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The new word that has entered the political vocabulary – UNCOALITIONABLE – politicalbetting.com

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  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    .
    Charles said:

    MattW said:

    Pork barrel politics in Batley & Spen:-

    Town centre investment has been a sore point for people in Batley after neighbouring Huddersfield and Dewsbury were awarded £250 million and £200 million respectively, for their town centre blueprints.

    Batley has recently been given £1.5 million by Kirklees Council for its regeneration.

    On town centre investment, Mr [Boris] Johnson said: "I believe that Ryan Stephenson [the Conservative candidate] would be a fantastic champion for Batley and Spen and would help to target the funding that we need whether, through the towns fund, the levelling up fund or the many other funds that we have available."

    https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/key-things-boris-johnson-said-20851491

    Where do those numbers come from?

    Town Centre Funds are up to £25m if I recall.

    If they are dishing out hundreds of millions, I'll tell my Council.
    I believe the £250m is the total value of the project not the grant. Multiple bits coming from all over the place.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/cash-behind-huddersfields-250m-blueprint-18398597.amp
    I can't see that Huddersfield got any significant money from the Towns Fund, and the bulk of that spending seems to come from Kirklees Council.
    Couple of million here:
    https://kirkleestogether.co.uk/2020/09/24/2million-funding-boost-for-huddersfield-blueprint

    Dewsbury did get £24.5m from government Town’s Fund
    https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/50m-cash-boost-transform-dewsbury-20765480

    The West Yorkshire Combined Authority got £52m
    https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/heritage/the-arcade-in-dewsbury-and-george-hotel-in-huddersfield-given-regeneration-funding-grants-to-save-their-futures-3146748
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,743
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    Poor old Poland (among others but it was the ostensible casus belli), it got the evillest war imaginable and the alternative.

    I think the original exchange centred on the idea that Harris was a selfless servant of the state not someone glorying in the death and destruction carried out by Bomber Command; much of what I've read about him (including his own words) suggests that he took an unholy glee in destroying German cities and the civilians who lived in them.

    Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord

    Oh no it isn't saith Bomber

    Apocryphal
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    There are plenty of working class unionists. Scotland is split down the middle at the moment.
    At the last census, which was ten years ago of course, more than 6 in 10 of the Scottish population identified as "Scottish only." I doubt that things haven't travelled much further in that direction since. At a guess, perhaps 2 or no more than 3 in 10 are still British. The rest already want out or are only in it for the money.

    If it could've been demonstrated in 2014 that the average voter in Scotland would've been £1 per year better off under independence then they'd have made a stampede for the exit door. It is naïve to imagine otherwise.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
  • TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,387
    For those not following the government's borrowing figures, today's numbers confirm that the government is likely to substantially beat the current OBR forecast of £233.9bn , which were already lower than previous forecasts. On current figures - and the one thing we know if that the rest of year could be very different from April/May - it is likely to borrow about £180bn.

    For those of you that are following, this is in line with my expectations and, I think, Max's and offer scope for improvement if the UK avoids further lockdown.



  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Jenny Chapman helped lead the campaign for a second referendum, made clear she would vote Remain again if there was one and lost her Darlington seat in the Brexit-inspired collapse of Labour's Red Wall. Now she's Labour's new Brexit spokesman...

    https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1407280805102096390?s=20
  • northern_monkeynorthern_monkey Posts: 1,493

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
    Yep - Goebbels added a zero the death toll of 25,000, and that 250,000 figure has hung around for a long time. Though 25,000 is a terrible number in itself. But in the summer of '44 Auschwitz was killing 10,000 Hungarian Jews a day.

    Again, IIRC, there were no bomb shelters in Dresden, because they thought they would never be bombed.

    One of my favourite books, an anti-war book, is Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. As an American POW he was in Dresden when it was bombed. Well worth a read, IMHO.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    Poor old Poland (among others but it was the ostensible casus belli), it got the evillest war imaginable and the alternative.

    I think the original exchange centred on the idea that Harris was a selfless servant of the state not someone glorying in the death and destruction carried out by Bomber Command; much of what I've read about him (including his own words) suggests that he took an unholy glee in destroying German cities and the civilians who lived in them.

    Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord

    Oh no it isn't saith Bomber

    Apocryphal
    I'm sure he was a very flawed man, but a necessary one. I think that's true of most famous commanders. Wellington, Nelson, Montgomery etc. were not nice people, by any means.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Ken Clarke on BBC R4 Today absolutely destroying de Pfeffel.

    My god, Ken’s good. Royal Yacht = populist nonsense.

    The timeline for the Carrie Celeste looks absolutely mad on the face of it. It's a one off design of a type of ship that hasn't been built in the UK for 50+ years. The is no fucking way they are going to cut steel on it in 2022. It's one of those schemes that's so ill considered you can't help but assume The Fireplace Salesman was involved somewhere.
    As Ken Clarke pointed out, the cost of the royal yacht itself is not going to break the bank, but it is an indication of a profound lack of judgement at No.10.
    That she, like Britannia before her, will generate a massive amount of trade and goodwill from countries and companies around the world, far in excess of the cost of building her.
    Well, she won't be like Britannia because she is not a royal yacht. Indeed all the indications which have been given is that the Royal Family want nothing to do with it.

    Still let's see what Carrie and a load of gold wallpaper do for our trade, eh!
    Hopefully, by the time it comes into being, Carrie will be nowhere near being invited onto it.

    On the more substantive point, Britannia really did do a great job for UK trade and soft power. Businessmen framed their invitations from HMQ, even if they only ever got to meet Michael Hesetine and AirMiles Andy.
    Well, that's all very lovely I'm sure. How much trade that would not otherwise have happened did all this jollity generate?

    Does anyone know? Or is it one of those things that we're supposed to believe just because everyone always repeats it?

    And since this new yacht is not a royal one why would anyone care two hoots about being invited onto it?
    This article has an estimate of £3bn of value from trade missions by Britannia between 1991 & 1995. Not quite what you asked as very difficult to demonstrate how much would have happened without Britannia but enough that it seems there is a positive case to at least investigate

    Your last point, about it not being a “royal” yacht is much more important

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2021/04/22/the-grey-zone-case-for-building-new-royal-and-presidential-yachts/amp/
    Thanks.

    My view is that of all the things that need spending on, this is way way down the list of priorities. Indeed, should not be on a list of priorities at all.
    If it’s £250m to build and £20m a year to run that’s peanuts in the scheme of things. Not going to limit any other spending choices. Provided it generates a positive return on capital then just do it.
    The case for your various "ifs" and "provided"s is questionable.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Ken Clarke on BBC R4 Today absolutely destroying de Pfeffel.

    My god, Ken’s good. Royal Yacht = populist nonsense.

    The timeline for the Carrie Celeste looks absolutely mad on the face of it. It's a one off design of a type of ship that hasn't been built in the UK for 50+ years. The is no fucking way they are going to cut steel on it in 2022. It's one of those schemes that's so ill considered you can't help but assume The Fireplace Salesman was involved somewhere.
    As Ken Clarke pointed out, the cost of the royal yacht itself is not going to break the bank, but it is an indication of a profound lack of judgement at No.10.
    That she, like Britannia before her, will generate a massive amount of trade and goodwill from countries and companies around the world, far in excess of the cost of building her.
    Well, she won't be like Britannia because she is not a royal yacht. Indeed all the indications which have been given is that the Royal Family want nothing to do with it.

    Still let's see what Carrie and a load of gold wallpaper do for our trade, eh!
    Hopefully, by the time it comes into being, Carrie will be nowhere near being invited onto it.

    On the more substantive point, Britannia really did do a great job for UK trade and soft power. Businessmen framed their invitations from HMQ, even if they only ever got to meet Michael Hesetine and AirMiles Andy.
    Well, that's all very lovely I'm sure. How much trade that would not otherwise have happened did all this jollity generate?

    Does anyone know? Or is it one of those things that we're supposed to believe just because everyone always repeats it?

    And since this new yacht is not a royal one why would anyone care two hoots about being invited onto it?
    This article has an estimate of £3bn of value from trade missions by Britannia between 1991 & 1995. Not quite what you asked as very difficult to demonstrate how much would have happened without Britannia but enough that it seems there is a positive case to at least investigate

    Your last point, about it not being a “royal” yacht is much more important

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2021/04/22/the-grey-zone-case-for-building-new-royal-and-presidential-yachts/amp/
    Thanks.

    My view is that of all the things that need spending on, this is way way down the list of priorities. Indeed, should not be on a list of priorities at all.
    If it’s £250m to build and £20m a year to run that’s peanuts in the scheme of things. Not going to limit any other spending choices. Provided it generates a positive return on capital then just do it.
    The case for your various "ifs" and "provided"s is questionable.
    If you think its questionable then shouldn't that merit further investigation and answering the questions, rather than dismissing out of hand?
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
    Yep - Goebbels added a zero the death toll of 25,000, and that 250,000 figure has hung around for a long time. Though 25,000 is a terrible number in itself. But in the summer of '44 Auschwitz was killing 10,000 Hungarian Jews a day.

    Again, IIRC, there were no bomb shelters in Dresden, because they thought they would never be bombed.

    One of my favourite books, an anti-war book, is Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. As an American POW he was in Dresden when it was bombed. Well worth a read, IMHO.
    David Irving repeated the 250,000 number, but Dresden City Council says it was 25 - 30,000. As you say, a terrible number, but Dresden was an entirely legitimate military target.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    Rather more germane were the utter lack of training for an 18 year old security guard, the fact that his radio wasn't working, so that he was unable to call for assistance, and the absence of police who should have been on duty,
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Starmer has shifted another adviser away from this top team. That's 4 in 3 days.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021

    Jenny Chapman helped lead the campaign for a second referendum, made clear she would vote Remain again if there was one and lost her Darlington seat in the Brexit-inspired collapse of Labour's Red Wall. Now she's Labour's new Brexit spokesman...

    https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1407280805102096390?s=20

    What political antenna from Starmer....
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Next up: the Scots.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,341

    algarkirk said:

    Re the discussion about the composition of parliament and who governs if the Tories fall a bit short, the likelihood is a rapid fresh election following a VONC and short delay under the FTPA, or even quicker if FTPA has been replaced. Both centre right and centre will fancy their chances of a decisive win, and it might even lead the centre left out of its current Lab/LD/Green split.

    How would that election be called?
    If the FTPA is still law by using sec 2(2) or the procedure under sec 2(3) and (4). If a stable government can't be formed all sides will fancy their chances.

    If the FTPA has been repealed an unstable PM of an unstable government will ask HM for a dissolution.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Criticism of Bomber Command was largely confined to the Bishop of Chichester and a couple of Labour MP's. Most British people were entirely supportive of the bombing campaign.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,844
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    .
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
    Yep - Goebbels added a zero the death toll of 25,000, and that 250,000 figure has hung around for a long time. Though 25,000 is a terrible number in itself. But in the summer of '44 Auschwitz was killing 10,000 Hungarian Jews a day.

    Again, IIRC, there were no bomb shelters in Dresden, because they thought they would never be bombed.

    One of my favourite books, an anti-war book, is Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. As an American POW he was in Dresden when it was bombed. Well worth a read, IMHO.
    David Irving repeated the 250,000 number, but Dresden City Council says it was 25 - 30,000. As you say, a terrible number, but Dresden was an entirely legitimate military target.
    Was it, by February 45 ?
    "Entirely legitimate" wasn't even consensus at the time.
  • Nunu3Nunu3 Posts: 178

    FWIW I've had an on balance positive report from a Labour source who I trust in Batley and Spen. I still think the Tories are favourites, but I wouldn't back them at less than 1.8.

    If Labour does hold it, I think it will change the media narrative somewhat.

    So a dead cert Tory gain then........
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764
    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
    Yep - Goebbels added a zero the death toll of 25,000, and that 250,000 figure has hung around for a long time. Though 25,000 is a terrible number in itself. But in the summer of '44 Auschwitz was killing 10,000 Hungarian Jews a day.

    Again, IIRC, there were no bomb shelters in Dresden, because they thought they would never be bombed.

    One of my favourite books, an anti-war book, is Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. As an American POW he was in Dresden when it was bombed. Well worth a read, IMHO.
    David Irving repeated the 250,000 number, but Dresden City Council says it was 25 - 30,000. As you say, a terrible number, but Dresden was an entirely legitimate military target.
    Was it, by February 45 ?
    "Entirely legitimate" wasn't even consensus at the time.
    In February 1945 it was a transit point for German soldiers heading for the Eastern Front. The Soviets were very keen for Dresden to be hit.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    Nigelb said:

    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    Rather more germane were the utter lack of training for an 18 year old security guard, the fact that his radio wasn't working, so that he was unable to call for assistance, and the absence of police who should have been on duty,
    Am I alone in being rather concerned that criticism is being, and appears may be, focussed on those at the sharp end rather than on the organisation and management?
    Who employed, and failed to train, an 18 year old security guard.
    You are right, blame should be laid at the door of the organisation rather than the guard. However, as Cressida Dick is showing all too well, if you are management, you just need to brazen it out.
  • northern_monkeynorthern_monkey Posts: 1,493

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Ian Kershaw's recent book 'The End', looks at the last year of the war and why Germany kept resisting despite the end result no longer being in doubt. He considers Dresden in there.

    Essentially, we had to grind the buggers down. The Nazis wouldn't give up, they had nothing left to lose. And part of that was things like Dresden, unfortunately. It had to be done. The Russians were still taking eye watering losses, even at that late stage of the war. They ground down the Wehrmacht to mincemeat in the East. We degraded the German capacity to wage war through bombing. Though German industry, under Speer, proved remarkably resilient.
  • Nunu3Nunu3 Posts: 178
    White working class pupils have fallen back after decades of neglect and the term white privilege is damaging.


    Hmmm how much does that term really have to do with wwc pupils falling behind, why is that in the headline?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,955

    Jenny Chapman helped lead the campaign for a second referendum, made clear she would vote Remain again if there was one and lost her Darlington seat in the Brexit-inspired collapse of Labour's Red Wall. Now she's Labour's new Brexit spokesman...

    https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1407280805102096390?s=20

    Red Wall Tories say "Thank you very much....."
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    Nigelb said:

    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    Rather more germane were the utter lack of training for an 18 year old security guard, the fact that his radio wasn't working, so that he was unable to call for assistance, and the absence of police who should have been on duty,
    All important and all playing a part but the inquiry made clear he could and should have been challenged by the personnel and wasn’t. Fear of being accused of racism certainly looks to be one of the reasons for this.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,722
    Fishing said:

    FWIW I've had an on balance positive report from a Labour source who I trust in Batley and Spen. I still think the Tories are favourites, but I wouldn't back them at less than 1.8.

    If Labour does hold it, I think it will change the media narrative somewhat.

    It just shows what freakish and unpredictable things by-elections are. Like mid-term opinion polls, anoraks like obsessing over them, but they mean absolutely nothing at the next general election.

    The polar example of this may be the Ryedale by-election of 1986. The Alliance won it from the Conservatives on a 20 point swing, only slightly less than in C&A. And then, the following year, the Conservatives won it back. It, and its successor seat, have been Conservative ever since.

    So transforming the way we are looking at the next election on the basis of one by-election two or three years out is completely crazy.
    I had a conversation with an ex PBer about C&A and they were furious at my suggestion it was a case of stay at home Tories vs motivated anti Boris vote.

    Then I asked what price the Tories would be to win the seat at the next GE

    1/3 they replied.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    Nigelb said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
    The original poster's comment on this thread was the irrelevant drivel. The person on Breakfast this morning was Robert Halfon (who I think is the Chair of the committee?) and he is hardly on the right of the Tory Party. His comments were perfectly rational. WWC kids are underperforming compared to their peers.

    I went to a very poor ex-secondary modern comprehensive school. I am sure nowadays it would have ended up in special measures. The teachers at that school were almost without exception very left wing and had no problem expressing their far left political views. During the Falklands War one was so "woke" that he referred to the Falklands as "The Malvinas"! Most of these teachers were actually middle class, and some seemed to revel in the fact that most of the kids left with no qualifications, and I am quite sure looked down on them as uneducable. With the exception of one or two most were incompetent and lazy. Most should have been sacked.

    There is an essential problem with the middle class educated left: they are often intellectual and cultural snobs and they would like the WWC to know their place. The reason for poor performance in many schools is not just the lack of resources. It is a lack of expectation and ambition. This takes outstanding teachers, many of whom gravitate, understandably, to the better schools, thereby exacerbating the problem. I am not sure what the answer is. As I was fortunate enough to become quite successful I chose to privately educate my kids. It is a decision I have never regretted.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,844
    IshmaelZ said:

    On topic, a commentator who called Hartlepool as peak Boris on the day after the by electron would be a sage of outstanding perspicacity.

    TWO pundits, Ishmael. :smile:
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Criticism of Bomber Command was largely confined to the Bishop of Chichester and a couple of Labour MP's. Most British people were entirely supportive of the bombing campaign.
    There was, I think, little or no opportunity for 'British people' to express any negative opinion.
    The only criticism of Bomber Command that I ever heard while growing up was that aircrew who 'couldn't do it any more' were regarded as 'lacking moral fibre' by senior officers, in spite of having made 30+ trips through anti-aircraft fire and faced hostile fighter aircraft.
    The senior officers of course often hadn't experienced those conditions.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Criticism of Bomber Command was largely confined to the Bishop of Chichester and a couple of Labour MP's. Most British people were entirely supportive of the bombing campaign.
    There was, I think, little or no opportunity for 'British people' to express any negative opinion.
    The only criticism of Bomber Command that I ever heard while growing up was that aircrew who 'couldn't do it any more' were regarded as 'lacking moral fibre' by senior officers, in spite of having made 30+ trips through anti-aircraft fire and faced hostile fighter aircraft.
    The senior officers of course often hadn't experienced those conditions.
    Which was entirely unfair, given the terrific level of casualties they were taking.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    It takes a very special kind of privilege not to realise how lucky you are not to face that alternative.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    MrEd said:

    Nigelb said:

    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    Rather more germane were the utter lack of training for an 18 year old security guard, the fact that his radio wasn't working, so that he was unable to call for assistance, and the absence of police who should have been on duty,
    Am I alone in being rather concerned that criticism is being, and appears may be, focussed on those at the sharp end rather than on the organisation and management?
    Who employed, and failed to train, an 18 year old security guard.
    You are right, blame should be laid at the door of the organisation rather than the guard. However, as Cressida Dick is showing all too well, if you are management, you just need to brazen it out.
    It's rather like the NHS; when heavy fines are levied on organisations those on the front line have to manage on reduced budgets, rather than jobs being lost by those who were actually in charge at the time.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    The Education Select Committee are a cross-party group of MPs, and their point is that social class and parental involvement are a larger factor than race in determining educational outcomes.

    The people playing the race card in Batley and Spen are the George Galloway supporters, with their homophobic and anti-Semitic attacks on the Labour candidate and party leader.

    The Tories are talking about levelling up the area, by investing in infrastructure and encouraging private job creation.

    Me, well I emigrated already ;)
    Hmmm. A unanimous report, and the committee is 7 Tory, 4 Labour, who include 3 members of the Socialist Campaign Group and Fleur Anderson.
    One of the Labour MPs on the committee explicitly rejected the culture war bit though. Kim Johnson said that the references to White Privilege were trying to "stoke the culture war" and said the report avoided talking about the "lack of investment" in education and local communities.
    It's just classic Tory divide and rule.
    That's interesting. So KJ believes that there is a culture war :smile:

    I was wondering if there was a minority report.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Criticism of Bomber Command was largely confined to the Bishop of Chichester and a couple of Labour MP's. Most British people were entirely supportive of the bombing campaign.
    There was, I think, little or no opportunity for 'British people' to express any negative opinion.
    The only criticism of Bomber Command that I ever heard while growing up was that aircrew who 'couldn't do it any more' were regarded as 'lacking moral fibre' by senior officers, in spite of having made 30+ trips through anti-aircraft fire and faced hostile fighter aircraft.
    The senior officers of course often hadn't experienced those conditions.
    Which was entirely unfair, given the terrific level of casualties they were taking.
    50%+ over all, I think.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Criticism of Bomber Command was largely confined to the Bishop of Chichester and a couple of Labour MP's. Most British people were entirely supportive of the bombing campaign.
    “Harris, though of course criminal charges were never brought against him, was not treated after the war as a giant among the leaders of men. He had done what his government thought necessary, but what he had done was ugly, and there seems to have been a conscious decision not to celebrate the exploits of Bomber Command or to honor its leader. ... ‘After the strategic air offensive officially ended in mid-April [1945], Bomber Command was slighted and snubbed; and Harris, unlike other well-known commanders, was not rewarded with a peerage.’ In such circumstances, not to honor was to dishonor, and that is exactly how Harris regarded the government’s action.”

    https://www.academia.edu/4146985/The_Dishonoring_of_Arthur_Harris_Morality_in_International_Politics
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,955

    Starmer has shifted another adviser away from this top team. That's 4 in 3 days.

    Or "deckchairs"....
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    Nunu3 said:

    White working class pupils have fallen back after decades of neglect and the term white privilege is damaging.


    Hmmm how much does that term really have to do with wwc pupils falling behind, why is that in the headline?

    Because it is divisive? If you are a WWC kid with parent or parents on benefits you might want to know where your white privilege has got you. Possibly best to lose the "white" part and just refer to them as "working class". They are definitely getting a raw deal.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
    Yep - Goebbels added a zero the death toll of 25,000, and that 250,000 figure has hung around for a long time. Though 25,000 is a terrible number in itself. But in the summer of '44 Auschwitz was killing 10,000 Hungarian Jews a day.

    Again, IIRC, there were no bomb shelters in Dresden, because they thought they would never be bombed.

    One of my favourite books, an anti-war book, is Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. As an American POW he was in Dresden when it was bombed. Well worth a read, IMHO.
    David Irving repeated the 250,000 number, but Dresden City Council says it was 25 - 30,000. As you say, a terrible number, but Dresden was an entirely legitimate military target.
    Was it, by February 45 ?
    "Entirely legitimate" wasn't even consensus at the time.
    In February 1945 it was a transit point for German soldiers heading for the Eastern Front. The Soviets were very keen for Dresden to be hit.
    So mass-murderer Stalin asked the UK and US to mass murder civilians… and we helped him out. Shame.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    MattW said:

    Pork barrel politics in Batley & Spen:-

    Town centre investment has been a sore point for people in Batley after neighbouring Huddersfield and Dewsbury were awarded £250 million and £200 million respectively, for their town centre blueprints.

    Batley has recently been given £1.5 million by Kirklees Council for its regeneration.

    On town centre investment, Mr [Boris] Johnson said: "I believe that Ryan Stephenson [the Conservative candidate] would be a fantastic champion for Batley and Spen and would help to target the funding that we need whether, through the towns fund, the levelling up fund or the many other funds that we have available."

    https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/key-things-boris-johnson-said-20851491

    Where do those numbers come from?

    Town Centre Funds are up to £25m if I recall.

    If they are dishing out hundreds of millions, I'll tell my Council.
    It's also a bit absurd dishing out huge subsidies at the same time as levying high business rates.

    The sort of thing Gilbert and Sullivan liked to parody.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    Totally agree.
    And then of course, Boris and Gove themselves preclude any reasonable carrot pitch as they are so untrustworthy.

    My philosophy is that the 1707 Act created a Union of two equals and to use that as inspiration for how we might rearrange things.

    Did you see my suggestion last night that the U.K. government move to Edinburgh while the Palace of Westminster is refurbished?
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764
    edited June 2021

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Criticism of Bomber Command was largely confined to the Bishop of Chichester and a couple of Labour MP's. Most British people were entirely supportive of the bombing campaign.
    “Harris, though of course criminal charges were never brought against him, was not treated after the war as a giant among the leaders of men. He had done what his government thought necessary, but what he had done was ugly, and there seems to have been a conscious decision not to celebrate the exploits of Bomber Command or to honor its leader. ... ‘After the strategic air offensive officially ended in mid-April [1945], Bomber Command was slighted and snubbed; and Harris, unlike other well-known commanders, was not rewarded with a peerage.’ In such circumstances, not to honor was to dishonor, and that is exactly how Harris regarded the government’s action.”

    https://www.academia.edu/4146985/The_Dishonoring_of_Arthur_Harris_Morality_in_International_Politics
    Which was entirely hypocritical of the government. They were entirely supportive of Bomber Command while it was doing the bombing.

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
    Yep - Goebbels added a zero the death toll of 25,000, and that 250,000 figure has hung around for a long time. Though 25,000 is a terrible number in itself. But in the summer of '44 Auschwitz was killing 10,000 Hungarian Jews a day.

    Again, IIRC, there were no bomb shelters in Dresden, because they thought they would never be bombed.

    One of my favourite books, an anti-war book, is Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. As an American POW he was in Dresden when it was bombed. Well worth a read, IMHO.
    David Irving repeated the 250,000 number, but Dresden City Council says it was 25 - 30,000. As you say, a terrible number, but Dresden was an entirely legitimate military target.
    Was it, by February 45 ?
    "Entirely legitimate" wasn't even consensus at the time.
    In February 1945 it was a transit point for German soldiers heading for the Eastern Front. The Soviets were very keen for Dresden to be hit.
    So mass-murderer Stalin asked the UK and US to mass murder civilians… and we helped him out. Shame.
    Would you rather have seen the Allies take greater casualties, and the War be prolonged, by refraining from bombing the enemy?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    Sean_F said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    It was - "Dresden was a war crime" was started by Goebbels - and the proportionately higher death toll than the much more heavily bombed Berlin lay partly at the door of the incompetent Dresden Gauleiter
    Yep - Goebbels added a zero the death toll of 25,000, and that 250,000 figure has hung around for a long time. Though 25,000 is a terrible number in itself. But in the summer of '44 Auschwitz was killing 10,000 Hungarian Jews a day.

    Again, IIRC, there were no bomb shelters in Dresden, because they thought they would never be bombed.

    One of my favourite books, an anti-war book, is Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut. As an American POW he was in Dresden when it was bombed. Well worth a read, IMHO.
    David Irving repeated the 250,000 number, but Dresden City Council says it was 25 - 30,000. As you say, a terrible number, but Dresden was an entirely legitimate military target.
    Was it, by February 45 ?
    "Entirely legitimate" wasn't even consensus at the time.
    In February 1945 it was a transit point for German soldiers heading for the Eastern Front. The Soviets were very keen for Dresden to be hit.
    So mass-murderer Stalin asked the UK and US to mass murder civilians… and we helped him out. Shame.
    It was war, Mr D. And the Russians were our allies. People used to go about with three flags; British, American and Soviet. You'd see them on lorries and on posters.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182
    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    I think the counterfactual would have been Nazi control of the whole of Europe, including the UK. Which would have been worse.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    What stick?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    No course not. What I'm saying is that it looks like a tag on here to generate some culture war spat and divert the responsibility for a problem in schools to that oh so convenient amorphous blob which is to blame for all the defects of 11 years of Tory government - the woke left.

    It's getting stale. It's getting very stale indeed.
    1. It’s only just begun

    2. It works
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    I think the counterfactual would have been Nazi control of the whole of Europe, including the UK. Which would have been worse.
    And we'd had the experience of Coventry, the East End and a dozen other cities. I used to lie in bed as a six-year old and hear the bombers heading up the Thames towards London. Bombs fell near my home.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    Nigelb said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
    The original poster's comment on this thread was the irrelevant drivel. The person on Breakfast this morning was Robert Halfon (who I think is the Chair of the committee?) and he is hardly on the right of the Tory Party. His comments were perfectly rational. WWC kids are underperforming compared to their peers.

    I went to a very poor ex-secondary modern comprehensive school. I am sure nowadays it would have ended up in special measures. The teachers at that school were almost without exception very left wing and had no problem expressing their far left political views. During the Falklands War one was so "woke" that he referred to the Falklands as "The Malvinas"! Most of these teachers were actually middle class, and some seemed to revel in the fact that most of the kids left with no qualifications, and I am quite sure looked down on them as uneducable. With the exception of one or two most were incompetent and lazy. Most should have been sacked.

    There is an essential problem with the middle class educated left: they are often intellectual and cultural snobs and they would like the WWC to know their place. The reason for poor performance in many schools is not just the lack of resources. It is a lack of expectation and ambition. This takes outstanding teachers, many of whom gravitate, understandably, to the better schools, thereby exacerbating the problem. I am not sure what the answer is. As I was fortunate enough to become quite successful I chose to privately educate my kids. It is a decision I have never regretted.
    Totally agree. It’s the teachers in many of these places that can be an issue and it is down to snobbery in many cases.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,458

    Nigelb said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
    The original poster's comment on this thread was the irrelevant drivel. The person on Breakfast this morning was Robert Halfon (who I think is the Chair of the committee?) and he is hardly on the right of the Tory Party. His comments were perfectly rational. WWC kids are underperforming compared to their peers.

    I went to a very poor ex-secondary modern comprehensive school. I am sure nowadays it would have ended up in special measures. The teachers at that school were almost without exception very left wing and had no problem expressing their far left political views. During the Falklands War one was so "woke" that he referred to the Falklands as "The Malvinas"! Most of these teachers were actually middle class, and some seemed to revel in the fact that most of the kids left with no qualifications, and I am quite sure looked down on them as uneducable. With the exception of one or two most were incompetent and lazy. Most should have been sacked.

    There is an essential problem with the middle class educated left: they are often intellectual and cultural snobs and they would like the WWC to know their place. The reason for poor performance in many schools is not just the lack of resources. It is a lack of expectation and ambition. This takes outstanding teachers, many of whom gravitate, understandably, to the better schools, thereby exacerbating the problem. I am not sure what the answer is. As I was fortunate enough to become quite successful I chose to privately educate my kids. It is a decision I have never regretted.
    Given your reference to the Falklands War, you were clearly at school around 40 years ago. Some of what you write was true then, but it certainly isn't now except in a very tiny minority of schools. 40 years ago there was very little accountability: no Ofsted (started in 1992), no performance league tables, no appraisal of teachers, and so on.

    Any school now where teachers had low expectations or little ambition for w/c pupils would not survive long. Its performance would lead to it going into special measures pretty quickly, and leadership would be replaced.

    To summarise, your experience of school 40 years ago has little relevance to what happens today.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    As long as we Tories are in power we do not need to sell the Union, we will just refuse indyref2 and as Westminster is supreme under our constitution and the Scotland Act 1998 nothing nationalists can do about it. We have learnt from our PP cousins in Spain.

    Labour might need to sell the Union if they got in and needed SNP confidence and supply using devomax etc but we Tories do not
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    edited June 2021
    The EU is ordering another 150m doses of Moderna for 2022.

    https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1407280662533574658
  • OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,911
    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    You don't think that perhaps he might have latched on to that as a convenient excuse for why he failed to do the job he was paid to do?

    "Woke" is a non-issue for 99% of us. It has negligible impact on the day-to-day lives of most people in comparison to education, housing and health policy issues. It's obvious why some people prefer to bang on about it rather than the real issues that affect people's lives.

  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    OllyT said:

    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    You don't think that perhaps he might have latched on to that as a convenient excuse for why he failed to do the job he was paid to do?

    "Woke" is a non-issue for 99% of us. It has negligible impact on the day-to-day lives of most people in comparison to education, housing and health policy issues. It's obvious why some people prefer to bang on about it rather than the real issues that affect people's lives.

    Anyone who has school age children or is a schoolchild is affected quite significantly by Wokeness. That’s a lot more than “1%” of the country
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,844
    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    Your poor white kids aren't struggling because they're white, they are struggling because they're poor, and the education system is under-funded by the government you vote for, and perhaps in some cases because of aspects of their upbringing, in many cases linked to their poverty.
    I've just given you two examples of how they don't face some similar barriers that non-White people do. And I'm not sure there are many places where a white kid in a hoodie will get hassled by the police more than a black kid in a hoodie, but please share statistics to the contrary if you have them.
    It’s divisive and unhelpful as it perpetrates the perception that people are homogenous blocs based on skin colour.

    They’re not. People are people.
    So why should it be, that some of them should get along so awfully? - That's the million dollar question.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    On topic, I agree the Tories need a majority to stay in power in 2024. The LDs would back Starmer over Boris and closer alignment to the SM and CU as would the SNP in return for indyref2.

    The DUP would also abstain and only support the Tories if they moved the hard border from the Irish Sea to Ireland, this is not 2017.

    At the moment the polls are clear the Tories should still win with a majority but if we do not I think we would head for opposition, it would require Labour to do better in the Red Wall as the LDs are now doing in southern Remain areas
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,955

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    The Education Select Committee are a cross-party group of MPs, and their point is that social class and parental involvement are a larger factor than race in determining educational outcomes.

    The people playing the race card in Batley and Spen are the George Galloway supporters, with their homophobic and anti-Semitic attacks on the Labour candidate and party leader.

    The Tories are talking about levelling up the area, by investing in infrastructure and encouraging private job creation.

    Me, well I emigrated already ;)
    Hmmm. A unanimous report, and the committee is 7 Tory, 4 Labour, who include 3 members of the Socialist Campaign Group and Fleur Anderson.
    One of the Labour MPs on the committee explicitly rejected the culture war bit though. Kim Johnson said that the references to White Privilege were trying to "stoke the culture war" and said the report avoided talking about the "lack of investment" in education and local communities.
    It's just classic Tory divide and rule.
    White working class kids let down most by:

    a) The party that has been in government for the last 11 years

    b) the phrase/concept 'white privilege' which only seems to have entered the English consciousness in the last couple of years as far as I can tell

    It's a bit of a conundrum, though my psychic superpowers enable me to guess which one the party that has been in government for the last 11 years would plump for.
    How is the SNP doing in battling "white privilege"?
    Top 10 fastest whatabouttery in PB history, easy.
    Never answer a question on policy. Noted.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    Totally agree.
    And then of course, Boris and Gove themselves preclude any reasonable carrot pitch as they are so untrustworthy.

    My philosophy is that the 1707 Act created a Union of two equals and to use that as inspiration for how we might rearrange things.

    Did you see my suggestion last night that the U.K. government move to Edinburgh while the Palace of Westminster is refurbished?
    Yes, I did. Good suggestion. I confidently predict that it will be ignored.

    Although I did not respond to your post yesterday I did note that you described Edinburgh as “the second capital”. Unusual to see such astuteness. It reminded me of the origins of the Royal Mail: instigated by James VI and I to ensure swift communications between his privy councillors in his two capitals.

    - “My philosophy is that the 1707 Act created a Union of two equals and to use that as inspiration for how we might rearrange things.”

    If more folk understood that forty years ago the Union would never have found itself in the mess it is now. Too late now. Cheers Maggie!
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,844
    edited June 2021
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    I think the counterfactual would have been Nazi control of the whole of Europe, including the UK. Which would have been worse.
    For sure. But I was responding to Sean's general comment.

    Sean: "War is an evil but the alternative is sometimes worse."

    Me: "But not usually."

    We're both right.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. T, given the stink kicked up by police stopping and searching black people I'm surprised you dismiss the security guard's comment on the bomber so readily.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    I think the counterfactual would have been Nazi control of the whole of Europe, including the UK. Which would have been worse.
    The mass murder of civilians in Dresden took place when the outcome of the war was not in question, so that defence does not stand up to scrutiny.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    I is a necessary condition of Lab performance in the next GE that they rule out a referendum deal with the SNP.

    Labour need to kill the “Vote Lab, get SNP” meme and indeed advance a “Vote SNP, get Tory” argument in Scotland.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    On educational performance. The SC Report is telling us nothing new. Ever since meaningful educational performance data started being collected, around 30 years ago, the group that has underachieved the most has been white kids from a poor background - i.e. on free school meals (FSM). The only group who does worse is those who have been in care. Other underachieving groups have (and still do) included Afro-Caribbean boys, and poorer kids from Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin.

    Various efforts have been made to improve the performance of kids on FSM (from all backgrounds). The London Challenge was the most successful. The jury is still out on how successful the Pupil Premium funding has been; where it's been well targetted, it's had an impact, but too many schools have just merged it into their general funding.

    Given this brief overview of historical underachievement dating back decades (and, if we had the data, probably ever since compulsory education started), the idea that the fashionable concept of 'white privilege' is a factor is ludicrous. As is the insulting suggestion by one poster that 'leftie' teachers don't try to raise the aspirations of w/c kids.

    Agreed, proportioning blame for a decades old problem on a relatively new non-issue is ridiculous and all it has done is drown out, once again, the very real conversation this country needs to have wrt achievement and expectation setting for young white and black boys both by their parents and the educational establishment (not individual teachers, the wider establishment including the DoE and teaching unions).
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    Uefa has declined a request to light up the Allianz Arena in rainbow colours before Germany's Euro 2020 match against Hungary on Wednesday.

    Uefa says it denied the request because of the "political context".

    -----

    UEFA getting themselves in a right mess now. Kneeling is ok, not political, all about racial justice. Neuer wearing a pride armband is investigated by UEFA and deemed not political, is all about diversity.

    But light up a stadium with pride colours, no that's political.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    Nigelb said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
    The original poster's comment on this thread was the irrelevant drivel. The person on Breakfast this morning was Robert Halfon (who I think is the Chair of the committee?) and he is hardly on the right of the Tory Party. His comments were perfectly rational. WWC kids are underperforming compared to their peers.

    I went to a very poor ex-secondary modern comprehensive school. I am sure nowadays it would have ended up in special measures. The teachers at that school were almost without exception very left wing and had no problem expressing their far left political views. During the Falklands War one was so "woke" that he referred to the Falklands as "The Malvinas"! Most of these teachers were actually middle class, and some seemed to revel in the fact that most of the kids left with no qualifications, and I am quite sure looked down on them as uneducable. With the exception of one or two most were incompetent and lazy. Most should have been sacked.

    There is an essential problem with the middle class educated left: they are often intellectual and cultural snobs and they would like the WWC to know their place. The reason for poor performance in many schools is not just the lack of resources. It is a lack of expectation and ambition. This takes outstanding teachers, many of whom gravitate, understandably, to the better schools, thereby exacerbating the problem. I am not sure what the answer is. As I was fortunate enough to become quite successful I chose to privately educate my kids. It is a decision I have never regretted.
    Given your reference to the Falklands War, you were clearly at school around 40 years ago. Some of what you write was true then, but it certainly isn't now except in a very tiny minority of schools. 40 years ago there was very little accountability: no Ofsted (started in 1992), no performance league tables, no appraisal of teachers, and so on.

    Any school now where teachers had low expectations or little ambition for w/c pupils would not survive long. Its performance would lead to it going into special measures pretty quickly, and leadership would be replaced.

    To summarise, your experience of school 40 years ago has little relevance to what happens today.
    I certainly hope you are right, but fear that many of the attitudes I witnessed may well still exist, because teachers are, like all of us, human, and they are also very dominated by the teaching unions where the far left still has a lot of influence. And of course, the teaching unions have opposed all the policies of measurement that successive governments have tried to implement.

    Don't get me wrong, I have huge respect for good teachers, who often work under very difficult conditions. The incompetent and lazy, and those that try to indoctrinate kids with their politics I have nothing but contempt for.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    Totally agree.
    And then of course, Boris and Gove themselves preclude any reasonable carrot pitch as they are so untrustworthy.

    My philosophy is that the 1707 Act created a Union of two equals and to use that as inspiration for how we might rearrange things.

    Did you see my suggestion last night that the U.K. government move to Edinburgh while the Palace of Westminster is refurbished?
    Why? The UK Government isn't based at the Palace of Westminster.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,844
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    No course not. What I'm saying is that it looks like a tag on here to generate some culture war spat and divert the responsibility for a problem in schools to that oh so convenient amorphous blob which is to blame for all the defects of 11 years of Tory government - the woke left.

    It's getting stale. It's getting very stale indeed.
    1. It’s only just begun

    2. It works
    Probably correct. In which case the relative economic prospects of the white working class will not improve.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    I think the counterfactual would have been Nazi control of the whole of Europe, including the UK. Which would have been worse.
    The mass murder of civilians in Dresden took place when the outcome of the war was not in question, so that defence does not stand up to scrutiny.
    The bombing of Dresden was to speed up the end of the war, not to change the outcome. Whether or not it had that effect is for debate, and we'll never know for sure.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    OllyT said:

    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    You don't think that perhaps he might have latched on to that as a convenient excuse for why he failed to do the job he was paid to do?

    "Woke" is a non-issue for 99% of us. It has negligible impact on the day-to-day lives of most people in comparison to education, housing and health policy issues. It's obvious why some people prefer to bang on about it rather than the real issues that affect people's lives.

    But I thought structural racism was the cause of many problems. So that line is a pile of sh1t then?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    Totally agree.
    And then of course, Boris and Gove themselves preclude any reasonable carrot pitch as they are so untrustworthy.

    My philosophy is that the 1707 Act created a Union of two equals and to use that as inspiration for how we might rearrange things.

    Did you see my suggestion last night that the U.K. government move to Edinburgh while the Palace of Westminster is refurbished?
    Why? The UK Government isn't based at the Palace of Westminster.
    Quite right; I should have said Parliament.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    edited June 2021
    HYUFD said:

    On topic, I agree the Tories need a majority to stay in power in 2024.

    They need a WORKING majority (30+? 40+?) to stay in power. Otherwise, like John Major or TMay, they are just in office.

  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Peter ‘gain of function’ Daszak has finally been kicked off the committee which was set up to investigate, er, Peter Daszak


    “Peter Daszak is now recused from any of the @TheLancet Covid-19 Commission work that deals with the origin of the pandemic. (An extremely late acknowledgement of his obvious conflict of interest and bias)”

    https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1407126953128300549?s=21

    As the Lab Leak hypothesis becomes evermore plausible, he is now being lined up as the Fall Guy. He will be scapegoated. However his toppling leaves others exposed: Fauci and Co in the USA, Vallance and the Wellcome dude and the Lancet editors, who STILL haven’t apologized for that letter
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Special report: UEFA & the love-in with Eastern European strongmen. Refusal to challenge or condemn homophobia, cosy meetings between @UEFA president Ceferin & Belarus Lukashenko & Russia Putin. Orban’s homophobic Hungarian govt has 2022 Europa final (1/9) https://t.co/jgHf7Z3kLj

    https://twitter.com/AdamCrafton_/status/1407229984985452547?s=19
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764
    Fishing said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    I think the counterfactual would have been Nazi control of the whole of Europe, including the UK. Which would have been worse.
    The mass murder of civilians in Dresden took place when the outcome of the war was not in question, so that defence does not stand up to scrutiny.
    The bombing of Dresden was to speed up the end of the war, not to change the outcome. Whether or not it had that effect is for debate, and we'll never know for sure.
    Every day the war continued saw more people being put to death by the Nazis.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    As long as we Tories are in power we do not need to sell the Union, we will just refuse indyref2 and as Westminster is supreme under our constitution and the Scotland Act 1998 nothing nationalists can do about it. We have learnt from our PP cousins in Spain.

    Labour might need to sell the Union if they got in and needed SNP confidence and supply using devomax etc but we Tories do not
    Well done! Let me fetch you a new shovel. You’ve worn that one out.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,844

    kinabalu said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    Yeah this is a tricky one, but on the whole I think I agree that we had to be ruthless. The bombing campaign by 1944 and into '45 was a terrible, terrible beast. Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force were fearsome agents of death and destruction. But Nazi Germany was still stubbornly resisting. Dresden had probably become a legitimate target due to its proximity to the advancing Russians - IIRC I think a lot of logistics went through Dresden.
    War is an evil, but the alternative is sometimes worse.
    But not usually.
    It takes a very special kind of privilege not to realise how lucky you are not to face that alternative.
    Nonsensical comment. I'm simply saying that wars over the bloody course of human history by and large do not meet the test "essential to prevent a worse alternative". Some do but most don't.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited June 2021

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Somebody asked about Bomber Harris a couple of days ago. I didn’t respond as the topic is very easy to research, and the evidence against Harris is overwhelming. Then happened to spot this story. It’s behind a paywall, but seems indicative of the more balanced way public bodies are going to have to deal with controversial figures, eg blokes who order the mass murder of civilians.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/bomber-harris-war-crime-claim-included-new-english-heritage/

    The only way to win WW2 was to be completely ruthless. Our present ease and comfort and freedom depends on the decisions made by Harris, Le May, FDR, Truman, Churchill, and their Soviet counterparts.
    The “only way” to win wars is by the mass murder of women, children and civilians? That’ll explain Trident and why Greater Glasgow is a sacrifice worth making.
    I find it hugely preferable to the alternative, namely losing. I expect you would have, too, had you been around at the time.
    The people around at the time disapproved of Harris too. He and his unit were ostracised.
    Criticism of Bomber Command was largely confined to the Bishop of Chichester and a couple of Labour MP's. Most British people were entirely supportive of the bombing campaign.
    “Harris, though of course criminal charges were never brought against him, was not treated after the war as a giant among the leaders of men. He had done what his government thought necessary, but what he had done was ugly, and there seems to have been a conscious decision not to celebrate the exploits of Bomber Command or to honor its leader. ... ‘After the strategic air offensive officially ended in mid-April [1945], Bomber Command was slighted and snubbed; and Harris, unlike other well-known commanders, was not rewarded with a peerage.’ In such circumstances, not to honor was to dishonor, and that is exactly how Harris regarded the government’s action.”

    https://www.academia.edu/4146985/The_Dishonoring_of_Arthur_Harris_Morality_in_International_Politics
    Interesting that the author of the paper where that is quoted from a third party source argues that normal tules of morality (ie don't bomb civilians) can be appropriately suspended where national extinction is threatened.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Uefa has declined a request to light up the Allianz Arena in rainbow colours before Germany's Euro 2020 match against Hungary on Wednesday.

    Uefa says it denied the request because of the "political context".

    -----

    UEFA getting themselves in a right mess now. Kneeling is ok, not political, all about racial justice. Neuer wearing a pride armband is investigated by UEFA and deemed not political, is all about diversity.

    But light up a stadium with pride colours, no that's political.

    It is when the reason the organisers wish to do it is to annoy Hungary - a country with a Government that has very different viewpoint on such matters.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
    The original poster's comment on this thread was the irrelevant drivel. The person on Breakfast this morning was Robert Halfon (who I think is the Chair of the committee?) and he is hardly on the right of the Tory Party. His comments were perfectly rational. WWC kids are underperforming compared to their peers.

    I went to a very poor ex-secondary modern comprehensive school. I am sure nowadays it would have ended up in special measures. The teachers at that school were almost without exception very left wing and had no problem expressing their far left political views. During the Falklands War one was so "woke" that he referred to the Falklands as "The Malvinas"! Most of these teachers were actually middle class, and some seemed to revel in the fact that most of the kids left with no qualifications, and I am quite sure looked down on them as uneducable. With the exception of one or two most were incompetent and lazy. Most should have been sacked.

    There is an essential problem with the middle class educated left: they are often intellectual and cultural snobs and they would like the WWC to know their place. The reason for poor performance in many schools is not just the lack of resources. It is a lack of expectation and ambition. This takes outstanding teachers, many of whom gravitate, understandably, to the better schools, thereby exacerbating the problem. I am not sure what the answer is. As I was fortunate enough to become quite successful I chose to privately educate my kids. It is a decision I have never regretted.
    So your analysis of the current state system is based on your experience of four decades back ?
    No one is arguing that white British kids from poor backgrounds aren't underperforming. And if you think current teachers revel in that fact, then you are a fool.
    Indeed. I think it's actually pretty insulting to a lot of hard working teachers that really do want the best for the kids they teach. Unfortunately the problems here start much earlier than that with parental and establishment expectations. Just as the Met sees a black person and sees potential criminal or an Asian person and sees a potential terrorist, the education establishment sees a young white boy or young black boy and sees troublemakers and treats them as such. If anything there are teachers all across the country who are fighting against that system of low expectations.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    No course not. What I'm saying is that it looks like a tag on here to generate some culture war spat and divert the responsibility for a problem in schools to that oh so convenient amorphous blob which is to blame for all the defects of 11 years of Tory government - the woke left.

    It's getting stale. It's getting very stale indeed.
    1. It’s only just begun

    2. It works
    Probably correct. In which case the relative economic prospects of the white working class will not improve.
    It will if more focus is placed into those areas.

    Blair's education policies focused very much on improving the performance of state schools in London in particular and, 20 years on, huge progress has been made there. However, the rest of the country was relegated in importance, with the possible exception of some of the cities.

    It might help the left in general if their reaction to reports such as the Education Committee was a bit more introspection and a lot less lashing out and blaming everyone else for how you are perceived. The left's behaviour when anyone brings up issues such as the WWC in schools is starting to look very Trumpian in its manner.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    eek said:

    Uefa has declined a request to light up the Allianz Arena in rainbow colours before Germany's Euro 2020 match against Hungary on Wednesday.

    Uefa says it denied the request because of the "political context".

    -----

    UEFA getting themselves in a right mess now. Kneeling is ok, not political, all about racial justice. Neuer wearing a pride armband is investigated by UEFA and deemed not political, is all about diversity.

    But light up a stadium with pride colours, no that's political.

    It is when the reason the organisers wish to do it is to annoy Hungary - a country with a Government that has very different viewpoint on such matters.
    I know, but UEFA now opened a very messy pandora box. Arbitrary decisions on what is political, what isn't, etc, depending on who they are trying to appease.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,458
    MrEd said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    No course not. What I'm saying is that it looks like a tag on here to generate some culture war spat and divert the responsibility for a problem in schools to that oh so convenient amorphous blob which is to blame for all the defects of 11 years of Tory government - the woke left.

    It's getting stale. It's getting very stale indeed.
    1. It’s only just begun

    2. It works
    Probably correct. In which case the relative economic prospects of the white working class will not improve.
    It will if more focus is placed into those areas.

    Blair's education policies focused very much on improving the performance of state schools in London in particular and, 20 years on, huge progress has been made there. However, the rest of the country was relegated in importance, with the possible exception of some of the cities.

    It might help the left in general if their reaction to reports such as the Education Committee was a bit more introspection and a lot less lashing out and blaming everyone else for how you are perceived. The left's behaviour when anyone brings up issues such as the WWC in schools is starting to look very Trumpian in its manner.
    It might help the right in general if their reaction to reports such as the Education Committee was to read them before commenting so knowledgeably. Have you read it?
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182
    Fishing said:

    HYUFD said:

    On topic, I agree the Tories need a majority to stay in power in 2024.

    They need a WORKING majority (30+? 40+?) to stay in power. Otherwise, like John Major or TMay, they are just in office.

    David Cameron's majority of 8 was fine for getting through his primary election commitment of an EU referendum.
    :wink:
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Scotland

    Boris Johnson’s net approval rating: -32
    Rishi Sunak’s net approval rating: -3
    Government’s Net Competency Rating: -36
    Keir Starmer's net approval rating: -16

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-21-june-2021/

    Proper ray of sunshine you lot
    If you lot want better scores then the solution is hardly beyond the wit of man: offer Scottish voters some intelligent, pleasant, hard-working, competent and sympathetic politicians. Boris, Rishi, Keir, Anas and Douglas just don’t cut it.
    Wouldn't make a difference to anything. The fundamental problem with Scotland is that it simultaneously wants to break away but a crucial group of middle class voters won't vote for it because they're afraid it will be expensive. That leaves the more committed nationalists feeling permanently thwarted and angry, and the waverers loathing their choices because, deep down, they know that they are dependent on handouts for being kept in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

    Selling the Union and being popular are, therefore, two mutually exclusive propositions. How could it be otherwise?
    The problem for Unionists is that no one is “selling the Union”. It is all stick and no carrot.
    As long as we Tories are in power we do not need to sell the Union, we will just refuse indyref2 and as Westminster is supreme under our constitution and the Scotland Act 1998 nothing nationalists can do about it. We have learnt from our PP cousins in Spain.

    Labour might need to sell the Union if they got in and needed SNP confidence and supply using devomax etc but we Tories do not
    Well done! Let me fetch you a new shovel. You’ve worn that one out.
    Its the 'we' tories nonsense

    I am a conservative member and utterly reject @HYUFD hard line claptrap and the time will come when 'we' tories will address the issue and indeed since the Holyrood elections the trend has moved towards to stay in the union and 'we' tories must be confident and make our case.

    And certainly no tanks !!!!
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Labour need to… advance a “Vote SNP, get Tory” argument in Scotland.

    They’ve consistently pushed that message at every election since the 1960s. Ask Jim Murphy how it worked out.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Besides the content, check the language on this Dutch tweet. There is so much English in it, she is basically speaking English

    I’ve seen the same in Sweden and Denmark. I wonder if these smaller European languages will survive for much longer. The urge to talk - certainly online - in plain English, and finally abandon Dutch, must be intense. You instantly get a vastly bigger audience, and you’re already halfway there


    ‘Peter Daszak, lid vh WHO-team dat in China herkomst coronavirus onderzocht, heeft nu fuller disclosure gegeven over financiering door non-profit waarvan hij president is en dat eerder onderzoek van het Wuhanlab financieerde, recent onthuld door Vanity Fair.’

    https://twitter.com/askimono/status/1407256417275371520?s=21
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Good to hear Steve Baker saying it as it is on Politics Live regarding QE.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
    The original poster's comment on this thread was the irrelevant drivel. The person on Breakfast this morning was Robert Halfon (who I think is the Chair of the committee?) and he is hardly on the right of the Tory Party. His comments were perfectly rational. WWC kids are underperforming compared to their peers.

    I went to a very poor ex-secondary modern comprehensive school. I am sure nowadays it would have ended up in special measures. The teachers at that school were almost without exception very left wing and had no problem expressing their far left political views. During the Falklands War one was so "woke" that he referred to the Falklands as "The Malvinas"! Most of these teachers were actually middle class, and some seemed to revel in the fact that most of the kids left with no qualifications, and I am quite sure looked down on them as uneducable. With the exception of one or two most were incompetent and lazy. Most should have been sacked.

    There is an essential problem with the middle class educated left: they are often intellectual and cultural snobs and they would like the WWC to know their place. The reason for poor performance in many schools is not just the lack of resources. It is a lack of expectation and ambition. This takes outstanding teachers, many of whom gravitate, understandably, to the better schools, thereby exacerbating the problem. I am not sure what the answer is. As I was fortunate enough to become quite successful I chose to privately educate my kids. It is a decision I have never regretted.
    So your analysis of the current state system is based on your experience of four decades back ?
    No one is arguing that white British kids from poor backgrounds aren't underperforming. And if you think current teachers revel in that fact, then you are a fool.
    I was illustrating a possible attitudinal cause based on anecdote. If you think all teachers are saints, any more than other professionals then you are probably very biased or you are the fool. I hope they are a minority, but one only has to watch a teaching union meeting to see there is a still a problem within the teaching profession.

    In fact, this is one of the biggest fundamental problem with the public sector. If one identifies a problem with the sector, even if one is of fairly centrist viewpoint, one is accused of attacking the saintly teachers or "doctorsannurses" or some other vested interest and huge opprobrium is pored on the unclean person that dared to point at the emperor, usually by selective quotation of what one said. I am sure the teaching profession has improved, but I doubt the attitudes I described have been irradiated entirely, even though I wish they would be.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,458
    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    I would back 1/3 that in a random conversation on here where it drifts onto white privilege it is a Tory voter who first uses the phrase here, and be a comfortable winner in the long run.

    I would also back at odds on, that if someone starts a conversation about increasing education spending, they did not vote Tory at the last election.

    I think the phrase is tactically unhelpful to the point of being counter productive, but does exist to an extent, as do many other privileges especially class and in many societies gender.
    If a Tory voter on here quotes someone who uses the term (and means it), like Charles in his example above, then is that a leftwinger initiating that or a right winger?

    You seem to think that the far left ought to be able to say whatever they want in a safe space and never be quoted or responded to.

    If the phrase is unhelpful to the point of being counter productive then don't use it and condemn those who do.
    I would never initiate a conversation about it so only use it when it is already being discussed anyway.

    Like most of wokeism, it is a tiny minority on the left who probably do start it, but a much bigger minority on the right who amplify, publicise and politicise it into the mainstream.
    In which case its the left that started it, not the right. Publicising what your opponents are up to is just politics and quite right to do.

    If you find the left embarrassing then you can join in with the right in rejecting it and criticising it yourself. In which case it loses all potency.
    All of which is irrelevant drivel in getting to grips with problems in education, which is the job of the select committee.
    What you write just confirms that it's engaged in petty politicking.
    The original poster's comment on this thread was the irrelevant drivel. The person on Breakfast this morning was Robert Halfon (who I think is the Chair of the committee?) and he is hardly on the right of the Tory Party. His comments were perfectly rational. WWC kids are underperforming compared to their peers.

    I went to a very poor ex-secondary modern comprehensive school. I am sure nowadays it would have ended up in special measures. The teachers at that school were almost without exception very left wing and had no problem expressing their far left political views. During the Falklands War one was so "woke" that he referred to the Falklands as "The Malvinas"! Most of these teachers were actually middle class, and some seemed to revel in the fact that most of the kids left with no qualifications, and I am quite sure looked down on them as uneducable. With the exception of one or two most were incompetent and lazy. Most should have been sacked.

    There is an essential problem with the middle class educated left: they are often intellectual and cultural snobs and they would like the WWC to know their place. The reason for poor performance in many schools is not just the lack of resources. It is a lack of expectation and ambition. This takes outstanding teachers, many of whom gravitate, understandably, to the better schools, thereby exacerbating the problem. I am not sure what the answer is. As I was fortunate enough to become quite successful I chose to privately educate my kids. It is a decision I have never regretted.
    So your analysis of the current state system is based on your experience of four decades back ?
    No one is arguing that white British kids from poor backgrounds aren't underperforming. And if you think current teachers revel in that fact, then you are a fool.
    Indeed. I think it's actually pretty insulting to a lot of hard working teachers that really do want the best for the kids they teach. Unfortunately the problems here start much earlier than that with parental and establishment expectations. Just as the Met sees a black person and sees potential criminal or an Asian person and sees a potential terrorist, the education establishment sees a young white boy or young black boy and sees troublemakers and treats them as such. If anything there are teachers all across the country who are fighting against that system of low expectations.
    You're right, but that's a battle that's been fought for at least twenty years now, and the 'goodies' are winning. There's very few teachers now who stereotype pupils as black = troublemaker, or white disadvantaged = no hoper, and those who do are older and on their way out.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Labour need to… advance a “Vote SNP, get Tory” argument in Scotland.

    They’ve consistently pushed that message at every election since the 1960s. Ask Jim Murphy how it worked out.
    True though, innit.
  • OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,911
    Leon said:

    OllyT said:

    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    You don't think that perhaps he might have latched on to that as a convenient excuse for why he failed to do the job he was paid to do?

    "Woke" is a non-issue for 99% of us. It has negligible impact on the day-to-day lives of most people in comparison to education, housing and health policy issues. It's obvious why some people prefer to bang on about it rather than the real issues that affect people's lives.

    Anyone who has school age children or is a schoolchild is affected quite significantly by Wokeness. That’s a lot more than “1%” of the country
    Only in the fevered imagination of Daily Mail journalists and people such as your good self.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    OllyT said:

    Leon said:

    OllyT said:

    MrEd said:

    OllyT said:

    kinabalu said:

    MrEd said:

    Taz said:

    Gnudders said:

    After reading the thread here I bet on Labour holding Batley and Spen, but I pulled out of the market after I woke up this morning to the headline news that the Education Select Committee believes schools have long neglected white children. This is how the Tories win - by playing the race card. The race card is a trump card. (See what I did there.) Most likely the Tories will gain Batley and Spen and they are value at 1.45. Thumping away with this kind of story - what is essentially a call for "white rights" - could increase the Tories' Commons majority at the next GE too.

    Time to emigrate?

    What rubbish. There is clearly an issue with underachievement in this demographic, and there has been for a while, and addressing it is exactly what is needed to stop people playing the race card.

    Or would you prefer this sector of society was allowed to keep falling behind as long as your comfy worldview wasn’t challenged ?
    I just don't understand what their race has to do with this. They're not getting treated badly at school because they're white. In fact I doubt they're getting treated badly at school at all, except to the extent that all state school kids in this country are let down by a lack of money and focus from the government and the establishment, who mostly go private and so have very little skin in the game. Their problems come from a lack of engagement in education, often rooted in their parents' experiences of school, sometimes compounded by other issues that their parents have. Plus poverty, which makes everything harder.
    (BTW before anyone accuses me of being an out of touch elitist, I went to a comprehensive school that was almost entirely white so the so-called white working class is not some kind of unknown exotic species to me).
    I disagree with that and I think a lot has to do with the attitude of teachers. As @RochdalePioneers so helpfully demonstrated a few days back, there is a view on the left, especially amongst let's say the more educated parts including the teaching profession, that WWC kids are essentially thick, racist and therefore not worth saving, and the problems they have in their lives are the faults of them and their ghastly parents. Therefore, why bother trying to do anything with them. That then leads to teachers who view their place as going through the motions rather than trying to inspire or change.
    That is the Right's view of the view of the Left. The real one is that our education system is elitist and old fashioned and underfunded and warped by the propensity of the affluent to opt out and purchase advantage via the private sector.

    We demand better. We want a more egalitarian approach that will deliver a similar (and high) quality education to everyone regardless of parental bank balance. Increase participation in state schools, proper funding, a real prioritizing of disadvantaged areas.

    The biggest beneficiary of such an approach? Yep - white working class children.

    But oh no, too difficult. Too disruptive of the status quo that so many are secretly comfortable with. So let's produce this report instead. Let's avoid the hard choices about class and money and push some culture war buttons. Let's waffle on about the term "white privilege". Has sweet FA to do with the problem but let's pretend that it does. Let's stoke some grievance!

    I see you, Tories, and Middle England. I see you.
    So are you saying Tories invented the term "white privilege"?
    The Tories have latched onto it because they have figured out that it is a way of stoking resentment and dividing working class people. White Privilege is a term that is used to describe the advantages in many situations that white people enjoy on account of being the majority group. I'm sorry, but it describes something real, something that I personally have observed, and so I am not going to be bullied into not using it in that specific context. Of course, many white people don't feel very privileged, and so the term grates with them. But I doubt they have ever not had their CV looked at on account of their name, or been racially profiled by the police. White Privilege does not mean that all white people are more privileged than all non-White people.
    It would only be a way of stoking resentment if there is a reason for resentment to be stoked.

    If you believe that "white privilege" is real then stand up loud and proud and explain why poor white kids struggling at school are privileged. Otherwise maybe your term is flawed and you should stop using it and use something else instead.

    We aren't America incidentally. I'd imagine many young white teenagers in hoodies have been profiled by the Police here.
    All you need to stoke resentment is to convince people that something is a cause of their problems. Whether it actually is the cause or not is largely irrelevant.

    Blaming the EU for everything was a classic example - the likes of the Mail , the Telegraph and Farage milked it for years. They now have to find something else to replace it and explain away the continuing problems of the folk in the red wall seats. Attacks on "Woke" will become the new "EU bendy bananas" mantra.
    Except the wokeness stuff can also have very tragic real-life consequences. One of the security "guards" interviewed as part of the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry mentioned he didn't challenge the alleged suicide bomber, despite of his behaviour, was because he was afraid of being called racist. The inquiry is clear that, if the bomber had been challenged earlier, not so many people would have died.
    You don't think that perhaps he might have latched on to that as a convenient excuse for why he failed to do the job he was paid to do?

    "Woke" is a non-issue for 99% of us. It has negligible impact on the day-to-day lives of most people in comparison to education, housing and health policy issues. It's obvious why some people prefer to bang on about it rather than the real issues that affect people's lives.

    Anyone who has school age children or is a schoolchild is affected quite significantly by Wokeness. That’s a lot more than “1%” of the country
    Only in the fevered imagination of Daily Mail journalists and people such as your good self.
    I have kids at British schools
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