It's like a divorce. Brexit is generally miserable, but now we're free! A relationship with Australia AND with America.It will be more fun and just as good!
The free trade effort is largely displacement PR. We need the agreements, given that we are leaving the EU anyway. We are unlikely to end up with a set of agreements that is significantly better for us than what we would have had anyway as a member of the EU. And none of this is a substitute for the one relationship that we MUST get right, which is with the EU.
If the USA and the EU do eventually sort out TTIP, we probably would want to be a part of it. Multilateral is much better than bilateral if you can get it. Which is a big part of the problem with Brexit.
If the EU had been just about trade it would have been fine.
It was all the other stuff that came with it that made it unpalatable
My parent's generation took me into the EEC when I was 12. When I finally got the opportunity to have my say, it had turned into something quite different and not particularly attractive,
I've lived all my life as part of the EU/its predecessors... it's time for a change
These conversations make me feel old. I was 9yrs old in 1975. Reminds me of my mother talking about pre-war life. She was born in 1932
Even I've been surprised at how many countries have expressed an interest in doing a trade deal with us, and just how fast. It's barely been 3 weeks.
One can only conclude that a major part of the attraction a lot of the world had in doing trade deals with the EU is precisely because the UK was in it.
It does not take many brain cells to work out that people will be desperate to trade with one of the biggest economies on the planet.
Yet for some reason Remain campaigners thought they wouldn't. Weird ...
To express an interest to trade does not mean you will have trade agreements coming off the printer ! In the beginning it will be on WTO terms. which, in many instances, will be worse than arrangements with the EU.
Or, are you saying, they will offer Britain better terms than the EU which in terms of size, is 6 times larger than the UK [ including Scotland ]
Yes I am saying that we will get better terms. I am saying we are likely (over the next decade probably) to negotiate trade deals much better than the EU.
If we negotiate a trade deal with the EU and with Australia alone then that already would be better as we'd have the EU (which we already had) and Australia on top of it. If we get a dozen deals as Fox has spoken about, then that would be transformatively better potentially even if we failed to get an EU deal (unlikely).
Only if we don't sort them out ourselves which is partially what the two year plus window is for. Which nations do you think we won't sort a deal with during that window?
The Sun also reports May is ready to open a wave of new grammar schools tearing up rules banning the opening of new selective schools and allowing them to expand where local parents want them in the most significant departure yet from the Cameron administration
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
TBF, who expected to see 1970s politics again in 2015/16 either? Or even 1930s? What we've learned over the last year is that politics runs in cycles - very long ones. I thought military coups were a bit passe except in S America.
When was the last military coup in S America, Ms Plato?
SDP2 would have no Short Money and no Union money. This immediately puts its financial situaiton in a very precarious position.
It is also unsupported by Labour members who want to deselect the right wing MPs infesting the PLP. Again, no money for them there. The only hope they have for funding is for people like John Mills to prop them up.
If you're claiming they can get tens of millions of points in backing from enough wealthy backers, you need to demonstrate some evidence of this beyond the odd claim. You'd also need to explain to potential voters how a party ENTIRELY funded by a wealth few is a popular, social democratic movement.
Who gives a fuck about Short money ? PD can attract the same level of donor money as the Tories can.
Again, another completely unsubstantiated claim.
The Labour party gets money from Unions, Subscriptions and small donations, Short Money and large donors. Labour, even at the height of Blairism got significantly less money from large donors than the Tories. Its a fraction of what the Tories get.
SDP2 will have access to only ONE of those four funding sources, which has always been historically tiny compared to the amount the Tories get from the same source and yet, you claim that SDP2 will magically get as much from this source as the Tories.
Even I've been surprised at how many countries have expressed an interest in doing a trade deal with us, and just how fast. It's barely been 3 weeks.
One can only conclude that a major part of the attraction a lot of the world had in doing trade deals with the EU is precisely because the UK was in it.
It does not take many brain cells to work out that people will be desperate to trade with one of the biggest economies on the planet.
Yet for some reason Remain campaigners thought they wouldn't. Weird ...
To express an interest to trade does not mean you will have trade agreements coming off the printer ! In the beginning it will be on WTO terms. which, in many instances, will be worse than arrangements with the EU.
Or, are you saying, they will offer Britain better terms than the EU which in terms of size, is 6 times larger than the UK [ including Scotland ]
Yes I am saying that we will get better terms. I am saying we are likely (over the next decade probably) to negotiate trade deals much better than the EU.
If we negotiate a trade deal with the EU and with Australia alone then that already would be better as we'd have the EU (which we already had) and Australia on top of it. If we get a dozen deals as Fox has spoken about, then that would be transformatively better potentially even if we failed to get an EU deal (unlikely).
Only if we don't sort them out ourselves which is partially what the two year plus window is for. Which nations do you think we won't sort a deal with during that window?
SDP2 would have no Short Money and no Union money. This immediately puts its financial situaiton in a very precarious position.
It is also unsupported by Labour members who want to deselect the right wing MPs infesting the PLP. Again, no money for them there. The only hope they have for funding is for people like John Mills to prop them up.
If you're claiming they can get tens of millions of points in backing from enough wealthy backers, you need to demonstrate some evidence of this beyond the odd claim. You'd also need to explain to potential voters how a party ENTIRELY funded by a wealth few is a popular, social democratic movement.
Who gives a fuck about Short money ? PD can attract the same level of donor money as the Tories can.
Again, another completely unsubstantiated claim.
The Labour party gets money from Unions, Subscriptions and small donations, Short Money and large donors. Labour, even at the height of Blairism got significantly less money from large donors than the Tories. Its a fraction of what the Tories get.
SDP2 will have access to only ONE of those four funding sources, which has always been historically tiny compared to the amount the Tories get from the same source and yet, you claim that SDP2 will magically get as much from this source as the Tories.
The Sun also reports May is ready to open a wave of new grammar schools tearing up rules banning the opening of new selective schools and allowing them to expand where local parents want them in the most significant departure yet from the Cameron administration
Excellent.
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
The Sun also reports May told Osborne he had 'over promised and under delivered' on his 2020 budget surplus when she sacked him.
The paper also reports May is ready to open a wave of new grammar schools tearing up rules banning the opening of new selective schools and allowing them to expand where local parents want them in the most significant departure yet from the Cameron administration
I guess it's not just corbynites who want to fight the battles of the past, everyone wants a return to politics of the good old days.
Only if we don't sort them out ourselves which is partially what the two year plus window is for. Which nations do you think we won't sort a deal with during that window?
Look, I've argued for Out consistently, but I think you're optimistic.
There's a reason why trade deals typically take a long-time to negotiate, and that's because countries always seek to protect strategic domestic industries. If you look at the UK, we want to promote our industries abroad. So, it's very important that other countries open up - for example - their insurance market to our firms. Annoyingly, the areas that we are strongest (services) are the areas where there is the most work that needs to be done to deal with regulation and non-tariff barriers. And therefore negotiations tend to be protracted.
When we leave the EU, we also leave the trade deals the EU has with the EFTA states, and with about two dozen other countries around the world. These countries *are* going to seek advantage from us because we're so keen to get a deal done quickly, and because all our trade negotiators are going to be locked in a room with the EU.
It's what makes EFTA (even without the EEA part) so attractive: they have almost exactly the same list of trade deals as the EU, plus they've actually signed their Canadian FTA I believe.
PB is a wonderful site. When it starts floundering about in the morass that is world trade, it's definitely not at its best.
I'm not an expert, but I do have time on my hands to poke about. Picking up a few points:
- The UK is three times as wealthy as it was in the early 70s. The WTO has changed the whole outlook on tariffs. Poke about on this site, if you're really interested.
Tariffs are only part of the equation. We could trade quite comfortably on WTO MFN - for goods. Services, different kettle of fish, and we're a service economy.
- EU has 33 existing FTAs, with several more in the pipeline. EFTA has 26. There are some frameworks we could piggyback on mutatis mutandis.
- Robert mentioned the TPP. I looked at five chapters. Horribly technical, very dull. Trade agreements are difficult & slow. The EU is the poster child for making them slower.
- About 10-13% of the UK economy is directly dependent on EU trade. About 10% of the workforce. It's important, but May has other fish to fry. We need to make sure that the EU uncertainty doesn't drag the rest of the economy down.
For my part, I support the EU because I think it's good for the countries of Europe to have an organisation where they work together, a forum where they are encouraged to sort out their differences and institutions that bind them all together. And crucially where there is no alternative to the EU for that to happen.
On the other hand by being a member, the UK and other countries give up control over our affairs to that remote institution who have far less interest than the people of our countries in what happens here and even less responsibility for it.
They are both good arguments in my view, but they are both philosophical ones. As a supporter of the EU, I can talk about peace and brotherhood, but that doesn't butter any parsnips if it means we are poorer and have fewer jobs etc. So I talk only about the practical issues.
But I hold the counterargument to the same principle. Sovereignty is meaningless if we end up being poorer and having fewer jobs. We shouldn't discount the positive arguments for the EU as being airy-fairy and then say of course the counter arguments are a dearly held principle.
On the practicalities, leaving the EU is definitely worse in the short and medium term while the long term is unknowable. That's where we end up arguing
I don't think we differ too much in our objectives.
I too agree with the countries of Europe having an organisation to help them sort out their differences and bind them together. There are plenty of multi-lateral organisations that can help do this - whether the ECHR, NATO, the UN, the OECD, the G20, etc. I can, however, see the argument for a pan-European body to do this.
Where we part is that, in my view, it should be multi-lateral cooperation between independent states.
The fundamental issue is that - with QMV - critical decisions were being made for us without those decision makers being accountable to the British electorate. If you could convince me that the people of Europe would vote as a single demos for non-national based political parties and leaders then I'd be ok with the concept of a directly elected European government. But no one has convinced me of that to date...
Fundamentally there will - of course - be some near term disruption. But I have confidence in the British people to innovate and create wealth and - in the medium term - we will be better off than we are in the EU. I gave the specific example of premium beef exports from Mercosur a couple of times but no Remainer ever answered me: a key industry in the North of England/south of Scotland was being sacrificed to allow Italian and German speciality engineering companies access to Mercosur. I'm sure that the EU as a whole would be better off, but that's thin gruel for our fellow citizens. And they had no effective way to express their discontent.
SDP2 would have no Short Money and no Union money. This immediately puts its financial situaiton in a very precarious position.
It is also unsupported by Labour members who want to deselect the right wing MPs infesting the PLP. Again, no money for them there. The only hope they have for funding is for people like John Mills to prop them up.
If you're claiming they can get tens of millions of points in backing from enough wealthy backers, you need to demonstrate some evidence of this beyond the odd claim. You'd also need to explain to potential voters how a party ENTIRELY funded by a wealth few is a popular, social democratic movement.
Who gives a fuck about Short money ? PD can attract the same level of donor money as the Tories can.
Again, another completely unsubstantiated claim.
The Labour party gets money from Unions, Subscriptions and small donations, Short Money and large donors. Labour, even at the height of Blairism got significantly less money from large donors than the Tories. Its a fraction of what the Tories get.
SDP2 will have access to only ONE of those four funding sources, which has always been historically tiny compared to the amount the Tories get from the same source and yet, you claim that SDP2 will magically get as much from this source as the Tories.
What was the original SDP's funding like? Genuinely, I don't know.
I have no idea.
I suspect the cost of running a party was substantially less back then and unlike an SDP2, the original SDP would have taken a decent chunk of the old Labour membership with them.
As I hinted before, the main problem SDP2 has is that it is an entirely hollow movement, it is top led, completely lacking in a grass roots.
Angela Eagle's entire pitch on Marr is 'because I'm a woman'.
As a woman, I find that profoundly irritating. I didn't get appointed to my role because I'm a woman, I got it because I beat all the other candidates to prove I was the best person for the role.
PB is a wonderful site. When it starts floundering about in the morass that is world trade, it's definitely not at its best.
I'm not an expert, but I do have time on my hands to poke about. Picking up a few points:
- The UK is three times as wealthy as it was in the early 70s. The WTO has changed the whole outlook on tariffs. Poke about on this site, if you're really interested.
Tariffs are only part of the equation. We could trade quite comfortably on WTO MFN - for goods. Services, different kettle of fish, and we're a service economy.
- EU has 33 existing FTAs, with several more in the pipeline. EFTA has 26. There are some frameworks we could piggyback on mutatis mutandis.
- Robert mentioned the TPP. I looked at five chapters. Horribly technical, very dull. Trade agreements are difficult & slow. The EU is the poster child for making them slower.
- About 10-13% of the UK economy is directly dependent on EU trade. About 10% of the workforce. It's important, but May has other fish to fry. We need to make sure that the EU uncertainty doesn't drag the rest of the economy down.
Your post does very little to alter the observation you make in your first sentence, I'm afraid.
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
PB is a wonderful site. When it starts floundering about in the morass that is world trade, it's definitely not at its best.
I'm not an expert, but I do have time on my hands to poke about. Picking up a few points:
- The UK is three times as wealthy as it was in the early 70s. The WTO has changed the whole outlook on tariffs. Poke about on this site, if you're really interested.
Tariffs are only part of the equation. We could trade quite comfortably on WTO MFN - for goods. Services, different kettle of fish, and we're a service economy.
- EU has 33 existing FTAs, with several more in the pipeline. EFTA has 26. There are some frameworks we could piggyback on mutatis mutandis.
- Robert mentioned the TPP. I looked at five chapters. Horribly technical, very dull. Trade agreements are difficult & slow. The EU is the poster child for making them slower.
- About 10-13% of the UK economy is directly dependent on EU trade. About 10% of the workforce. It's important, but May has other fish to fry. We need to make sure that the EU uncertainty doesn't drag the rest of the economy down.
An excellent post.
As an aside, in the medium term, we should certainly be able to negotiate trade deals faster than the EU, as we only represent one country's interest, and not 28.
Only if we don't sort them out ourselves which is partially what the two year plus window is for. Which nations do you think we won't sort a deal with during that window?
Look, I've argued for Out consistently, but I think you're optimistic.
There's a reason why trade deals typically take a long-time to negotiate, and that's because countries always seek to protect strategic domestic industries. If you look at the UK, we want to promote our industries abroad. So, it's very important that other countries open up - for example - their insurance market to our firms. Annoyingly, the areas that we are strongest (services) are the areas where there is the most work that needs to be done to deal with regulation and non-tariff barriers. And therefore negotiations tend to be protracted.
When we leave the EU, we also leave the trade deals the EU has with the EFTA states, and with about two dozen other countries around the world. These countries *are* going to seek advantage from us because we're so keen to get a deal done quickly, and because all our trade negotiators are going to be locked in a room with the EU.
It's what makes EFTA (even without the EEA part) so attractive: they have almost exactly the same list of trade deals as the EU, plus they've actually signed their Canadian FTA I believe.
Joining EFTA is a no brainer, I agree. Regardless of what other arrangements we make.
Angela Eagle's entire pitch on Marr is 'because I'm a woman'.
As a woman, I find that profoundly irritating. I didn't get appointed to my role because I'm a woman, I got it because I beat all the other candidates to prove I was the best person for the role.
Yes but in Eagles case that's because she's been entirely sheltered from having to come up with any other argument. She was given a seat because she was a woman, promoted because she was a women, kept on despite incompetence because she was a woman.
Eventually, even if she didn't start out with the mindset (and she probably did) it has been consistently re-inforced to such a degree that she undoubtedly thinks that way now.
PB is a wonderful site. When it starts floundering about in the morass that is world trade, it's definitely not at its best.
I'm not an expert, but I do have time on my hands to poke about. Picking up a few points:
- The UK is three times as wealthy as it was in the early 70s. The WTO has changed the whole outlook on tariffs. Poke about on this site, if you're really interested.
Tariffs are only part of the equation. We could trade quite comfortably on WTO MFN - for goods. Services, different kettle of fish, and we're a service economy.
- EU has 33 existing FTAs, with several more in the pipeline. EFTA has 26. There are some frameworks we could piggyback on mutatis mutandis.
- Robert mentioned the TPP. I looked at five chapters. Horribly technical, very dull. Trade agreements are difficult & slow. The EU is the poster child for making them slower.
- About 10-13% of the UK economy is directly dependent on EU trade. About 10% of the workforce. It's important, but May has other fish to fry. We need to make sure that the EU uncertainty doesn't drag the rest of the economy down.
Your post does very little to alter the observation you make in your first sentence, I'm afraid.
Exactly this. It is a battle to make the party responsive and democratic again. This is not to say make it blindly left wing, just a place where policies have to withstand a public battle of ideas rather than being imposed from above.
This is the problem. There is a difference between members and "the public".
The current Labour membership, were they to have a debate about Trident "in public" would probably vote for unilateral disarmament
Such a policy when put to a "public battle of ideas" in a General Election would get crushed.
So the question remains, should the Labour Party be a an intellectually pure talking shop and protest movement, or a party of Government?
Members want the former. MPs (and voters) want the latter
Not sure about that Scott.
I am pro Corbyn but not in favour of UND.
Not because its an election loser but because any disarmament needs to be done multilaterally.
Those Corbyn types I meet are split 50/50 on that issue
Typical Labour , pretend to be for disarmament but put condition of multilaterally on it knowing they will never get it and so they can be pious as ever without ever having to make a real decision on a moral / principal. Is it any wonder they are in their last death throes, only a sad rotten core of unprincipled chancers left.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
what's a 'lynch pin', I wonder? Made in Alabama?
Lynch Law used to be something respectable - if unorthodox.
It comes from when Thomas Lynch was Mayor of Galway & his son & heir was found standing of the dead body of a rival, bloody knife in hand.
No jury would convict him of murder (the Lynch's were, by some margin, the most powerful family in the region). So Thomas declared martial law and hung his son without a trial.
PB is a wonderful site. When it starts floundering about in the morass that is world trade, it's definitely not at its best.
I'm not an expert, but I do have time on my hands to poke about. Picking up a few points:
- The UK is three times as wealthy as it was in the early 70s. The WTO has changed the whole outlook on tariffs. Poke about on this site, if you're really interested.
Tariffs are only part of the equation. We could trade quite comfortably on WTO MFN - for goods. Services, different kettle of fish, and we're a service economy.
- EU has 33 existing FTAs, with several more in the pipeline. EFTA has 26. There are some frameworks we could piggyback on mutatis mutandis.
- Robert mentioned the TPP. I looked at five chapters. Horribly technical, very dull. Trade agreements are difficult & slow. The EU is the poster child for making them slower.
- About 10-13% of the UK economy is directly dependent on EU trade. About 10% of the workforce. It's important, but May has other fish to fry. We need to make sure that the EU uncertainty doesn't drag the rest of the economy down.
An excellent post.
As an aside, in the medium term, we should certainly be able to negotiate trade deals faster than the EU, as we only represent one country's interest, and not 28.
Thanks. I'd imagine 3-4 years might be about right in the round. BTW, are you interested in proofreading/feedback on your draft paper? Happy to help if so.
Only if we don't sort them out ourselves which is partially what the two year plus window is for. Which nations do you think we won't sort a deal with during that window?
Look, I've argued for Out consistently, but I think you're optimistic.
There's a reason why trade deals typically take a long-time to negotiate, and that's because countries always seek to protect strategic domestic industries. If you look at the UK, we want to promote our industries abroad. So, it's very important that other countries open up - for example - their insurance market to our firms. Annoyingly, the areas that we are strongest (services) are the areas where there is the most work that needs to be done to deal with regulation and non-tariff barriers. And therefore negotiations tend to be protracted.
When we leave the EU, we also leave the trade deals the EU has with the EFTA states, and with about two dozen other countries around the world. These countries *are* going to seek advantage from us because we're so keen to get a deal done quickly, and because all our trade negotiators are going to be locked in a room with the EU.
It's what makes EFTA (even without the EEA part) so attractive: they have almost exactly the same list of trade deals as the EU, plus they've actually signed their Canadian FTA I believe.
I understand that, which is why standing start trade deals are notoriously difficult. However we won't be negotitating from a standing start.
We are already a party to a free trade deal with all of the nations that the EU has a deal with. If we want to mirror our existing terms of trade then it should be relatively simple to get an agreement. Not to forget that almost all the nations the EU has a deal with like Iceland, Liechtenstein, the Palestinian Authority or Montenegro etc are tiny countries that we absolutely dwarf.
If we say to them that we're not looking at changing our terms of trade and would like to continue what already exists then a so-called "new" deal ought to be possible as it is already the status quo ante.
SDP2 would have no Short Money and no Union money. This immediately puts its financial situaiton in a very precarious position.
It is also unsupported by Labour members who want to deselect the right wing MPs infesting the PLP. Again, no money for them there. The only hope they have for funding is for people like John Mills to prop them up.
If you're claiming they can get tens of millions of points in backing from enough wealthy backers, you need to demonstrate some evidence of this beyond the odd claim. You'd also need to explain to potential voters how a party ENTIRELY funded by a wealth few is a popular, social democratic movement.
Who gives a fuck about Short money ? PD can attract the same level of donor money as the Tories can.
Again, another completely unsubstantiated claim.
The Labour party gets money from Unions, Subscriptions and small donations, Short Money and large donors. Labour, even at the height of Blairism got significantly less money from large donors than the Tories. Its a fraction of what the Tories get.
SDP2 will have access to only ONE of those four funding sources, which has always been historically tiny compared to the amount the Tories get from the same source and yet, you claim that SDP2 will magically get as much from this source as the Tories.
What was the original SDP's funding like? Genuinely, I don't know.
I have no idea.
I suspect the cost of running a party was substantially less back then and unlike an SDP2, the original SDP would have taken a decent chunk of the old Labour membership with them.
As I hinted before, the main problem SDP2 has is that it is an entirely hollow movement, it is top led, completely lacking in a grass roots.
"Lord Sainsbury was a supporter of the Social Democrat Party (SDP), remaining a trustee until 1990. In the late 1980s he served with Dick Taverne and Roger Liddle on the SDP's Steering Committee. He also bankrolled the party."
Angela Eagle's entire pitch on Marr is 'because I'm a woman'.
As a woman, I find that profoundly irritating. I didn't get appointed to my role because I'm a woman, I got it because I beat all the other candidates to prove I was the best person for the role.
Urgh, the Ovaries Argument. Was she wearing pink?
She's on Murnaghan next along with David Davis. Will have a looksee.
@PCollinsTimes: Paul, you're 10 points behind. 40% of Labour voters prefer May to Corbyn. When do you work out it's not working? https://t.co/Eqj2WJw2bT
Alternatively (if we arent cherry-picking data) labour is one point behind at one of the most damaging times in recent history. The better Pm question does not indicate a straight preference. So the question is completely and deliberately disingenuous. I think the virulence with which the tory press are attacking corbyn shows what they really fear, and it isnt the return of the likes of eagle and smith.
OK, now you're obviously a sockpuppet. No one really believes this rubbish.
Do they?!
JWisemann and BigJohnOwls are spoof posters Sean. I am furious with myself for not clicking months ago.
Exactly this. It is a battle to make the party responsive and democratic again. This is not to say make it blindly left wing, just a place where policies have to withstand a public battle of ideas rather than being imposed from above.
This is the problem. There is a difference between members and "the public".
The current Labour membership, were they to have a debate about Trident "in public" would probably vote for unilateral disarmament
Such a policy when put to a "public battle of ideas" in a General Election would get crushed.
So the question remains, should the Labour Party be a an intellectually pure talking shop and protest movement, or a party of Government?
Members want the former. MPs (and voters) want the latter
Not sure about that Scott.
I am pro Corbyn but not in favour of UND.
Not because its an election loser but because any disarmament needs to be done multilaterally.
Those Corbyn types I meet are split 50/50 on that issue
I am pro-nuclear but anti-Trident because it is not value for money. Nuclear deterrence does not mean Trident is the only route. When big business and Trade Unions agree, there is something very fishy.
Agree - Trident is jobs for the boys. To be honest though I'm very ambivalent on Nuclear and wish we didn't have it. If we were to get rid right now though I think we'd head even further into the leper books of alot of our allies.
So just waste another 100-200 Billion in case someone takes the hump at us. Great way to justify borrowing another 200 Billion.
PB is a wonderful site. When it starts floundering about in the morass that is world trade, it's definitely not at its best.
I'm not an expert, but I do have time on my hands to poke about. Picking up a few points:
- The UK is three times as wealthy as it was in the early 70s. The WTO has changed the whole outlook on tariffs. Poke about on this site, if you're really interested.
Tariffs are only part of the equation. We could trade quite comfortably on WTO MFN - for goods. Services, different kettle of fish, and we're a service economy.
- EU has 33 existing FTAs, with several more in the pipeline. EFTA has 26. There are some frameworks we could piggyback on mutatis mutandis.
- Robert mentioned the TPP. I looked at five chapters. Horribly technical, very dull. Trade agreements are difficult & slow. The EU is the poster child for making them slower.
- About 10-13% of the UK economy is directly dependent on EU trade. About 10% of the workforce. It's important, but May has other fish to fry. We need to make sure that the EU uncertainty doesn't drag the rest of the economy down.
Your post does very little to alter the observation you make in your first sentence, I'm afraid.
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
The question that always comes to me is why the UK seems to (uniquely) require grammar schools.
It does not seem to be a system found anywhere else in the developed world and better outcomes seem to come from other countries comprehensive systems. Is there even evidence that it works, for example, do people from Kent have better outcomes than people from demographically similar counties?
The whole argument in favour of them seems to incorporate elements of the NIMBY mentality with "something must be done, this is something".
I see they've demolished the last bit of Didcot powerstation this morning. The poor souls who've been trapped under rubble since February have a chance to be found and buried at last.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Why can't we think about both, in the spirit of the original 1944 act? And as, eg Germany does.
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
what's a 'lynch pin', I wonder? Made in Alabama?
What stops a wagon wheel from coming off a wagon. Therefore, metaphorically a vital safety feature.
It's funny. Nobody seems to mention that greatest of death causing, waster of natural resources, and maker of fortunes: war. Ah, I am forgetting. It won't happen now. We are wiser that the previous 50-odd generations of Europeans for whom peacetime has been an interlude between armed conflict.
Yes we are. We also have Trident. How many of those generations were nuclear armed?
I'm thinking about Europe. Will some of those states get Trident too?
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
The question that always comes to me is why the UK seems to (uniquely) require grammar schools.
It does not seem to be a system found anywhere else in the developed world and better outcomes seem to come from other countries comprehensive systems. Is there even evidence that it works, for example, do people from Kent have better outcomes than people from demographically similar counties?
The whole argument in favour of them seems to incorporate elements of the NIMBY mentality with "something must be done, this is something".
You think no other nations have academic selection? It's a view ...
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
I cannot understand the English obsession with grammar schools. Good comprehensives where kids from all backgrounds mix are far better for preventing the ghettoisation of rich and poor.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
I cannot understand the English obsession with grammar schools. Good comprehensives where kids from all backgrounds mix are far better for preventing the ghettoisation of rich and poor.
You have obviously not come across the stigmatisation of the 'swotty and clever' that goes on in Comprehensives, with the according reduction in results as the 'swotty and clever' try and become one with the thickos/
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
Portions of school funding come from extra curricular fundraising activities (plays, school fetes etc) and grammar schools, with their heavy skew of richer academically interested parents, will always outperform the non grammar schools in the area by design.
Even I've been surprised at how many countries have expressed an interest in doing a trade deal with us, and just how fast. It's barely been 3 weeks.
One can only conclude that a major part of the attraction a lot of the world had in doing trade deals with the EU is precisely because the UK was in it.
It does not take many brain cells to work out that people will be desperate to trade with one of the biggest economies on the planet.
Scotland has grown since I last looked.
Not awake yet Sean, I was actually talking about current UK, but you are correct that it is likely we will have several amaller economies in teh end and fall well down the league tables.
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
The question that always comes to me is why the UK seems to (uniquely) require grammar schools.
It does not seem to be a system found anywhere else in the developed world and better outcomes seem to come from other countries comprehensive systems. Is there even evidence that it works, for example, do people from Kent have better outcomes than people from demographically similar counties?
The whole argument in favour of them seems to incorporate elements of the NIMBY mentality with "something must be done, this is something".
You think no other nations have academic selection? It's a view ...
As far as I know, there are no other OECD countries with a binary academic stream at age 11 or even similar. The Grammar school system is not the same as MAGNET or Gynasium systems.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
It's not either or but the mix.
Whenever possible parents should be offered choice and that includes the provision of free schools, academies and grammar schools.
The Sun also reports May told Osborne he had 'over promised and under delivered' on his 2020 budget surplus when she sacked him.
The paper also reports May is ready to open a wave of new grammar schools tearing up rules banning the opening of new selective schools and allowing them to expand where local parents want them in the most significant departure yet from the Cameron administration
I guess it's not just corbynites who want to fight the battles of the past, everyone wants a return to politics of the good old days.
Though grammarsare likely to be more popular than reheated socialism
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
You're misreading the stats.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
what's a 'lynch pin', I wonder? Made in Alabama?
Lynch Law used to be something respectable - if unorthodox.
It comes from when Thomas Lynch was Mayor of Galway & his son & heir was found standing of the dead body of a rival, bloody knife in hand.
No jury would convict him of murder (the Lynch's were, by some margin, the most powerful family in the region). So Thomas declared martial law and hung his son without a trial.
The ENTIRE Labour party (including Corbyn) could move to the "New Democrats", offer exactly the same policies as now - and yet any one of us here standing under the Labour banner (With zip policies) would win in about a hundred seats.
This is the rebels problem the "Labour" brand is a massive massive brand name.
What they need to do is to adopt the name 'real Labour' and relentlessly refer to the Corbynist rump as 'momentum Labour'.
That happened in 31 but the law Labour passed after the 97 election will make that impossible wouldn't it?
MacDonald was expelled from Labour in 1931 so in that case it was the aberrant leader and his followers left without a party.
But in 1931 we had Ramsay MacDonald's National Labour competing against Arthur Henderson's Labour. Meanwhile we had the Liberal National Party, the Liberal Party and Independent Liberal.
As there was no restriction then on party names it was possible for a party to split and both claim to be Labour or Liberal etc
Under the Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 would that have been possible?
Probably not.
Historically the Labour name arises from its ties with the trade unions, who effectively founded it. In the 1980s splits the unions were with the moderates; now they are with the left. I think it would be difficult therefore for a bunch of rebel MPs leaving, without any Union backing, to lay any claim to the name.
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
what's a 'lynch pin', I wonder? Made in Alabama?
One assumes you actually know what a lynchpin is and are just being a wag.
Finally the Sun reports May was willing to give Gove a Cabinet post but in the end sacked him because other Ministers refused to work with him
I'm getting mixed signals from these first days of May. If that report is accurate then she isn't a decisive leader who got rid of the incompetent and backstabbers as part of a grand strategy, she was trying to manage things and got pushed into it. Not sure what to believe.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I'm fairly certain I can run a successful school if I can pick the academically best children/parents in the area.
The major reason you want your kid to go to a grammar school, is that you want your kid to go to a school where all the other parents are obsessive about education.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
You're misreading the stats.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
The Sun also reports May told Osborne he had 'over promised and under delivered' on his 2020 budget surplus when she sacked him.
The paper also reports May is ready to open a wave of new grammar schools tearing up rules banning the opening of new selective schools and allowing them to expand where local parents want them in the most significant departure yet from the Cameron administration
I guess it's not just corbynites who want to fight the battles of the past, everyone wants a return to politics of the good old days.
Though grammarsare likely to be more popular than reheated socialism
Probably. Personally, as someone without children and little knowledge of the educational establishment, it's a bit of a mystery to me why it has to be so complicated, why so many different types of schools.
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
what's a 'lynch pin', I wonder? Made in Alabama?
Lynch Law used to be something respectable - if unorthodox.
It comes from when Thomas Lynch was Mayor of Galway & his son & heir was found standing of the dead body of a rival, bloody knife in hand.
No jury would convict him of murder (the Lynch's were, by some margin, the most powerful family in the region). So Thomas declared martial law and hung his son without a trial.
lynchpin , more normally spelt linchpin is a pin used to hold a wheel in place on an axle. Though your one is more interesting.
In the 4th century BC Adea and Olympias led armies against one another [they didn't actually fight but that was only because Adea's abandoned her, unable, for sentimental reasons, to fight Alexander's mother]. In the 11th (I think) century, Sichelgaita, the wife of Robert Guiscard, commanded troops when her husband invaded the Balkans.
I'm reasonably sure none of them used 'because ovaries' as an argument to win authority.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
You're misreading the stats.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
Grammar school pupils are overrepresented at Oxbridge compared to their numbers, comprehensive school pupils underrepresented, that is the key statistic. So yes the grammar school system does deliver
TBF, who expected to see 1970s politics again in 2015/16 either? Or even 1930s? What we've learned over the last year is that politics runs in cycles - very long ones. I thought military coups were a bit passe except in S America.
When was the last military coup in S America, Ms Plato?
Ms Plato having fallen silent, it seems I have to answer my own question. The last one I can remember was that of General Pinochet in Chile, almost 40 years ago. So the sneer at the many coutries of Latin America does seem a bit out of place.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
You're misreading the stats.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
Grammar school pupils are overrepresented at Oxbridge compared to their numbers, comprehensive school pupils underrepresented, that us the key statistic. So yes the grammar school system does deliver
No, it's not. It's statistically meaningless.
What would be meaningful would be if Council areas with Grammar schools are over-represented compared to council areas who only use Comprehensives.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I'm fairly certain I can run a successful school if I can pick the academically best children/parents in the area.
The major reason you want your kid to go to a grammar school, is that you want your kid to go to a school where all the other parents are obsessive about education.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
Not necessarily, selective Trafford has above average GCSE results overall
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I'm fairly certain I can run a successful school if I can pick the academically best children/parents in the area.
The major reason you want your kid to go to a grammar school, is that you want your kid to go to a school where all the other parents are obsessive about education.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
Instead of closing grammar schools we should have focused on fixing secondary moderns. Many people didn't even have the chance to take O Levels because they ended up in the wrong school at the age of 11.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I'm fairly certain I can run a successful school if I can pick the academically best children/parents in the area.
The major reason you want your kid to go to a grammar school, is that you want your kid to go to a school where all the other parents are obsessive about education.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
The big unstated elephant in the room hanging ignored over the conversation is that Parents are by far the biggest determinant on a child's academic success, schools are a bonus.
Children on Free School Meals do dramatically worse academically in regions with grammar schools.
I'm possibly surprised there is a dramatic difference, I thought it might be even overall (if you added up Grammars and Comps in such areas and all Comps in non-Grammar areas).
That it actually makes things worse is a genuine concern but then, these families won't be Tory voters and we have FPTP...
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
what's a 'lynch pin', I wonder? Made in Alabama?
One assumes you actually know what a lynchpin is and are just being a wag.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I'm fairly certain I can run a successful school if I can pick the academically best children/parents in the area.
The major reason you want your kid to go to a grammar school, is that you want your kid to go to a school where all the other parents are obsessive about education.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
Not necessarily, selective Trafford has above average GCSE results overall
The FT article is excellent if you can get past the paywall. It changed my mind on this issue.
So what about the commonly made claim that grammars boost social mobility? Maybe they do not increase everyone’s results, but do they close the rich-poor gap? Well, here is the average score attained by FSM-eligible children.
And the same attainment graph as before, but solely for FSM-eligible children:
You can see that poor children do dramatically worse in selective areas.
There is an narrower idea out there in the ether that grammar schools are better for propelling poor children to the very top of the tree. But, again, that is not true. Poor children are less likely to score very highly at GCSE in grammar areas than the rest. Note that the blue line is below the red on the very right hand side of the graph.
Indeed, I think this whole story is neatly encapsulated by one graph to follow. If you plot how well children do on average by household deprivation for selective areas and for the rest of the country, you can see that the net effect of grammar schools is to disadvantage poor children and help the rich.
At the left hand side of the graph, where poor children’s results are, you can see selective areas do much worse. At the very right, you can see a few very rich children do better. This is all driven by the process of selection itself: poor children are more likely to be behind at the age of 11, and less likely to get places in grammars.
Chris Bryant MPVerified account @RhonddaBryant Turkey is now and has long been a lynch pin in European and wider security. Ludicrous Brexit lies undoubtedly contributed to destabilising
I mean he actually typed that with a straight face
The various replies to that absurd tweet are very funny. He's such a plonker. And to think he was once a vicar.
As a churchwarden & someone who's family is quite involved with the church, I find that there are a higher percentage of plonkers among vicars than in the general population
what's a 'lynch pin', I wonder? Made in Alabama?
Lynch Law used to be something respectable - if unorthodox.
It comes from when Thomas Lynch was Mayor of Galway & his son & heir was found standing of the dead body of a rival, bloody knife in hand.
No jury would convict him of murder (the Lynch's were, by some margin, the most powerful family in the region). So Thomas declared martial law and hung his son without a trial.
lynchpin , more normally spelt linchpin is a pin used to hold a wheel in place on an axle. Though your one is more interesting.
I know - Lynching is nothing to do with linching (can you make a verb out of linch pin? or would it be to pin?)
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
The question that always comes to me is why the UK seems to (uniquely) require grammar schools.
It does not seem to be a system found anywhere else in the developed world and better outcomes seem to come from other countries comprehensive systems. Is there even evidence that it works, for example, do people from Kent have better outcomes than people from demographically similar counties?
The whole argument in favour of them seems to incorporate elements of the NIMBY mentality with "something must be done, this is something".
You think no other nations have academic selection? It's a view ...
As far as I know, there are no other OECD countries with a binary academic stream at age 11 or even similar. The Grammar school system is not the same as MAGNET or Gynasium systems.
Germany has wholesale selective secondary education, France has some selective lycees, South Korea has selective schools, even the U.S. has some in New York and Finland selects in the sixth form. Most grammars also have a sixth form entry
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I'm fairly certain I can run a successful school if I can pick the academically best children/parents in the area.
The major reason you want your kid to go to a grammar school, is that you want your kid to go to a school where all the other parents are obsessive about education.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
Not necessarily, selective Trafford has above average GCSE results overall
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
You're misreading the stats.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
Grammar school pupils are overrepresented at Oxbridge compared to their numbers, comprehensive school pupils underrepresented, that is the key statistic. So yes the grammar school system does deliver
It delivers for the people at grammar school. If you are in charge of the whole system you need to look at everyone.
TBF, who expected to see 1970s politics again in 2015/16 either? Or even 1930s? What we've learned over the last year is that politics runs in cycles - very long ones. I thought military coups were a bit passe except in S America.
When was the last military coup in S America, Ms Plato?
Ms Plato having fallen silent, it seems I have to answer my own question. The last one I can remember was that of General Pinochet in Chile, almost 40 years ago. So the sneer at the many coutries of Latin America does seem a bit out of place.
I missed your post. Given Venezuela is currently under martial law and has been for several months - it's ripe for one.
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
Germany has wholesale selective secondary education, France has some selective lycees, South Korea has selective schools, even the U.S. has some in New York and Finland selects in the sixth form. Most grammars also have a sixth form entry
Again you are misrepresenting your claims.
No country has a binary model remotely similar to the Grammar school system.
Personally, I think there is a lot of appeal of the MAGNET and Gymnasium systems and a combination of both (i.e. MAGNET with lots of technical, some sport and arts and no academic selection) would work best but the bulk of kids would still go to a standard comprehensive high school.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
You're misreading the stats.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
Grammar school pupils are overrepresented at Oxbridge compared to their numbers, comprehensive school pupils underrepresented, that is the key statistic. So yes the grammar school system does deliver
Not if the overall population has the same representation.
County A has 1 grammar school and 1 comprehensive. Count B has 2 comprehensives. The schools re of equal size.
County A sends 20 pupils to Oxbridge. 15 from the Grammar and 5 from the comp. County B sends 20, 10 from each.
Average number of pupils sent per school: 10. Average from Grammars 50% higher. Average from Comps: 17% lower
TBF, who expected to see 1970s politics again in 2015/16 either? Or even 1930s? What we've learned over the last year is that politics runs in cycles - very long ones. I thought military coups were a bit passe except in S America.
When was the last military coup in S America, Ms Plato?
Ms Plato having fallen silent, it seems I have to answer my own question. The last one I can remember was that of General Pinochet in Chile, almost 40 years ago. So the sneer at the many coutries of Latin America does seem a bit out of place.
To be fair, though, the generals were in power for a long-time post coup. I'm not sure when Argentina, for instance, became a pseudo-democracy (mid 80s?)
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
Depressing news. Look at the progress in inner city London schools and the numbers they are able to get into Oxbridge. Grammar schools are not needed for bright but poor kids to do well, we simply need good schools.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
Grammar schools are the only state schools which compete with private schools on Oxbridge entry, yes there are a few exceptions like Mossbourne Academy but they are rare. Personally I am in favour of grammar expansion but would prefer entry at 13 or even 16 rather than 11
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
You're misreading the stats.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
Grammar school pupils are overrepresented at Oxbridge compared to their numbers, comprehensive school pupils underrepresented, that is the key statistic. So yes the grammar school system does deliver
It delivers for the people at grammar school. If you are in charge of the whole system you need to look at everyone.
Unless you are a political party in a FPTP system that only needs 37% of the vote to form a majority government.
Yes a big piece of red meat for Tory activists which will go down well with Tory voters too and a clear rejection of Cameron's decision to turn his back on new grammars in 2007 which caused a row with many of his backbenchers
I've always been a firm supporter of grammar schools but with one significant proviso.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
Indeed and especially if they get good results
Or especially if they get bad results, so they can hire more teachers, buy more interactive whiteboards, and reduce class sizes in order to bring their results back up to par.
That's the problem with common sense -- contradictory solutions seem equally reasonable.
@PCollinsTimes: Paul, you're 10 points behind. 40% of Labour voters prefer May to Corbyn. When do you work out it's not working? https://t.co/Eqj2WJw2bT
There are Corbyn supporters who seem rational and reasonable, even if they wrong (and if they are right then my gods we are in for a shock) - Mason on the other hands seems like an absolute loon. It's to the point I'm amazed he was able to hold diwn a job reporting on things, having to restrain himself from making rabid far left rants about everything.
Mason is rather a disappointment. Having seen some of his broadcasting I bought his book "it's all kicking off" a couple of years back. It's a good read, with a lot of stuff about his meetings with the young disaffected of the Arab world, and an interesting insight into the origins of and sentiments behind the 'Arab spring'. But as a piece of analysis it was really poor - he makes some vague claims about how it's all a common phenomenon, without really examining how or why - and rather than offer any sort of coherent narrative or even prospectus for the future,the book just peters out. It felt to me like one of those student essays where you start writing before knowing what you want to say.
He's doing a great PR job for them already. I feel a skip in my step.
"I came into the Foreign Office yesterday morning after a pretty truncated night’s sleep to find the place in what Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service calls “crisis mode”...
Some of them had worked consecutive shifts without sleep... Some of them were still engaged in the aftermath of the horrendous carnage in Nice; some had only just finished organising an evacuation of aid workers from Juba in South Sudan, scene of a singularly nasty conflict..."
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I'm fairly certain I can run a successful school if I can pick the academically best children/parents in the area.
The major reason you want your kid to go to a grammar school, is that you want your kid to go to a school where all the other parents are obsessive about education.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
Instead of closing grammar schools we should have focused on fixing secondary moderns. Many people didn't even have the chance to take O Levels because they ended up in the wrong school at the age of 11.
Secondary moderns were not really the problem -- it was the technical schools that were the third leg of the system, that would teach engineering and craft skills. Alas, all those labs, workshops and materials were very expensive, so almost none were opened.
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
A new generation of just under the cutoff kids being stuffed in forgotten about sub standard schools.
The issue with grammar school was never the grammar schools, it was those stuck in the secondary moderns below.*
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
I think I'd get lynched if I moaned about my wife's schooling preference!
Any parent who does not do all that they can to ensure their child(ren) get the best possible education they can is, in my view, guilty of child abuse.
Grammar schools are a great idea for about 10% of children who would benefit from university education. And therein is the rub, we have a national target of sending 50% of our children to university. To just allow areas to re-introduce grammar schools without fixing the rest of the system (restoring freedom to teachers, technical schools, age of selection, return of the polytechnics etc.) would, in my view, be very wrong - a middle class rip-off.
Comments
Speaking of prophecy, another link to the mid-season piece [apologies for plugging it a fair bit, but unlike the race weekend pieces it's not something that F1 persons will necessarily realise is up unless I bang on about it]:
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/the-2016-mid-season-review.html
A new generation of bright but poor kids getting ahead hopefully.
The Labour party gets money from Unions, Subscriptions and small donations, Short Money and large donors. Labour, even at the height of Blairism got significantly less money from large donors than the Tories. Its a fraction of what the Tories get.
SDP2 will have access to only ONE of those four funding sources, which has always been historically tiny compared to the amount the Tories get from the same source and yet, you claim that SDP2 will magically get as much from this source as the Tories.
You're talking nonsense. Completely delusional nonsense.
There's a reason why trade deals typically take a long-time to negotiate, and that's because countries always seek to protect strategic domestic industries. If you look at the UK, we want to promote our industries abroad. So, it's very important that other countries open up - for example - their insurance market to our firms. Annoyingly, the areas that we are strongest (services) are the areas where there is the most work that needs to be done to deal with regulation and non-tariff barriers. And therefore negotiations tend to be protracted.
When we leave the EU, we also leave the trade deals the EU has with the EFTA states, and with about two dozen other countries around the world. These countries *are* going to seek advantage from us because we're so keen to get a deal done quickly, and because all our trade negotiators are going to be locked in a room with the EU.
It's what makes EFTA (even without the EEA part) so attractive: they have almost exactly the same list of trade deals as the EU, plus they've actually signed their Canadian FTA I believe.
I'm not an expert, but I do have time on my hands to poke about. Picking up a few points:
- The UK is three times as wealthy as it was in the early 70s. The WTO has changed the whole outlook on tariffs. Poke about on this site, if you're really interested.
https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/statis_bis_e.htm?solution=WTO&path=/Dashboards/MAPS&file=Tariff.wcdf&bookmarkState={"impl":"client","params":{"langParam":"en"}}
Tariffs are only part of the equation. We could trade quite comfortably on WTO MFN - for goods. Services, different kettle of fish, and we're a service economy.
- EU has 33 existing FTAs, with several more in the pipeline. EFTA has 26. There are some frameworks we could piggyback on mutatis mutandis.
- Robert mentioned the TPP. I looked at five chapters. Horribly technical, very dull. Trade agreements are difficult & slow. The EU is the poster child for making them slower.
- About 10-13% of the UK economy is directly dependent on EU trade. About 10% of the workforce. It's important, but May has other fish to fry. We need to make sure that the EU uncertainty doesn't drag the rest of the economy down.
I too agree with the countries of Europe having an organisation to help them sort out their differences and bind them together. There are plenty of multi-lateral organisations that can help do this - whether the ECHR, NATO, the UN, the OECD, the G20, etc. I can, however, see the argument for a pan-European body to do this.
Where we part is that, in my view, it should be multi-lateral cooperation between independent states.
The fundamental issue is that - with QMV - critical decisions were being made for us without those decision makers being accountable to the British electorate. If you could convince me that the people of Europe would vote as a single demos for non-national based political parties and leaders then I'd be ok with the concept of a directly elected European government. But no one has convinced me of that to date...
Fundamentally there will - of course - be some near term disruption. But I have confidence in the British people to innovate and create wealth and - in the medium term - we will be better off than we are in the EU. I gave the specific example of premium beef exports from Mercosur a couple of times but no Remainer ever answered me: a key industry in the North of England/south of Scotland was being sacrificed to allow Italian and German speciality engineering companies access to Mercosur. I'm sure that the EU as a whole would be better off, but that's thin gruel for our fellow citizens. And they had no effective way to express their discontent.
I suspect the cost of running a party was substantially less back then and unlike an SDP2, the original SDP would have taken a decent chunk of the old Labour membership with them.
As I hinted before, the main problem SDP2 has is that it is an entirely hollow movement, it is top led, completely lacking in a grass roots.
As a woman, I find that profoundly irritating. I didn't get appointed to my role because I'm a woman, I got it because I beat all the other candidates to prove I was the best person for the role.
A wonderful modern history book.
Also a damning indictment of the Soviet system that certain elements in Labour / momentum hark back too.
On topic, I struggle to see a happy ending in this for Labour.
I also have a depressing feeling someone is going to get badly hurt before this is all over too.
Essentially funding needs to be skewed to non grammars schools with teachers prepared to work in failing schools paid more.
As an aside, in the medium term, we should certainly be able to negotiate trade deals faster than the EU, as we only represent one country's interest, and not 28.
Eventually, even if she didn't start out with the mindset (and she probably did) it has been consistently re-inforced to such a degree that she undoubtedly thinks that way now.
The problem English education has is mid level technical training which grammar schools do nothing to solve. We need to be thinking about averagely bright but poor kids,not bright but poor.
It comes from when Thomas Lynch was Mayor of Galway & his son & heir was found standing of the dead body of a rival, bloody knife in hand.
No jury would convict him of murder (the Lynch's were, by some margin, the most powerful family in the region). So Thomas declared martial law and hung his son without a trial.
We are already a party to a free trade deal with all of the nations that the EU has a deal with. If we want to mirror our existing terms of trade then it should be relatively simple to get an agreement. Not to forget that almost all the nations the EU has a deal with like Iceland, Liechtenstein, the Palestinian Authority or Montenegro etc are tiny countries that we absolutely dwarf.
If we say to them that we're not looking at changing our terms of trade and would like to continue what already exists then a so-called "new" deal ought to be possible as it is already the status quo ante.
http://powerbase.info/index.php/David_Sainsbury
She's on Murnaghan next along with David Davis. Will have a looksee.
It does not seem to be a system found anywhere else in the developed world and better outcomes seem to come from other countries comprehensive systems. Is there even evidence that it works, for example, do people from Kent have better outcomes than people from demographically similar counties?
The whole argument in favour of them seems to incorporate elements of the NIMBY mentality with "something must be done, this is something".
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/if_you_get_with_me_you_will_be_cummingtonite_tshirt-235445300086406455
Lord Baker was also leading an expansion of technical schools under Cameron which will likely continue under May
* says the man who hopes his daughter gets into Henrietta Barnett
Whenever possible parents should be offered choice and that includes the provision of free schools, academies and grammar schools.
Do more children per capita in Kent go to Oxbridge than go per capita from a demographically similar county. Not JUST those going from the Grammar schools in Kent. Of course they should have a much higher rate because they are selective. What is the OVERALL rate.
As far as I am aware there is no difference between Kent and the rest of the England. Clearly the Grammar school system does not deliver what it promises.
Historically the Labour name arises from its ties with the trade unions, who effectively founded it. In the 1980s splits the unions were with the moderates; now they are with the left. I think it would be difficult therefore for a bunch of rebel MPs leaving, without any Union backing, to lay any claim to the name.
Of course, as I said before, the issue is that it sucks for the kids who don't make the cut.
It changed my mind.
Any chance of a precis?
In the 4th century BC Adea and Olympias led armies against one another [they didn't actually fight but that was only because Adea's abandoned her, unable, for sentimental reasons, to fight Alexander's mother]. In the 11th (I think) century, Sichelgaita, the wife of Robert Guiscard, commanded troops when her husband invaded the Balkans.
I'm reasonably sure none of them used 'because ovaries' as an argument to win authority.
What would be meaningful would be if Council areas with Grammar schools are over-represented compared to council areas who only use Comprehensives.
That it actually makes things worse is a genuine concern but then, these families won't be Tory voters and we have FPTP...
So what about the commonly made claim that grammars boost social mobility? Maybe they do not increase everyone’s results, but do they close the rich-poor gap? Well, here is the average score attained by FSM-eligible children.
And the same attainment graph as before, but solely for FSM-eligible children:
You can see that poor children do dramatically worse in selective areas.
There is an narrower idea out there in the ether that grammar schools are better for propelling poor children to the very top of the tree. But, again, that is not true. Poor children are less likely to score very highly at GCSE in grammar areas than the rest. Note that the blue line is below the red on the very right hand side of the graph.
Indeed, I think this whole story is neatly encapsulated by one graph to follow. If you plot how well children do on average by household deprivation for selective areas and for the rest of the country, you can see that the net effect of grammar schools is to disadvantage poor children and help the rich.
At the left hand side of the graph, where poor children’s results are, you can see selective areas do much worse. At the very right, you can see a few very rich children do better. This is all driven by the process of selection itself: poor children are more likely to be behind at the age of 11, and less likely to get places in grammars.
I just thought it was an interesting story!
No country has a binary model remotely similar to the Grammar school system.
Personally, I think there is a lot of appeal of the MAGNET and Gymnasium systems and a combination of both (i.e. MAGNET with lots of technical, some sport and arts and no academic selection) would work best but the bulk of kids would still go to a standard comprehensive high school.
County A has 1 grammar school and 1 comprehensive. Count B has 2 comprehensives. The schools re of equal size.
County A sends 20 pupils to Oxbridge. 15 from the Grammar and 5 from the comp. County B sends 20, 10 from each.
Average number of pupils sent per school: 10.
Average from Grammars 50% higher.
Average from Comps: 17% lower
Difference between Counties: None.
So not much different to Spain and Portugal.
Then you just play to your audience.
That's the problem with common sense -- contradictory solutions seem equally reasonable.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/07/16/brexit-frees-us-to-build-a-truly-global-britain/
He's doing a great PR job for them already. I feel a skip in my step.
"I came into the Foreign Office yesterday morning after a pretty truncated night’s sleep to find the place in what Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service calls “crisis mode”...
Some of them had worked consecutive shifts without sleep... Some of them were still engaged in the aftermath of the horrendous carnage in Nice; some had only just finished organising an evacuation of aid workers from Juba in South Sudan, scene of a singularly nasty conflict..."
Grammar schools are a great idea for about 10% of children who would benefit from university education. And therein is the rub, we have a national target of sending 50% of our children to university. To just allow areas to re-introduce grammar schools without fixing the rest of the system (restoring freedom to teachers, technical schools, age of selection, return of the polytechnics etc.) would, in my view, be very wrong - a middle class rip-off.