The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with, or rather should I say understanding.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
Mr. 1000, assuming that's true, it highlights another problem with the cover-up/minimising coverage approach I didn't think of yesterday.
Every time there's a knife or gun attack, people will wonder if it's terrorism that's being covered up. That might lead to a larger than accurate picture forming in the public's mind when it comes to the threat/terrorist activity. One more reason we need to be able to trust the media/politicians/the police.
Perhaps the reason that there's not been much on it, is simply that it was local gangland, and therefore it's simply not an exciting story. The British press, as a general rule, doesn't cover stories where there is an altercation in a foreign country and no-one dies.
As an aside, have you seen that the Swiss police have said "the suspect, who also set himself on fire was a Swiss national who was not of immigrant origin and did not have a criminal record." Which suggests the Twitter image doing the rounds may be false.
Perhaps we should all calm down. Every day in Europe there will be a knife attack of some kind. Heck, there are probably a dozen non-terrorist knife attacks.
The German police in Cologne and elsewhere tried to cover up the migrant assaults on women. As a consequence there is increased scrutiny of police reports and goverment media to ensure they are not applying political correctness in place of the truth.
Fascinating figures. The SNP it turns out are more popular among remainers than the Tories, Labour or MPs in ENGLAND. Sounds like they are best placed to be the new REMAIN party across the UK.
All of which re-enforces a theory that if the Party which Salmond/Sturgeon built (sensible left of centre, moderate and competent) has been across the UK they would have swept England as well as Scotland.
It's incredibly dishonest how the Government deems RPI an appropriate inflation statistic for money it takes in (student loans, train fares) but not for money it pays out (e.g. pensions and benefits) where generally lower CPI is used.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with, or rather should I say understanding.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
In a large corporation when reviewing between 50 and 100 job applicants for people to work for me I used the usual academic and experience criteria to create a short list for interview. However, I always picked a wild card as well, someone who didn't fit the criteria but stood out in some way. At least it made for a more interesting interview.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
Big law firms are excellent at picking up the apparently best students from university and then systematically squashing all the personality and originality out of them. It is why even in those firms it is harder than one might think to find a really good lawyer i.e. not just one who knows the law but the sort of lawyer you can trust and whom you want on your side when you have an issue which needs resolving, a lawyer who realizes that his/her knowledge of the law is merely a means to an end i.e. sorting out your problem. And not a lawyer who thinks that you are paying them to dazzle you with their legal knowledge and technique.
There are a surprisingly large number of mediocrities amongst elite firms: polished, well educated, well trained for sure but fundamentally really quite mediocre.
Surely a defined contribution scheme is 'affordable' by definition. You put in as much as it says. You might not get much out, depending on the state of the markets and quality of investment choices. But DC is always 'affordable'.
The DB problem goes to the heart of politicians and central bankers debasing the very basis of a free market economy - that investors get a return. We've had ZIRP for ages, apparently in order to protect the real economy. But this has screwed saving and investment returns. Maybe we should get back to having a bit of inflation, a bit of real interest able to be earned and a bit of a wash out of the insolvent. We're still deep in pretendy land. Borrowing forever and ZIRPing to stave off bankruptcy today is not a good way to run a sweet shop.
I was going to make the same point - but the debate was really about state funded provision. There the question will inevitably be how much benefit can be expected from a DC approach, rather than just the cost of the amount put in - and if life expectancy continues to increase and investment returns stay low, the OP was correct in making the point about affordability. The bottom line is that people need to retire later. I believe that when the state pension was first introduced, the average number of years in receipt was three. To get back to the same position we would need a retirement age somewhere in the mid 80s now!
Trump says he will end "nation building". Sure, he's proposing to create redneck seventh heaven plus gay rights, where everyone applying to come to the US gets grilled and watched for whether they're genuine or not when they kneel down and worship the Blood-Stained Banner Stars and Stripes. And for whether they mean it when they say they don't discriminate between a man who walks a woman up the aisle and a man who weds another bloke. "We think you do discriminate! You're not welcome in our country, punk!" But is he really promising to end mass immigration? No more Fulbright program?
If he is, what do AIPAC and the rest of the Lobby think?
Or is he simply backtracking on the "No Muslims" promise, and because he suffers from the personality problems that he does, when he backtracks he's got to make sure he's the tough guy?
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
In a large corporation when reviewing between 50 and 100 job applicants for people to work for me I used the usual academic and experience criteria to create a short list for interview. However, I always picked a wild card as well, someone who didn't fit the criteria but stood out in some way. At least it made for a more interesting interview.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
Big law firms are excellent at picking up the apparently best students from university and then systematically squashing all the personality and originality out of them. It is why even in those firms it is harder than one might think to find a really good lawyer i.e. not just one who knows the law but the sort of lawyer you can trust and whom you want on your side when you have an issue which needs resolving, a lawyer who realizes that his/her knowledge of the law is merely a means to an end i.e. sorting out your problem. And not a lawyer who thinks that you are paying them to dazzle you with their legal knowledge and technique.
There are a surprisingly large number of mediocrities amongst elite firms: polished, well educated, well trained for sure but fundamentally really quite mediocre.
During the 90s, there was a huge fashion for candidates with a degree/MBA - and no practical experience whatsoever. I endured many of these types who were frankly useless and expensive hires. TBH, when handed CVs of such fellows, I sighed inside. HR felt it was all terribly clever and elitist - I just saw cleverdicks with no idea how to make an idea work or understand sweet-talking.
I consider the fashion for degrees pernicious. It doesn't help anyone to create an unnecessary bar to entry, costs a fortune and won't deliver rewards for the vast majority.
The big disconnect between "Your MP" and "MPs generally" is interesting.
Your MP is a person (who half the respondents will have voted for) whereas MPs generally are a bunch of useless crooks.
There’s a similar situation with regard to GP services.
I think we are probably on the verge of a big switch to private GP services. A few years back I had terrible sinusitis. Suffered for a couple of days but managed to get GP appointment.
New doc at GP said it wasnt bad enough to give antibiotics and that I should just steam it.
Went from there to London to work. Pain got worse. Not fancying being laid up for the bank holiday I phoned a private GP service near Bank. Appointment 40 mins later. Thorough unrushed examination by nurse who diagnosed acute sinusitis. Prescribed antibiotics which they promptly supplied. £70. Plus that included the prescription so £61 really when you take off NHS prescription charge.
They also offered an annual season ticket for about £200.
So much better than NHS and pretty reasonable cost.
If everyone goes private then you'll have the same overutilisation problem causing short examination times and long waits.
Private GPs only 'work' at the moments as there are the public GPs taking the strain.
... AND THATS WHY ANTIBIOTICS ARE FAILING.
Er... No antibiotics are failing due to inappropriate prescription for viral infections which they are useless for and people who dont finish the course breeding resistant bugs. Not to mention cattle being constantly pumped with them so they can stay disease free in factory barns.
Non therapeutic use of antibiotics in feed has been banned in the UK since the mid 2000s.
In a large corporation when reviewing between 50 and 100 job applicants for people to work for me I used the usual academic and experience criteria to create a short list for interview. However, I always picked a wild card as well, someone who didn't fit the criteria but stood out in some way. At least it made for a more interesting interview.
Last year I had to recruit two lawyers. Not graduates as we needed some experience. I would look at all the CVs because, in my line of work, you need something more than just that. Not all my team are lawyers since good lawyers do not necessarily make good investigators.
What was interesting was that those with often very relevant experience whom you might have thought of as good were very poor when interviewed. We had a number of scenarios of the type we encounter at work and put these to the candidates: it was less about seeing whether they came up with the right answer (there often isn't one) but more about seeing how they thought and reacted to the unexpected, which is what a lot of my work is. That proved quite eye-opening. Aptitude and temperament are quite important, even in law. And that is something which is often forgotten. The sort of person who would make a good tax lawyer would be useless in my team, and not because of their knowledge.
If you just look at externalities like exam results you risk missing people who really do have the qualities: character, judgment, aptitude, emotional intelligence, ability to get on with and handle people etc that will make the difference.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
Someone could ask the survey question right now, "Assuming the immigration level and mix stay the same as they are now, would you prefer it if Britain leaves the EU or stays in?" I doubt there would have been less than a 30% majority for Remain if that had been the question.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
I agree; the expectations raised by the leave campaign are simply too high. Even if exit works out OK on the economic front (and that remains a big 'if'), and if the UK holds together, exit still won't see all the EU migrants return home, let alone the Muslims already here; it won't reduce our reliance on ongoing immigration to pick our fruit and veg and staff our hospitals, it isn't going to solve the housing or NHS funding crises, nor transform politics so that suddenly politicians are focusing on the needs of the Sunderland council tenant in the safe seat, rather than of the rich and the powerful and of the swing voters in Worcester as usual. And it is unlikely to deliver in practice any extra sovereignty - in terms of freedom to act and shape our own future.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
Yes I think so too. Individual social security accounts have to be the future. They can be drawn either in times of unemployment or at retirement. You can choose to let the government invest it for you, have a fund manage it foe a fee or do it yourself. I guess the workplace pension is supposed to be the solution, but its not massive.
Please, no. Individual insurance payments lead to means testing or denial of benefits if things go wrong, as in the German healthcare system. Messy and expensive, unless you believe in unnecessary bureaucrats.
Private/workplace pensions are almost bound to end badly if you start your working life at the 'wrong' time, the advice is mediocre, too much goes into equities and the market crashes twice within 20 years of your retirement. The admin. costs are higher than a state system.
I think compulsory deduction from all incomes, including self-employment, is needed, at 12%; i.e. the Australian figure or the FDR-devised state system which the US still has. Must go into an independent Trust Fund not under governmental control, although it might end up govt.-influenced, given that it's the peoples' money at stake and must be invested *prudently*.
With some redistribution, 12% should give a state pension enough for people on minimum wage to live on and higher earners have a very nice standard of living if the mortgage is paid off, possibly like my 78 yr-old friend whose gold-plated index-linked public sector pensions total 35,000/year ... plus his and his wife's state pensions.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
I wonder whether it has been a mistake to fail to apply retrospective changes to pensions.
We have all these gold plated pensioners, and the cost of the errors which gave overlarge pensions can only be picked up by the next generation.
It is the one claim amongst alleged "intergenerational theft" which I think has some merit.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
Big law firms are excellent at picking up the apparently best students from university and then systematically squashing all the personality and originality out of them. It is why even in those firms it is harder than one might think to find a really good lawyer i.e. not just one who knows the law but the sort of lawyer you can trust and whom you want on your side when you have an issue which needs resolving, a lawyer who realizes that his/her knowledge of the law is merely a means to an end i.e. sorting out your problem. And not a lawyer who thinks that you are paying them to dazzle you with their legal knowledge and technique.
There are a surprisingly large number of mediocrities amongst elite firms: polished, well educated, well trained for sure but fundamentally really quite mediocre.
Correct. And, obviously I'm bias, but my wife is very, very good (really, she is - feedback is she can make partner in 3-4 years) and genuinely loves law. She gets excited at the sight of a contract.
All the magic circles weren't interested (career change late 20s, non-Russell group, non-British..= doesn't compute)
Mr. Song, the combination of AI exceeding human intelligence and autonomous killing machines will reduce the problems of an ageing population quite rapidly?
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
n.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
Mr. Song, the combination of AI exceeding human intelligence and autonomous killing machines will reduce the problems of an ageing population quite rapidly?
If it is that intelligent it will leave the older people until last, surely?
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
The same was said about machines but the opposite turned out to be true. Whether the work was, especially for those at the bottom of the heap “better” or “worse” is a different question.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Don't disagree. I fear we are turning into Japan.
Not quite. We are still copulating.
Mr Royale, what you and Charles get up to together in your own time is your business, but I felt that was TMI.
@Cyclefree I think I'd already answered those questions above. I don't disagree about the huge pressure children are under (or teachers, for the matter of that) or about how exam factory mentalities are very damaging. What I do worry about is that these new exams are going to be even more of a shambles, not least because they are much more extensive. Running through the RS spec this morning, content has increased by almost 100% on the old spec, which is ridiculous for a subject that was already struggling.
The big disconnect between "Your MP" and "MPs generally" is interesting.
Your MP is a person (who half the respondents will have voted for) whereas MPs generally are a bunch of useless crooks.
There’s a similar situation with regard to GP services.
I think we are probably on the verge of a big switch to private GP services. A few years back I had terrible sinusitis. Suffered for a couple of days but managed to get GP appointment.
New doc at GP said it wasnt bad enough to give antibiotics and that I should just steam it.
Went from there to London to work. Pain got worse. Not fancying being laid up for the bank holiday I phoned a private GP service near Bank. Appointment 40 mins later. Thorough unrushed examination by nurse who diagnosed acute sinusitis. Prescribed antibiotics which they promptly supplied. £70. Plus that included the prescription so £61 really when you take off NHS prescription charge.
They also offered an annual season ticket for about £200.
So much better than NHS and pretty reasonable cost.
If everyone goes private then you'll have the same overutilisation problem causing short examination times and long waits.
Private GPs only 'work' at the moments as there are the public GPs taking the strain.
... AND THATS WHY ANTIBIOTICS ARE FAILING.
Er... No antibiotics are failing due to inappropriate prescription for viral infections which they are useless for and people who dont finish the course breeding resistant bugs. Not to mention cattle being constantly pumped with them so they can stay disease free in factory barns.
Non therapeutic use of antibiotics in feed has been banned in the UK since the mid 2000s.
#FactFail
Not in the USA and a lot of other places though as far as I know. Unfortunately Bacteria don't care about borders
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
That's true, but in a country such as Britain there is clearly large-scale over-employment in the white collar sector - computerisation of offices hasn't reduced the amount of office work - and one wonders for how long it will be allowed to go on.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
That would be good news if you could trust the marking... The reason that many headteachers are panicking with the new remarking rules is that they simply don't trust the marking and have recently seen so many bad examples that they know Thursday is going to be a unfair disaster for many...
I certainly don't trust the marking and I've been a marker. One of the senior examiners at AQA is still pushing the line that Thatcher won in 1983 solely because of the Falklands war, and marks anyone who points out that actually this was likely a marginal factor down to an E.
I don't believe that the Falklands War was a marginal factor in bringing about Thatcher's 1983 victory - though it was far from being the whole story. Its effect for several years was to confer credibility on her polices as a whole - in that where voters had previously been highly critical of her performance they became much more inclined to give her the benefit of any doubt. There was some evidence of a Tory recovery in the polls by April 1982, but it is far from clear that it would have continued. Just four months earlier the Tories were smashed at the Crosby by election and barely a week before the invasion they lost Hillhead to Roy Jenkins. Whilst there is a good chance that Thatcher would have won anyway in 1983 , I feel sure that the scale of such a win would have been very different. I suspect she would have struggled to match her 1979 majority of 43 had she not had the assistance of Galtieri & Co.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
I wonder whether it has been a mistake to fail to apply retrospective changes to pensions.
We have all these gold plated pensioners, and the cost of the errors which gave overlarge pensions can only be picked up by the next generation.
It is the one claim amongst alleged "intergenerational theft" which I think has some merit.
But the whole credibility of the pension system rests upon the legal protection of benefits already paid for. Who would give their money up for most of their lifetime, otherwise?
The big disconnect between "Your MP" and "MPs generally" is interesting.
Your MP is a person (who half the respondents will have voted for) whereas MPs generally are a bunch of useless crooks.
There’s a similar situation with regard to GP services.
I think we are probably on the verge of a big switch to private GP services. A few years back I had terrible sinusitis. Suffered for a couple of days but managed to get GP appointment.
New doc at GP said it wasnt bad enough to give antibiotics and that I should just steam it.
Went from there to London to work. Pain got worse. Not fancying being laid up for the bank holiday I phoned a private GP service near Bank. Appointment 40 mins later. Thorough unrushed examination by nurse who diagnosed acute sinusitis. Prescribed antibiotics which they promptly supplied. £70. Plus that included the prescription so £61 really when you take off NHS prescription charge.
They also offered an annual season ticket for about £200.
So much better than NHS and pretty reasonable cost.
My understanding is that sinusitis is usually viral, which by can't be treated by antibiotics.
Are you sure you weren't just sold an expensive placebo?
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
n.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
snip
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
That would be good news if you could trust the marking... The reason that many headteachers are panicking with the new remarking rules is that they simply don't trust the marking and have recently seen so many bad examples that they know Thursday is going to be a unfair disaster for many...
I certainly don't trust the marking and I've been a marker. One of the senior examiners at AQA is still pushing the line that Thatcher won in 1983 solely because of the Falklands war, and marks anyone who points out that actually this was likely a marginal factor down to an E.
I don't believe that the Falklands War was a marginal factor in bringing about Thatcher's 1983 victory - though it was far from being the whole story. Its effect for several years was to confer credibility on her polices as a whole - in that where voters had previously been highly critical of her performance they became much more inclined to give her the benefit of any doubt. There was some evidence of a Tory recovery in the polls by April 1982, but it is far from clear that it would have continued. Just four months earlier the Tories were smashed at the Crosby by election and barely a week before the invasion they lost Hillhead to Roy Jenkins. Whilst there is a good chance that Thatcher would have won anyway in 1983 , I feel sure that the scale of such a win would have been very different. I suspect she would have struggled to match her 1979 majority of 43 had she not had the assistance of Galtieri & Co.
Although clearly the government would have expected recovery as the election approached, the real significance of the war was to end, quite amazingly suddenly, the alliance-mania that had been the big story for some months prior. Overnight the new political party became yesterday's news, and it was only the fallout for Labour and its hard left platform that sustained the alliance above 20%.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
What would your basic safety net look like?
A state pension to pay for rent in one bedroom flat plus food plus bus transport plus energy bills.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
I had a debate yonks ago with @Neil that all state backed pension schemes should be changed to DC. He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
I wonder whether it has been a mistake to fail to apply retrospective changes to pensions.
We have all these gold plated pensioners, and the cost of the errors which gave overlarge pensions can only be picked up by the next generation.
It is the one claim amongst alleged "intergenerational theft" which I think has some merit.
But the whole credibility of the pension system rests upon the legal protection of benefits already paid for. Who would give their money up for most of their lifetime, otherwise?
Indeed. Personally I think we should start making pensioners subject to NI, albeit at a reduced rate.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
Someone could ask the survey question right now, "Assuming the immigration level and mix stay the same as they are now, would you prefer it if Britain leaves the EU or stays in?" I doubt there would have been less than a 30% majority for Remain if that had been the question.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Don't disagree. I fear we are turning into Japan.
Not quite. We are still copulating.
Mr Royale, what you and Charles get up to together in your own time is your business, but I felt that was TMI.
@Cyclefree I think I'd already answered those questions above. I don't disagree about the huge pressure children are under (or teachers, for the matter of that) or about how exam factory mentalities are very damaging. What I do worry about is that these new exams are going to be even more of a shambles, not least because they are much more extensive. Running through the RS spec this morning, content has increased by almost 100% on the old spec, which is ridiculous for a subject that was already struggling.
Quite aside from the mind bleach, if it we me and Charles doing the copulating UK wide we really would be like Japan.
On a serious note, young Japanese just aren't having babies, and the population is in absolute decline.
Two people have been injured after a man with a knife attacked passengers on a train, Austrian police have said. It happened early on Tuesday near the village of Sulz in the western Vorarlberg province.
Officers say the attacker was a 60-year old German national who appeared to be mentally ill. ***
Mr. Charles, but haven't antibiotics been used a lot in American farming?
New rules came in January to restrict the use of medically necessary antibiotics. But the evidence for cross species resistance is marginal at best. It's really over prescription plus people not finishing courses of treatment because they feel better.
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
That's true, but in a country such as Britain there is clearly large-scale over-employment in the white collar sector - computerisation of offices hasn't reduced the amount of office work - and one wonders for how long it will be allowed to go on.
One thing to point out. The deep learning type AI we are seeing now (it is actually an old idea from the 90's, but computers couldn't undertake anything more than toy problems) is basically extremely good at teasing about patterns in massive data.
However, it is extremely crap at many tasks humans do with ease e.g. ask a adult to tidy a room, and they will put the garbage in the bin and put things say things like the kids toys in the right box (not saying cleaners are safe, but admin clerks aren't). What looks like trash to a computer via a camera, might actually be little Johnny's prized drawing of dad. The sort of AI at the moment really struggles with these kind of contextual tasks.
It seems at the moment a lot of the focus on his deep learning is rather than replace individuals, is to enable things to be done smarter e.g. google has cut their cut power usage in data centres, looking at the medical data to prioritize / make more efficent the way in which doctors view it.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
That would be good news if you could trust the marking... The reason that many headteachers are panicking with the new remarking rules is that they simply don't trust the marking and have recently seen so many bad examples that they know Thursday is going to be a unfair disaster for many...
I certainly don't trust the marking and I've been a marker. One of the senior examiners at AQA is still pushing the line that Thatcher won in 1983 solely because of the Falklands war, and marks anyone who points out that actually this was likely a marginal factor down to an E.
I don't believe that the Falklands War was a marginal factor in bringing about Thatcher's 1983 victory - though it was far from being the whole story. Its effect for several years was to confer credibility on her polices as a whole - in that where voters had previously been highly critical of her performance they became much more inclined to give her the benefit of any doubt. There was some evidence of a Tory recovery in the polls by April 1982, but it is far from clear that it would have continued. Just four months earlier the Tories were smashed at the Crosby by election and barely a week before the invasion they lost Hillhead to Roy Jenkins. Whilst there is a good chance that Thatcher would have won anyway in 1983 , I feel sure that the scale of such a win would have been very different. I suspect she would have struggled to match her 1979 majority of 43 had she not had the assistance of Galtieri & Co.
I agree, and I suggest Mr Stodge, who was also active in LiB/SDP politics at the time would do too. See our recent discussion.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
So which did you attend?
Imperial (maths)
What are the entry qualifications for Maths at Imperial - four As at A level? What about A star in the old system?
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
Someone could ask the survey question right now, "Assuming the immigration level and mix stay the same as they are now, would you prefer it if Britain leaves the EU or stays in?" I doubt there would have been less than a 30% majority for Remain if that had been the question.
A 30% majority is an oxymoron.
It means a majority of 30%. 65%-35%. Don't you even say things like a "100-seat majority"?
Two people have been injured after a man with a knife attacked passengers on a train, Austrian police have said. It happened early on Tuesday near the village of Sulz in the western Vorarlberg province.
Officers say the attacker was a 60-year old German national who appeared to be mentally ill. ***
*** rumours that his name was Dave are probably exaggerated
Lets say like in Switzerland, it really is a mentally ill man this time. Now has there just been an increased media reporting of deranged mad men attacking people on trains, the famed copy cat effect, or something else?
The big disconnect between "Your MP" and "MPs generally" is interesting.
Your MP is a person (who half the respondents will have voted for) whereas MPs generally are a bunch of useless crooks.
There’s a similar situation with regard to GP services.
I think we are probably on the verge of a big switch to private GP services. A few years back I had terrible sinusitis. Suffered for a couple of days but managed to get GP appointment.
New doc at GP said it wasnt bad enough to give antibiotics and that I should just steam it.
Went from there to London to work. Pain got worse. Not fancying being laid up for the bank holiday I phoned a private GP service near Bank. Appointment 40 mins later. Thorough unrushed examination by nurse who diagnosed acute sinusitis. Prescribed antibiotics which they promptly supplied. £70. Plus that included the prescription so £61 really when you take off NHS prescription charge.
They also offered an annual season ticket for about £200.
So much better than NHS and pretty reasonable cost.
If everyone goes private then you'll have the same overutilisation problem causing short examination times and long waits.
Private GPs only 'work' at the moments as there are the public GPs taking the strain.
... AND THATS WHY ANTIBIOTICS ARE FAILING.
Er... No antibiotics are failing due to inappropriate prescription for viral infections which they are useless for and people who dont finish the course breeding resistant bugs. Not to mention cattle being constantly pumped with them so they can stay disease free in factory barns.
Non therapeutic use of antibiotics in feed has been banned in the UK since the mid 2000s.
#FactFail
Not in the USA and a lot of other places though as far as I know. Unfortunately Bacteria don't care about borders
"Denis MacShane @DenisMacShane · 6m6 minutes ago West Midlands, England
Amazing @RSylvesterTimes piece in TT on £5 bn cost of hiring £5k a day lawyers etc for Brexit negs. Feels more and more like a racket"
I know many lawyers who would bill out £5k/day for a full day's work.
Yet Labour (well Ed Milliband) wanted a 'judge-led' enquiry for everysingle bloody thing?
And now he's concerned about the cost of lawyers? Pah.
Ex-con McShane...
In November 2013 he pleaded guilty to false accounting at the Old Bailey, by submitting false receipts for £12,900.[6] On 23 December, Mr Justice Sweeney sentenced MacShane to six months in prison.[7] He served six weeks of his sentence before being released.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
So which did you attend?
Imperial (maths)
What are the entry qualifications for Maths at Imperial - four As at A level? What about A star in the old system?
I got 5 As at 'A' level (when A was the top grade) but I think my offer was just AAB. This was back in 2000.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
But a large number of the 48% were reluctant "yeah, I guess, stick with what we know" - or were scared into it. When the sky doesn't fall, they'll be happy enough that we left.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Don't disagree. I fear we are turning into Japan.
Not quite. We are still copulating.
Mr Royale, what you and Charles get up to together in your own time is your business, but I felt that was TMI.
@Cyclefree I think I'd already answered those questions above. I don't disagree about the huge pressure children are under (or teachers, for the matter of that) or about how exam factory mentalities are very damaging. What I do worry about is that these new exams are going to be even more of a shambles, not least because they are much more extensive. Running through the RS spec this morning, content has increased by almost 100% on the old spec, which is ridiculous for a subject that was already struggling.
@CasinoRoyale: it's not the copulating I mind but the word. I thought it had been agreed that the correct PB word for such activity was now "swiving".
You and @Charles swiving sounds so much more poetic.
@Ydoethur: thanks. I'd written my comments before seeing yours.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
So which did you attend?
Imperial (maths)
What are the entry qualifications for Maths at Imperial - four As at A level? What about A star in the old system?
I got 5 As at 'A' level (when A was the top grade) but I think my offer was just AAB. This was back in 2000.
FWIW, I went to a Grammar school.
You should change your name from not_on_fire to on_fire!
Please, no. Individual insurance payments lead to means testing or denial of benefits if things go wrong, as in the German healthcare system. Messy and expensive, unless you believe in unnecessary bureaucrats.
Private/workplace pensions are almost bound to end badly if you start your working life at the 'wrong' time, the advice is mediocre, too much goes into equities and the market crashes twice within 20 years of your retirement. The admin. costs are higher than a state system.
I think compulsory deduction from all incomes, including self-employment, is needed, at 12%; i.e. the Australian figure or the FDR-devised state system which the US still has. Must go into an independent Trust Fund not under governmental control, although it might end up govt.-influenced, given that it's the peoples' money at stake and must be invested *prudently*.
With some redistribution, 12% should give a state pension enough for people on minimum wage to live on and higher earners have a very nice standard of living if the mortgage is paid off, possibly like my 78 yr-old friend whose gold-plated index-linked public sector pensions total 35,000/year ... plus his and his wife's state pensions.
What are you talking about? That's basically what I'm proposing. 10-12% off the gross income tax free every year into a personal social security account. You can then choose to self manage, have the government invest it in Gilts or hand it over to a fund manager. The account becomes available on retirement. For a worker on the median wage that is £120-140k of contributions over a lifetime, with accruals it would be enough for a decent pension, that's without taking into account any wage inflation either which at current estimates would make the pot something like £300-350k on retirement, for an average worker.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
So which did you attend?
Imperial (maths)
What are the entry qualifications for Maths at Imperial - four As at A level? What about A star in the old system?
I got 5 As at 'A' level (when A was the top grade) but I think my offer was just AAB. This was back in 2000.
FWIW, I went to a Grammar school.
You should change your name from not_on_fire to on_fire!
Congratulations; doing 4 A’s was hard enough for me.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Not real numbers though - artifically inflated by the low risk free rate. Unless you believe that 0.25% rates are here to stay in which case we can't afford the pension promises anyway.
0.25 probably isn't here to stay in perpetuity, but I can see sub 1% rates being around for the next 20 years.
Don't disagree. I fear we are turning into Japan.
Not quite. We are still copulating.
Mr Royale, what you and Charles get up to together in your own time is your business, but I felt that was TMI.
@Cyclefree I think I'd already answered those questions above. I don't disagree about the huge pressure children are under (or teachers, for the matter of that) or about how exam factory mentalities are very damaging. What I do worry about is that these new exams are going to be even more of a shambles, not least because they are much more extensive. Running through the RS spec this morning, content has increased by almost 100% on the old spec, which is ridiculous for a subject that was already struggling.
@CasinoRoyale: it's not the copulating I mind but the word. I thought it had been agreed that the correct PB word for such activity was now "swiving".
You and @Charles swiving sounds so much more poetic.
@Ydoethur: thanks. I'd written my comments before seeing yours.
I like Charles but, let me assure everyone, I will not be seeking (or attempting) to start a family with him.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
That would be good news if you could trust the marking... The reason that many headteachers are panicking with the new remarking rules is that they simply don't trust the marking and have recently seen so many bad examples that they know Thursday is going to be a unfair disaster for many...
I certainly don't trust the marking and I've been a marker. One of the senior examiners at AQA is still pushing the line that Thatcher won in 1983 solely because of the Falklands war, and marks anyone who points out that actually this was likely a marginal factor down to an E.
I don't believe that the Falklands War was a marginal factor in bringing about Thatcher's 1983 victory - though it was far from being the whole story. Its effect for several years was to confer credibility on her polices as a whole - in that where voters had previously been highly critical of her performance they became much more inclined to give her the benefit of any doubt. There was some evidence of a Tory recovery in the polls by April 1982, but it is far from clear that it would have continued. Just four months earlier the Tories were smashed at the Crosby by election and barely a week before the invasion they lost Hillhead to Roy Jenkins. Whilst there is a good chance that Thatcher would have won anyway in 1983 , I feel sure that the scale of such a win would have been very different. I suspect she would have struggled to match her 1979 majority of 43 had she not had the assistance of Galtieri & Co.
Although clearly the government would have expected recovery as the election approached, the real significance of the war was to end, quite amazingly suddenly, the alliance-mania that had been the big story for some months prior. Overnight the new political party became yesterday's news, and it was only the fallout for Labour and its hard left platform that sustained the alliance above 20%.
I agree with that. It is also probable that memory of a recent conlict helped to make Defence a central issue of the 83 campaign. Without that Labour's CND divisions would have been rather less obvious.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
But a large number of the 48% were reluctant "yeah, I guess, stick with what we know" - or were scared into it. When the sky doesn't fall, they'll be happy enough that we left.
It will all depend on how well we do and how well the EU appears to do (and if it does also reform to head off any future Exit sentiment - it's down now, but if we do well it could rise again) - prolonged difficulty and I've no doubt a majority will regret decision, he'll, I may be one of them. If it is ok or even good, as you say many were not enthusiastic supporters of the EU, and many will think it a good move despite their fear of the unknown at the time.
The kids experience today is not really anything new. I did 6 A-Levels back in the day and worked my nuts off. I did the same for a range of undergraduate and postgrad qualifications too. I now regular work 70+ hrs a week. Thats life, if you want to succeed, especially in the globalised world with live in.
I have direct experience for a number of years at several of the countries best unis having to teach undergrads. There is a real problem with the lack of knowledge many are starting their course with, or rather should I say understanding.
I have said on here over the course of a number of years, the kids are definitely better motivated than a generation before, but a lot of knowledge is surface. The government / exam boards say they study x or y and can tick it off the list, but when I have pushed them they have learned one "fact" about it, rather than really understood the fundamentals.
The first question I always used to get was "what's on the exam". Good to see people are motivated, but it isn't motivated to learn, experience, understand and enjoy the subject matter, it is motivated to know what it is they have to do to pass the exam.
And that is the trouble with seeing education as nothing more than passing exams. The scope for originality, for thinking around a subject, for making interesting connections, for looking at issues with a different perspective, for thinking for yourself, for exploring a subject is limited. It is not education. Nonetheless it is not the students' fault. Perhaps employers might learn to look at students for what they are and what they might be rather than not bother to look past the exam results.
There's a trend towards just this in the US. Anyone who's worked in the software industry knows how variable developer quality is, and how poor academic qualifications are at predicting performance in practice.
Really don’t know why he wishes to have anything more to do with Ms Danczuk, he should get on with his life and leave her to continue posting pictures of herself on social media.
Really don’t know why he wishes to have anything more to do with Ms Danczuk, he should get on with his life and leave her to continue posting pictures of herself on social media.
AFAIK, they have kids together. It does seem like he has serious issues.
I don't believe that the Falklands War was a marginal factor in bringing about Thatcher's 1983 victory - though it was far from being the whole story. Its effect for several years was to confer credibility on her polices as a whole - in that where voters had previously been highly critical of her performance they became much more inclined to give her the benefit of any doubt. There was some evidence of a Tory recovery in the polls by April 1982, but it is far from clear that it would have continued. Just four months earlier the Tories were smashed at the Crosby by election and barely a week before the invasion they lost Hillhead to Roy Jenkins. Whilst there is a good chance that Thatcher would have won anyway in 1983 , I feel sure that the scale of such a win would have been very different. I suspect she would have struggled to match her 1979 majority of 43 had she not had the assistance of Galtieri & Co.
So Justin, as a very able and knowledgeable historian, what would your attitude be towards a marker who marked at the top level any statement that the Conservative poll ratings continued to fall until the outbreak of the war and 'undoubtedly would have continued to fall further' and that 'but for the war, Thatcher would undoubtedly have been defeated at the next election'?
While holding up as wrong an answer that pointed out (with figures) the Conservative poll lead had been steadily if slowly recovering prior to the war and that while it undoubtedly helped Thatcher's personal popularity suggesting that perhaps Labour's extremely unpopular policy positions, split into two parties and disastrous implosion in the 1983 election campaign had more to do with their devastating defeat?
My attitude would be that such an individual is unfit to be a marker. But that individual is not only a marker, but is training and moderating other markers. It's no wonder that there are a few concerns.
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
So which did you attend?
Imperial (maths)
What are the entry qualifications for Maths at Imperial - four As at A level? What about A star in the old system?
I got 5 As at 'A' level (when A was the top grade) but I think my offer was just AAB. This was back in 2000.
FWIW, I went to a Grammar school.
You should change your name from not_on_fire to on_fire!
Congratulations; doing 4 A’s was hard enough for me.
One of them was General Studies, that barely counts I remember one of the exam questions being essentially "Do you know what the House of Lords is?"
Just on my way to see the Messiah speak in Mattock this afternoon
I thought he was a very naughty boy?
By the way, I know that Labour are digging a deep hole for themselves using all kinds of implements, but I think you must mean 'Matlock' rather than 'Mattock'.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
Maths at Cambridge (if BA done somewhere else, then at least Part III) and ... ?
Most large employers usually just set recruitment policy, define a graduate scheme, and recruit via an HR department who run a process as they are not technical.
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
I have seen presentations from some employers that admitted not even as wide as "Russell Group". I saw one that listed the 6 universities and 3 the courses at each from which they only really considered.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
When I did an internship at a hedge fund, the person who recruited me told me that any CV that didn't list one of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College went straight in the bin.
So which did you attend?
Imperial (maths)
What are the entry qualifications for Maths at Imperial - four As at A level? What about A star in the old system?
I got 5 As at 'A' level (when A was the top grade) but I think my offer was just AAB. This was back in 2000.
FWIW, I went to a Grammar school.
You should change your name from not_on_fire to on_fire!
Congratulations; doing 4 A’s was hard enough for me.
One of them was General Studies, that barely counts I remember one of the exam questions being essentially "Do you know what the House of Lords is?"
Pretty sure we didn’t do that; the Head was very traditionalist. Think we only offered biological subjects because parents wanted their sons to become doctors. It was the 50’s.
Generation safe space are going to get a shock in two days according to headteachers. Finally it seems like the government are making exams tougher again. The Labour years of falling standards and lower difficulty were a joke.
But but but the poor little darling . They all had a meltdown this summer because they were asked one hardy wardy question.
An excellent piece. Thank you.
I'm not Ydoethur, but I am a teacher: indeed my form group from last year were Y13 (upper sixth in old money). Most have been working very hard and the skills and understanding I have seen from th best exceed anything I demonstrated when I was at school. People my generation tend to talk about grade inflation, but the flip side of that are eye-wateringly high offers in many cases and the fear that one mistake on a paper or by an exam board could cost them their place.
Its not "talk" about grade inflation, there are academic studies that show it is case.
Also there is a crucial difference with todays exam grades than "back in the day". The exams today are marked to reflect achievement level, a one point they were graded to indicate basically what percentile in the country you were for a particular year group.
The modern system is in theory better if you want to be able to say Johnny is "this" capable in Maths, but has led to fiddling by exam boards and government to make grades inflate. In the old system, grade offers were basically saying we need you to be in the top 5% of x,y and z of this years cohort.
Absolutely correct! The move from Relative Marking to Absolute Marking circa 1988 makes it pretty pointless to compare A level/O level grades from the earlier period with what we see today.Back in the 1960s and 70s only the most academic pupils were entered for A levels at all, and a point that is often forgotten is that 30% of them failed to achieve the lowest E grade pass - ie only 70% of pupils taking A level exams then achieved a pass of any kind. Nowadays the pass rate appears to be 95% plus. That is something to bear in mind when we laugh at Corbyn's two E grades from the late 60s in that today he could expect a C/B for the same standard. Grade inflation at degree level has been rampant for years with a 2.1 long having become the 'normal' degree. Back in the 60s and 70s the 'normal' degree was a 2.2 despite entry to degree courses being much more difficult to achieve.On the whole I find it a bit sad in that to obtain a like for like comparison we have to knock a grade or two of today's published results to match them with what had been achieved by parents /grandparents.
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
That's true, but in a country such as Britain there is clearly large-scale over-employment in the white collar sector - computerisation of offices hasn't reduced the amount of office work - and one wonders for how long it will be allowed to go on.
One thing to point out. The deep learning type AI we are seeing now (it is actually an old idea from the 90's, but computers couldn't undertake anything more than toy problems) is basically extremely good at teasing about patterns in massive data.
However, it is extremely crap at many tasks humans do with ease e.g. ask a adult to tidy a room, and they will put the garbage in the bin and put things say things like the kids toys in the right box (not saying cleaners are safe, but admin clerks aren't). What looks like trash to a computer via a camera, might actually be little Johnny's prized drawing of dad. The sort of AI at the moment really struggles with these kind of contextual tasks.
It seems at the moment a lot of the focus on his deep learning is rather than replace individuals, is to enable things to be done smarter e.g. google has cut their cut power usage in data centres, looking at the medical data to prioritize / make more efficent the way in which doctors view it.
Even the 'deep' AI we are seeing is not really AI in any meaningful sense. They are dumb-clever routines that mimic intelligence to solve limited-scope problems, without actually being in any way intelligent.
Witness the way not a single AI-complete problem has been solved.
Experts cannot even seem to agree what intelligence is ....
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
These polls are a hugely welcome development for the site and for British polling in general. Having a series of favourability scores will be very helpful both for the individual ratings and - going forward - for the changes over time.
On these figures, what's clear to me is the extent to which the country is divided between Remain and Leave - it's probably a bigger divide in some ways that between party support and certainly than between, say, men and women or rich and poor. What the causality is there though is harder to say. Do people divide their views because they are Remain or Leave (i.e. is their Euro-vote preference driving their other opinions), or is the split deeper than that, with Remain and Leave also consequences or that difference in outlook?
It does show that Temainers are potentially fertile ground for LD targeting.
Rejoiners are only a small subset of Remainers.
At the moment
And only going to get smaller.
Whilst it is unlikely we will ever rejoin or, more likely, be allowed back, I would be prepared to bet that in 5 years time there will be a clear majority saying they wish we had never left. the 48% will become the 60%+ once the wwc realise they were sold a pup.
But a large number of the 48% were reluctant "yeah, I guess, stick with what we know" - or were scared into it. When the sky doesn't fall, they'll be happy enough that we left.
It will all depend on how well we do and how well the EU appears to do (and if it does also reform to head off any future Exit sentiment - it's down now, but if we do well it could rise again) - prolonged difficulty and I've no doubt a majority will regret decision, he'll, I may be one of them. If it is ok or even good, as you say many were not enthusiastic supporters of the EU, and many will think it a good move despite their fear of the unknown at the time.
William Hague put it best in the Telegraph; there will be times when people regret their decision, other times when they'll be sanguine. We're complicated beasts. Brexit will, like most things, be intensely personal.
I have no issue with admitting regret; I have made many mistakes in my life, voting Leave might be another.
What is obvious is that at present we're getting all the downsides with none of the benefits. Of course, we can (and have) argue about the range and extend of those benefits, but hopefully we can agree there are some (if not accepting that they're worth the costs).
Just on my way to see the Messiah speak in Mattock this afternoon
I thought he was a very naughty boy?
By the way, I know that Labour are digging a deep hole for themselves using all kinds of implements, but I think you must mean 'Matlock' rather than 'Mattock'.
Indeed,hardly a hot bed of Socialism in the High Peak and has been hastily arranged. Was speaking to a Labour councillor for Matlock who didn't even know it was taking place.
Comments
Also they are a bit lazy. Without having "the time" to think around CVs, of which they receive thousands, or the knowledge to interpret they will simply do a sift by exam grade.
Some smaller firms are much better than this, like the law firm my wife got into, but too many larger ones seem to be 2:1+, Russell Group, excellent A-levels = come for an interview.
Once she gets to an interview, she impressed, but it's getting there first. Of course, those inside the firm can introduce a CV for special attention within HR for friends, & family which shouldn't make a difference but almost always does.
All of which re-enforces a theory that if the Party which Salmond/Sturgeon built (sensible left of centre, moderate and competent) has been across the UK they would have swept England as well as Scotland.
I thought that was very narrow minded, but like grade inflation, we have uni inflation, their approach was basically a safety first. We know graduates with 2:1 from these unis / courses will have studied what we need.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
There are a surprisingly large number of mediocrities amongst elite firms: polished, well educated, well trained for sure but fundamentally really quite mediocre.
If he is, what do AIPAC and the rest of the Lobby think?
Or is he simply backtracking on the "No Muslims" promise, and because he suffers from the personality problems that he does, when he backtracks he's got to make sure he's the tough guy?
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
I consider the fashion for degrees pernicious. It doesn't help anyone to create an unnecessary bar to entry, costs a fortune and won't deliver rewards for the vast majority.
#FactFail
What was interesting was that those with often very relevant experience whom you might have thought of as good were very poor when interviewed. We had a number of scenarios of the type we encounter at work and put these to the candidates: it was less about seeing whether they came up with the right answer (there often isn't one) but more about seeing how they thought and reacted to the unexpected, which is what a lot of my work is. That proved quite eye-opening. Aptitude and temperament are quite important, even in law. And that is something which is often forgotten. The sort of person who would make a good tax lawyer would be useless in my team, and not because of their knowledge.
If you just look at externalities like exam results you risk missing people who really do have the qualities: character, judgment, aptitude, emotional intelligence, ability to get on with and handle people etc that will make the difference.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
Private/workplace pensions are almost bound to end badly if you start your working life at the 'wrong' time, the advice is mediocre, too much goes into equities and the market crashes twice within 20 years of your retirement. The admin. costs are higher than a state system.
I think compulsory deduction from all incomes, including self-employment, is needed, at 12%; i.e. the Australian figure or the FDR-devised state system which the US still has. Must go into an independent Trust Fund not under governmental control, although it might end up govt.-influenced, given that it's the peoples' money at stake and must be invested *prudently*.
With some redistribution, 12% should give a state pension enough for people on minimum wage to live on and higher earners have a very nice standard of living if the mortgage is paid off, possibly like my 78 yr-old friend whose gold-plated index-linked public sector pensions total 35,000/year ... plus his and his wife's state pensions.
We have all these gold plated pensioners, and the cost of the errors which gave overlarge pensions can only be picked up by the next generation.
It is the one claim amongst alleged "intergenerational theft" which I think has some merit.
All the magic circles weren't interested (career change late 20s, non-Russell group, non-British..= doesn't compute)
@Cyclefree I think I'd already answered those questions above. I don't disagree about the huge pressure children are under (or teachers, for the matter of that) or about how exam factory mentalities are very damaging. What I do worry about is that these new exams are going to be even more of a shambles, not least because they are much more extensive. Running through the RS spec this morning, content has increased by almost 100% on the old spec, which is ridiculous for a subject that was already struggling.
There was some evidence of a Tory recovery in the polls by April 1982, but it is far from clear that it would have continued. Just four months earlier the Tories were smashed at the Crosby by election and barely a week before the invasion they lost Hillhead to Roy Jenkins. Whilst there is a good chance that Thatcher would have won anyway in 1983 , I feel sure that the scale of such a win would have been very different. I suspect she would have struggled to match her 1979 majority of 43 had she not had the assistance of Galtieri & Co.
Are you sure you weren't just sold an expensive placebo?
(Will of course defer to medics present).
https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/content/upload/Intro_Session1.pdf
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
On a serious note, young Japanese just aren't having babies, and the population is in absolute decline.
Amazing @RSylvesterTimes piece in TT on £5 bn cost of hiring £5k a day lawyers etc for Brexit negs. Feels more and more like a racket"
I know many lawyers who would bill out £5k/day for a full day's work.
Two people have been injured after a man with a knife attacked passengers on a train, Austrian police have said. It happened early on Tuesday near the village of Sulz in the western Vorarlberg province.
Officers say the attacker was a 60-year old German national who appeared to be mentally ill. ***
http://news.sky.com/story/knifeman-attacks-passengers-on-austrian-train-10538699
*** rumours that his name was Dave are probably exaggerated
However, it is extremely crap at many tasks humans do with ease e.g. ask a adult to tidy a room, and they will put the garbage in the bin and put things say things like the kids toys in the right box (not saying cleaners are safe, but admin clerks aren't). What looks like trash to a computer via a camera, might actually be little Johnny's prized drawing of dad. The sort of AI at the moment really struggles with these kind of contextual tasks.
It seems at the moment a lot of the focus on his deep learning is rather than replace individuals, is to enable things to be done smarter e.g. google has cut their cut power usage in data centres, looking at the medical data to prioritize / make more efficent the way in which doctors view it.
And now he's concerned about the cost of lawyers? Pah.
In November 2013 he pleaded guilty to false accounting at the Old Bailey, by submitting false receipts for £12,900.[6] On 23 December, Mr Justice Sweeney sentenced MacShane to six months in prison.[7] He served six weeks of his sentence before being released.
FWIW, I went to a Grammar school.
You and @Charles swiving sounds so much more poetic.
@Ydoethur: thanks. I'd written my comments before seeing yours.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/16/simon-danczuk-spent-the-night-in-a-spanish-police-cell-after-fig/
Nitwit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-the-best-hiring.html?_r=0
While holding up as wrong an answer that pointed out (with figures) the Conservative poll lead had been steadily if slowly recovering prior to the war and that while it undoubtedly helped Thatcher's personal popularity suggesting that perhaps Labour's extremely unpopular policy positions, split into two parties and disastrous implosion in the 1983 election campaign had more to do with their devastating defeat?
My attitude would be that such an individual is unfit to be a marker. But that individual is not only a marker, but is training and moderating other markers. It's no wonder that there are a few concerns.
By the way, I know that Labour are digging a deep hole for themselves using all kinds of implements, but I think you must mean 'Matlock' rather than 'Mattock'.
Grade inflation at degree level has been rampant for years with a 2.1 long having become the 'normal' degree. Back in the 60s and 70s the 'normal' degree was a 2.2 despite entry to degree courses being much more difficult to achieve.On the whole I find it a bit sad in that to obtain a like for like comparison we have to knock a grade or two of today's published results to match them with what had been achieved by parents /grandparents.
Witness the way not a single AI-complete problem has been solved.
Experts cannot even seem to agree what intelligence is ....
I have no issue with admitting regret; I have made many mistakes in my life, voting Leave might be another.
What is obvious is that at present we're getting all the downsides with none of the benefits. Of course, we can (and have) argue about the range and extend of those benefits, but hopefully we can agree there are some (if not accepting that they're worth the costs).