LDs 67% favourite in Mid Beds, LAB 88% in Uxbridge & S Ruislip – politicalbetting.com
Comments
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I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.0 -
A glitch in your dictation software? Chrome's voice (on video) to text function also fails with names.OldKingCole said:
Could he run for mayor of London as an independent as Ken living standard?Farooq said:
Who said anything about Boris controlling RefUK? I don't think he'd be able to take control of any vaguely serious political party. But he could, in theory, stand for them.HYUFD said:
No, Boris is more likely to run for Mayor of London again next year, given the approved Tory candidates aren't even known to most London Tories let alone Londoners overall and how unpopular Mayor Khan's ULEZ is.RochdalePioneers said:
I did float the idea of Boris running for ReFUK. Decried as madness on here - and mad it would be.DavidL said:Reply function not working.
I will be astounded if the Reform/Brexit party manages to stand in as many seats as it did the last time. It's dead and has been for some time everywhere but in the polling figures. Some won't vote at all but I am expecting a small boost for the Tories from the detritus. It won't be enough though.
But - and its a big but - the crank right enjoy madness. In 2019 they succeeded in gifting Labour retention of seats like Stockton North and Sunderland Central.
In 2024? A conservative party needs to be on the ballot somewhere, and that party is Reform UK. I can see donors putting up enough money for candidates and as we have seen post the Brexit referendum all kinds of names reappear in all kinds of unlikely places.
Boris wants to be relevant. Seems the Tory party have declared him persona non grata, despite so many actual Tory MPs and voters still thinking he is the man. He can't reinvent himself inside the party - a party he and so many describe as not conservative enough.
So why not? He will be running as BORIS primarily, the George Galloway of the right. Go get 'em Bozza.
Boris has no interest in RefUK under FPTP and Farage and Tice will not allow him to challenge their control of the party either0 -
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.1 -
Er... the 26th amendment was passed in 1971, no need for the Democrats to propose that one.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.1 -
That's an incredibly useful anecdoteEl_Capitano said:Mrs Capitano has been DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) at her last two schools and has mentored others on it. She was at the Oxfordshire safeguarding conference last week. I'd post the agenda but it would just make PB too depressing for a sunny Monday morning. Let's just say that an entire day on child sexual abuse is probably (hopefully) no-one's idea of fun.
A few points I've picked up from her, and from seeing our local primary get failed by Ofsted on safeguarding issues.
Safeguarding (at primary level at least) is almost entirely about home issues, not school issues. It is directly correlated with deprivation levels in the school catchment. It is basically teachers acting as social workers, because there aren't any/enough social workers. It is absolutely usual to have "team around the child" meetings for home problems which are nonetheless chaired by the head or the DSL because childrens' social care at county is under-resourced.
As such, a school's performance on safeguarding is probably not relevant to the majority of kids at the school or their parents. 99% of kids at her current school, and 90% at the previous one, have no cause to appear on the safeguarding radar at all.
So for that reason, I agree with those protesting about Ofsted's single-word judgements. For most parents/kids, it's misleading to add a single-word judgement where a failure on safeguarding masks excellent teaching. Just publish individual scores/levels without aggregating them into one single rating.
However...
Fulfilling your safeguarding responsibilities isn't really that hard. (Fixing the underlying social issues is, but Ofsted doesn't rate you on that!) If a school is neglecting its safeguarding responsibilities, the head is incompetent. And an incompetent head generally doesn't run a good school.
That was one of the reasons we chose not to send Capitano Junior to our local primary, and went out-of-catchment instead. It had just been failed by Ofsted on safeguarding. The school's line was that it was a "paperwork mistake". It turns out that the head had just told a close-to-retirement teacher to become DSL and hadn't checked at all whether she was doing her job. Surprise surprise, she wasn't. We looked a bit closer and this couldn't-care-less attitude permeated all the way through the school. Four years on, the school has got through two permanent heads, two temporaries, and might slowly be hauling itself back to an acceptable standard. Meanwhile, the school we did choose is not remotely "Ofsteddy" - it's a liberal little village primary where the kids are given space to develop - but the head is supremely competent and knows damn well that all her paperwork is in order, and that the troubled kids are being monitored and issues passed up to county.
Did you have to put down 'reasons' why you were deciding to send Cap Jr out the catchment area ?
I've only got one school - which was inadequate but has now been academised (And hasn't had an OFSTED in it's new form) in my catchment area but quite a few other schools would potentially be viable.0 -
There were some interesting discussion between the middle class people sending children to the local Free School and the parents from the estates.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
The middle class people were a bit shocked by stern enforcement (detentions etc) of rules on uniforms, lateness, politeness to teachers and other pupils etc.
The parents from the estates uniformly stated that this was exactly what they wanted - they'd often moved across London to get their children into a school where they would have an ordered existence.4 -
Boris Johnson's hairdresser in line for OBE
https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1667906479121129472?s=200 -
Correlation between voting Conservative and wanting to cane naughty young children. That's quite an odd one.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned0 -
True but see also Germany where the CDU and SPD grand coalitions reduced their voteshares ultimately longer term and boosted the votes for the Greens and AfD in particular.felix said:
Maybe , but if there was therefore no immediate election, so what?HYUFD said:
If PP went into a grand coalition with PSOE, they would lose some of their more rightwing voters to Vox and PSOE would lose some of their more leftwing voters to Sumarfelix said:
I think a pact as such is unlikely. Vox are the ones with zero option apart from the PP. Otherwise Sanchez stays. PP have always the grand coalition option if Vox won't play. At the moment all polls would require PP as part of the mix, unless Vox want to join the left! An election which decides nothing is still a possibility.Stuartinromford said:
Though there's a poll there where PSOE + Sumar > PP, so PP would need Vox actively supporting them rather than just not opposing them. There might be a couple of others that do that once you factor in nationalists.felix said:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_Spanish_general_election
More Spanish polls overnight give a clearer lead in seats for the PP/VOX combo.
If push comes to shove, I'm sure there's a deal to be done; PP want power and who else can Vox support? But in the medium term, the PP would prefer not to have the taint of pacting with the hard right and Vox would prefer not to make the compromises that go with being a junior partner.
In 2005 the CDU/CSU got 35% and the SPD 34%, by 2021 the CDU/CSU got just 24% and the SPD just 25%0 -
That was my point - Vivek Ramaswamy isBenpointer said:
Er... the 26th amendment was passed in 1971, no need for the Democrats to propose that one.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.
1) Ignorant of the constitution
2) triangulating
3) a combination of both2 -
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.1 -
Constitutional amendments require 2/3rds of states to agree to them.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.
The last time Democrats got 2/3rds of states in their tally was... Lyndon Johnson - they also had 66 senate seats in 1964.
2/3rds of States is incredibly difficult for any party to do, particularly the Dems.0 -
Excellent thank you.El_Capitano said:Mrs Capitano has been DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) at her last two schools and has mentored others on it. She was at the Oxfordshire safeguarding conference last week. I'd post the agenda but it would just make PB too depressing for a sunny Monday morning. Let's just say that an entire day on child sexual abuse is probably (hopefully) no-one's idea of fun.
A few points I've picked up from her, and from seeing our local primary get failed by Ofsted on safeguarding issues.
Safeguarding (at primary level at least) is almost entirely about home issues, not school issues. It is directly correlated with deprivation levels in the school catchment. It is basically teachers acting as social workers, because there aren't any/enough social workers. It is absolutely usual to have "team around the child" meetings for home problems which are nonetheless chaired by the head or the DSL because childrens' social care at county is under-resourced.
As such, a school's performance on safeguarding is probably not relevant to the majority of kids at the school or their parents. 99% of kids at her current school, and 90% at the previous one, have no cause to appear on the safeguarding radar at all.
So for that reason, I agree with those protesting about Ofsted's single-word judgements. For most parents/kids, it's misleading to add a single-word judgement where a failure on safeguarding masks excellent teaching. Just publish individual scores/levels without aggregating them into one single rating.
However...
Fulfilling your safeguarding responsibilities isn't really that hard. (Fixing the underlying social issues is, but Ofsted doesn't rate you on that!) If a school is neglecting its safeguarding responsibilities, the head is incompetent. And an incompetent head generally doesn't run a good school.
That was one of the reasons we chose not to send Capitano Junior to our local primary, and went out-of-catchment instead. It had just been failed by Ofsted on safeguarding. The school's line was that it was a "paperwork mistake". It turns out that the head had just told a close-to-retirement teacher to become DSL and hadn't checked at all whether she was doing her job. Surprise surprise, she wasn't. We looked a bit closer and this couldn't-care-less attitude permeated all the way through the school. Four years on, the school has got through two permanent heads, two temporaries, and might slowly be hauling itself back to an acceptable standard. Meanwhile, the school we did choose is not remotely "Ofsteddy" - it's a liberal little village primary where the kids are given space to develop - but the head is supremely competent and knows damn well that all her paperwork is in order, and that the troubled kids are being monitored and issues passed up to county.
Extremely well put.0 -
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.0 -
I remember Ken Living Standard. Had this obsession with Hitter. Ran against Boring Jonestown Massacre. As depicted in this entirely respected and independent historical document.OldKingCole said:
Could he run for mayor of London as an independent as Ken living standard?Farooq said:
Who said anything about Boris controlling RefUK? I don't think he'd be able to take control of any vaguely serious political party. But he could, in theory, stand for them.HYUFD said:
No, Boris is more likely to run for Mayor of London again next year, given the approved Tory candidates aren't even known to most London Tories let alone Londoners overall and how unpopular Mayor Khan's ULEZ is.RochdalePioneers said:
I did float the idea of Boris running for ReFUK. Decried as madness on here - and mad it would be.DavidL said:Reply function not working.
I will be astounded if the Reform/Brexit party manages to stand in as many seats as it did the last time. It's dead and has been for some time everywhere but in the polling figures. Some won't vote at all but I am expecting a small boost for the Tories from the detritus. It won't be enough though.
But - and its a big but - the crank right enjoy madness. In 2019 they succeeded in gifting Labour retention of seats like Stockton North and Sunderland Central.
In 2024? A conservative party needs to be on the ballot somewhere, and that party is Reform UK. I can see donors putting up enough money for candidates and as we have seen post the Brexit referendum all kinds of names reappear in all kinds of unlikely places.
Boris wants to be relevant. Seems the Tory party have declared him persona non grata, despite so many actual Tory MPs and voters still thinking he is the man. He can't reinvent himself inside the party - a party he and so many describe as not conservative enough.
So why not? He will be running as BORIS primarily, the George Galloway of the right. Go get 'em Bozza.
Boris has no interest in RefUK under FPTP and Farage and Tice will not allow him to challenge their control of the party either0 -
Banana kingdom, though.Theuniondivvie said:
Banana constitutional monarchy is a bit of a mouthful, as the actress said etc.Farooq said:
We are not, as you say, a republicMexicanpete said:
Or a man (A) facilitates the underwriting of a substantial loan on behalf of another man (B) and without favour, man A becomes Chairman of the state broadcaster. It just wouldn't happen here. We are not some central African or American banana republic.Farooq said:
Oh that. Yeah ok.Mexicanpete said:...
It's not like friends and family of MPs and donors were given unfettered access to multi- million pound public sector contracts without going through a formal tender process or anything genuinely scandalous like that? Or £63m of London ratepayers' money being spent on a garden bridge that is yet to see the first brick laid.Farooq said:
The current and previous-but-one PMs were fined for breaking lockdown rules... and I think there was something about seatbelts recently too but I don't remember whether a fine was issued. Do you think there is some more serious crime that's gone uninvestigated or unpunished?RochdalePioneers said:
The arrest of a former First Minister (again) demonstrates to a wider public that nobody is above the law. Which is more than we can say for Prime Ministers and senior cabinet ministers in Westminster...Farooq said:
I don't see why us Scottish posters would have any more of an insight. In fact, given the partisan instincts of people on either side, Scottish posters are probably, on average, less able to give a balanced view due to strong feelings for and against independence.Cyclefree said:- The police investigation into the SNP finances starts in July 2021. This follows complaints about what has happened to £600,000 raised for another independence referendum.
- 19 months later in February 2023 the Head of Police Scotland announces his intention to retire 2 years early in summer 2023. It is reported that this because of a clash with the SNP government about the policing budget.
- Also in February 2023 after this announcement Nicola Sturgeon announces her intention to stand down.
- March 2023: Peter Murrell, SNP CEO, resigns.
- April 2023: Peter Murrell arrested and questioned. His and Sturgeon's home is searched.
- April 2023: campervan seized; Colin Beattie, SNP Treasurer, arrested and questioned; he resigns from his post.
- June 2023: Sturgeon arrested and questioned.
Now, investigating the whereabouts of £600,000 is not, on the face of it, the most complicated investigation ever. So what exactly were the police doing between July 2021 and February 2023? Is it just a coincidence that this all seems to come to a head in the wake of Police Scotland's Head's decision?
Do our Scottish posters have a view?
I'm just grateful we live in a country where holding powerful people to account for possible crimes is possible. In all too many places rule of law does not extend to the connected.
If either of those fictional scenarios were to be a reality and no one investigated the potential for criminality, now there would be a scandal of Sicilian proportions.0 -
Wait. Boris Johnson had a hairdresser? But why not give her a gong? Didn't SamCam's stylist get one?HYUFD said:Boris Johnson's hairdresser in line for OBE
https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1667906479121129472?s=200 -
Interesting. Your last sentence is critical. If competent leaders are doing the right thing in regard to looking after all their kids (for the kids' sake and not for Ofsted's), then they shouldn't have to worry about Ofsted at all.El_Capitano said:Mrs Capitano has been DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) at her last two schools and has mentored others on it. She was at the Oxfordshire safeguarding conference last week. I'd post the agenda but it would just make PB too depressing for a sunny Monday morning. Let's just say that an entire day on child sexual abuse is probably (hopefully) no-one's idea of fun.
A few points I've picked up from her, and from seeing our local primary get failed by Ofsted on safeguarding issues.
Safeguarding (at primary level at least) is almost entirely about home issues, not school issues. It is directly correlated with deprivation levels in the school catchment. It is basically teachers acting as social workers, because there aren't any/enough social workers. It is absolutely usual to have "team around the child" meetings for home problems which are nonetheless chaired by the head or the DSL because childrens' social care at county is under-resourced.
As such, a school's performance on safeguarding is probably not relevant to the majority of kids at the school or their parents. 99% of kids at her current school, and 90% at the previous one, have no cause to appear on the safeguarding radar at all.
So for that reason, I agree with those protesting about Ofsted's single-word judgements. For most parents/kids, it's misleading to add a single-word judgement where a failure on safeguarding masks excellent teaching. Just publish individual scores/levels without aggregating them into one single rating.
However...
Fulfilling your safeguarding responsibilities isn't really that hard. (Fixing the underlying social issues is, but Ofsted doesn't rate you on that!) If a school is neglecting its safeguarding responsibilities, the head is incompetent. And an incompetent head generally doesn't run a good school.
That was one of the reasons we chose not to send Capitano Junior to our local primary, and went out-of-catchment instead. It had just been failed by Ofsted on safeguarding. The school's line was that it was a "paperwork mistake". It turns out that the head had just told a close-to-retirement teacher to become DSL and hadn't checked at all whether she was doing her job. Surprise surprise, she wasn't. We looked a bit closer and this couldn't-care-less attitude permeated all the way through the school. Four years on, the school has got through two permanent heads, two temporaries, and might slowly be hauling itself back to an acceptable standard. Meanwhile, the school we did choose is not remotely "Ofsteddy" - it's a liberal little village primary where the kids are given space to develop - but the head is supremely competent and knows damn well that all her paperwork is in order, and that the troubled kids are being monitored and issues passed up to county.0 -
2031: On a popular political betting blog, the host writes a header opining that Labour PM Sadiq Khan was never truly popular - afterall his only electoral successes were against joke Tory opponents in London Mayoral elections, culminating in the 2024 London Mayoral election against the discredited Boris Johnson and then against electoral turn-off Suella Braverman, who led the Tories to their worst GE defeat since Major in the surprise election of 2026. Instead, he suggests that dull, charisma-free Tory leader Tom Pursglove has been underestimated by the betting public.OldKingCole said:
Could he run for mayor of London as an independent as Ken living standard?Farooq said:
Who said anything about Boris controlling RefUK? I don't think he'd be able to take control of any vaguely serious political party. But he could, in theory, stand for them.HYUFD said:
No, Boris is more likely to run for Mayor of London again next year, given the approved Tory candidates aren't even known to most London Tories let alone Londoners overall and how unpopular Mayor Khan's ULEZ is.RochdalePioneers said:
I did float the idea of Boris running for ReFUK. Decried as madness on here - and mad it would be.DavidL said:Reply function not working.
I will be astounded if the Reform/Brexit party manages to stand in as many seats as it did the last time. It's dead and has been for some time everywhere but in the polling figures. Some won't vote at all but I am expecting a small boost for the Tories from the detritus. It won't be enough though.
But - and its a big but - the crank right enjoy madness. In 2019 they succeeded in gifting Labour retention of seats like Stockton North and Sunderland Central.
In 2024? A conservative party needs to be on the ballot somewhere, and that party is Reform UK. I can see donors putting up enough money for candidates and as we have seen post the Brexit referendum all kinds of names reappear in all kinds of unlikely places.
Boris wants to be relevant. Seems the Tory party have declared him persona non grata, despite so many actual Tory MPs and voters still thinking he is the man. He can't reinvent himself inside the party - a party he and so many describe as not conservative enough.
So why not? He will be running as BORIS primarily, the George Galloway of the right. Go get 'em Bozza.
Boris has no interest in RefUK under FPTP and Farage and Tice will not allow him to challenge their control of the party either1 -
Term limits for SCOTUS would be ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS. Even with an amendment.Pulpstar said:
Constitutional amendments require 2/3rds of states to agree to them.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.
The last time Democrats got 2/3rds of states in their tally was... Lyndon Johnson - they also had 66 senate seats in 1964.
2/3rds of States is incredibly difficult for any party to do, particularly the Dems.0 -
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.5 -
I would expect 90% of this can be explained by both being correlated with age - and with the default position for views on education to be 'it was like x for me and I turned out ok'.kinabalu said:
Correlation between voting Conservative and wanting to cane naughty young children. That's quite an odd one.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
(That said, my kids' primary school experience is light years better than mine was in the 80s, where the school was seemingly staffed almost entirely by idiots.)1 -
Boris is a man of the people and he knows a good hairdresser when he sees oneDecrepiterJohnL said:
Wait. Boris Johnson had a hairdresser? But why not give her a gong? Didn't SamCam's stylist get one?HYUFD said:Boris Johnson's hairdresser in line for OBE
https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1667906479121129472?s=201 -
Deleted as thought better of it and didn't wish to be rude.0
-
I think privacy has proven bit broad from which to derive abortion (despite that, I agree fully with the reasoning behind earlier SCOTUS decisions). Not that it matters to opponents of abortion (or whatever else) what the constitution says, a well worded right to bodily autonomy would fit the bill better in my opinion.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.0 -
It might be helpful to avoid confusion in international contexts if our uses of the terms didn't drift too far from the common ones -- for instance IIRC the US asks on ESTA forms and the like "if you've ever been arrested" and implicitly assumes a similar use of the term to the US.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think that would help in any way as the "no smoke without fire" people would read whatever term was chosen as implying guilt.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Yes, but an alternative term *like* that. One that does not imply the police know they've got you bang to rights and it is only those lefty lawyers saving you from being strung up in the town centre.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
They aren't the same thing. You can be interviewed under caution without being arrested (but can leave the interview at any time in such circumstances).DecrepiterJohnL said:
Perhaps there should be a better term, such as interviewed under caution, rather than arrested (and presumably dearrested or unarrested or some such immediately afterwards).
0 -
Alternatively anyone who is prepared to have Boris Johnson's hair as a client deserves a gong, like charity workers who work with the disadvantaged.Farooq said:
I think all agree that Boris Johnson's hairdresser should be vigorously and repeatedly caned by a Singaporean teacher.HYUFD said:
Boris is a man of the people and he knows a good hairdresser when he sees oneDecrepiterJohnL said:
Wait. Boris Johnson had a hairdresser? But why not give her a gong? Didn't SamCam's stylist get one?HYUFD said:Boris Johnson's hairdresser in line for OBE
https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1667906479121129472?s=200 -
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
While superficially frivolous, it’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
I stick by my odds;
Evens, the tories never again win a majority.
4/1 they cease to be a meaningful electoral force within a decade.0 -
A
The person in question, is as I understand it a long serving hairdresser in the hair dressing outfit in Parliament.Farooq said:
I think all agree that Boris Johnson's hairdresser should be vigorously and repeatedly caned by a Singaporean teacher.HYUFD said:
Boris is a man of the people and he knows a good hairdresser when he sees oneDecrepiterJohnL said:
Wait. Boris Johnson had a hairdresser? But why not give her a gong? Didn't SamCam's stylist get one?HYUFD said:Boris Johnson's hairdresser in line for OBE
https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1667906479121129472?s=201 -
Not only does Singapore use canes, it also makes them. Manufacturing powerhouse.Farooq said:
This post is peak HYUFD. Bravo, sir. Bravo.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankingsDecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Corporal punishment support is an example of the human psychology that goes: “bad things happened when I was young; they didn’t do me [much] harm; therefore those bad things
are good things.”
See also lax health and safety rules, coal fired power stations, not being allowed to work from home, patting one’s Secretary on the bum, and golliwogs.0 -
Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian PM and the Boris of Italy has died aged 86
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-658772412 -
"True conservatives" like HYUFD have never been serious about being in/staying in government. Hence his penchant for sending the tanks into Spain/Scotland, caning, and 'brownfield'.ping said:
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
It’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
The problem with the Conservative Party is when "true conservatives" come to represent party policy rather than be eccentric oddballs.0 -
I don't think our terminology differs all that much from the US and elsewhere. "Arrest" generally means to take someone into custody on suspicion of them having committed a crime.pm215 said:
It might be helpful to avoid confusion in international contexts if our uses of the terms didn't drift too far from the common ones -- for instance IIRC the US asks on ESTA forms and the like "if you've ever been arrested" and implicitly assumes a similar use of the term to the US.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think that would help in any way as the "no smoke without fire" people would read whatever term was chosen as implying guilt.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Yes, but an alternative term *like* that. One that does not imply the police know they've got you bang to rights and it is only those lefty lawyers saving you from being strung up in the town centre.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
They aren't the same thing. You can be interviewed under caution without being arrested (but can leave the interview at any time in such circumstances).DecrepiterJohnL said:
Perhaps there should be a better term, such as interviewed under caution, rather than arrested (and presumably dearrested or unarrested or some such immediately afterwards).0 -
Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.1
-
Does Congress have (in extremis) the power to unmake SCOTUS ?Malmesbury said:
Term limits for SCOTUS would be ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS. Even with an amendment.Pulpstar said:
Constitutional amendments require 2/3rds of states to agree to them.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.
The last time Democrats got 2/3rds of states in their tally was... Lyndon Johnson - they also had 66 senate seats in 1964.
2/3rds of States is incredibly difficult for any party to do, particularly the Dems.
I know parliament has this power over SCOTUK (Though it'd never be agreed to be used)0 -
Obviously @TSE needs to educate you on the various flavours of such entertainment on offer these days.BartholomewRoberts said:When I was at school in the 90s it was a badly-kept secret that my English and Theory of Knowledge (Philosophy) teacher had done porn. Based on her age, I'd guess in the 70s or 80s.
1 -
Which highlights the problem - the Post Office were police force, prosecutor, judge and executionerMalmesbury said:
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.
And Ofsted are the same - there is no independent sanity check and it's very easy to solve a problem by forcing the next person down the chain to just follow what the previous person says (because you hide the awkward bits that made the decision dubious away)..
1 -
Good to hear Sunak stick it to Johnson.
They probably need to do more of that going forward.1 -
Given I earlier posted a poll with 53% of UK voters backing restoring the cane in schools (even if 10 years ago) yet another example of leftwingers like you underestimating support for rightwing policiesping said:
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
While superficially frivolous, it’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
I stick by my odds;
Evens, the tories never again win a majority.
4/1 they cease to be a meaningful electoral force within a decade.0 -
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
1 -
59% of UK voters also oppose allowing more houses to be built in the greenbeltBartholomewRoberts said:
"True conservatives" like HYUFD have never been serious about being in/staying in government. Hence his penchant for sending the tanks into Spain/Scotland, caning, and 'brownfield'.ping said:
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
It’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
The problem with the Conservative Party is when "true conservatives" come to represent party policy rather than be eccentric oddballs.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1658839136315273216?s=200 -
That would be an interesting battle to watch. The answer is no - The SCOTUS is party of Constitution, which can only be changed by the amendment process. Anything that Congress tried to do on it's own would be ruled unconstitutional by... SCOTUS.Pulpstar said:
Does Congress have (in extremis) the power to unmake SCOTUS ?Malmesbury said:
Term limits for SCOTUS would be ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS. Even with an amendment.Pulpstar said:
Constitutional amendments require 2/3rds of states to agree to them.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.
The last time Democrats got 2/3rds of states in their tally was... Lyndon Johnson - they also had 66 senate seats in 1964.
2/3rds of States is incredibly difficult for any party to do, particularly the Dems.
I know parliament has this power over SCOTUK (Though it'd never be agreed to be used)1 -
I don't think the two comparisons are remotely the same. Ofsted are the independent sanity check.eek said:
Which highlights the problem - the Post Office were police force, prosecutor, judge and executionerMalmesbury said:
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.
And Ofsted are the same - there is no independent sanity check...
The Post Office were not just the above but they were also a party to the issues. Their own software was at fault, but they were marking their own homework so refused to see it.
Ofsted aren't a party in the same way as the Post Office is. Its not like schools are running flawed Ofsted software that is causing the problems Ofsted are then marking them down on.1 -
There are I believe differences in arrest rules in England and Scotland, but I can't be arsed to dig out what they are.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think our terminology differs all that much from the US and elsewhere. "Arrest" generally means to take someone into custody on suspicion of them having committed a crime.pm215 said:
It might be helpful to avoid confusion in international contexts if our uses of the terms didn't drift too far from the common ones -- for instance IIRC the US asks on ESTA forms and the like "if you've ever been arrested" and implicitly assumes a similar use of the term to the US.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think that would help in any way as the "no smoke without fire" people would read whatever term was chosen as implying guilt.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Yes, but an alternative term *like* that. One that does not imply the police know they've got you bang to rights and it is only those lefty lawyers saving you from being strung up in the town centre.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
They aren't the same thing. You can be interviewed under caution without being arrested (but can leave the interview at any time in such circumstances).DecrepiterJohnL said:
Perhaps there should be a better term, such as interviewed under caution, rather than arrested (and presumably dearrested or unarrested or some such immediately afterwards).0 -
SCOTUS are providing a really bad advertisement for Constitutional law and make the statute law/supremacy of Parliament approach in the UK look a lot better.Malmesbury said:
Term limits for SCOTUS would be ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS. Even with an amendment.Pulpstar said:
Constitutional amendments require 2/3rds of states to agree to them.148grss said:
I think the Dems need to run on 3 constitutional amendments for the next 15 - 20 years and weave them into their general narrative of their view of freedom. The amendment you propose would be one. I'd also add a distinct right to privacy, including the right to abortion, family planning and to have consensual relationships with other adults and the ability to request the information held by private companies and the state that pertain to you. And finally I would add term limits to SCOTUS (20 years), the Senate (12 years), and the House (8 years). You could even make another amendment clarifying money is not speech and that corporations aren't people.Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
That would make the Democrats the party of freedom to vote and live a private life, the party against democratic interference from corporate money and the party for democratic reform of the representative democracy to make sure people don't get institutionalised.
I doubt they would run on these, though - they're quite radical and would break up some of the power that benefit the Democratic elites as well. But I imagine they would all have plurality support.
The last time Democrats got 2/3rds of states in their tally was... Lyndon Johnson - they also had 66 senate seats in 1964.
2/3rds of States is incredibly difficult for any party to do, particularly the Dems.1 -
Which is why parties serious about governance don't get led solely by opinion polls but show leadership instead.HYUFD said:
59% of UK voters also oppose allowing more houses to be built in the greenbeltBartholomewRoberts said:
"True conservatives" like HYUFD have never been serious about being in/staying in government. Hence his penchant for sending the tanks into Spain/Scotland, caning, and 'brownfield'.ping said:
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
It’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
The problem with the Conservative Party is when "true conservatives" come to represent party policy rather than be eccentric oddballs.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1658839136315273216?s=202 -
And runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction?HYUFD said:
Boris is a man of the people and he knows a good hairdresser when he sees oneDecrepiterJohnL said:
Wait. Boris Johnson had a hairdresser? But why not give her a gong? Didn't SamCam's stylist get one?HYUFD said:Boris Johnson's hairdresser in line for OBE
https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1667906479121129472?s=202 -
He’s going to heaven.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
He made the momentous and correct decision to support the liberation of Iraq.
That gets you into heaven.2 -
I'm saying an OBE for dealing with the barnets on some of them seems about right.Farooq said:
Oh, so you're saying they've been punished enough? Fair point.Malmesbury said:A
The person in question, is as I understand it a long serving hairdresser in hair dressing outfit in Parliament.Farooq said:
I think all agree that Boris Johnson's hairdresser should be vigorously and repeatedly caned by a Singaporean teacher.HYUFD said:
Boris is a man of the people and he knows a good hairdresser when he sees oneDecrepiterJohnL said:
Wait. Boris Johnson had a hairdresser? But why not give her a gong? Didn't SamCam's stylist get one?HYUFD said:Boris Johnson's hairdresser in line for OBE
https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1667906479121129472?s=200 -
You've clearly not had to deal with an Ofsted report - I have and when I did the number of mistakes they made where they had to back down was significant. Now it didn't change the final score but it was rather annoying to see things that were factually impossible (review of a teacher who was off sick that day) being written down as fact...BartholomewRoberts said:
I don't think the two comparisons are remotely the same. Ofsted are the independent sanity check.eek said:
Which highlights the problem - the Post Office were police force, prosecutor, judge and executionerMalmesbury said:
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.
And Ofsted are the same - there is no independent sanity check...
The Post Office were not just the above but they were also a party to the issues. Their own software was at fault, but they were marking their own homework so refused to see it.
Ofsted aren't a party in the same way as the Post Office is. Its not like schools are running flawed Ofsted software that is causing the problems Ofsted are then marking them down on.0 -
Fake tan suppliers and hair transplant surgeons mourn in their thousands.HYUFD said:Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian PM and the Boris of Italy has died aged 86
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-658772410 -
Take the total spending on schools - take 5-10% of that budget and that is what the paperwork Ofsted insists on costs.TOPPING said:
Ah interesting. So the issue is then not that people disagree with the principle that safeguarding should be the main determinant of the rating, but that Ofsted's measurement of safeguarding and the process around reporting it are flawed?Stuartinromford said:
That's closer to the situation.state_go_away said:
probably needs to be more nuanced that that though as being "good" at safeguarding can be a combination of empty virtue signalling and boxticking without solving anything seriousTOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
The current introspection has been driven by the tragedy that happened in Reading last year, where a head committed suicide.
I don't think anyone has claimed that the children at her school were anything but well educated and cared for and safe. But some of the paperwork wasn't complete.
Now, the paperwork is important. But not like this. The trouble is that Ofsted spends such a short time in a given school for a given inspection that the paperwork plays too great a role.
Now a lot of the paperwork is required but not all of it but given how Ofsted work - given the choice of 1 floating teacher / TA or 2 admin staff any Headmaster wishing to have a stress free live will have the admin staff.0 -
All the best and most interesting people surely go down below.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun.0 -
I'm not saying Ofsted are perfect, far from it, no organisation ever will be.eek said:
You've clearly not had to deal with an Ofsted report - I have and when I did the number of mistakes they made where they had to back down was significant. Now it didn't change the final score but it was rather annoying to see things that were factually impossible (review of a teacher who was off sick that day) being written down as fact...BartholomewRoberts said:
I don't think the two comparisons are remotely the same. Ofsted are the independent sanity check.eek said:
Which highlights the problem - the Post Office were police force, prosecutor, judge and executionerMalmesbury said:
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.
And Ofsted are the same - there is no independent sanity check...
The Post Office were not just the above but they were also a party to the issues. Their own software was at fault, but they were marking their own homework so refused to see it.
Ofsted aren't a party in the same way as the Post Office is. Its not like schools are running flawed Ofsted software that is causing the problems Ofsted are then marking them down on.
But at least they are independent, unlike the Post Office who were a party to the issues (and responsible for them) but were handling matters in-house.
Of course things can and should be better, but that's true in all walks of life.0 -
Not even in jest, Barty, not even in jest...BartholomewRoberts said:
All the best and most interesting people surely go down below.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun.
1 -
Sure, there are legal differences in rights under arrest between jurisdictions, and the precise process, and always will be. But the point is that it doesn't require the invention of a whole new language. Arrest is taking into custody on suspicion of a crime.Theuniondivvie said:
There are I believe differences in arrest rules in England and Scotland, but I can't be arsed to dig out what they are.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think our terminology differs all that much from the US and elsewhere. "Arrest" generally means to take someone into custody on suspicion of them having committed a crime.pm215 said:
It might be helpful to avoid confusion in international contexts if our uses of the terms didn't drift too far from the common ones -- for instance IIRC the US asks on ESTA forms and the like "if you've ever been arrested" and implicitly assumes a similar use of the term to the US.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think that would help in any way as the "no smoke without fire" people would read whatever term was chosen as implying guilt.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Yes, but an alternative term *like* that. One that does not imply the police know they've got you bang to rights and it is only those lefty lawyers saving you from being strung up in the town centre.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
They aren't the same thing. You can be interviewed under caution without being arrested (but can leave the interview at any time in such circumstances).DecrepiterJohnL said:
Perhaps there should be a better term, such as interviewed under caution, rather than arrested (and presumably dearrested or unarrested or some such immediately afterwards).0 -
Is it just me, or does discussion of getting caned in school bring back memories of the very funny Ali G talking about the subject, to a rather bemused Rhodes Boyson?HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OV1fq75aWtY1 -
Ofsted aren't really independent. And the right of appeal should be independent of Ofsted but it isn't...BartholomewRoberts said:
I'm not saying Ofsted are perfect, far from it, no organisation ever will be.eek said:
You've clearly not had to deal with an Ofsted report - I have and when I did the number of mistakes they made where they had to back down was significant. Now it didn't change the final score but it was rather annoying to see things that were factually impossible (review of a teacher who was off sick that day) being written down as fact...BartholomewRoberts said:
I don't think the two comparisons are remotely the same. Ofsted are the independent sanity check.eek said:
Which highlights the problem - the Post Office were police force, prosecutor, judge and executionerMalmesbury said:
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.
And Ofsted are the same - there is no independent sanity check...
The Post Office were not just the above but they were also a party to the issues. Their own software was at fault, but they were marking their own homework so refused to see it.
Ofsted aren't a party in the same way as the Post Office is. Its not like schools are running flawed Ofsted software that is causing the problems Ofsted are then marking them down on.
But at least they are independent, unlike the Post Office who were a party to the issues (and responsible for them) but were handling matters in-house.
Of course things can and should be better, but that's true in all walks of life.1 -
Could states constitutionally allow voters who are aged less than 18 to vote?Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."0 -
He will have a few things to explain away to the AlmightyHYUFD said:Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian PM and the Boris of Italy has died aged 86
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-658772410 -
Michael Gove stops Papa John's store opening over obesity fears for local children
Planning inspectorate rejects appeal after local council blocked pizza takeaway
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/11/michael-gove-stops-papa-johns-store-opening-obesity-fears/ (£££)0 -
We'll allow you a day of mourning.HYUFD said:Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian PM and the Boris of Italy has died aged 86
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-658772411 -
Unfortunately, some of those sinners' idea of fun will be sticking red hot pokers into parts of you where you really don't want red hot pokers.BartholomewRoberts said:
All the best and most interesting people surely go down below.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun.0 -
In our case, the out-of-catchment school wasn't full, and (as a non-academy school) their admissions policy was just the standard distance-based one. So we were reasonably confident that Junior would get in. We did put down a couple of reasons, but not with any expectation that they'd be taken into account - if there'd been an extra 10 kids who lived closer than they'd have got in and Junior wouldn't, no matter what pleading we put on the form!Pulpstar said:
That's an incredibly useful anecdoteEl_Capitano said:Mrs Capitano has been DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) at her last two schools and has mentored others on it. She was at the Oxfordshire safeguarding conference last week. I'd post the agenda but it would just make PB too depressing for a sunny Monday morning. Let's just say that an entire day on child sexual abuse is probably (hopefully) no-one's idea of fun.
A few points I've picked up from her, and from seeing our local primary get failed by Ofsted on safeguarding issues.
Safeguarding (at primary level at least) is almost entirely about home issues, not school issues. It is directly correlated with deprivation levels in the school catchment. It is basically teachers acting as social workers, because there aren't any/enough social workers. It is absolutely usual to have "team around the child" meetings for home problems which are nonetheless chaired by the head or the DSL because childrens' social care at county is under-resourced.
As such, a school's performance on safeguarding is probably not relevant to the majority of kids at the school or their parents. 99% of kids at her current school, and 90% at the previous one, have no cause to appear on the safeguarding radar at all.
So for that reason, I agree with those protesting about Ofsted's single-word judgements. For most parents/kids, it's misleading to add a single-word judgement where a failure on safeguarding masks excellent teaching. Just publish individual scores/levels without aggregating them into one single rating.
However...
Fulfilling your safeguarding responsibilities isn't really that hard. (Fixing the underlying social issues is, but Ofsted doesn't rate you on that!) If a school is neglecting its safeguarding responsibilities, the head is incompetent. And an incompetent head generally doesn't run a good school.
That was one of the reasons we chose not to send Capitano Junior to our local primary, and went out-of-catchment instead. It had just been failed by Ofsted on safeguarding. The school's line was that it was a "paperwork mistake". It turns out that the head had just told a close-to-retirement teacher to become DSL and hadn't checked at all whether she was doing her job. Surprise surprise, she wasn't. We looked a bit closer and this couldn't-care-less attitude permeated all the way through the school. Four years on, the school has got through two permanent heads, two temporaries, and might slowly be hauling itself back to an acceptable standard. Meanwhile, the school we did choose is not remotely "Ofsteddy" - it's a liberal little village primary where the kids are given space to develop - but the head is supremely competent and knows damn well that all her paperwork is in order, and that the troubled kids are being monitored and issues passed up to county.
Did you have to put down 'reasons' why you were deciding to send Cap Jr out the catchment area ?
I've only got one school - which was inadequate but has now been academised (And hasn't had an OFSTED in it's new form) in my catchment area but quite a few other schools would potentially be viable.0 -
The way that fast food outlets target schools is something that should be looked at.DecrepiterJohnL said:Michael Gove stops Papa John's store opening over obesity fears for local children
Planning inspectorate rejects appeal after local council blocked pizza takeaway
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/11/michael-gove-stops-papa-johns-store-opening-obesity-fears/ (£££)
I think there was a recording of an executive saying that, for them, getting children into the habit of going to their brand was a critical component of future sales.2 -
Eight of Boris Johnson’s picks for peerages blocked by Lords commission
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/11/boris-johnson-honours-list-eight-picks-blocked-holac/ (£££)
Basically, Number 10 says Rishi's (and James Forsythe's) hands are clean; they did not block Boris's peers; Holac did.0 -
That would require a US constitutional law expert to answer. The above Amendment *seems* to have no say in the matter.FF43 said:
Could states constitutionally allow voters who are aged less than 18 to vote?Malmesbury said:
26th Amendment to the the Constitution, section 1HYUFD said:GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the US voting age to 25, unless you do military service or work for the emergency services for at least 6 months or pass a civics test
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-raise-voting-age-25/index.html
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."0 -
.
Never seen that before, the but maths section is absolutely hilarious.Sandpit said:
Is it just me, or does discussion of getting caned in school bring back memories of the very funny Ali G talking about the subject, to a rather bemused Rhodes Boyson?HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OV1fq75aWtY
https://youtu.be/OV1fq75aWtY?t=1470 -
Al-Zawahiri and Berlusconi are dead, Boris Johnson is finished, Putin's army is on the run, Donald Trump is going to jail. Dark Brandon is just cleaning out the whole house.TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd been assuming Biden would run again but what's he going to do in the next term if he's already vanquished all his enemies?6 -
No kinkshaming.Stuartinromford said:
Unfortunately, some of those sinners' idea of fun will be sticking red hot pokers into parts of you where you really don't want red hot pokers.BartholomewRoberts said:
All the best and most interesting people surely go down below.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun.0 -
Quite some headline. Have they still not forgiven him for knifing Boris?DecrepiterJohnL said:Michael Gove stops Papa John's store opening over obesity fears for local children
Planning inspectorate rejects appeal after local council blocked pizza takeaway
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/11/michael-gove-stops-papa-johns-store-opening-obesity-fears/ (£££)
More accurate would be: 'Gove's Planning Inspectorate declines to overturn local council decision to block Papa John's store over obesity fears for local children'. They imply that Gove has personally stepped in to stop a development that would otherwise have been going ahead.6 -
I thought it was common knowledge that there are policies saying no takeaways within x yards of a school.Malmesbury said:
The way that fast food outlets target schools is something that should be looked at.DecrepiterJohnL said:Michael Gove stops Papa John's store opening over obesity fears for local children
Planning inspectorate rejects appeal after local council blocked pizza takeaway
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/11/michael-gove-stops-papa-johns-store-opening-obesity-fears/ (£££)
I think there was a recording of an executive saying that, for them, getting children into the habit of going to their brand was a critical component of future sales.0 -
IIRC from when we did something similar - there’s no requirement to have a reason to send your kids out of catchment, but you are not guaranteed a place. The school will only take your children if they have spaces left after taking those they are legally required to take. In catchment children & those in local authority care get priority IIRC. Methods by which the remaining spaces are apportioned vary by academy / school / LA: The school our children went to issued places in strict order of distance from the school.Pulpstar said:
That's an incredibly useful anecdoteEl_Capitano said:Mrs Capitano has been DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) at her last two schools and has mentored others on it. She was at the Oxfordshire safeguarding conference last week. I'd post the agenda but it would just make PB too depressing for a sunny Monday morning. Let's just say that an entire day on child sexual abuse is probably (hopefully) no-one's idea of fun.
A few points I've picked up from her, and from seeing our local primary get failed by Ofsted on safeguarding issues.
Safeguarding (at primary level at least) is almost entirely about home issues, not school issues. It is directly correlated with deprivation levels in the school catchment. It is basically teachers acting as social workers, because there aren't any/enough social workers. It is absolutely usual to have "team around the child" meetings for home problems which are nonetheless chaired by the head or the DSL because childrens' social care at county is under-resourced.
As such, a school's performance on safeguarding is probably not relevant to the majority of kids at the school or their parents. 99% of kids at her current school, and 90% at the previous one, have no cause to appear on the safeguarding radar at all.
So for that reason, I agree with those protesting about Ofsted's single-word judgements. For most parents/kids, it's misleading to add a single-word judgement where a failure on safeguarding masks excellent teaching. Just publish individual scores/levels without aggregating them into one single rating.
However...
Fulfilling your safeguarding responsibilities isn't really that hard. (Fixing the underlying social issues is, but Ofsted doesn't rate you on that!) If a school is neglecting its safeguarding responsibilities, the head is incompetent. And an incompetent head generally doesn't run a good school.
That was one of the reasons we chose not to send Capitano Junior to our local primary, and went out-of-catchment instead. It had just been failed by Ofsted on safeguarding. The school's line was that it was a "paperwork mistake". It turns out that the head had just told a close-to-retirement teacher to become DSL and hadn't checked at all whether she was doing her job. Surprise surprise, she wasn't. We looked a bit closer and this couldn't-care-less attitude permeated all the way through the school. Four years on, the school has got through two permanent heads, two temporaries, and might slowly be hauling itself back to an acceptable standard. Meanwhile, the school we did choose is not remotely "Ofsteddy" - it's a liberal little village primary where the kids are given space to develop - but the head is supremely competent and knows damn well that all her paperwork is in order, and that the troubled kids are being monitored and issues passed up to county.
Did you have to put down 'reasons' why you were deciding to send Cap Jr out the catchment area ?
I've only got one school - which was inadequate but has now been academised (And hasn't had an OFSTED in it's new form) in my catchment area but quite a few other schools would potentially be viable.0 -
Would that Michael Gove could as consistent in putting the boot in to Papa Johnson's wee boy. His rearguard defence of BJ's reputation this morning was a slippery masterclass.DecrepiterJohnL said:Michael Gove stops Papa John's store opening over obesity fears for local children
Planning inspectorate rejects appeal after local council blocked pizza takeaway
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/11/michael-gove-stops-papa-johns-store-opening-obesity-fears/ (£££)3 -
A lot of people (not just teenagers) don't rate the right to vote much - they correctly judge that they will probably never make an individual difference in their entire lives, plus they think politics is pretty seedy and uninteresting anyway. After all, a "good" turnout is 75%, and I don't believe the other 25% are all dead or incapacitated. Nor are all the 75% really that niterested - it's just something one does.Andy_JS said:Shocking.
"Teenagers would give up the right to vote to keep social media, survey reveals"
https://www.foxnews.com/media/teenagers-right-vote-keep-social-media-survey-reveals
Not endorsing any of that, of course, but it's sadly reality. Fits with the polls showing large minorities would welcome a Strong Man sorting things out.1 -
Berlusconi has died.
Oh, I now see it's already been mentioned.1 -
Rereading Pillars of the Earth, 1100 pages of easy read...Carnyx said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_FloodSeaShantyIrish2 said:
Sorry to hear that. However, also have an apt book suggestion for you too:Andy_JS said:
My train was cancelled due to flooding, the first rain we've had for ages.NickPalmer said:Flight to Crete (and numerous other flights from Gatwick) cancelled "due to the hot weather". It was a bit hot (31) but still?? Trains back home disrupted by the hot weather - rails buckling, signals failing.
I wonder if we're so used to a temperate climate that the infrastructure isn't really up to it?
Trying again tomorrow...
The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough
Believe it was the first of his many excellent books dealing with various aspects of American history.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yWtJGLG0aEcC&pg=PA263&redir_esc=y
Another good flood read/story ...1 -
It would depend on the nature of the porn. If it’s Hot Teacher Seduces Teen Slut, there may be a safeguarding issue.TOPPING said:
Obviously @TSE needs to educate you on the various flavours of such entertainment on offer these days.BartholomewRoberts said:When I was at school in the 90s it was a badly-kept secret that my English and Theory of Knowledge (Philosophy) teacher had done porn. Based on her age, I'd guess in the 70s or 80s.
0 -
No, you're wrong.HYUFD said:
No, I'm right.BartholomewRoberts said:
You're wrong as usual. In all but 2 of the past 50 years we've had more births than deaths in any given year.HYUFD said:
If we cut net immigration to zero our population would decline as we have a birthrate now well below replacement level. On that basis even just controlled immigration and a fractional net increase each year would still see us have more than enough houses than we needBartholomewRoberts said:
Cutting immigration will no more resolve the housing shortage than cutting inflation will see prices fall back down.HYUFD said:
There are if we cut immigration.pigeon said:
There aren't enough houses, therefore those that exist are too expensive. Inheritances will eventually bail some people out, but the numbers staggering under crippling rents into middle age will continue to increase. Eventually this will also undermine your party's support with the grey vote, as more of them end up having to work until they drop down dead to service rents.HYUFD said:
By then their children will have inherited of course (and even today by 39 most own property with a mortgage)pigeon said:
It's impossible, which is why the Conservative Party will always cave to the interests of the already wealthy in the end. It's why the rumours of the abolition of IHT and revival of Help to Buy continue to swirl, and it also explains why they've already caved to their Southern Nimbies by junking housing targets for local authorities.stodge said:
I was going to offer Land Value Taxation as a policy here (good old Liberal idea).BartholomewRoberts said:
LOL.DougSeal said:
Careful. HYUFD might say you’re not a real Tory.BartholomewRoberts said:
If he comes up with serious policies on this issue, I will hold my nose and vote Labour at the next election.Nigelb said:
That is, ostensibly, Starmer’s headline policy.BartholomewRoberts said:
Its worth noting that half the building work cost of houses may be labour but that's not half the cost of the house.Malmesbury said:
There was no let up in the production of various goods that have fallen in price, massively, over the decades.BartholomewRoberts said:
I think you've got it backwards.darkage said:
This is a point I have made about falling house prices and its impact on housebuilding. People like the idea that falling house prices and an increase in housebuilding could go together, but the reality is that when house prices are falling people are less likely to borrow large sums of money to buy premium new build houses, so there would be less demand for this type of housing, so the most probable outcome is that housebuilding also falls.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I see your point, but actually deflation is generally seen as an economically even worse problem than inflation as people defer spending if prices are expected to fall.SandyRentool said:Something used to cost £100. It now costs £110 due to inflation. Rishi Rich says that he will halve inflation. We are meant to feel grateful when the price increases to £115.50.
Get the price down to £105 if you want public gratitude, PM.
In general, price stability not dropping prices is the appropriate macroeconomic aim.
We don't want a fall in prices to lead to an increase in construction.
We want an increase in construction to lead to a fall in prices.
Increased competition absolutely can lead to prices stabilising or falling. And if competition increases, then prices stabilise or fall, then housebuilding falls back, then it will be because the shortage of houses in the system has resolved. Although unless population growth stops entirely, there will always be a need for construction.
Half the cost of building work is directly wages. That is half is bricks and roof tiles, half labour. Approximately. But the material themselves have labour inputs. And the materials for the materials.
Some guesses put the ultimate labour portion of a house at 70-80%.
Labour cost is a direct function, these days, of housing costs. The biggest cost for workers is their own housing!
So when house prices actually fall, for a period, labour costs will begin to trend down (assuming a competitive labour market). This in turn will make it cheaper to build houses.
In addition, the U.K. building industry is low productivity, compared to many other countries. Investment in non-exotic machinery - mini cranes and small diggers, say - could halve the work force on a house.
An incredibly significant portion of the cost of housing is the cost of land, and almost all of the cost of land is planning permission.
An acre of farmland can cost £12-25k while an acre of land with planning permission for a house can be worth hundreds of thousands.
Eliminate that discrepancy and the cost of housing would collapse, without affecting labour costs. And as you say, if its cheaper to house people, then everything including labour becomes cheaper.
Whether he can deliver will be interesting to watch.
One thing HYUFD is right about is that. I'm certainly a liberal who normally votes Tory. If I vote Labour at the next election it will only be the second time in my life, after voting Labour in 2001 in my first election.
The Tories should be the party of aspiration for people to have their own home.
If Starmer can get the importance of that but Sunak can't, what does it say about the state of today's Tory party?
The problem Sunak has is he has to balance the requirement of his core vote to maintain the status quo - his core of middle age and elderly northern and midlands home owners rather like the value of their asset continuing to rise which they can pass on (without IHT hopefully) to the children and grandchildren to provide the deposit for the next generation of home owners).
On the other side, he knows the longer term interests of the country and his Party are served by creating a new generation of home owners but he can't make houses affordable without causing existing values to drop which alienates his core.
That's not an easy circle to square.
Today's Tories will always default to the elderly homeowner interest, trusting that they can return to power if they bring enough of them on side. What happens when the housing shortage means there aren't enough elderly homeowners left to outvote pissed-off renters is a problem for tomorrow's Tories to solve.
No use bellyaching about the concreting of the countryside I'm afraid. If the Conservatives won't do it, eventually things will get so bad that voters will turn to somebody else who will.
Most will have inherited by 60-65, so certainly wouldn't need to work beyond normal retirement age (having pensions already saved for too).
Voters across the South are already voting for NIMBY LDs and Greens and Independents because even the modest housebuilding proposed by former Tory controlled councils was too much. If Starmer tried to concrete all over the greenbelt there would be a revolution in the South
Even if net immigration dropped to zero today our pre-existing shortage of houses will still exist. Just as if inflation dropped to zero today, then prices would remain higher than they were in the past.
"Replacement level" is a BS measure for measuring population change in any meaningful timespan,, birth rate versus death rate is the measure, and that has our births exceeding deaths every year but the height of the pandemic and one other year in the past half century.
The simple reality is that the housing crisis is already here. A typical healthy economy has 10% of houses empty which allows for churn as people move and for people to turn down houses that are unsuitable or priced unsuitably etc and we're running at 99% occupancy which is in any walk of life a failing system.
We don't need a few thousand extra homes, we need millions of extra houses in order to end the imbalance in the market. That will bring down inflation, bring down costs as people can afford their own home etc and at minimal cost to any 'green' space as we're not talking houses for a billion people, just the ones who live in this country and any net changes.
The birth rate in the UK is now just 1.61 per woman ie well below replacement level. So without high net immigration our population would decline longer term and deaths in due course exceed births and we would have more than enough houses than we need.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2021
We are already millions short of what we need so even if population declined gradually it won't resolve the shortage.
And furthermore the birth rate is still exceeding the death rate. So population isn't even declining even without immigration. Births have exceeded deaths in every year in this country except for 2020 (due to the pandemic) and 1976. Even in 2020 deaths only narrowly exceeded births and that was purely due to the pandemic - 2021 had births in excess of deaths again even with the pandemic.
Births exceeded deaths by over 100k in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year stats exist for. There's been six-digit natural growth in the population of births over deaths every single year from 2004-2019, even without considering immigration.0 -
Given that we are talking about schools - are secondary school pupil numbers due to rise or fall over the next few years.
I can't remember where to look for accurate details.0 -
.
It should be noted that schools aren't arguing against inspection, which is essential, but rather complaining about the fallibility OFSTED, and the difficulty of doing anything about it.eek said:
You've clearly not had to deal with an Ofsted report - I have and when I did the number of mistakes they made where they had to back down was significant. Now it didn't change the final score but it was rather annoying to see things that were factually impossible (review of a teacher who was off sick that day) being written down as fact...BartholomewRoberts said:
I don't think the two comparisons are remotely the same. Ofsted are the independent sanity check.eek said:
Which highlights the problem - the Post Office were police force, prosecutor, judge and executionerMalmesbury said:
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.
And Ofsted are the same - there is no independent sanity check...
The Post Office were not just the above but they were also a party to the issues. Their own software was at fault, but they were marking their own homework so refused to see it.
Ofsted aren't a party in the same way as the Post Office is. Its not like schools are running flawed Ofsted software that is causing the problems Ofsted are then marking them down on.0 -
Well, you might get to meet folks like Julius Caesar and Napoleon.BartholomewRoberts said:
All the best and most interesting people surely go down below.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun.
OTOH, you might get stuck with folks like Fred West and Oskar Dirlewanger.0 -
Only c.30% of UK voters support the Tories.HYUFD said:
59% of UK voters also oppose allowing more houses to be built in the greenbeltBartholomewRoberts said:
"True conservatives" like HYUFD have never been serious about being in/staying in government. Hence his penchant for sending the tanks into Spain/Scotland, caning, and 'brownfield'.ping said:
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
It’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
The problem with the Conservative Party is when "true conservatives" come to represent party policy rather than be eccentric oddballs.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1658839136315273216?s=200 -
Interesting. I know this was specifically TikTok, but there are some serious points here. An engaged young person could well do more with social media to influence the state of the country than with a single vote - it could be quite sensible for e.g. a Greta Thunberg to choose keeping her social media accounts over her vote to effect change. That, of course, is as long as everyone else gets to vote!NickPalmer said:
A lot of people (not just teenagers) don't rate the right to vote much - they correctly judge that they will probably never make an individual difference in their entire lives, plus they think politics is pretty seedy and uninteresting anyway. After all, a "good" turnout is 75%, and I don't believe the other 25% are all dead or incapacitated. Nor are all the 75% really that niterested - it's just something one does.Andy_JS said:Shocking.
"Teenagers would give up the right to vote to keep social media, survey reveals"
https://www.foxnews.com/media/teenagers-right-vote-keep-social-media-survey-reveals
Not endorsing any of that, of course, but it's sadly reality. Fits with the polls showing large minorities would welcome a Strong Man sorting things out.
I understand that in reality it's much more likely that people wish to lol over the latest TikTok sensation than have a vote they likely won't bother to use anyway.0 -
The rest are prime LD-target NIMBYsSunil_Prasannan said:
Only c.30% of UK voters support the Tories.HYUFD said:
59% of UK voters also oppose allowing more houses to be built in the greenbeltBartholomewRoberts said:
"True conservatives" like HYUFD have never been serious about being in/staying in government. Hence his penchant for sending the tanks into Spain/Scotland, caning, and 'brownfield'.ping said:
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
It’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
The problem with the Conservative Party is when "true conservatives" come to represent party policy rather than be eccentric oddballs.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1658839136315273216?s=20
0 -
I think the complaint is that paperwork is seen as essential by Ofsted - yet paperwork would be the very first thing we binned if we were trying to solve x issues at the same time.Nigelb said:.
It should be noted that schools aren't arguing against inspection, which is essential, but rather complaining about the fallibility OFSTED, and the difficulty of doing anything about it.eek said:
You've clearly not had to deal with an Ofsted report - I have and when I did the number of mistakes they made where they had to back down was significant. Now it didn't change the final score but it was rather annoying to see things that were factually impossible (review of a teacher who was off sick that day) being written down as fact...BartholomewRoberts said:
I don't think the two comparisons are remotely the same. Ofsted are the independent sanity check.eek said:
Which highlights the problem - the Post Office were police force, prosecutor, judge and executionerMalmesbury said:
{The management of the Post Office have entered the chat}Northern_Al said:
Of course Ofsted will make errors in the thousands of inspections it does, and I'm not particularly defending them. But in the case of the Reading School and the tragedy surrounding it, the report would have been pulled by now if it were not factually accurate. I pulled it off the Ofsted site this morning.mwadams said:
However this is in the context of the school in Cambridge where Ofsted have actually apologized and withdrawn the report because it was total garbage (full disclosure: a friend of mine is on the Board of Governors at that school). Ofsted is sufficiently broken for the reports to be considered unreliable.Northern_Al said:Far be it from me to provide actual evidence on Ofsted, but this is what the report on the school in Reading that led to the tragic suicide actually says on safeguarding:
Leaders have a weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures. They have not exercised sufficient leadership or oversight of this important work. As a result, records of safeguarding concerns and the tracking of subsequent actions are poor. Leaders have not ensured that all required employment checks are complete for some staff employed at the school. These weaknesses pose potential risks to pupils.
Now, one can argue against the inspection framework and the emphasis on safeguarding, but I suspect we'd all agree that not completing all the required employment checks is pretty poor.
And Ofsted are the same - there is no independent sanity check...
The Post Office were not just the above but they were also a party to the issues. Their own software was at fault, but they were marking their own homework so refused to see it.
Ofsted aren't a party in the same way as the Post Office is. Its not like schools are running flawed Ofsted software that is causing the problems Ofsted are then marking them down on.
Paperwork allows issues to be both hidden away (we documented it but didn't do anything to actively fixed it) or the exact opposite - paperwork is incomplete because I spent the 3 hours the form takes to actually raise the issue with social services by finding someone to speak to.0 -
Right, but I thought this subthread started because the Scottish law changes meant the police could now arrest you when they didn't suspect you of having committed a crime but just wanted to get your witness evidence on video for potential later court cases? Maybe I misunderstood...SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think our terminology differs all that much from the US and elsewhere. "Arrest" generally means to take someone into custody on suspicion of them having committed a crime.pm215 said:
It might be helpful to avoid confusion in international contexts if our uses of the terms didn't drift too far from the common ones -- for instance IIRC the US asks on ESTA forms and the like "if you've ever been arrested" and implicitly assumes a similar use of the term to the US.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
I don't think that would help in any way as the "no smoke without fire" people would read whatever term was chosen as implying guilt.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Yes, but an alternative term *like* that. One that does not imply the police know they've got you bang to rights and it is only those lefty lawyers saving you from being strung up in the town centre.SirNorfolkPassmore said:
They aren't the same thing. You can be interviewed under caution without being arrested (but can leave the interview at any time in such circumstances).DecrepiterJohnL said:
Perhaps there should be a better term, such as interviewed under caution, rather than arrested (and presumably dearrested or unarrested or some such immediately afterwards).
0 -
Rise but not much further I believe.eek said:Given that we are talking about schools - are secondary school pupil numbers due to rise or fall over the next few years.
I can't remember where to look for accurate details.
After number of live births fell to a plateau at the turn of the century, it then started rising again in 2003 (so young adults who are now 20) reaching a peak in 2012 (so primary age kids who are now 10).
Numbers then drifted off and started falling post-2017.
So I believe senior schools are due a rise in pupils over next few years, primary schools would be due a fall in pupils in next few years though.
Immigration probably means that the numbers of both will rise though, secondary schools certainly should given a natural bump coming and record migration too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Vital_statistics_(1900–2022)0 -
How was the polling question framed? Because if it was "should the cane be brought back to schools?" then I can imagine many people would potentially be "it did me no harm", or even "lol, who cares, this is a stupid question".HYUFD said:
Given I earlier posted a poll with 53% of UK voters backing restoring the cane in schools (even if 10 years ago) yet another example of leftwingers like you underestimating support for rightwing policiesping said:
I’d like to preserve this post.HYUFD said:
Plenty of canes still made and used in Singapore and Singapore tops the PISA rankings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
They probably mean that other people's children should be whacked. In any case, presumably the entire British cane-making industry closed down in the 1980s, not to mention we are still part of the ECHR. To be serious, what parents are saying is schools are not doing a very good job of preventing disruption, which brings us back to safeguarding, Ofsted and box-ticking.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
Indeed, 'The Ministry of Education encourages schools to punish boys by caning for serious offences such as fighting, smoking, cheating, gang-related offences, vandalism, defiance and truancy. Students may also be caned for repeated cases of more minor offences, such as being late repeatedly in a term.'
https://singaporeschools.fandom.com/wiki/Schools'_caning#:~:text=The Ministry of Education encourages,late repeatedly in a term.
While superficially frivolous, it’s clear evidence, to me, that even the true conservatives have given up.
They’re no longer serious about being in/staying in government.
I stick by my odds;
Evens, the tories never again win a majority.
4/1 they cease to be a meaningful electoral force within a decade.
I think if the wording was "Imagine caning in school was legal, and one of the children in your family was caned for misbehaving at school. Would you consider that acceptable?" fewer people would support it. People are fine with the general idea of caning because that happens to other people's kids. Whereas saying it happens to your children is different.1 -
It seems as if democracy is a bit annoying for some people because their vote is only worth the same as everyone else's, whereas with social media you can "get ahead" of other people in terms of influence if you're persistent enough. In that sense you could argue that people who complain that their vote isn't important enough are basically anti-democratic; they want their vote to be worth more than 1 in 45 million, or whatever it is in their country.Selebian said:
Interesting. I know this was specifically TikTok, but there are some serious points here. An engaged young person could well do more with social media to influence the state of the country than with a single vote - it could be quite sensible for e.g. a Greta Thunberg to choose keeping her social media accounts over her vote to effect change. That, of course, is as long as everyone else gets to vote!NickPalmer said:
A lot of people (not just teenagers) don't rate the right to vote much - they correctly judge that they will probably never make an individual difference in their entire lives, plus they think politics is pretty seedy and uninteresting anyway. After all, a "good" turnout is 75%, and I don't believe the other 25% are all dead or incapacitated. Nor are all the 75% really that niterested - it's just something one does.Andy_JS said:Shocking.
"Teenagers would give up the right to vote to keep social media, survey reveals"
https://www.foxnews.com/media/teenagers-right-vote-keep-social-media-survey-reveals
Not endorsing any of that, of course, but it's sadly reality. Fits with the polls showing large minorities would welcome a Strong Man sorting things out.
I understand that in reality it's much more likely that people wish to lol over the latest TikTok sensation than have a vote they likely won't bother to use anyway.0 -
@Anabobazina has again asked me to point out that they cannot post. Can @rcs1000 or @TSE press a magic button please?1
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I'm disappointed in the community that nobody caught the blatant Billy Joel reference there, nor responded with a pun.Sean_F said:
Well, you might get to meet folks like Julius Caesar and Napoleon.BartholomewRoberts said:
All the best and most interesting people surely go down below.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun.
OTOH, you might get stuck with folks like Fred West and Oskar Dirlewanger.
Especially given the opportunity of such low hanging fruit about starting fires etc.0 -
Not even if it involves Two Sisters, an Apeman, A Well Respected Man, Animals in the Zoo, the Death of a Clown, Lola, Mick Avory's Underpants and All of My Friends Were There?BartholomewRoberts said:
No kinkshaming.Stuartinromford said:
Unfortunately, some of those sinners' idea of fun will be sticking red hot pokers into parts of you where you really don't want red hot pokers.BartholomewRoberts said:
All the best and most interesting people surely go down below.eek said:
I suspect bunga bunga parties are down below not in the sky...TheScreamingEagles said:Berlusconi has gone to the great bunga bunga party in the sky.
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun.
2 -
Things began to look very unusual two months ago.
Today the charts need no commentary, they speak for themselves.
This is the Atlantic.
https://twitter.com/DrTELS/status/1667651296310992902
"...Just the top few metres of our oceans store as much energy as the entirety of our atmosphere..."
Some interesting weather is in prospect.1 -
Would it be an issue for you if the teacher had, in a previous job as an actor, played child-killer Richard III at the RSC?Sean_F said:
It would depend on the nature of the porn. If it’s Hot Teacher Seduces Teen Slut, there may be a safeguarding issue.TOPPING said:
Obviously @TSE needs to educate you on the various flavours of such entertainment on offer these days.BartholomewRoberts said:When I was at school in the 90s it was a badly-kept secret that my English and Theory of Knowledge (Philosophy) teacher had done porn. Based on her age, I'd guess in the 70s or 80s.
I'm slightly struggling to see the practical difference in safeguarding terms. They are rather different sorts of acting jobs, but they are acting jobs.0 -
It's what we left the EU for.HYUFD said:
And ten years ago a poll found 53% of voters would allow teachers to use the cane again in school with Conservative voters in particular pro caningMexicanpete said:...
Indeed, back in the 1970s "safeguarding" involved beating a child with a cane.HYUFD said:
The purpose of schools is to educate, especially in Maths and English, as saving lives is for hospitals, safeguarding is important too but not the purpose of school. Indeed 50 years ago most schools, state or private, didn't even do any safeguarding at all.TOPPING said:Listening to the head of Ofsted on R4 earlier.
It seems that people are complaining that just because child safeguarding is no good the whole school gets an inadequate, or ineffective rating. So you can have a school which has cracking Maths and English Departments but is no good at safeguarding children and it seems people think it should receive a good or outstanding rating.
Reminds me of the NHS outperforming on all measures apart from health outcomes and saving lives.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/10/07/should-schoolchildren-be-caned
That is a remarkably similar number to those who voted Brexit. Perhaps we need a Venn diagram to determine the inclusivity of the two groups.0 -
If people feel their vote is unimportant there is a significant democratic deficit that needs to be addressed. With younger people especially, I do feel that there is a concern that the issues of the elderly are given more weight, culturally and politically, than the issues of the young. We need only look at the seriousness of discourse and policy around climate change, a big issue for younger voters, or "wokeness", an issue most younger people don't care about strongly, as well as the entire economic structure of this country to see that. It should also be concerning to people that the policy proposals favoured by younger voters, presented by Jeremy Corbyn, versus the policy proposals favoured by older voters, presented by May and Johnson, are almost diametrically opposed in a way that hasn't really been the case in the past. A lot of young people (I wouldn't call myself young anymore, but I am in my early 30s with a sister in her early 20s) see many older voters as pulling up the ladder behind them - I can't afford the mortgage my parents got, let alone my grandparents. And the response from a lot of older voters / the press is the idea that "it was bad when I was young, it should always be bad, and it being bad is good for you" despite the fact that it was actually much better in many ways when those people were young.Selebian said:
Interesting. I know this was specifically TikTok, but there are some serious points here. An engaged young person could well do more with social media to influence the state of the country than with a single vote - it could be quite sensible for e.g. a Greta Thunberg to choose keeping her social media accounts over her vote to effect change. That, of course, is as long as everyone else gets to vote!NickPalmer said:
A lot of people (not just teenagers) don't rate the right to vote much - they correctly judge that they will probably never make an individual difference in their entire lives, plus they think politics is pretty seedy and uninteresting anyway. After all, a "good" turnout is 75%, and I don't believe the other 25% are all dead or incapacitated. Nor are all the 75% really that niterested - it's just something one does.Andy_JS said:Shocking.
"Teenagers would give up the right to vote to keep social media, survey reveals"
https://www.foxnews.com/media/teenagers-right-vote-keep-social-media-survey-reveals
Not endorsing any of that, of course, but it's sadly reality. Fits with the polls showing large minorities would welcome a Strong Man sorting things out.
I understand that in reality it's much more likely that people wish to lol over the latest TikTok sensation than have a vote they likely won't bother to use anyway.3 -
Births peaked in 2012 and stated seriously falling in 2015;eek said:Given that we are talking about schools - are secondary school pupil numbers due to rise or fall over the next few years.
I can't remember where to look for accurate details.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/2020
So that baby boomlet (say 2008- 2015) is starting to leave primary schools and enter secondary schools.
So all those expanded primary schools we built over the last decade or so are about to become redundant (the final bulge class is leaving our local primary this summer; it's worse in Inner London because having children is now an unaffordable luxury). And secondary schools (where you really don't want to look at the recruitment and training numbers) are in much the same situation as the characters in those videos on those websites.
When those cohorts hit HE, it's going to be even worse.0 -
So this year is the final intake with numbers increasing then a few years with slight drops before they started dropping in 2018 onwards.BartholomewRoberts said:
Rise but not much further I believe.eek said:Given that we are talking about schools - are secondary school pupil numbers due to rise or fall over the next few years.
I can't remember where to look for accurate details.
After number of live births fell to a plateau at the turn of the century, it then started rising again in 2003 (so young adults who are now 20) reaching a peak in 2012 (so primary age kids who are now 10).
Numbers then drifted off and started falling post-2017.
So I believe senior schools are due a rise in pupils over next few years, primary schools would be due a fall in pupils in next few years though.
Immigration probably means that the numbers of both will rise though, secondary schools certainly should given a natural bump coming and record migration too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Vital_statistics_(1900–2022)
Thanks - I have a reason why I wanted the answer sadly I can't say why but you should be able to guess.2
