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Punters aren’t giving the Tories an earthly in Thursday’s by-elections – politicalbetting.com
Punters aren’t giving the Tories an earthly in Thursday’s by-elections – politicalbetting.com
This was bound to happen given the appalling national polling collapse that Sunak’s Tories have seen – the betting money is going on three Tory by-election losses on Thursday.
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Thank God almighty I'm three at last
(Well I was for a moment.)
I've followed today's education debate with interest, and can't help but observe that the amount of actual evidence used to point to the superiority of a private education has been absolutely minimal. The data is actually quite complex, but there's a strong argument to suggest that for most kids, especially the middle classes, the advantages of a private education are, by the age of 18, either minimal or non-existent. The snobbery on here is manifest, though - particularly the not infrequent, and manifestly absurd, references to 'stabbings' in comprehensives - an extremely rare event in any schools. Indeed, criminal activity, whether it be drug use or sexual abuse, is probably more widespread in the private school sector.
Nevertheless, I fully understand the desire of those who use private schools to assert that they are much better. They'd feel pretty stupid if they were wasting their money, after all.
I share your wish, @Stark_Dawning . But the internet and the widespread addiction to smartphones hasn't happened solely because people want this stuff. And it won't disappear without one helluva lot of violence.
Of course I could be wrong and turning it on, building it up, turning it off and then building something else up - something even worse - could be part of the plan. Like a kind of super-Charles Manson and his followers mindf*ck job. But that's a truly horrible thought.
PS From previous thread...scientists and accountants? Isn't science a kind of accountancy?
Your talent for being wrong is something else. Puts my ability to miscall cricket matches to shame.
There are 10mn state school pupils in the UK not 12mn. I don't want to double school funding - I was simply pointing out that if funding didn't matter it was odd that private schools spend twice as much as state schools. But I'd like to see it increase in real terms over time - not all at once because that would likely be wasteful. Let's say an extra £3k per pupil, achieved after 10 years. £30bn at today's prices. I think that would pay for itself over time because we'd have a more productive workforce. In the meantime pay for it by higher taxes on the better off - income tax and wealth taxes - and by rejoining the EU single market to boost the economy and tax revenue.
Not even as much as that.
You wouldn’t have to increase either early years or sixth form funding by that amount. The figures for 5-16 as as follows:
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics
… The total amount of funding allocated to English schools for 5-16 year old pupils has grown since 2010-11 as the total pupil population has also grown.
In cash terms, the total funding allocated to schools through the grants covered in this report is £57.3 billion in 2023-24, an increase of 64% compared to the £35.0 billion allocated in 2010-11. The 2022 Autumn Statement means funding will increase further in 2024-25.
On a per-pupil basis the total funding allocated to schools for 5-16 year old pupils, in cash terms, in 2023-24 was £7,460, a 44% increase compared to £5,180 allocated per pupil in 2010-11...
So £23bn for a £3,000 per capita increase. And the first £1k would likely show the greatest benefit: £8bn well spent, IMO.
£1,000 per head in the sixth for would make a massive difference,
Thus securing his first true prediction.
I prefer Musk because I think he’s a proper genius who has made incredible engineering advances that have made the world better. He’s weird. And very flawed. But he’s a force for good on the whole
Zuck, I sense, is a bright guy who got lucky with that one idea at Harvard. I see no evidence that he’s done anything else or is likely to. He steals and buys - and controls
We probably all have our favourite villains in the tech Debrett’s
https://ai.meta.com/blog/generative-ai-text-images-cm3leon/
"Introducing CM3leon, a more efficient, state-of-the-art generative model for text and images"
So actually, we need to consider what would be needed *on top* of the increase needed to stay where we are.
Here's another point - if economies are needed, there are ones that could be made. Get rid of academy chains springs to mind. Or state that schools may join in a federation to share back office functions but not be run by centralised diktat. That would get rid of rather a lot of wasteful duplication (e.g. there is a school six miles from me that has a Head and a Chief Executive because it is the only school in a Multi-Academy Trust).
But those won't be the economies that are made. More likely, TAs will be fired and electronic resources will not be bought.
Tesla was hugely important for getting the EV industry started a good half a decade before it might otherwise have happened.
If Zuckerberg has redeeming features, they’re well hidden.
1) The apple that Adam & Eve ate.
2) The apple that landed on Sir Isaac Newton's head
3) The company Steve Jobs created.
I’m not aware of Musk inventing anything, but maybe I’ve not paid enough attention. Then again, far too many people pay attention to Musk, so I’m happy with that! Musk has bought into companies that invented innovative things. It’s hard to point to anything as Musk’s idea, until you get to his Twitter leadership, where his every decision has been deeply stupid.
Since Q4 2019 the EU economy has grown by 2.9% while the UK economy has shrunk by 0.5%, so you are wrong. If the UK economy had grown by an additional 3.4% it would be around £85bn larger and given that tax revenues are around 40% of GDP that implies more than £30bn in additional revenue.
If you think his plan is to annihilate it...
Frankly, the best service the Conservatives can do for the nation is to become unelectable for a decade or so, so that somebody else has the political space to do the unpalatable but necessary things.
Fascinating
There’s no Johnson in charge anymore . Sunak might be underwhelming but nowhere near as toxic to voters .
(Written on my iPad. Now, you must excuse me. I want to see if my iPod’s finished charging.)
I can't really comment on Adam.
(Well, I suppose technically I still have one too, but I haven't used it in years.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66166824
You've forgotten the Beatles' label.
But he was, also, Isaac bloody Newton
I currently have 5 Apple devices either in use or next to me.
Edit 6.
EU GDP 2019 2020 2021 2022
15692 15370 17187 16641
% 0% -2% +11.8% -3%
source https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp#:~:text=GDP in European Union averaged,503.70 USD Billion in 1966.
uk gdp 2019 2020 2021 2022
2857 2703 3122 3070
% 0% -5.5% +15.5% -1.7%
source https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp#:~:text=GDP in the United Kingdom,73.23 USD Billion in 1960.
Total change since 2019
EU +6%
UK +7.4%
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/17/first-generation-apple-iphone-sells-auction-in-us
May be a long wait
I'd be surprised if they lost all three.
There's plenty of examples of betting markets getting by elections wrong, sure. But if the Conservatives were in with a sniff in any of them, would we hear someone saying it by now?
The technical geniuses are the people who sit behind them. In the case of Jobs, it was Woz and a load of others. To his credit (and Bezos), they don't / didn't generally claim to be technical bods.
A disproportionate amount of the debate is around kids who could go to University.
They'll do OK whatever.
SENMH sector is in a dire state of crisis.
And there it can often be the difference between someone being able to hold down paid employment or not.
“And while Musk was an investor in both SpaceX and Tesla Motors, he was also heavily steeped in design, playing a lead role in both products' engineering. While he might not have a degree in engineering, he oversaw the development of the all-electric Tesla Roadster and Model S sedan.”
Musk is a famous workaholic who, in a 2021 interview, said that the majority of his working time was spent developing the technology. "Almost all my time, like 80 percent of it, is spent on engineering and design […] developing next-generation product," he said to Y Combinator founder Sam Altman.
At SpaceX, he was responsible for overseeing the design of SpaceX Falcon 1, the first privately developed rocket to reach orbit. Since then, SpaceX has also debuted Falcon 9, Dragon Spacecraft and Falcon Heavy, one of the most powerful operating rockets in the world.“
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/is-elon-musk-a-scientist
Of course, in the tech industry it helps to be be nice to Elon. But still, this seems sincere
He commented on retirement 'The House has been a pleasant club. I take no part in debates and am a silent member. It would be a great advantage to business if more members followed my example.'
Someone let the cat out of the bag a bit earlier- one of the advantages indy schools have is not having to take on children who are going to be hard work. Same goes for academies that see themselves as freestanding. Much harder for the system as a system to wash their hands of children like that.
Looked at on a small scale, spending shedloads on SENMH looks like a waste- those kids are never going to pay back the cost of their education in taxes. But the knock-on costs of failing to find it properly are huge, and their dispersed invisible nature doesn't mean they don't exist.
Which is why "vote for the things we want to fund and wish the rest away" won't work. Some costs don't vanish just because we want them to.
But Newton discovered gravity when the university was shut down and he'd been away from it for a bit.
If he'd been away longer and had a Chinese connection he may even have come up with a take on calculus and a universal language etc. that was half as cool as Leibniz's.
Changed the world? His dotty (pun!) take on calculus held British maths back for a long time.
Hats off for the alchemy though. Not so much for his obsession with the Book of Revelations.
The optics stuff was cool too, although it was only his obsession with the number 7 that caused indigo to be associated with rainbows.
Tracked mail is their focus at the moment; that's what I've been doing over there. I've had four days at work as an Amazon driver (one of them working Sunday in Marlborough - a few of us go in on Sunday to get all the parcels that we can pick up delivered, earn a few extra quid and keep Monday lighter for everyone), just driving around delivering parcels. It's my legs' first holiday for nearly a year
So with their focus on tracked mail, at the very bottom of the pile for it, their untracked mail is faring even worse
Every single route in their quite large office (I think they have twice as many routes as where I work in Marlborough) is at least week behind with its mail, many of them are two weeks or more behind. There are piles of unsorted trays of mail at each route's section and, I was told, rooms full of unsorted "yorks", the trolleys we use in the sorting office
I met an old lady on Saturday who hadn't yet had a single birthday card in the post for her birthday ten days before, and a guy today who was waiting on medical test results for his son. I've met so many people in between complaining about how little mail they've had lately
Tomorrow I'm back in Marlborough. I'll have double mail because only the parcels were done today. Then the mail will be totally up to date, some of it having been one day late because I was elsewhere. I'll have a long day tomorrow, but I'll get everything delivered
The disparity in service levels between us and such a nearby town has really shocked me
Beware of the Musk-hype. Other people - people who worked with him - say rather different. The following seems fair:
https://thecodebytes.com/can-elon-musk-code-yes-but-hes-not-the-greatest-coder-alive/
There's a tendency in tech to imbue the leaders of 'hot' companies with almost God-like skills. It's always b/s. Three decades ago, there were often comments by Microsofties that Bill Gates 'read every line of code' Microsoft produced. That may have been true when the company first started and had one product; it certainly was not true when he was running a multi-billion dollar company. If it had, the board would have sacked him for wasting his time.
I even saw the 'Gates reads every line of code MS produces' repeated by a deluded fanboi *after* Gates let the company...
At a private school near me there are an awful lot of eating disorders, and pupils are very poorly supported pastorally. There has been at least one master leave under a cloud after a sexual relationship with a sixth former.
Not so far away in Uppingham, the kids are excellent and well rounded, albeit very posh. The school theatre run by them is very good, with students running front of house as well as productions.
My brother's and I were all at regular comps. My older brother failed his 11+, but was spared a secondary modern by comprehensivisation. He later got a degree from LSE and a glittering career in economic analysis. This makes me very sceptical over the predictive power of selection at age 11.
I think I greatly benefited from being educated in state schools, it shaped my character and attitudes to many things. In particular my attitude to authority and hierarchy in wider society. There is much more to education than the academic side.
Whether a serpent did that or a wandering trader I will leave to the theologians.
Sadly the native population of Malus sieversii is rather threatened now.
The story is quite interesting:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Apple-Barrie-Edward-Juniper/dp/0881927848
Sadly Dr Juniper died a year or two ago.
I guess with these things one can never truly know. To succeed like Musk or Zuck you obviously need huge entrepreneurial skill, I’d say Musk has evidenced great engineering skill as well, unlike Zuck
And at some point you become so successful you simply say Do this or Do that to your underlings, as it is a waste of time for the boss to be tightening screws
A bit like a great Renaissance artist in Italy. Who would have a school of apprentices who did the hands or the rocks or the cat in the background. Yet no one denies Titian was a genius
Hey Ho. Time for an episode of THE GREAT. Which absolutely is genius
Announcing our paper on Generative TV & Showrunner Agents! Create episodes of TV shows with a prompt - SHOW-1 will write, animate, direct, voice, edit for you. We used South Park FOR RESEARCH ONLY - we won't be releasing ability to make your own South Park episodes -not our IP!
https://twitter.com/fablesimulation/status/1681352904152850437
As I said yesterday this country - including Scotland - has always had world class education at the top end. There’s a reason why British boarding schools are so popular with international parents. Grammar schools were a mid-twentieth century manifestation of that. And on their own terms they actually did some decent work although they were not without serious shortcomings.
But it’s always been pretty rubbish at doing the basics right for everyone else. My distinct impression is that’s due to a lack of understanding of what’s needed or effective at the centre of power (although comprehensive schools as grammar schools for all and the national curriculum were strongly supported by Callaghan, who hardly counted as elite in background or schooling). I could be completely wrong of course, but it fits with the facts as I have observed them.
We would really benefit as a country from sorting that out. But whatever solutions are proposed won’t be easy and certainly won’t be cheap. Moreover they won’t deal with the many legacy issues of the current system without a substantial commitment to lifelong learning as well. I see no sign of that from any party.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4270627#Comment_4270627
He was always very taciturn. Board meetings under him were extremely brief. I read the minutes and they of several for my BA and they were a model of elegant economy.
"Israeli clay lamps, intended for a brief exhibition in Washington D.C. in 2019, got stranded in the U.S. due to the pandemic. Recently, they were found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida"
source$: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-07-18/ty-article/.highlight/israeli-antiquities-remain-stranded-at-trumps-estate-as-authorities-fail-to-retrieve/00000189-6448-dc6b-a3f9-ee593e850000
The Israelis want the antiquities back.
(Don't know how they got to Mar-a-Swampo, as I have been calling it for years.)
Brunel, as it happens, was an *awful* mechanical engineer. He learnt that, and left it to others, such as Gooch. That's why I'd put him slightly below George Stephenson in a list of 'great' engineers - GS was a true all-rounder, from civils to mechanicals. His surveying wasn't too great at first though...
That would raise an additional £130bn or thereabouts which could transform public services and get the economy growing again.
Seems obvious to me.
(* 43% would put us in line with that well known failed state France, which last time I checked still seems be surviving just fine, with, for example, great infrastructure, health care, food, wine, and countryside and weather. Or Norway, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, every man jack of them gone to the dogs.)
My father (who finished his career as a Deputy Headmaster) used to crack a smile with all the Conservative and Ratepayer councillors on Wythall Parish Council who were advocates of the 11 plus until their children failed. Before you knew it they were great enthusiasts for comprehensive education.
according to here total tax is about 40% of gdp
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8513/#:~:text=In 2022/23, UK government,highest level since the 1980s.
https://twitter.com/bbcsimonjack/status/1676161715526836225
Nigel Farage fell below the financial threshold required to hold an account at Coutts, the prestigious private bank for wealthy customers the BBC has been told.
- Amazon transformed online retail. Indeed it practically invented online retail
- It then built up a dominant position in online marketplaces
- It almost accidentally fell into the advertising business, yet despite ads being “other” in its annual report it’s the 3rd largest ads aggregator after Google and Meta
- It launched AWS and became the worlds dominant wen hosting service, powering a scarily high proportion of the entire internet
- It reinvented e-readers with the kindle
- It’s now launching its own satellite broadband service kuiper so skylink won’t be alone for long
And it was all started, built and grown from scratch with very little capital behind him.
Bezos seems more sane, (a bit) less weird, more bog standard businessman, and much quieter than the others. In that way more in the Bill Gates category than a Jobs or Musk.
We are not out of line with other developed countries on the numbers going on to higher education. It is pretty normal for 40-50% rates in other advanced economies, and I don't think Britons systematically more stupid than our international competition.
There are certainly some poor courses out there, and ripped off students, but it is those running the poor courses that need to be made to shape up, not the students.
Robert Stephenson would be a more plausible all rounder, but even he had his disasters - the Dee Bridge disaster springs to mind.
With Musk he's obviously a gigantic arsehole with an ego the size of Jupiter, but I can more easily see the utility of things like Tesla and SpaceX, even though I don't own an electric car nor am about to go into space. Which makes his spending his personal time and energy literally trolling people on twitter seem like much more of a waste. Like, why does he spend his time like a random online nobody?
Harold Wilson was right. A week is a long time in politics. A week where Rishi has knocked it out of the park.
I have a tenner on the SNP in Rutherglen too.
Those nats are quite a resilient and motivated bunch. 21 is good odds.
We saw the same when fuel taxes were cut. Sellers kept the profits for themselves, because they could.
16 people who signed paperwork falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in Michigan have been charged, according to an announcement from state’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, on Tuesday.
Per NBC News, these charges appear to be the first against false electors.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/18/michigan-false-electors-charged?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The estimated private wealth in the UK is what £17-20tn, 50% of which is owned by the wealthiest 10%. Time for us to cough a bit up for the national good.