On topic, the solution is for the Tories to take right-wing positions that the LibDems can publicly oppose from the left, so both sides get to whistle at their respective constituencies. Ideally they'll both blow so loudly on their respective whistles that nobody will be able to hear whatever instrument Ed Miliband is playing.
This can only really be positioning rather than actual workable policy, but that also works out well, because the right-wing positions the Tories need to take up to impress UKIP-curious voters tend not to be produce any meaningful, practical policy within the limitations the Tories have set themselves (like staying in the EU and the ECHR).
Another beautifully honed gem from Edward - perfectly cynical and perfectly right at the same time.
How 2010 LibDem voters behave this time round will be a big factor. It is hard to see how the LibDem campaign will go, other than vote for your local incumbent.
I suspect that a lot of the LibDem switchers are unenthused by Labours UNITE tendency, so a lot depends on how that works out..
What makes everyone so sure that the so called 2010 LibDem switchers will bother to vote? Lots of 1992 Tory voters stayed at home in 1997 and didn't vote for Blair or Ashcroft.
I have long said that Alex Salmond's strongest card will be if by next September a Tory victory in 2015 looks likely he will try and scare the Scots into voting Yes. Frankly I am glad the Brownites are running their own so called pro-union campaign because the Scottish electorate think so highly of them in 2011 they did what all the experts had promised Tony Blair could not happen, they voted in a majority SNP government.
I know lots of 2010 LibDems who IMHO are far more likely to vote Labour without needing to be persuaded than some of the traditional Labour vote. As their criticism of Labour tends to be that it's not as left-wing as they want and as they temporarily supposed the LibDems to be, I'd suspect they're pretty relaxed about the UNITE stuff too (though nobody sane actually supports signing up members without consent).
There is currently a reasonable code of conduct for party selection applicants but it focuses mainly on what you shouldn't say (basically don't be horrible about the other candidates - one of my competitors is enthusiastically breaking this but the rest are keeping it positive) and limits to how much bumf you can send.
It all depends on what you consider to be the best in the world. Asian systems tend to cram kids full of facts, but are very formal and rigid; the European/American approach has tended to focus much more on encouraging creative thought. If we want to produce entrepreneurs and innovators, kids have to have time to use their imaginations. Too much formal learning, a la Shanghai and Singapore, and they won't get it.
A point you keep making, Southam. Just think, all those men and women of the past whose imagination and creativity were stymied by formal learning. People like Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mary Anne Evans, Albert Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell, Charles Darwin, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac - not an original thought or spark of creativity between them, all tragically snuffed out by formal learning.
I'm not sure if holding up Jane Austen and George Eliot as exemplary products of formal learning holds any water.
Edit: or Balzac.
'Balzac had difficulty adapting to the rote style of learning at the school. As a result, he was frequently sent to the "alcove," a punishment cell reserved for disobedient students (The janitor at the school, when asked later if he remembered Honoré, replied: "Remember M. Balzac? I should think I do! I had the honour of escorting him to the dungeon more than a hundred times!"). Still, his time alone gave the boy ample freedom to read every book which came his way.'
Re Gove's view that 5yrs olds should know fractions - maybe its just me but I knew that half an orange was 1/2 an orange when I was five.
I knew 5 Smarties were a 1/4 of the Smarties on the table too.
And knew my times tables up to 12x before I left State primary school in 1977.
Perhaps my Mum helped me to know these things when others didn't - I can't remember, but surely its not *too hard* to know such things by rote then? There are few things more essential to general life than knowing how to do simple adds/subtractions/percentages and times tables in your head?
Even if its just to have a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost?
On the plus side for the tories Ed and Ed are no Blair and Brown. The latter were some of the more effective and plausible liars in our recent history. One of the reasons for that was the disciplined on message repetition of the same themes. Miliband tries a different theme in each speech in the hope that something sticks and Balls is in the process of abandoning all his previous positions. Not easy by any means but the tories are in the game here.
Agreed.
For the first time in ages, since late 2010, it is starting to look like another Tory government is possible, perhaps even likely, after 2015. I am fascinated to see how that is going to play in Scotland. Can Lamont & Co scare the Scots electorate back into the SLab fold for the umpteenth time? Or have they cried wolf once too often?
There is no question that a well based and solid tory revival is the biggest risk factor in the Independence referendum. I can't think of anything else that is likely to get Scotland to vote yes but that might.
My other worry as a Unionist is the state of Scottish Labour. They should be the bulwark of the no campaign but they seem to be falling apart. I have been amused by your comments reporting Ms Lamont as a missing person over Falkirk but also concerned. Complacancy and incompetence, it is a heady brew in Scottish Labour. They took Scotland for granted for too long.
I'm not too sure that the state of SLAB is that important to the referendum campaign. For many years Scottish voters have compartmentalized voting on issues and different types of election which is why the SNP rules at home but SLAB is dominant at Westminster.
The referendum campaign will come down to a combination of the effectiveness of both campaigns, the state of the economy, historical context and the most difficult to analyse - the gut feeling of the punters.
Jack, you have been away from your estate too long. The referendum will hinge on Labour voters voting YES. They are getting deeper and deeper into a mess, led by donkeys. If they continue this way ( copying Tory policy ) and there is a hint of Tories looking like winning the die will be cast.
We'll see what the next rounds of referendum polling shows in the coming months. However my view is very clearly that Scottish voters will not determine their future as a nation on the basis of the Falkirk shambles.
Jack, agree on that but in Labour in general it will be down to labour supporters whether we get a YES or NO. Given current Labour performance they are in trouble even excluding Falkirk.
Indeed. However there are other groupings to be considered, the two most important of which are SNP government supporters who back the Union and also voters who normally do not vote but will do so for this issue.
My own take presently is a 60/40 In vote although my tartan ARSE will be undertaking projections from the Autumn and clearly this is the organ(ization) to follow.
Something I'd agree with - Gove who inspires hatred from LDs and Labour supporters is clearly making his mark because Tories love him.
"The funny thing about the new National Curriculum, published today, is that after all the fuss of the past few months, particularly over the history curriculum, it’s probably the last ever national plan from the government. As more and more schools convert to academy status, and more free schools pop up to compete with poorly-performing schools, there will be fewer and fewer who must conform to this: the rest have been given freedom to teach what they judge is best for their pupils. Michael Gove’s critics like to argue that he is a great centraliser, dictating the curriculum from Westminster while claiming to give schools freedom. But he only remains a centraliser where schools remain subject to centralisation and local authority control."
Which is it? If Gove's new curriculum is good, why not impose it everywhere? If it is so bad that Gove encourages schools to become exempt from it, then why impose it anywhere?
Is Gove a Machiavellian genius to rival master strategist George Osborne, deliberately handicapping LEA schools so his preferred free schools look better?
Or is the truth more mundane? That Gove has no overarching philosophy of education, but merely some incoherent and contradictory prejudices.
"Local authorities cannot create new schools that are not academies or free schools"
Gove's whole ideology is based on stopping schools being built which are bound to teach the national curriculum. But his desire to fiddle around at the centre with the history curriculum as a hobby is not seen as incongruous by his worshippers.
Credit where it's due, the history tinkering sounds like ignorant twattery, but the computer science stuff is really good policy.
I suspect the problem with a lot of top-down education policy-making is that everyone has spent years being educated, so they think they know about education. A minister can make a good call on computer science because they don't start out thinking they know about it, so they can actually take advice from people who do.
If the type of views that get expressed on ConHome are anything to go by the Tories will need to vere very sharply to the right to bring the Kippers back in - ditch gay marriage, kick out all the immigrants, get out of the "EUSSR".
The one thing that I thought the Tories had learned after the defeats of IDS, Hague and Howard was that a right wing Tory party was very unlikely to ever win a majority in the UK again. Surely that was Cameron's USP - I'm not a nasty old-style Tory. Difficult to see how a full on charm offensive to the Kippers would end up ultimately in anything but failure as far as the bigger picture goes.
The tired old "demonize the unions" scare tactics that some seem to be getting very excited about at the moment, won't, in my view resonate much at all with the 40% of voters that incline towards Labour so I can't see how it's going to win many votes for the Tories that they didn't have in 2010 (it will have the Kipper contingent foaming at the mouth though)
" converting the almost daily better economic news into votes and support. This is not a given. Clarke did a brilliant job in the years up to 97 and the tories got hammered."
The problem in 1997 surely was that the recovery was in spite, not because, of the Tories' economic policy? The one that entailed 15% interest rates and ERM membership.
That policy was blown out of the water by the City, essentially, in 1992.
The subsequent recovery was possible because the Tories had been forced to abandon their policy, and to follow another not of their choosing. The electorate noticed this and concluded, rightly IMO, that they deserved no credit; and in fact deserved to be punished for having been so demonstrably wrong.
That is perhaps why the baby eater party was split. Some wanted ERM / Euro, some didn't. Remember 1989 and the ERM entry. Maggie didn't want it and didn't listen, and eventually agreed with the concensus, then got blamed for it.
On the plus side for the tories Ed and Ed are no Blair and Brown. The latter were some of the more effective and plausible liars in our recent history. One of the reasons for that was the disciplined on message repetition of the same themes. Miliband tries a different theme in each speech in the hope that something sticks and Balls is in the process of abandoning all his previous positions. Not easy by any means but the tories are in the game here.
Agreed.
For the first time in ages, since late 2010, it is starting to look like another Tory government is possible, perhaps even likely, after 2015. I am fascinated to see how that is going to play in Scotland. Can Lamont & Co scare the Scots electorate back into the SLab fold for the umpteenth time? Or have they cried wolf once too often?
There is no question that a well based and solid tory revival is the biggest risk factor in the Independence referendum. I can't think of anything else that is likely to get Scotland to vote yes but that might.
My other worry as a Unionist is the state of Scottish Labour. They should be the bulwark of the no campaign but they seem to be falling apart. I have been amused by your comments reporting Ms Lamont as a missing person over Falkirk but also concerned. Complacancy and incompetence, it is a heady brew in Scottish Labour. They took Scotland for granted for too long.
I don't think that a Conservative victory will look like a certainty in October 2014.
Nor do I. Which is why I think the referendum will lose. But if it did...
As a Unionist I am not thrilled that the union may be hanging on the degree of incompetence and ineptitude the Eds show by that date.
Re Gove's view that 5yrs olds should know fractions - maybe its just me but I knew that half an orange was 1/2 an orange when I was five.
I knew 5 Smarties were a 1/4 of the Smarties on the table too.
And knew my times tables up to 12x before I left State primary school in 1977.
Perhaps my Mum helped me to know these things when others didn't - I can't remember, but surely its not *too hard* to know such things by rote then? There are few things more essential to general life than knowing how to do simple adds/subtractions/percentages and times tables in your head?
Even if its just to have a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost?
AFAIK (my parents were primary teachers til a couple of years back) then times tables to at least 10, possibly 12, are core curriculum before the end of year 6, i.e. end of primary. The question isn't really whether these things should be taught, it's about the age at which they can be taught in the most effective manner when looking at the overall motivation of children, development of imagination, ability to absorb data and so on. The concerns that a lot of professionals have about Gove is that they agree on the endpoint (ability to leave school knowing what a tank of petrol costs, say), but feel that he's ignoring decades of research and developed best practice in order to impose his "hunches" about the way to get to the endpoint. The fear is that there's a confusion of ends with means, that he sets "teaching at a certain stage in a certain manner" above "achieving a target by the relevant real-world milestone".
After all, does an 11 year old need a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost...?
"Kay Matheson became a nationalist icon after the heist on Christmas Day in 1950 and continued to believe strongly in Scottish independence until her death on Saturday, at the age of 84."
Whenever I hear of a Marxist dying, I still get a frisson of bemusement that somebody could spend much of their life believing strongly in something patently wrong and patently evil.
There isn’t a word (that I know of) for the feeling one has upon the passing of somebody who spent much of their life believing strongly in something crushingly trivial.
It's like believing strongly in Puffa Puffa Rice, or believing strongly in countersunk screws, or that Airfix is better than Revell.
Wasn't the great lady more or less forced into it by Major amongst others? As for the post ERM recovery, JM had iirc said the ERM membership was the central plank of government policy. A bit hard to claim credit for the recovery once hoisted by your own petard etc. Happy to be corrected if my somewhat mdma addled mind at the time was playing tricks
" converting the almost daily better economic news into votes and support. This is not a given. Clarke did a brilliant job in the years up to 97 and the tories got hammered."
The problem in 1997 surely was that the recovery was in spite, not because, of the Tories' economic policy? The one that entailed 15% interest rates and ERM membership.
That policy was blown out of the water by the City, essentially, in 1992.
The subsequent recovery was possible because the Tories had been forced to abandon their policy, and to follow another not of their choosing. The electorate noticed this and concluded, rightly IMO, that they deserved no credit; and in fact deserved to be punished for having been so demonstrably wrong.
That is perhaps why the baby eater party was split. Some wanted ERM / Euro, some didn't. Remember 1989 and the ERM entry. Maggie didn't want it and didn't listen, and eventually agreed with the concensus, then got blamed for it.
Unlikely I concede, but there must surely be a not entirely insignificant chance that one poll in the weeek's ahead might actually put the Tories in the lead, possibly after the July 25th 2Q GDP announcement and assuming Labour hasn't sorted something out on its election process/union relationship.
Mike, I think you're missing the local factor, which will help support the LD vote - mostly in their own seats, but also others. If you're a LD in a marginal, you're used to the Labour (mostly) rhetoric about not letting in the Tories, and you presumably already have a reason to reject it, which I suggest is, in many cases, a local element as well as wider disagreements about policy.
On topic: It's a false dichotomy. The next election IS about whether you want the two Eds and Labour, or Cameron and the Conservatives. That's the choice; all the rest is flummery. So the message is very simple: don't let Labour wreck it. Same message for the UKIP-inclined and the LibDem-inclined, and indeed for the group who might vote either Labour or Conservative,or not vote at all, in the main marginals (often largely forgotten in our pigeon-holing of voters, but actually the most important group of all).
Will it work? Dunno. Clearly there are a large number of people who still, even now, haven't faced up to the reality of the actual choices facing the country, be it in welfare reform, repairing our severely broken education system, or most notably in the public finances. The Tory leadership essentially needs to do what it is doing: keep governing well in the interests of the whole country, address these difficult problems, and ask voters for a mandate to finish the job. It may be that, as in the 1970s, the country is not yet ready face up to what needs to be done. If so, a dose of the two Eds will be what they get, with either a massive disappointment when people realise that Balls is actually following Osborne's plans and money doesn't after all grow on trees, or a panic as the markets make the point for him. Probably the latter followed by the fomer.
Perhaps you can tell us about the merits of system in Japan?
Not really, I'm afraid. I taught English in the state education system 15 years ago, but since then it's gone through a big reform aimed at "yutori" (something like "leeway" or "breathing space") that was supposed to stop trying to cram facts into the kids' heads and keeping them intensively occupied for every waking hour, and instead make them more creative.
A lot of older people complain that the "yutori" generation can't work properly because they're used to too much freedom, or something like that. This isn't my experience - the few young people I work are sharp, hard-working and creative, but I doubt I have a representative sample.
There isn’t a word (that I know of) for the feeling one has upon the passing of somebody who spent much of their life believing strongly in something crushingly trivial.
And yet in your incoherently condescending way, you still feel the need to comment on it (though I do accept any contribution you make on the matter will be crushingly trivial).
"Most people don’t want to be on benefits. They want to be free from the state and they need confidence and encouragement. Self-reliance. “To find yourself, think for yourself,” said Socrates,"
An interesting view from Janet Daley re the impact of abolishing the *fairness* rule for broadcasters
"...A sensible step would be to accept that it is just one more broadcaster in an enormous market place of alternatives. That means cutting back what [the BBC] does (and what it charges) to a core of services that commercial rivals are less likely to offer. But the larger question is what we do about the spurious notion of “neutrality” which is required by law in all broadcast news and current affairs.
The United States used to have similar legislation: known as the “fairness” rule, it decreed that airtime for a spokesman on any issue had to be balanced by a spokesman for the other side. The effect was exactly the same: a Left-liberal consensus dominated all of the mass media networks’ presentation of political issues. When the fairness rule was finally revoked, a thousand flowers bloomed: talk radio exploded on to the scene, as did the famous cable news channels such as Fox News (on the Right) and MSNBC (on the Left) which were blatantly partisan and enormously vibrant.
American politics is altogether too febrile and vituperative for the sedately smug BBC – which regards the US phenomenon as nothing more than a “Right-wing free-for-all” (direct quote). But this liberation of opinion and red-blooded argument has brought the hegemony of the elites to an end. It means that groups of voters who once felt marginalised to the point of invisibility have rejoined a robust national debate and are now engaged, big time, with the democratic process. (US voter turnout, which was once shockingly low by European standards, is now generally higher than in Britain.)
"An unholy alliance of politically ambitious über-Blairite Shadow Cabinet members, Tory politicians and outriders and a large swathe of the press are conspiring to sever Labour’s trade union link. It is not just an attempt to drive Britain’s biggest democratic movement out of political life. It would dissolve what the Labour party is – the clue is in the name – ending what connection with working people it still has, leaving it a rootless party, a mere plaything of vacuous careerists and apparatchiks."
Re Gove's view that 5yrs olds should know fractions - maybe its just me but I knew that half an orange was 1/2 an orange when I was five.
I knew 5 Smarties were a 1/4 of the Smarties on the table too.
And knew my times tables up to 12x before I left State primary school in 1977.
The national curriculum was invented and introduced by Mrs Thatcher's government. Your anecdote suggests it was possible to learn fractions before that, even in LEA-controlled schools.
"After all, does an 11 year old need a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost...? "
That is clearly not the point I was making about primary school teaching - but as an aside, my class teacher in my final year at Benton Park Primary was a lady with many dimples called Mary McMurray - she also had blond plaits and wore plaid.
She explained times tables using her cigarette smoking habit - and how she could have bought a Mini she desired if she'd given up. She used the 12x table re the number of months it'd take and others that were a multiple of the cost of packet of fags...
40yrs later - I've never forgotten it or her - I can't recall another lesson she gave!
From Guido - can't wait to see what marvellous policies Cruddas comes out with - no doubt not at conference this year as that will be taken up with patching up the local difficulties.
Several Labour MPs employ Unite lobbyists, subsidised with taxpayer money, sponsoring them for parliamentary passes and having them work on party business.
Jim Sheridan MP employs Steve Hart, Political Director for Unite
John Cruddas MP employs Nick Parrott, Political Officer for Unite
Mark Tami MP employs Hannah Blythyn, Political Officer for Unite Ronnie Campbell MP employs Stephen Turner, National Officer for Unite
Re Gove's view that 5yrs olds should know fractions - maybe its just me but I knew that half an orange was 1/2 an orange when I was five.
I knew 5 Smarties were a 1/4 of the Smarties on the table too.
And knew my times tables up to 12x before I left State primary school in 1977.
Perhaps my Mum helped me to know these things when others didn't - I can't remember, but surely its not *too hard* to know such things by rote then? There are few things more essential to general life than knowing how to do simple adds/subtractions/percentages and times tables in your head?
Even if its just to have a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost?
My brother and I knew all we needed to know about fractions. One cuts, the other chooses. Simple, and such precision. Barely a crumb of difference.
"On topic: It's a false dichotomy. The next election IS about whether you want the two Eds and Labour, or Cameron and the Conservatives. That's the choice; all the rest is flummery."
Given how unhappy those polled re another Hung Parly are - I'd suspect that most floating voters will pick one of the Big Two to make sure it doesn't happen again.
The decline in approval for coalitions has been a very longstanding trend after an initial bounce.
"Most people don’t want to be on benefits. They want to be free from the state and they need confidence and encouragement. Self-reliance. “To find yourself, think for yourself,” said Socrates,"
Mr Simon Danczuk is cut from the same cloth as Tom Harris and Frank Field - it'd be interesting to hear nominations of others who advocate this POV from the Labour benches.
I follow him on Twitter and seems a very sensible chap.
Re Gove's view that 5yrs olds should know fractions - maybe its just me but I knew that half an orange was 1/2 an orange when I was five.
I knew 5 Smarties were a 1/4 of the Smarties on the table too.
And knew my times tables up to 12x before I left State primary school in 1977.
The national curriculum was invented and introduced by Mrs Thatcher's government. Your anecdote suggests it was possible to learn fractions before that, even in LEA-controlled schools.
Sorry? I really don't get your point - I was noting that when I was of that young age it was taught - and that Gove is reintroducing it.
It's got nothing to do with Thatcher for heaven's sake - its about expectations that appear to have declined substantially for several decades inbetween.
At pre-preparatory school, I was given a series of math worksheets, which I was to work through at my own rate in addition to maths lessons. It was probably the greatest academic freedom I had in the classroom throughout my schooling - I finished, as I recall, about 18 months or so ahead, aged 8.
"Most people don’t want to be on benefits. They want to be free from the state and they need confidence and encouragement. Self-reliance. “To find yourself, think for yourself,” said Socrates,"
Mr Simon Danczuk is cut from the same cloth as Tom Harris and Frank Field - it'd be interesting to hear nominations of others who advocate this POV from the Labour benches.
I follow him on Twitter and seems a very sensible chap.
His clash with Owen Jones reminded me that pre Blair and Brown there used to be something admirable about much of the Labour party. Misguided and unrealistic perhaps, but admirable. Interested in real things, real people, real lives. Not pointless theory by overrated intellectuals.
At pre-preparatory school, I was given a series of math worksheets, which I was to work through at my own rate in addition to maths lessons. It was probably the greatest academic freedom I had in the classroom throughout my schooling - I finished, as I recall, about 18 months or so ahead, aged 8.
There are some things that stick in one's mind as a small kid at school re teachers - mine is being accused of lying by one when I said I'd read the set book. I had - it was very simple and very short to my mind.
After that = I didn't put my hand up for many months in case I was accused of this again, and put me off trying to be a smarty pants for much longer.
Mr Simon Danczuk is cut from the same cloth as Tom Harris and Frank Field - it'd be interesting to hear nominations of others who advocate this POV from the Labour benches.
I follow him on Twitter and seems a very sensible chap.
Wanting full employment might not be a wholly controversial view on the Labour benches. Surely it is Conservatives who believe unemployment is a price worth paying?
An interesting view from Janet Daley re the impact of abolishing the *fairness* rule for broadcasters
"...A sensible step would be to accept that it is just one more broadcaster in an enormous market place of alternatives. That means cutting back what [the BBC] does (and what it charges) to a core of services that commercial rivals are less likely to offer. But the larger question is what we do about the spurious notion of “neutrality” which is required by law in all broadcast news and current affairs.
The United States used to have similar legislation: known as the “fairness” rule, it decreed that airtime for a spokesman on any issue had to be balanced by a spokesman for the other side. ...
American politics is altogether too febrile and vituperative for the sedately smug BBC – which regards the US phenomenon as nothing more than a “Right-wing free-for-all” (direct quote). ... It means that groups of voters who once felt marginalised to the point of invisibility have rejoined a robust national debate and are now engaged, big time, with the democratic process. (US voter turnout, which was once shockingly low by European standards, is now generally higher than in Britain.)
She doesn't seem to be right in terms of participation in Presidential elections, which has been adrift around 60% with no obvious changes in the early 20th century:
More generally, is it a widespread view that American politics are in a healthier state? The view that it comes down to who can afford to buy the most negative attack ads is oversimplified, and the primary process does usefully test the mettle of candidates, but overall the level of political debate in the US seems even lower than Britain - mostly about the real or imagined virtues of the individual (tough, patriotic, warm, etc.) - and the dominance of money, mainly because paid media adverts are legal, is a scandal.
"Most people don’t want to be on benefits. They want to be free from the state and they need confidence and encouragement. Self-reliance. “To find yourself, think for yourself,” said Socrates,"
Mr Simon Danczuk is cut from the same cloth as Tom Harris and Frank Field - it'd be interesting to hear nominations of others who advocate this POV from the Labour benches.
I follow him on Twitter and seems a very sensible chap.
His clash with Owen Jones reminded me that pre Blair and Brown there used to be something admirable about much of the Labour party. Misguided and unrealistic perhaps, but admirable. Interested in real things, real people, real lives. Not pointless theory by overrated intellectuals.
I can't stand Owen Jones - he's clearly a very clever chappy with an enormous chip on both shoulders, which is his prerogative. That he's been adopted as the resident Lefty Pet by the BBC is just perfect. If ever they wanted to push voters away from Labour its him and Laurie Penny.
I've never forgotten an intv with Mr Jones on R5 where he discussed his book Chavs - and blamed Thatcher/Tories for the questionable dress sense of his book's subject. That just summed him up IMO.
Anyone born in 1984 who lives in 1970/80s really needs to start looking forward not back as far as I'm concerned. I've never yearned for the 40/50s despite being born in 1966.
I would suggest Sean T's main point is that Guardian readers don't know what literally means.... listening to Anneka Rice on Radio 5 (punishment) on Sat mornings, neither does she.
I agree completely. The LDs will survive pretty well in the CON-LD battles where the incumbent MP is standing again. The LD defence strategy will be to put a lot of focus on their candidates and run high octane campaigning at almost by-election levels.
In the other 570 seats there'll be almost zero activity.
If you voted LD in 2010 in a seat where they always come third you might want to make your vote count. The signs are that many more, if they did that, would go red rather than blue.
I live in a seat with a 1363 CON majority where the LDs got 20% in 2010 and Labour are out campaiginng several times a week. The local Tories appear to be doin nothing.
Mike, I think you're missing the local factor, which will help support the LD vote - mostly in their own seats, but also others. If you're a LD in a marginal, you're used to the Labour (mostly) rhetoric about not letting in the Tories, and you presumably already have a reason to reject it, which I suggest is, in many cases, a local element as well as wider disagreements about policy.
Didn't @SeanT tell us of his CiF travels a year or so ago? He called himself something like Scarlet and Black. I never spotted him = but TBH, I don't read the comments there very often anymore.
What you keep saying is that Tories and UKIP members tend to be older (on average) than "progressives", as if that means extinction for the parties involved.
There are two factors you like to ignore. Young lefties often grow into older righties, but not the other way round - it's a natural progression, get over it. And old gits vote more regularly. If the average age of the Labour voters was higher, they'd be unbeatable at election time.
The future is old gittery, the future is on the right.
I've not made the transition yet, but when I reach 75, who knows?
This is rather fun and worth reading - why I'm recruiting for 3rd class degrees [are they still given?]
It’s hard to tell the difference between a university and a business school nowadays. Where are all the hippies, the potheads and the commies? And why is everyone so intently serious and sober all the time? ‘Oh, it’s simple,’ a friend explained. ‘If you don’t get a 2:1 or a first nowadays, employers won’t look at your CV.’
So, as a keen game-theorist, I struck on an idea. Recruiting next year’s graduate intake for Ogilvy would be easy. We could simply place ads in student newpapers: ‘Headed for a 2:2 or a third? Finish your joint and come and work for us.’
Let me explain. I have asked around, and nobody has any evidence to suggest that, for any given university, recruits with first-class degrees turn into better employees than those with thirds (if anything the correlation operates in reverse). There are some specialised fields which may demand spectacular mathematical ability, say, but these are relatively few.
So my game theoretic instincts suggest that if we confine our recruitment efforts to people in the lower half of the degree ladder we shall have an exclusive appeal to a large body of people no less valuable than anyone else. And such people will be far more loyal hires, since we won’t be competing for their attention with deep-pocketed pimps in investment banking...
I live in a seat with a 1363 CON majority where the LDs got 20% in 2010 and Labour are out campaiginng several times a week. The local Tories appear to be doin nothing
Several times a week? On what issues? Do they vary?
I live in a seat with a 1363 CON majority where the LDs got 20% in 2010 and Labour are out campaiginng several times a week. The local Tories appear to be doin nothing
Several times a week? On what issues? Do they vary?
Well, yes, because sociologically, a preoccupation with the trivial is persistent and interesting.
In the 1950s, we lived in the shadow of the Bomb, we were in the process of losing an Empire, and despite the sacrifices of WW2, we still had totalitarian insurgency in Malaya and elsewhere. Five years after being on the winning side, we still had food rationing.
On the positive side, the sound barrier was up for grabs, jet fighters whizzed overhead, British aviation was still in good shape and the same decade saw the first man in space. Elvis had his first hit record, Dr Robert Moog was selling early analogue synthesizers and “The Catcher in the Rye” was published.
The Treaty of Rome established the EC, Germany’s economic miracle picked up speed and Japan also began its recovery.
Against this backdrop, a group of angry hayseeds crassly damaged something that wasn’t theirs, and one at least thought all the above less interesting than Scottish independence. WTF?
When I was a kid I liked to read the Richmal Crompton ‘Just William’ books. The adults include recurrent stereotypes: pierrots, temperance campaigners, the organisers of the village fete, and so on. This is of course Crompton brilliantly mocking the trivial preoccupations of a certain example of the middle class, but as a 10-year-old, I couldn’t fathom it at all. In the 1920s and 1930s, weren’t there things like the rise of Nazism to be thinking about? Why was nobody discussing Mr. Mitchell’s new Spitfire? Were there really such weird people around?
Yes there were, and there always are. One could call them ‘trivialites’, perhaps; people angrily fiddling while Rome burns, or booms, or whatever.
What you keep saying is that Tories and UKIP members tend to be older (on average) than "progressives", as if that means extinction for the parties involved.
There are two factors you like to ignore. Young lefties often grow into older righties, but not the other way round - it's a natural progression, get over it. And old gits vote more regularly. If the average age of the Labour voters was higher, they'd be unbeatable at election time.
The future is old gittery, the future is on the right.
I've not made the transition yet, but when I reach 75, who knows?
"If ever they wanted to push voters away from Labour its him and Laurie Penny"
I'm waiting for Laurie Penny to drift rightwards, perhaps to the LDs first.
Who's going to be first with "Red Laurie, Yellow Laurie"
Haven't we all done some trolling of various political sites under other pseudonyms? The difficulty with cif and the Telegraph website is that there is no statement, no matter how extreme, that will not have some posters on one or other of those sites vigorously agreeing with. In a world where posters draw parallels between a coup in Egypt and the European Commission, there's little scope for going beyond the pale.
The pb crowd is only a bit more difficult to spoof.
It all depends on what you consider to be the best in the world. Asian systems tend to cram kids full of facts, but are very formal and rigid; the European/American approach has tended to focus much more on encouraging creative thought. If we want to produce entrepreneurs and innovators, kids have to have time to use their imaginations. Too much formal learning, a la Shanghai and Singapore, and they won't get it.
A point you keep making, Southam. Just think, all those men and women of the past whose imagination and creativity were stymied by formal learning. People like Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mary Anne Evans, Albert Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell, Charles Darwin, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac - not an original thought or spark of creativity between them, all tragically snuffed out by formal learning.
Yes, all brought up through the western system of education which, as I say, has focused to a large extent on encouraging creativity and freedom of thought. What worries me about Gove more than anything is his idea that our schools should compete with those in Shanghai and Singapore. These are excellent at producing children who can do well in PISA-type tests, but there is no evidence that they produce innovators or entrepreneurs in any great numbers.
If this weren't in color, we would've guessed that it was made around 1950. The other ads we've looked at just had one or two poorly chosen elements, but this is a literal parade of racial stereotypes.
The ad is what Uncle Remus's fever hallucinations look like. It's what Aunt Jemima sees when she drops peyote. It is not a viewing experience that makes us thirsty for some orange drink.
We've start with some jive-talking crows, something that was already offensive when Dumbo used it in 1941, and we only regress from there. Follow along as they run through all the harmful black stereotypes from our embarrassing century.
Haven't we all done some trolling of various political sites under other pseudonyms? The difficulty with cif and the Telegraph website is that there is no statement, no matter how extreme, that will not have some posters on one or other of those sites vigorously agreeing with. In a world where posters draw parallels between a coup in Egypt and the European Commission, there's little scope for going beyond the pale.
The pb crowd is only a bit more difficult to spoof.
My favourite was protesters from Occupy LSX comparing themselves to Egyptians
Sorry? I really don't get your point - I was noting that when I was of that young age it was taught - and that Gove is reintroducing it.
It's got nothing to do with Thatcher for heaven's sake - its about expectations that appear to have declined substantially for several decades inbetween.
One point is that fractions do not need the blessed Michael. Second is that most of the education reforms to which the right objects were introduced by Conservative and not Labour governments.
Leaving that aside, I do not know if fractions were dropped, or, if so, when and why.
@Plato - Mike is talking about Labour. The issue is whether they are stalking him, or (more worryingly) whether he is stalking them!
My apols - when I see OGH using Bedford as yet another electoral benchmark...I tend to switch off. As I do when he cites Farage and Buckingham blah blah. There are some hobby-horses that have been flogged to death.
"The idea that people who grew up in the sixties are suddenly going to morph into Tory bigots seems a little patronising."
That's not what I said, and you know it.
They morph gradually and society changes slowly too. So they are moving against a background. In 2050, Laurie Penny may well be a "Tory bigot" , but the Tory party of then won't be the Tory party of today - like the Tory party of 2013 isn't the party of MacMillan. They may, of course, be even more right wing.
You're fighting a losing battle, tim. Embrace your inner senescence you'll feel happier for it.
Sorry? I really don't get your point - I was noting that when I was of that young age it was taught - and that Gove is reintroducing it.
It's got nothing to do with Thatcher for heaven's sake - its about expectations that appear to have declined substantially for several decades inbetween.
One point is that fractions do not need the blessed Michael. Second is that most of the education reforms to which the right objects were introduced by Conservative and not Labour governments.
Leaving that aside, I do not know if fractions were dropped, or, if so, when and why.
My children were all taught fractions at primary school and learned their times tables. A lot of the stuff that Giove likes to imply is no longer done actually is done. What's always worth remembering is that over the last 15 years or so standards at primary schools have improved markedly.
Sorry? I really don't get your point - I was noting that when I was of that young age it was taught - and that Gove is reintroducing it.
It's got nothing to do with Thatcher for heaven's sake - its about expectations that appear to have declined substantially for several decades inbetween.
One point is that fractions do not need the blessed Michael. Second is that most of the education reforms to which the right objects were introduced by Conservative and not Labour governments.
Leaving that aside, I do not know if fractions were dropped, or, if so, when and why.
Eh? Gove is re-introducing a standard I experienced 40yrs ago. Your bizarre prejudice against Tories is making a nonsense of your own point.
And you don't know when fractions were dropped - so why are you arguing with me about it? Frankly I don't care who was the SoS at the time - all HMGs get things right and wrong with the benefit of hindsight. As someone who's voted for several different ones, I can accept that none has a monopoly on good ideas.
@Plato - Mike is talking about Labour. The issue is whether they are stalking him, or (more worryingly) whether he is stalking them!
Best way of shoring up tactical Labour voting among 2010 Lib Dems in seats like that is to send Gove on a tour.
Infinitesemal significance either way. The next election will be won or lost on the economy: education/Gove simply won't figure in the equation. If the recovery is in earnest by June 2015 then the Tories can reasonably expect (albeit modest) net swings from LibDems, Labour and even previous non-voters. And UKIP will subside as well.
Marginal seats don't vary tremendously from the national swing than safe ones, and much of that may be attributed to a first-term incumbency bonus.
Perhaps you can tell us about the merits of system in Japan?
Not really, I'm afraid. I taught English in the state education system 15 years ago, but since then it's gone through a big reform aimed at "yutori" (something like "leeway" or "breathing space") that was supposed to stop trying to cram facts into the kids' heads and keeping them intensively occupied for every waking hour, and instead make them more creative.
A lot of older people complain that the "yutori" generation can't work properly because they're used to too much freedom, or something like that. This isn't my experience - the few young people I work are sharp, hard-working and creative, but I doubt I have a representative sample.
I have some kids in the Japanese system. it has some very good points and some poor ones.
things I like- there are plenty of male primary teachers. - the kids are encouraged to look after their own environment- they are responsible for cleaning the classrooms etc- so there is quite a bond as classmates and in learning as a cooperative experience. - teachers work a lot, they put in plenty of voluntary hours -there are a lot of afterschool activities (this is varibale by region i think) -they are very strong on basic numeracy and literacy (not being able to multiply by 9 yrs would be looked upon with amazement)
As for downsides- well, I'm not convinced that "yutori" is going all that well, At primary level things look OK, but at Junior high everything becomes focused on hitting the grade to get into the best High school; thence to get into the best University (though I'm not sure the grading of high schools or universities is based upon rigorous means)
So, the school policy may well be to ease up and allow more time for creative pursuits- but in reality all the kids go to "Juku"- that's private tutoring schools. my eldest is doing the same (we didn't force him to- but peer pressure counts)
Also at high school level the English lessons seem to change from being about communication (or playing bingo if you get a ropey english teacher) and just turn into vocabulary memorization classes..
Overall, though I think they get a pretty good, pretty traditional education, so I'm not unhappy that they're in this system.
(ps i don't think we particularly need to teach creativity. kids are fairly anarchic by nature, in my experience )
@Plato - Mike is talking about Labour. The issue is whether they are stalking him, or (more worryingly) whether he is stalking them!
Best way of shoring up tactical Labour voting among 2010 Lib Dems in seats like that is to send Gove on a tour.
Infinitesemal significance either way. The next election will be won or lost on the economy: education/Gove simply won't figure in the equation. If the recovery is in earnest by June 2015 then the Tories can reasonably expect (albeit modest) net swings from LibDems, Labour and even previous non-voters. And UKIP will subside as well.
Marginal seats don't vary tremendously from the national swing than safe ones, and much of that may be attributed to a first-term incumbency bonus.
Well you're OK then, the only politician with worse polling than Gove among 2010 Lib Dems is Osborne, who trails Balls by 31% among that group.
Look, I'm increasingly confident of winning all our bets for 2015. It's all panning out rather well, isn't it. But many a slip 'twixt cup and lip and all that....
Perhaps you can tell us about the merits of system in Japan?
Not really, I'm afraid. I taught English in the state education system 15 years ago, but since then it's gone through a big reform aimed at "yutori" (something like "leeway" or "breathing space") that was supposed to stop trying to cram facts into the kids' heads and keeping them intensively occupied for every waking hour, and instead make them more creative.
A lot of older people complain that the "yutori" generation can't work properly because they're used to too much freedom, or something like that. This isn't my experience - the few young people I work are sharp, hard-working and creative, but I doubt I have a representative sample.
I have some kids in the Japanese system. it has some very good points and some poor ones.
things I like- there are plenty of male primary teachers. - the kids are encouraged to look after their own environment- they are responsible for cleaning the classrooms etc- so there is quite a bond as classmates and in learning as a cooperative experience. - teachers work a lot, they put in plenty of voluntary hours -there are a lot of afterschool activities (this is varibale by region i think) -they are very strong on basic numeracy and literacy (not being able to multiply by 9 yrs would be looked upon with amazement)
As for downsides- well, I'm not convinced that "yutori" is going all that well, At primary level things look OK, but at Junior high everything becomes focused on hitting the grade to get into the best High school; thence to get into the best University (though I'm not sure the grading of high schools or universities is based upon rigorous means)
So, the school policy may well be to ease up and allow more time for creative pursuits- but in reality all the kids go to "Juku"- that's private tutoring schools. my eldest is doing the same (we didn't force him to- but peer pressure counts)
Also at high school level the English lessons seem to change from being about communication (or playing bingo if you get a ropey english teacher) and just turn into vocabulary memorization classes..
Overall, though I think they get a pretty good, pretty traditional education, so I'm not unhappy that they're in this system.
(ps i don't think we particularly need to teach creativity. kids are fairly anarchic by nature, in my experience )
Agree - you can't teach creativity. But you can give it time and space to flourish, you can give it direction, and you can actively seek not to stifle it.
"SCOTLAND is to get its first tennis court in recognition of Andy Murray’s achievements.
Dubbed the Glasgow Tennis Court, first minister Alex Salmond has promised to equip the facility with two racquets and up to six balls.
He said: “This tennis field, or ‘court’ as I believe they are called by experts, is a recognition of the fact that playing non-violent sports is no longer a betrayal of our national identity.
“Scotland’s up-and-coming tennis talent will be able to book it for up to 45 minutes at a time, the keys are in the nearby chip shop.”"
Beeb24 - Tories ask the Met to investigate both Labour/UNITE selections in Ilford North and Lewisham-Deptford[?]
A cull is a-coming....
If nothing else - its an enormous opportunity for media mischief making - Labour did it in spades to the Tories a while back and I assume Lynton is telling them to get stuck in by return.
Finally, the beginning of July has seen above average temperatures, the first month to do so this year. The year to date graph shows that the anomaly is now reducing, so that the year to date is merely the coldest for about 50 years, rather than the coldest for more than 130 years, as had previously been the case.
There is, of course, still plenty of time left in the year, and it may end up not being notably cold as a whole...
Finally, the beginning of July has seen above average temperatures, the first month to do so this year. The year to date graph shows that the anomaly is now reducing, so that the year to date is merely the coldest for about 50 years, rather than the coldest for more than 130 years, as had previously been the case.
There is, of course, still plenty of time left in the year, and it may end up not being notably cold as a whole...
We'll be in drought by the end of the summer, you mark my words!
Wales workers happiest but paid less and have lower skills, says report
Workers in Wales are paid less than elsewhere in Britain and do lower skilled jobs, a report says.
But they were however the happiest and most committed, according to the study led by Cardiff University.
The report said there was a long way to go before Wales can claim to be the "high quality, high skilled" economy set by politicians as an ambition.
The authors added that improvements to Wales' transport links are essential to attract better quality jobs.
Alan Felstead, the survey's director, told BBC Radio Wales: "We have a happy workforce [in Wales], but on average doing work of a lower quality and poorer paying."
He said the reason for the discrepancy was that workers in Wales are simply happy to have a job.
"They are less optimistic of finding another job which matches what they currently have.
"It's reflected in the state of the labour market in general, [and] the state of the labour market outside what they do is so much poorer that they're very happy with their lot," he told BBC Radio Wales.
Mr Felstead said there were very few "top end jobs" in high paying industries in Wales, but "relatively more low paying, low end jobs and that is reflected in the survey".
That is also reflected in the more committed workforce, he said.
"The message for employers really is that Wales is open for business."
The challenge is for the Welsh government to get better quality and better paying jobs and a way to do that would be to improve transport links, he added.
"Politicians in the Bay [Cardiff] must make a strong case for the strength of the Welsh economy for this infrastructure so we can actually attract better quality jobs, to allow our workers to get those jobs," he added.
"As any job is better than no job it's a delicate trade-off."
Not sure if a survey was needed to reveal the obvious, regarding pay and jobs. However, the "happiest" part is certainly open to debate and would be good to see the evidence for this assertion.
Agree - you can't teach creativity. But you can give it time and space to flourish, you can give it direction, and you can actively seek not to stifle it.
Absolutely. spot on. And most teachers in my experience are pretty good at it. (British teachers, I mean) (Jury still out on the Japanese ones- although have had some v good experiences so far)
"Miliband forgetting that his opponent is called David William Donald Cameron and leads the Conservative Party, not a trade union, suggests he needs a long holiday.
He divided Labour's top team with his ill-judged decision to escalate the Falkirk parliamentary selection row by calling the police."
How long a holiday would toilets like ? Indefinite ?
OT But I've just been reviewing how often I read The Times vs The Telegraph - I have the DT's blogs as a toolbar shortcut and probably click on it several times a day. I read most of them as they're timely, usually provocative and quite clever.
The Times did much better IMO opinion pieces more often - but I think the DT has caught up and now overtakes them. I had 6 mths off the Times after their stupid billing people demanded I did all the work so they could charge me for the privilege - and TBH, I think it's not really matching the DT anymore.
The odd news scoop doesn't make up for online content and a largely static site.
The STimes has really lost the plot online - the sooner they merge the M-S with Sunday the better AFAIC.
"We have withdrawn an article today relating to Unite and Mr Len McCluskey that contained allegations concerning Unite’s role in nominating Labour MPs with particular reference to Paisley. This withdrawal follows correspondence form Unite’s solicitors to the effect that information contained in the article was false. Pending further enquiries, we have withdrawn the article and request that media outlets do not report further the information contained in it."
Comments
There is currently a reasonable code of conduct for party selection applicants but it focuses mainly on what you shouldn't say (basically don't be horrible about the other candidates - one of my competitors is enthusiastically breaking this but the rest are keeping it positive) and limits to how much bumf you can send.
Edit: or Balzac.
'Balzac had difficulty adapting to the rote style of learning at the school. As a result, he was frequently sent to the "alcove," a punishment cell reserved for disobedient students (The janitor at the school, when asked later if he remembered Honoré, replied: "Remember M. Balzac? I should think I do! I had the honour of escorting him to the dungeon more than a hundred times!"). Still, his time alone gave the boy ample freedom to read every book which came his way.'
I knew 5 Smarties were a 1/4 of the Smarties on the table too.
And knew my times tables up to 12x before I left State primary school in 1977.
Perhaps my Mum helped me to know these things when others didn't - I can't remember, but surely its not *too hard* to know such things by rote then? There are few things more essential to general life than knowing how to do simple adds/subtractions/percentages and times tables in your head?
Even if its just to have a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost?
My own take presently is a 60/40 In vote although my tartan ARSE will be undertaking projections from the Autumn and clearly this is the organ(ization) to follow.
I suspect the problem with a lot of top-down education policy-making is that everyone has spent years being educated, so they think they know about education. A minister can make a good call on computer science because they don't start out thinking they know about it, so they can actually take advice from people who do.
The one thing that I thought the Tories had learned after the defeats of IDS, Hague and Howard was that a right wing Tory party was very unlikely to ever win a majority in the UK again. Surely that was Cameron's USP - I'm not a nasty old-style Tory. Difficult to see how a full on charm offensive to the Kippers would end up ultimately in anything but failure as far as the bigger picture goes.
The tired old "demonize the unions" scare tactics that some seem to be getting very excited about at the moment, won't, in my view resonate much at all with the 40% of voters that incline towards Labour so I can't see how it's going to win many votes for the Tories that they didn't have in 2010 (it will have the Kipper contingent foaming at the mouth though)
Perhaps you can tell us about the merits of system in Japan?
As a Unionist I am not thrilled that the union may be hanging on the degree of incompetence and ineptitude the Eds show by that date.
"Drenge on Tom Watson resignation letter namecheck: 'We're not totally overjoyed"
http://www.nme.com/news/drenge/71295#kTv2Chr1G8fe4LzO.99
As for Prescott's state funded primary idea - stupidest idea ever.
If Labour want primaries why not tap up Unite for a few million.
After all, does an 11 year old need a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost...?
Whenever I hear of a Marxist dying, I still get a frisson of bemusement that somebody could spend much of their life believing strongly in something patently wrong and patently evil.
There isn’t a word (that I know of) for the feeling one has upon the passing of somebody who spent much of their life believing strongly in something crushingly trivial.
It's like believing strongly in Puffa Puffa Rice, or believing strongly in countersunk screws, or that Airfix is better than Revell.
As for the post ERM recovery, JM had iirc said the ERM membership was the central plank of government policy.
A bit hard to claim credit for the recovery once hoisted by your own petard etc.
Happy to be corrected if my somewhat mdma addled mind at the time was playing tricks
I would say a 15-20% prospect?
Will it work? Dunno. Clearly there are a large number of people who still, even now, haven't faced up to the reality of the actual choices facing the country, be it in welfare reform, repairing our severely broken education system, or most notably in the public finances. The Tory leadership essentially needs to do what it is doing: keep governing well in the interests of the whole country, address these difficult problems, and ask voters for a mandate to finish the job. It may be that, as in the 1970s, the country is not yet ready face up to what needs to be done. If so, a dose of the two Eds will be what they get, with either a massive disappointment when people realise that Balls is actually following Osborne's plans and money doesn't after all grow on trees, or a panic as the markets make the point for him. Probably the latter followed by the fomer.
http://tinyurl.com/Salmond54
A lot of older people complain that the "yutori" generation can't work properly because they're used to too much freedom, or something like that. This isn't my experience - the few young people I work are sharp, hard-working and creative, but I doubt I have a representative sample.
Liam Fox
Norman Tebbitt
Simon Danczuk, Labour MP Rochdale
"Most people don’t want to be on benefits. They want to be free from the state and they need confidence and encouragement. Self-reliance. “To find yourself, think for yourself,” said Socrates,"
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-selfreliance-is-no-joking-matter-8693660.html
Ed's wonderful week just rolls on.....
"...A sensible step would be to accept that it is just one more broadcaster in an enormous market place of alternatives. That means cutting back what [the BBC] does (and what it charges) to a core of services that commercial rivals are less likely to offer. But the larger question is what we do about the spurious notion of “neutrality” which is required by law in all broadcast news and current affairs.
The United States used to have similar legislation: known as the “fairness” rule, it decreed that airtime for a spokesman on any issue had to be balanced by a spokesman for the other side. The effect was exactly the same: a Left-liberal consensus dominated all of the mass media networks’ presentation of political issues. When the fairness rule was finally revoked, a thousand flowers bloomed: talk radio exploded on to the scene, as did the famous cable news channels such as Fox News (on the Right) and MSNBC (on the Left) which were blatantly partisan and enormously vibrant.
American politics is altogether too febrile and vituperative for the sedately smug BBC – which regards the US phenomenon as nothing more than a “Right-wing free-for-all” (direct quote). But this liberation of opinion and red-blooded argument has brought the hegemony of the elites to an end. It means that groups of voters who once felt marginalised to the point of invisibility have rejoined a robust national debate and are now engaged, big time, with the democratic process. (US voter turnout, which was once shockingly low by European standards, is now generally higher than in Britain.)
And for all the fear of Right-wing influence, it was in the era of the radio talk show that America elected its most Left-wing president in a generation. Maybe allowing the voices that alarm you to be heard is not such a bad thing. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10163583/The-damaging-neutrality-at-the-BBCs-core.html
"An unholy alliance of politically ambitious über-Blairite Shadow Cabinet members, Tory politicians and outriders and a large swathe of the press are conspiring to sever Labour’s trade union link. It is not just an attempt to drive Britain’s biggest democratic movement out of political life. It would dissolve what the Labour party is – the clue is in the name – ending what connection with working people it still has, leaving it a rootless party, a mere plaything of vacuous careerists and apparatchiks."
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/this-attack-on-labours-union-links-must-notsucceed-8693653.html
"a mere plaything of vacuous careerists and apparatchiks."
How could we tell?
"After all, does an 11 year old need a general idea of how much a tank of petrol will cost...? "
That is clearly not the point I was making about primary school teaching - but as an aside, my class teacher in my final year at Benton Park Primary was a lady with many dimples called Mary McMurray - she also had blond plaits and wore plaid.
She explained times tables using her cigarette smoking habit - and how she could have bought a Mini she desired if she'd given up. She used the 12x table re the number of months it'd take and others that were a multiple of the cost of packet of fags...
40yrs later - I've never forgotten it or her - I can't recall another lesson she gave!
http://order-order.com/2013/07/08/how-labour-mps-give-parliamentary-passes-to-unite-lobbyists/
Several Labour MPs employ Unite lobbyists, subsidised with taxpayer money, sponsoring them for parliamentary passes and having them work on party business.
Jim Sheridan MP employs Steve Hart, Political Director for Unite
John Cruddas MP employs Nick Parrott, Political Officer for Unite
Mark Tami MP employs Hannah Blythyn, Political Officer for Unite
Ronnie Campbell MP employs Stephen Turner, National Officer for Unite
"You Dumbo, Roger !!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s35puUhqQJc
Jeremy Cliffe@JeremyCliffe47s
Ed M's big problem is that unlike Unite, Blairites or Balls-ites, he lacks tight-knit, organised network of support: http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2013/07/labour-politics …
"On topic: It's a false dichotomy. The next election IS about whether you want the two Eds and Labour, or Cameron and the Conservatives. That's the choice; all the rest is flummery."
Given how unhappy those polled re another Hung Parly are - I'd suspect that most floating voters will pick one of the Big Two to make sure it doesn't happen again.
The decline in approval for coalitions has been a very longstanding trend after an initial bounce.
I follow him on Twitter and seems a very sensible chap.
It's got nothing to do with Thatcher for heaven's sake - its about expectations that appear to have declined substantially for several decades inbetween.
Look at any university maths department and you'll find Russian professors.
What to teach and how (and when) to teach it are different questions. Gove conflates these, and takes ill-informed stabs at answering them.
"I never dreamed of being a model but I dreamt of winning
Wimbledon"
Very French
After that = I didn't put my hand up for many months in case I was accused of this again, and put me off trying to be a smarty pants for much longer.
"I'm amazed that David Cameron has agreed to appear with Philip Schofield ever again. Especially on an "ask anything" basis."
Really? Surely it's every politicians dream to be interviewed by the most vacuous interviewer in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voter_turnout.png
More generally, is it a widespread view that American politics are in a healthier state? The view that it comes down to who can afford to buy the most negative attack ads is oversimplified, and the primary process does usefully test the mettle of candidates, but overall the level of political debate in the US seems even lower than Britain - mostly about the real or imagined virtues of the individual (tough, patriotic, warm, etc.) - and the dominance of money, mainly because paid media adverts are legal, is a scandal.
Nadine Dorries MP@NadineDorriesMP
Sorry, last link relates to an article by @thomasknox
Nadine Dorries MP@NadineDorriesMP
Guardian readers are LITERALLY delusional and idiotic - I just Literally love this - https://twitter.com/mustberead/status/354167214749908993 …
MustBeRead@MustBeRead
By @thomasknox: How I posed as a Left-wing nutjob on the Guardian's Comment is Free – and got away with it. http://is.gd/RetMBO
I've never forgotten an intv with Mr Jones on R5 where he discussed his book Chavs - and blamed Thatcher/Tories for the questionable dress sense of his book's subject. That just summed him up IMO.
Anyone born in 1984 who lives in 1970/80s really needs to start looking forward not back as far as I'm concerned. I've never yearned for the 40/50s despite being born in 1966.
In the other 570 seats there'll be almost zero activity.
If you voted LD in 2010 in a seat where they always come third you might want to make your vote count. The signs are that many more, if they did that, would go red rather than blue.
I live in a seat with a 1363 CON majority where the LDs got 20% in 2010 and Labour are out campaiginng several times a week. The local Tories appear to be doin nothing.
Didn't @SeanT tell us of his CiF travels a year or so ago? He called himself something like Scarlet and Black. I never spotted him = but TBH, I don't read the comments there very often anymore.
tim,
What you keep saying is that Tories and UKIP members tend to be older (on average) than "progressives", as if that means extinction for the parties involved.
There are two factors you like to ignore. Young lefties often grow into older righties, but not the other way round - it's a natural progression, get over it. And old gits vote more regularly. If the average age of the Labour voters was higher, they'd be unbeatable at election time.
The future is old gittery, the future is on the right.
I've not made the transition yet, but when I reach 75, who knows?
It’s hard to tell the difference between a university and a business school nowadays. Where are all the hippies, the potheads and the commies? And why is everyone so intently serious and sober all the time? ‘Oh, it’s simple,’ a friend explained. ‘If you don’t get a 2:1 or a first nowadays, employers won’t look at your CV.’
So, as a keen game-theorist, I struck on an idea. Recruiting next year’s graduate intake for Ogilvy would be easy. We could simply place ads in student newpapers: ‘Headed for a 2:2 or a third? Finish your joint and come and work for us.’
Let me explain. I have asked around, and nobody has any evidence to suggest that, for any given university, recruits with first-class degrees turn into better employees than those with thirds (if anything the correlation operates in reverse). There are some specialised fields which may demand spectacular mathematical ability, say, but these are relatively few.
So my game theoretic instincts suggest that if we confine our recruitment efforts to people in the lower half of the degree ladder we shall have an exclusive appeal to a large body of people no less valuable than anyone else. And such people will be far more loyal hires, since we won’t be competing for their attention with deep-pocketed pimps in investment banking...
Airfix are of good quality. When it comes to die-cast Tamiya are the best....
:dont-make-me-angry...:
ETA: Dr Prassanan. This is a response to an off-topic comment. If I post something off-topic I always flag-it as - ahem - off-topic:.
Further assistence from your-good-self is not required.... :?
“you still feel the need to comment on it”
Well, yes, because sociologically, a preoccupation with the trivial is persistent and interesting.
In the 1950s, we lived in the shadow of the Bomb, we were in the process of losing an Empire, and despite the sacrifices of WW2, we still had totalitarian insurgency in Malaya and elsewhere. Five years after being on the winning side, we still had food rationing.
On the positive side, the sound barrier was up for grabs, jet fighters whizzed overhead, British aviation was still in good shape and the same decade saw the first man in space. Elvis had his first hit record, Dr Robert Moog was selling early analogue synthesizers and “The Catcher in the Rye” was published.
The Treaty of Rome established the EC, Germany’s economic miracle picked up speed and Japan also began its recovery.
Against this backdrop, a group of angry hayseeds crassly damaged something that wasn’t theirs, and one at least thought all the above less interesting than Scottish independence. WTF?
When I was a kid I liked to read the Richmal Crompton ‘Just William’ books. The adults include recurrent stereotypes: pierrots, temperance campaigners, the organisers of the village fete, and so on. This is of course Crompton brilliantly mocking the trivial preoccupations of a certain example of the middle class, but as a 10-year-old, I couldn’t fathom it at all. In the 1920s and 1930s, weren’t there things like the rise of Nazism to be thinking about? Why was nobody discussing Mr. Mitchell’s new Spitfire? Were there really such weird people around?
Yes there were, and there always are. One could call them ‘trivialites’, perhaps; people angrily fiddling while Rome burns, or booms, or whatever.
I'm waiting for Laurie Penny to drift rightwards, perhaps to the LDs first.
Who's going to be first with "Red Laurie, Yellow Laurie"
The pb crowd is only a bit more difficult to spoof.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SAUZGuLrmM
Wodger,
We all loved the advert! So ignore the Septic trolls...!
http://static1.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/a_scale_large/800-8/photos/1318719393-occupy-london-stock-exchange-wall-street-protests-go-global_875988.jpg
Leaving that aside, I do not know if fractions were dropped, or, if so, when and why.
@Roger - Lol.
"The idea that people who grew up in the sixties are suddenly going to morph into Tory bigots seems a little patronising."
That's not what I said, and you know it.
They morph gradually and society changes slowly too. So they are moving against a background. In 2050, Laurie Penny may well be a "Tory bigot" , but the Tory party of then won't be the Tory party of today - like the Tory party of 2013 isn't the party of MacMillan. They may, of course, be even more right wing.
You're fighting a losing battle, tim. Embrace your inner senescence you'll feel happier for it.
http://www.poverty.org.uk/25/index.shtml
Interesting also to speculate what Labour might be like.
About like John Major's Tories circa 1995 would be my guess.
And you don't know when fractions were dropped - so why are you arguing with me about it? Frankly I don't care who was the SoS at the time - all HMGs get things right and wrong with the benefit of hindsight. As someone who's voted for several different ones, I can accept that none has a monopoly on good ideas.
Marginal seats don't vary tremendously from the national swing than safe ones, and much of that may be attributed to a first-term incumbency bonus.
things I like- there are plenty of male primary teachers.
- the kids are encouraged to look after their own environment- they are responsible for cleaning the classrooms etc- so there is quite a bond as classmates and in learning as a cooperative experience.
- teachers work a lot, they put in plenty of voluntary hours
-there are a lot of afterschool activities (this is varibale by region i think)
-they are very strong on basic numeracy and literacy (not being able to multiply by 9 yrs would be looked upon with amazement)
As for downsides- well, I'm not convinced that "yutori" is going all that well, At primary level things look OK, but at Junior high everything becomes focused on hitting the grade to get into the best High school; thence to get into the best University (though I'm not sure the grading of high schools or universities is based upon rigorous means)
So, the school policy may well be to ease up and allow more time for creative pursuits- but in reality all the kids go to "Juku"- that's private tutoring schools. my eldest is doing the same (we didn't force him to- but peer pressure counts)
Also at high school level the English lessons seem to change from being about communication (or playing bingo if you get a ropey english teacher) and just turn into vocabulary memorization classes..
Overall, though I think they get a pretty good, pretty traditional education, so I'm not unhappy that they're in this system.
(ps i don't think we particularly need to teach creativity. kids are fairly anarchic by nature, in my experience )
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/scotland-to-get-a-tennis-court-2013070574959
"SCOTLAND is to get its first tennis court in recognition of Andy Murray’s achievements.
Dubbed the Glasgow Tennis Court, first minister Alex Salmond has promised to equip the facility with two racquets and up to six balls.
He said: “This tennis field, or ‘court’ as I believe they are called by experts, is a recognition of the fact that playing non-violent sports is no longer a betrayal of our national identity.
“Scotland’s up-and-coming tennis talent will be able to book it for up to 45 minutes at a time, the keys are in the nearby chip shop.”"
German exports in sharpest fall since 2009 Src.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23225660
:new-balls-please:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23227423
Note the flags....
Finally, the beginning of July has seen above average temperatures, the first month to do so this year. The year to date graph shows that the anomaly is now reducing, so that the year to date is merely the coldest for about 50 years, rather than the coldest for more than 130 years, as had previously been the case.
There is, of course, still plenty of time left in the year, and it may end up not being notably cold as a whole...
Workers in Wales are paid less than elsewhere in Britain and do lower skilled jobs, a report says.
But they were however the happiest and most committed, according to the study led by Cardiff University.
The report said there was a long way to go before Wales can claim to be the "high quality, high skilled" economy set by politicians as an ambition.
The authors added that improvements to Wales' transport links are essential to attract better quality jobs.
Alan Felstead, the survey's director, told BBC Radio Wales: "We have a happy workforce [in Wales], but on average doing work of a lower quality and poorer paying."
He said the reason for the discrepancy was that workers in Wales are simply happy to have a job.
"They are less optimistic of finding another job which matches what they currently have.
"It's reflected in the state of the labour market in general, [and] the state of the labour market outside what they do is so much poorer that they're very happy with their lot," he told BBC Radio Wales.
Mr Felstead said there were very few "top end jobs" in high paying industries in Wales, but "relatively more low paying, low end jobs and that is reflected in the survey".
That is also reflected in the more committed workforce, he said.
"The message for employers really is that Wales is open for business."
The challenge is for the Welsh government to get better quality and better paying jobs and a way to do that would be to improve transport links, he added.
"Politicians in the Bay [Cardiff] must make a strong case for the strength of the Welsh economy for this infrastructure so we can actually attract better quality jobs, to allow our workers to get those jobs," he added.
"As any job is better than no job it's a delicate trade-off."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-23223035
Not sure if a survey was needed to reveal the obvious, regarding pay and jobs. However, the "happiest" part is certainly open to debate and would be good to see the evidence for this assertion.
I spent yesterday mostly in the buff as it was very hot and humid down here - how Mr Murray managed to run around a court is beyond me...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ed-miliband-needs-fight-real-2037789
"among over 75's Miliband has much better ratings than Cameron."
They probably think it's that nice young man, David.
(Jury still out on the Japanese ones- although have had some v good experiences so far)
He divided Labour's top team with his ill-judged decision to escalate the Falkirk parliamentary selection row by calling the police."
How long a holiday would toilets like ? Indefinite ?
The Times did much better IMO opinion pieces more often - but I think the DT has caught up and now overtakes them. I had 6 mths off the Times after their stupid billing people demanded I did all the work so they could charge me for the privilege - and TBH, I think it's not really matching the DT anymore.
The odd news scoop doesn't make up for online content and a largely static site.
The STimes has really lost the plot online - the sooner they merge the M-S with Sunday the better AFAIC.
"We have withdrawn an article today relating to Unite and Mr Len McCluskey that contained allegations concerning Unite’s role in nominating Labour MPs with particular reference to Paisley. This withdrawal follows correspondence form Unite’s solicitors to the effect that information contained in the article was false. Pending further enquiries, we have withdrawn the article and request that media outlets do not report further the information contained in it."
This will run and run!