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Perhaps the government will not get the blame – politicalbetting.com

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  • isamisam Posts: 41,135

    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    Is it bad form to share this from a decade ago?


    Plenty of people were keen to be seen alongside him a decade or so ago. O'Brien also belittled one of Brand's accusers on social media




  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657

    So what happens next? Does Trump plough on in the face of disastrous economic news, as Erdoğan did for years? Or does he U-turn while pretending he hasn't ("We've shown the world who's boss and now we have much better deals")? I'll guess the latter, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

    I guess the latter

    He will continue to tell his voters they are much better off, and so will Fox News, but at some point they have to look at their own wallets and go Huh?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Even then 57% of schools say they no longer hold a daily act of worship

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-swap-christian-worship-for-mindfulness/.

    C of E schools where there are faith schools tend to be most prominent in primary schools and RC schools in secondary schools
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,400
    edited April 4
    HYUFD said:


    Trump wasn't elected by corporate America, he was elected by white working class voters in the rustbelt mainly who hate globalisation and what their manufacturing jobs back

    He received plenty of votes from outside the rustbelt and from the middle classes too.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,135

    isam said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Techne

    Lab 24%
    Ref 24%
    Con 23%
    LD 13%
    Grn 8%
    SNP 3%

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1908109232332763361

    Still waiting for a 3-way tie. Have we ever had one in the past?
    I seem to remember one during the 2010 election campaign.
    No, Labour always lagged in that campaign.

    As far as I'm aware, there's only ever been a single three-way tie: an ICM on 24-26 Sept 2003, which had Con / Lab / LD all on 31%.
    In 2019 You Gov had a tie between Labour & Tory on May 17th, then one between Brexit Party and the Lib Dems on June 1st. They were on behalf of different clients, but should that make a difference?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
    Well, it's an interesting occurrence but it's not a four-way tie, particularly as the Euro-elections happened in between.

    The polls being on behalf of different clients shouldn't have made a difference though.
    Oh yes, I didn't think of it as a four-way tie, just a curious state of affairs, especially as six months later there was a GE where one of them won a huge majority
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,400

    boulay said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Foxy said:

    We're doomed. The sooner the AI Robot war exterminates humanity, the better.

    The tariffs were created by AI

    The war already started...
    Wait until AI decides that food production is an unneccessary waste. And closes it all down...
    They started small. Massive tariffs on Madagascar, where most of the Vanilla in the World comes from.

    Are Americans about to stop eating ice cream?
    I suspect that most Americans are eating Vanilla Ice Cream that has never seen any Vanilla tbh.
    Don't they make fake vanilla with beaver arseholes?
    No. Castoreum can be used as a food additive in the US, but you don't make vanillin from it. Most vanillin is made from wood.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,417
    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Has that trumped them?
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 18,163

    Keir Starmer is a lucky general once again.

    Worth noting that Labour is currently polling near its lowest *ever* in the polls, so not that lucky. The fact that it's still leading some of them is not entirely beside the point but nor should it be used as much of a comfort blanket, particularly when it could lose further support in pretty much every direction.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996
    Scott_xP said:

    @atrupar.com‬

    as Fox Business pleads with Trump to back off his self-destructive tariffs, Trump posts that "MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE"

    https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llyh7gopf22k

    Once mad, always mad ?
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 6,214

    boulay said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Foxy said:

    We're doomed. The sooner the AI Robot war exterminates humanity, the better.

    The tariffs were created by AI

    The war already started...
    Wait until AI decides that food production is an unneccessary waste. And closes it all down...
    They started small. Massive tariffs on Madagascar, where most of the Vanilla in the World comes from.

    Are Americans about to stop eating ice cream?
    I suspect that most Americans are eating Vanilla Ice Cream that has never seen any Vanilla tbh.
    Don't they make fake vanilla with beaver arseholes?
    No. Castoreum can be used as a food additive in the US, but you don't make vanillin from it. Most vanillin is made from wood.
    I know, but I believe that it used to be used more as a flavouring

    Whatever, I know that if I'm ever in close proximity to a beaver, I will try to sniff its backside
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,304
    edited April 4
    Scott_xP said:

    So what happens next? Does Trump plough on in the face of disastrous economic news, as Erdoğan did for years? Or does he U-turn while pretending he hasn't ("We've shown the world who's boss and now we have much better deals")? I'll guess the latter, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

    I guess the latter

    He will continue to tell his voters they are much better off, and so will Fox News, but at some point they have to look at their own wallets and go Huh?
    A rather disappointing interview with Jeremy Hunt this lunchtime saying the UK should do a 'Singapore' and benefit from other countries problems by nicking their trade. Once a Tory always a Tory
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,417
    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Even then 57% of schools say they no longer hold a daily act of worship

    https://schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-swap-christian-worship-for-mindfulness/.

    C of E schools where there are faith schools tend to be most prominent in primary schools and RC schools in secondary schools
    Back in the dim and distant it was the girls from the RC Secondary school who were reputed to be the most likely .....
    I say reputed because I never actually tried myself. Spent my time chasing the girls from the state grammar.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 30,975
    edited April 4
    HYUFD said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cicero said:

    The stunned silence on the US right after Trump´s Tariff of Misfortune game show performance has been quite remarkable. I think the backlash will take a little while to come, since the scale of the disaster is so immense that it takes a while to grasp it, especially for the knuckle draggers n the GOP congressional delegation.

    However, after the absolute rout across global markets it is pretty clear that Trump is facing a choice: walk back from this disaster or own it.

    He is doing what he was elected to do, whether it ends in disaster or not depends on whether prices and cost of living rise more than US manufacturing jobs grow as a result of these tariffs
    Exactly. The people who voted for him, largely, couldn't give a Tinker's cuss for the stock market.

    "Economic inequality has increased drastically across advanced industrial democracies and, with it, the range of economic experiences. These changes present a challenge for political economy which gauges the health of the economy with aggregate economic statistics like growth and jobs. Motivated by this challenge, we ask how new economic realities in advanced capitalism matters for how citizens evaluate the national economy. We argue that individuals seek out and apply information on those indicators of economic heath that affect their own lives while discounting those that do not. Applying our reasoning to the case of poverty and poverty risk, we assert that among the working poor, poverty rates provide a more meaningful signal of economic conditions than do conventional macroeconomic indicators. We show that poverty risk exerts a strong effect on economic evaluations. Individuals at high risk of poverty are less informed about standard macroeconomic indicators but better informed about national poverty rates. When evaluating macroeconomic performance, they are more likely to discount conventional economic indicators and base assessments on national poverty rates instead. Results indicate that political economy must depart from familiar but partial indicators and account for the layered economies structuring political behavior."

    https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/2b29bd82-ee7f-49b2-b58b-dae5002a85ac/
    Their fathers worked in steel factories and car factories, they don't now on the whole and few hold stocks
    I watched a YouTube video about Gary, Indiana (essentially a suburb of Chicago) last night. It's where the Jackson 5 grew up. Gary is so named after a steel magnate whose enormous mill provided employment for the city and indeed built the city.

    Medium house values are $70 thousand bucks. The median for the whole of the US was circa $250k. It is the murder capital of the US for Towns over 500,000 residents. Gary is 71% black. The main street was full of derelict and crumbling shops, the steelworks had been flattened, domestic dwellings were empty and vandalised, the Methodist church built in the 1920s and the biggest in the Midwest has remained empty and decaying since the 1970s.

    No tariff in the World is reviving Gary.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,400

    boulay said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Foxy said:

    We're doomed. The sooner the AI Robot war exterminates humanity, the better.

    The tariffs were created by AI

    The war already started...
    Wait until AI decides that food production is an unneccessary waste. And closes it all down...
    They started small. Massive tariffs on Madagascar, where most of the Vanilla in the World comes from.

    Are Americans about to stop eating ice cream?
    I suspect that most Americans are eating Vanilla Ice Cream that has never seen any Vanilla tbh.
    Don't they make fake vanilla with beaver arseholes?
    No. Castoreum can be used as a food additive in the US, but you don't make vanillin from it. Most vanillin is made from wood.
    I know, but I believe that it used to be used more as a flavouring

    Whatever, I know that if I'm ever in close proximity to a beaver, I will try to sniff its backside
    I don't know whether I would advise that, but let it be noted that UK government is trying to make your dream easier: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wild-release-and-management-of-beavers-in-england
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996
    Scott_xP said:

    @KFILE

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leading Chuck Schumer by double digits in a new head-to-head poll of the 2028 New York primary.
    The survey by the liberal firm Data for Progress, first shared with POLITICO, found that 55 percent of Democratic likely voters said they supported or leaned toward supporting Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), while 36 percent backed or leaned toward backing Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Nine percent were undecided.

    https://x.com/KFILE/status/1908120098172248511

    Hardly surprising, since Schumer has been spectacularly useless is opposing Trump's policies.

    A wholesale clear out of the Congressional gerontocracy wouldn't surprise me.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657
    Nigelb said:

    A wholesale clear out of the Congressional gerontocracy wouldn't surprise me.

    By both parties.

    Assuming the GOP survive Trump, nominating another senile geriatric will not be their best move
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594

    HYUFD said:


    Trump wasn't elected by corporate America, he was elected by white working class voters in the rustbelt mainly who hate globalisation and what their manufacturing jobs back

    He received plenty of votes from outside the rustbelt and from the middle classes too.
    Harris received more, if it was not for the white working class vote Harris would have won comfortably as she won the college graduate vote and non white vote
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657
    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    MAGA farmers: "We are furious. We could go bankrupt"

    PB Expert: "No they're not. No they won't"
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
    edited April 4
    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996
    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    A wholesale clear out of the Congressional gerontocracy wouldn't surprise me.

    By both parties.

    Assuming the GOP survive Trump, nominating another senile geriatric will not be their best move
    The electorate might pre empt them.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,400
    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Exports make up about 20% of US food production, so, you're right, but if that 20% segment is badly hit by tariffs, that could be a lot of farmers struggling financially.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    That's as maybe, but a glut of unsold produce crashes prices even if their soybeans or corn never leave Iowa.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 30,975
    Andy_JS said:

    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    WOW. Huge lead for Reform

    Reform 28%
    Labour 22%
    Tories 20%

    Source: FindOutNow"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1908094173044982229

    It's Matt Goodwin, move along (even if it is accurate).
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,400
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:


    Trump wasn't elected by corporate America, he was elected by white working class voters in the rustbelt mainly who hate globalisation and what their manufacturing jobs back

    He received plenty of votes from outside the rustbelt and from the middle classes too.
    Harris received more, if it was not for the white working class vote Harris would have won comfortably as she won the college graduate vote and non white vote
    But Trump still needed all of the middle class votes he got to win.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996
    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 34,159
    The Silvertown Tunnel opens on Monday.

    "Free Cross-River Bus & DLR Travel | Transport for London"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGvcRTvIBmE
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,304
    isam said:


    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    Is it bad form to share this from a decade ago?


    Plenty of people were keen to be seen alongside him a decade or so ago. O'Brien also belittled one of Brand's accusers on social media




    I think it is. We've all been photographed with people who later became wrong 'uns. To share the reflected shame of someone who later sinned is not reasonable. Particularly 10 years later
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,877
    Scott_xP said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    MAGA farmers: "We are furious. We could go bankrupt"

    PB Expert: "No they're not. No they won't"
    To be fair, you're not just talking about an expert here, but someone with preternatural omniscience, not limited to this universe, but extending to all the others as well.
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 7,283
    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 9,225
    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    I'm clearly a little innocent on such matters, but haven't encountered the term 'oral rape' before - is that forced fellatio? If so it seems extremely risky for the perpetrator (I can accept there would be situations, perhaps the majority, where the threat of violence would prevent the victim just biting as hard as possible).
  • isamisam Posts: 41,135
    Roger said:

    isam said:


    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    Is it bad form to share this from a decade ago?


    Plenty of people were keen to be seen alongside him a decade or so ago. O'Brien also belittled one of Brand's accusers on social media




    I think it is. We've all been photographed with people who later became wrong 'uns. To share the reflected shame of someone who later sinned is not reasonable. Particularly 10 years later
    The crimes Brand is accused of took place way before Owen Jones and James O'Brien championed him, and boasting about such behaviour was part of his stand up
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 18,163
    Roger said:

    isam said:


    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    Is it bad form to share this from a decade ago?


    Plenty of people were keen to be seen alongside him a decade or so ago. O'Brien also belittled one of Brand's accusers on social media




    I think it is. We've all been photographed with people who later became wrong 'uns. To share the reflected shame of someone who later sinned is not reasonable. Particularly 10 years later
    And, without casting any comment on the current case, it's a well-known strategy of abusers to befriend the rich and powerful, or merely to be seen in that circle, in the belief (undoubtedly justified in some cases), that it will protect them.

    Abusers who are already rich, powerful or connected, will inevitably be seen alongside their peers just in the normal course of life anyway.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996
    edited April 4
    Roger said:

    isam said:


    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    Is it bad form to share this from a decade ago?


    Plenty of people were keen to be seen alongside him a decade or so ago. O'Brien also belittled one of Brand's accusers on social media




    I think it is. We've all been photographed with people who later became wrong 'uns. To share the reflected shame of someone who later sinned is not reasonable. Particularly 10 years later
    I was going to argue with your premise, and then realised there's an old school photograph somewhere that I'm on.

    I'm probably didn't look quite so cheerful in it.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,417
    edited April 4
    Selebian said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    I'm clearly a little innocent on such matters, but haven't encountered the term 'oral rape' before - is that forced fellatio? If so it seems extremely risky for the perpetrator (I can accept there would be situations, perhaps the majority, where the threat of violence would prevent the victim just biting as hard as possible).
    'Forced' cunnilingus doesn't really sound like fun either.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    Roger said:

    isam said:


    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    Is it bad form to share this from a decade ago?


    Plenty of people were keen to be seen alongside him a decade or so ago. O'Brien also belittled one of Brand's accusers on social media




    I think it is. We've all been photographed with people who later became wrong 'uns. To share the reflected shame of someone who later sinned is not reasonable. Particularly 10 years later
    Brand has not yet been convicted in court of these charges we should remember
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 18,195

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 30,975

    Keir Starmer is a lucky general once again.

    Worth noting that Labour is currently polling near its lowest *ever* in the polls, so not that lucky. The fact that it's still leading some of them is not entirely beside the point but nor should it be used as much of a comfort blanket, particularly when it could lose further support in pretty much every direction.
    One could argue they could be polling lower were ot not for Trump's interventions on Ukraine and crashing the World economy.

    The pedestrian pace of change (not reversing Hunt's absurd NI cuts on day one was unforgivable) and the performative cruelty over benefits which certainly do need culling have disappointed me. But I won't be voting Reform or Tory. Unless it looks like a Lib Dem Government I won't be voting for them or the Greens either if it lets RefCon in. That may be the only justification to vote Labour, but it's a good enough reason if it keeps the racists out.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
    Not when you consider 80% is not exported and I suspect many of the biggest and wealthiest farmers who exported a lot to places like China did not vote for Trump anyway
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    Can Trump's Tariffs Romaine for 42 days?
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 23,969
    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @KFILE

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leading Chuck Schumer by double digits in a new head-to-head poll of the 2028 New York primary.
    The survey by the liberal firm Data for Progress, first shared with POLITICO, found that 55 percent of Democratic likely voters said they supported or leaned toward supporting Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), while 36 percent backed or leaned toward backing Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Nine percent were undecided.

    https://x.com/KFILE/status/1908120098172248511

    Hardly surprising, since Schumer has been spectacularly useless is opposing Trump's policies.

    A wholesale clear out of the Congressional gerontocracy wouldn't surprise me.
    I hope she wins. The Democrats need somebody who wants to punch back.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,135
    isam said:

    Roger said:

    isam said:


    Scott_xP said:

    @lizziedearden

    Breaking: Russell Brand has been charged with the following offences:

    One count of rape
    One count of indecent assault
    One count of oral rape
    Two counts of sexual assault

    Met says the charges relate to the following alleged incidents:

    - 1999, woman raped in Bournemouth area
    - 2001, woman indecently assaulted in Westminster, London
    - 2004, woman orally raped and sexually assaulted in Westminster
    - 2004-5, woman sexually assaulted in Westminster

    https://x.com/lizziedearden/status/1908143027802996871

    Is it bad form to share this from a decade ago?


    Plenty of people were keen to be seen alongside him a decade or so ago. O'Brien also belittled one of Brand's accusers on social media




    I think it is. We've all been photographed with people who later became wrong 'uns. To share the reflected shame of someone who later sinned is not reasonable. Particularly 10 years later
    The crimes Brand is accused of took place way before Owen Jones and James O'Brien championed him, and boasting about such behaviour was part of his stand up
    Brand joking about the crime he is now accused of.

    https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/xrated-joke-proves-that-russell-brand-was-always-vile/news-story/9e249bf638def9995b6325c0bf6426cd
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    Muslims and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews disagree on many things but they all agree atheist uber liberals are doing the work of Satan!
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 20,003
    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
    Not when you consider 80% is not exported and I suspect many of the biggest and wealthiest farmers who exported a lot to places like China did not vote for Trump anyway
    What do you think a 20% increase in supply domestically is going to do to the sale price?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
    edited April 4

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
    They need men in white coats carrying straitjackets!
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,172

    We cannot overstate what has just happened. It took just 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the American economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American-led world order.

    He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement.

    He did it with the support of a plurality of American voters.

    He did not hide his intentions. He campaigned on them. He made them the central thrust of his election. He told Americans that he would betray our allies and give up our leadership position in the world.

    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-american-age-is-over

    "If you want a small preview, look at what has happened to the British economy since Brexit"

    Ouch!
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 20,003
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    Muslims and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews disagree on many things but they all agree atheist uber liberals are doing the work of Satan!
    Whose work are the child abusing priests doing?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,417
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    Muslims and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews disagree on many things but they all agree atheist uber liberals are doing the work of Satan!
    Satan, like God, doesn't exist!
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,417

    Keir Starmer is a lucky general once again.

    Worth noting that Labour is currently polling near its lowest *ever* in the polls, so not that lucky. The fact that it's still leading some of them is not entirely beside the point but nor should it be used as much of a comfort blanket, particularly when it could lose further support in pretty much every direction.
    One could argue they could be polling lower were ot not for Trump's interventions on Ukraine and crashing the World economy.

    The pedestrian pace of change (not reversing Hunt's absurd NI cuts on day one was unforgivable) and the performative cruelty over benefits which certainly do need culling have disappointed me. But I won't be voting Reform or Tory. Unless it looks like a Lib Dem Government I won't be voting for them or the Greens either if it lets RefCon in. That may be the only justification to vote Labour, but it's a good enough reason if it keeps the racists out.
    The LibDem's didn't really try round here..... I think they were putting all the effort into Chelmsford ..... so it's probably Labour for me next time.
    Unless the Greens do well in the locals next year.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
    Not when you consider 80% is not exported and I suspect many of the biggest and wealthiest farmers who exported a lot to places like China did not vote for Trump anyway
    What do you think a 20% increase in supply domestically is going to do to the sale price?
    Not much if US consumers switch from buying imported to US grown and raised food
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
    They have Men in Black.
    Who have a blind spot when it comes to politicians.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 33,238
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    Muslims and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews disagree on many things but they all agree atheist uber liberals are doing the work of Satan!
    You mean they are just as deluded about that as about all the rest of their sky fairy beliefs? Who'd a thunk it.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    edited April 4

    Keir Starmer is a lucky general once again.

    Worth noting that Labour is currently polling near its lowest *ever* in the polls, so not that lucky. The fact that it's still leading some of them is not entirely beside the point but nor should it be used as much of a comfort blanket, particularly when it could lose further support in pretty much every direction.
    One could argue they could be polling lower were ot not for Trump's interventions on Ukraine and crashing the World economy.

    The pedestrian pace of change (not reversing Hunt's absurd NI cuts on day one was unforgivable) and the performative cruelty over benefits which certainly do need culling have disappointed me. But I won't be voting Reform or Tory. Unless it looks like a Lib Dem Government I won't be voting for them or the Greens either if it lets RefCon in. That may be the only justification to vote Labour, but it's a good enough reason if it keeps the racists out.
    Brentwood and Ongar was Tory first and Reform second even in 2024, suspect Burghart will get a few middle class Labour and LD tactical votes next time while Reform squeeze the Labour wwc vote.

    Plenty of home counties seats where the fight is LD v Tory, so a vote for Labour elects the Tory.

    In Brighton and Norwich South of course the contest is Labour v Green
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
    Not when you consider 80% is not exported and I suspect many of the biggest and wealthiest farmers who exported a lot to places like China did not vote for Trump anyway
    What do you think a 20% increase in supply domestically is going to do to the sale price?
    Previously when China tariffed US soybean, the US government subsidised the farmers, and the farmers also found markets elsewhere. Neither may happen this time around.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
    Not when you consider 80% is not exported and I suspect many of the biggest and wealthiest farmers who exported a lot to places like China did not vote for Trump anyway
    What do you think a 20% increase in supply domestically is going to do to the sale price?
    It's actually far worse than that, since 20% is just an average.
    Over half of US soybean production is exported, for example.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 59,082

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    Muslims and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews disagree on many things but they all agree atheist uber liberals are doing the work of Satan!
    Satan, like God, doesn't exist!
    Ah, so a bit like liberal Democrat MPs under Jo Swinson.
  • theakestheakes Posts: 957
    3 local main type of local by elections yesterday:

    St Helens: Reform walked in over the Lib Dems who previously held the seat
    Neath: Lib Dem gain from Plaid, former not stood there for ages, ward part of Brecon constituency
    Lincoln: Lib Dem gain from Labour, former were fourth a couple of elections ago

    Total Votes cast:-

    Lib Dems: 896
    Labour 787
    Reform 777
    Con 145
    Green 87

    Any portents for May 1st, St Helens result suggest Reform will storm in at Runcorn. However its full impact may be lost as Reform unlikely to make the MOST local election gains or seats.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    Muslims and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews disagree on many things but they all agree atheist uber liberals are doing the work of Satan!
    Whose work are the child abusing priests doing?
    Also the work of Satan as with any other child abuser (though Smyth it should be noted was a barrister)
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 18,163

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
    The system itself has Men in Grey (or, I suppose, Gray) Suits designed in. That's what the 25th is - or impeachment, for that matter. Higher bar but the mechanisms are there.

    The problem is there's no way they'll use them in current circumstances.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,417
    HYUFD said:

    Keir Starmer is a lucky general once again.

    Worth noting that Labour is currently polling near its lowest *ever* in the polls, so not that lucky. The fact that it's still leading some of them is not entirely beside the point but nor should it be used as much of a comfort blanket, particularly when it could lose further support in pretty much every direction.
    One could argue they could be polling lower were ot not for Trump's interventions on Ukraine and crashing the World economy.

    The pedestrian pace of change (not reversing Hunt's absurd NI cuts on day one was unforgivable) and the performative cruelty over benefits which certainly do need culling have disappointed me. But I won't be voting Reform or Tory. Unless it looks like a Lib Dem Government I won't be voting for them or the Greens either if it lets RefCon in. That may be the only justification to vote Labour, but it's a good enough reason if it keeps the racists out.
    Brentwood and Ongar was Tory first and Reform second even in 2024, suspect Burghart will get a few middle class Labour and LD tactical votes next time while Reform squeeze the Labour wwc vote
    Have you still got that weird happy-clappy Christian sect in, I think, Ongar?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
    Not when you consider 80% is not exported and I suspect many of the biggest and wealthiest farmers who exported a lot to places like China did not vote for Trump anyway
    What do you think a 20% increase in supply domestically is going to do to the sale price?
    Not much if US consumers switch from buying imported to US grown and raised food
    Can you make guacamole with rutabegas?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657
    @atrupar.com‬

    Marco Rubio: "Market are crashing."

    https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llylwzfycu2d
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,623
    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    "Happy Guru's Martyrdom Day!" That sort of thing?
  • kamskikamski Posts: 6,293
    HYUFD said:

    glw said:

    boulay said:

    Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.

    I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.

    What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.

    Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.

    The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.

    The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.

    If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.

    Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.

    Several times over the years I've seen examples from the US where there's been a fire but a bible or cross survives, this is seen as miraculous even where actual people have died in the fire.

    More recently way too many people have said that God spared Trump's life in the assassination attempt, they don't seem to address the fact that God apparently didn't care too much for the fireman who was killed.

    It's plainly nuts, and as you say if it was another religion we'd be considerably more condemnatory.
    No it is not nuts, genuine Christians believe Jesus can save. The fact you wish to condemn such beliefs says so much about the uber liberal secular cancel culture of faith we have had in recent years in the UK
    You seem to miss the point. If Jesus and/or God is going to save one thing from a fire, and they choose to save a bible or a cross rather than a human that's kinda nuts. I mean if any human saved a bible from a house fire rather than a human we probably wouldn't have much respect for them.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
    The system itself has Men in Grey (or, I suppose, Gray) Suits designed in. That's what the 25th is - or impeachment, for that matter. Higher bar but the mechanisms are there.

    The problem is there's no way they'll use them in current circumstances.
    Though also why Trump appointed a coterie of yes-men and puppets as cabinet. They will not use the 25th on him.

    We have another 45 months of this, unless the Grim Reaper gets off his lazy arse.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Most US farmers do not export food produce and crops abroad at all and of course if consumers buy more American goods that will boost them
    Something like 20% of US agricultural produce U.S. exported. That's a huge amount.
    Their input costs from fertiliser are likely to rise considerably.

    Tariffs will hurt US farmers far more than they will help.
    Not when you consider 80% is not exported and I suspect many of the biggest and wealthiest farmers who exported a lot to places like China did not vote for Trump anyway
    What do you think a 20% increase in supply domestically is going to do to the sale price?
    Not much if US consumers switch from buying imported to US grown and raised food
    Can you make guacamole with rutabegas?
    "Let them eat tofu".
    Bet that will go down well with Trump's base.

    Though actually it would take a fairly long time to instal the necessary manufacturing capacity to deal with the soybean glut, so it wouldn't work anyway.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,417

    We cannot overstate what has just happened. It took just 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the American economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American-led world order.

    He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement.

    He did it with the support of a plurality of American voters.

    He did not hide his intentions. He campaigned on them. He made them the central thrust of his election. He told Americans that he would betray our allies and give up our leadership position in the world.

    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-american-age-is-over

    "Dumb-ass Colonists!" :lol:

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,996
    Scott_xP said:

    @atrupar.com‬

    Marco Rubio: "Market are crashing."

    https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llylwzfycu2d

    Sure, blame the markets.
    We all know who the driver is.
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 4,960
    edited April 4
    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Apparently they’re going to be giving them financial help . Farm subsidies paid by US tax payers to alleviate Trumps moronic tariffs.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,304
    Im sure it's been mentioned but the stock market is crashing....
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,400
    Roger said:

    Im sure it's been mentioned but the stock market is crashing....

    Ouch.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 38,370
    edited April 4

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cookie said:

    boulay said:

    Cookie said:

    Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:

    Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable.
    Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.

    So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.

    *the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.

    Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.

    I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.

    And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.

    *The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
    Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
    That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.

    (I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
    Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.

    In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021

    Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many

    https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
    Well, of those 56%, I'd imagine a large number are nominally 'Christian' (or indeed Muslim or Jew) but for practical purposes secular.
    And my point is that for practical purposes there are almost no secular primary schools. My daughters' school nominally has no religion - like most in Trafford - but includes collective religious worship with hymns, prayers etc.

    I honestly don't have a handle on how secular or not my daughters' nominally secular secondary schools are. I know one of them made a big fuss about Ramadan - there are a lot of Muslims at the school - but I expect that was largely the cultural rather than religious aspect.

    An odd aspect of secondary education around here (this may or may not be widespread) is that there are a lot of Catholic secondary schools - which are not just nominally Catholic but take their religion pretty seriously (I remember the shock the first time as a youth I played rugby against one, and they had monks and pictures of Jesus and things, and the realisation of 'good grief, these people really BELIEVE'), but almost no C of E secondary schools. Odd that only one flavour of Christianity should be provided for.
    Equally odd is that in southern Greater Manchester, almost all the sixth form colleges are nominally Catholic (though in practice their Catholicism is very slight). If you want to do A Levels and your school does not have a sixth form - and many do not - you have a choice of Loreto (Hulme), Xaverian (Rusholme) or Aquinas (Stockport) sixth form colleges (together with a small number of more vocationally-oriented colleges).
    Obviously it varies from person to person, but my experience of living in a very multi-cultural city, and and working with some quite devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is that religious people don't object to such things as Easter/Eid/Finalised etc being taught, even if it contradicts their own beliefs. Most religious people are fairly comfortable with other religious observance and even have a feeling of fellowship of believers. It tends to be the Athiests that object.

    My Departmental WhatsApp Social group is full of believers sending good wishes on each others festivities, all well meant if occasionally not quite getting it right.
    Muslims and evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews disagree on many things but they all agree atheist uber liberals are doing the work of Satan!
    Satan, like God, doesn't exist!
    You’ve not met my former boss, Paul Dumbleton, then.

    He was certainly one of Satan’s minions.

    https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/solicitor-check/139360/
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
    nico67 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Apparently they’re going to be giving them financial help . Farm subsidies paid by US tax payers to alleviate Trumps moronic tariffs.
    So, Trump's copying the Argentinian model, albeit Peron rather than Milei?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657
    @atrupar.com‬

    Ron Johnson: "What's also indisputable is the markets are down about 8% in just two days, and I'm getting all kids of reactions from businesses, farmers in Wisconsin that are highly concerned about what's happening. Those are the facts ... it's a bold, risky move."

    https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llymu7kyjh2f
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657
    Foxy said:

    nico67 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Apparently they’re going to be giving them financial help . Farm subsidies paid by US tax payers to alleviate Trumps moronic tariffs.
    So, Trump's copying the Argentinian model, albeit Peron rather than Milei?
    I did wonder if Trump wants has face on the million dollar bill, which everyone will be using to buy their 'groceries' when he is done
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 24,057
    edited April 4
    HYUFD said:


    (((Dan Hodges)))
    '@DPJHodges
    ·
    1h
    It was one thing when Trump was seen to be targeting illegal migrants, benefit scroungers and the woke Left. Now he's targeting the wealth of corporate America. And corporate America isn't going to sit on its hands.'

    https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1908107169972560293

    ------------
    Broken Quotes

    HYUFD - Trump wasn't elected by corporate America, he was elected by white working class voters in the rustbelt mainly who hate globalisation and what their manufacturing jobs back

    ------------

    Lets see how much they hate insularity, still without those well paid manufacturing jobs.
  • RazedabodeRazedabode Posts: 3,097
    The Dow Jones is looking pretty horrendous at the moment
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 30,975
    Worse news for the steelworkers and tertiary workers of Scunny I would have thought. Vauxhall vans closed their doors in Luton last week after 120 years.

    Because these industries have been decimated over the decades from cheap overseas labour and Thatcher's law change which has allowed the Chinese and the Indians to own steelmaking capacity in the UK, has ensured when the doors finally close there aren't too many employees left to sack anyway. Through the 1990s and 2000s we rode the wave of exporting steel jobs to Korea, Italy, China and India and benefitted from unprecedented low inflation as a result. It is Labour's fault only by dint of incumbency.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 44,550
    edited April 4
    Foxy said:

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
    They need men in white coats carrying straitjackets!
    We now have a clearout of senior national security staff deemed 'disloyal' at the behest of far right, overtly racist nutcase Laura Loomer. DJT is bananas and it's all going pear. Don't ask me exactly how he exits but I do not see him completing the term.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657
    kinabalu said:

    Don't ask me exactly how he exits but I do not see him completing the term.

    I guess it will involve guns
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 24,057

    The Dow Jones is looking pretty horrendous at the moment

    The Dow Jones is looking pretty horrendous at the moment

    You ain't seen nothing yet.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
    Roger said:

    Im sure it's been mentioned but the stock market is crashing....

    Never change @Roger!
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 18,163

    The Dow Jones is looking pretty horrendous at the moment

    The Dow Jones is looking pretty horrendous at the moment

    You ain't seen nothing yet.
    The S&P has just dropped to an 11-month low, having now fallen below the level it bottomed out at last August.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
    edited April 4
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
    They need men in white coats carrying straitjackets!
    We now have a clearout of senior national security staff deemed 'disloyal' at the behest of far right, overtly racist nutcase Laura Loomer. DJT is bananas and it's all going pear. Don't ask me exactly how he exits but I do not see him completing the term.
    The chainsaw meme is an accurate one for Trump and Musk. A forest can be destroyed in a day and take decades or longer to regrow, if ever.

    Even if Trump and his imps disappeared tomorrow so many institutions have been compromised and so much confidential data insecurely managed that rebuilding what existed on Jan 19th will take years or even decades.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 44,550
    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    And it's not obvious that the US system has any Men in Gray Suits.
    They need men in white coats carrying straitjackets!
    We now have a clearout of senior national security staff deemed 'disloyal' at the behest of far right, overtly racist nutcase Laura Loomer. DJT is bananas and it's all going pear. Don't ask me exactly how he exits but I do not see him completing the term.
    The chainsaw meme is an accurate one for Trump and Musk. A forest can be destroyed in a day and take decades or longer to regrow, if ever.

    Even if Trump and his imps disappeared tomorrow so many institutions have been compromised and so much confidential data insecurely managed that rebuilding what existed on Jan 19th will take years or even decades.
    Yep. Vandalism on an epic scale. What a tragedy.
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 6,214
    HYUFD said:

    Keir Starmer is a lucky general once again.

    Worth noting that Labour is currently polling near its lowest *ever* in the polls, so not that lucky. The fact that it's still leading some of them is not entirely beside the point but nor should it be used as much of a comfort blanket, particularly when it could lose further support in pretty much every direction.
    One could argue they could be polling lower were ot not for Trump's interventions on Ukraine and crashing the World economy.

    The pedestrian pace of change (not reversing Hunt's absurd NI cuts on day one was unforgivable) and the performative cruelty over benefits which certainly do need culling have disappointed me. But I won't be voting Reform or Tory. Unless it looks like a Lib Dem Government I won't be voting for them or the Greens either if it lets RefCon in. That may be the only justification to vote Labour, but it's a good enough reason if it keeps the racists out.
    Brentwood and Ongar was Tory first and Reform second even in 2024, suspect Burghart will get a few middle class Labour and LD tactical votes next time while Reform squeeze the Labour wwc vote.

    Plenty of home counties seats where the fight is LD v Tory, so a vote for Labour elects the Tory.

    In Brighton and Norwich South of course the contest is Labour v Green
    If you speak to Alex, ask him if he remembers the jelly parties at ChristChurch in 98
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,657
    @sunnyright

    "Stop looking at how the market is reacting to our new policies and instead focus on how well it's done mostly under Trump's Democratic predecessor" is an incredible new talking point.

    https://x.com/sunnyright/status/1907869358900043947
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 44,550
    Foxy said:

    nico67 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Apparently they’re going to be giving them financial help . Farm subsidies paid by US tax payers to alleviate Trumps moronic tariffs.
    So, Trump's copying the Argentinian model, albeit Peron rather than Milei?
    That's not great news for Melania unless she fancies tortured martyrdom followed by immortalisation in a West End musical.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,826
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,525
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    nico67 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Apparently they’re going to be giving them financial help . Farm subsidies paid by US tax payers to alleviate Trumps moronic tariffs.
    So, Trump's copying the Argentinian model, albeit Peron rather than Milei?
    That's not great news for Melania unless she fancies tortured martyrdom followed by immortalisation in a West End musical.
    I've heard a preview of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Stormy Daniels number and I think he's got another hit on his hands.
  • CleitophonCleitophon Posts: 587
    I don't understand how reform isn't tanking totally in the polls. Reform want exactly what Trump is doing. Gut the state, cut all social services, privatise health care, tariffs and trade barriers, cut benefits.... Look where it is going for the USA. And I bet you the ones who would suffer under a reform regime are: low education, low income reform voters... it is so freaking mad. You would have to be mad to vote reform.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    Foxy said:

    nico67 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Oh

    @lancelachlan

    MAGA farmers are furious over China’s new 34% tariffs - some say they could go bankrupt as their exports are no longer competitive.

    https://x.com/lancelachlan/status/1908143281612918993

    Apparently they’re going to be giving them financial help . Farm subsidies paid by US tax payers to alleviate Trumps moronic tariffs.
    So, Trump's copying the Argentinian model, albeit Peron rather than Milei?
    Trump is Peron, protectionist nationalism, Musk is Milei, slash the state libertarianism
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 79,096

    I don't understand how reform isn't tanking totally in the polls. Reform want exactly what Trump is doing. Gut the state, cut all social services, privatise health care, tariffs and trade barriers, cut benefits.... Look where it is going for the USA. And I bet you the ones who would suffer under a reform regime are: low education, low income reform voters... it is so freaking mad. You would have to be mad to vote reform.

    Are Reform in favour of tariffs ?
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,800

    It’s all going a bit Liz Truss (x200) isn’t it?

    Only thing is, there's no mechanism for GOP to get rid of the Orange One, unlike the Tories and Liz...
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,594
    edited April 4

    Worse news for the steelworkers and tertiary workers of Scunny I would have thought. Vauxhall vans closed their doors in Luton last week after 120 years.

    Because these industries have been decimated over the decades from cheap overseas labour and Thatcher's law change which has allowed the Chinese and the Indians to own steelmaking capacity in the UK, has ensured when the doors finally close there aren't too many employees left to sack anyway. Through the 1990s and 2000s we rode the wave of exporting steel jobs to Korea, Italy, China and India and benefitted from unprecedented low inflation as a result. It is Labour's fault only by dint of incumbency.
    'Britain First' comes the Farage cry in response. As the above shows the idea free market liberal globalisation has been perfection is of course rubbish, there is a reason the likes of Trump get elected to pursue protectionism
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 7,283

    I don't understand how reform isn't tanking totally in the polls. Reform want exactly what Trump is doing. Gut the state, cut all social services, privatise health care, tariffs and trade barriers, cut benefits.... Look where it is going for the USA. And I bet you the ones who would suffer under a reform regime are: low education, low income reform voters... it is so freaking mad. You would have to be mad to vote reform.

    Because Reform is a “plague on all your houses” party, and people neither like nor trust Labour, or the Tories.

    I think it is quite clear that in the minds of a lot of voters Reform does NOT equal Trump.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 34,159

    I don't understand how reform isn't tanking totally in the polls. Reform want exactly what Trump is doing. Gut the state, cut all social services, privatise health care, tariffs and trade barriers, cut benefits.... Look where it is going for the USA. And I bet you the ones who would suffer under a reform regime are: low education, low income reform voters... it is so freaking mad. You would have to be mad to vote reform.

    Because a lot of British voters are in the same mood as the voters who just elected Trump. They want things turned upside down because the current situation isn't working for them.
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