Cont: General UK politics [2]

[Mojo]

Interestingly the "anti-government" BBC is choosing to lie about what Boris Johnson said.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-...dfed6c1136d922db66f8cb&pinned_post_type=share

That's rubbish, he just said that he wasn't aware of any business being discussed but as he's unaware of raucous parties happing in his own flat - that means nothing whatsoever.

He was unaware of a cake sneaking up on him.

 

[Planigale]

I wasn't actually advocating for the return of grammar schools. I was pointing out that as long as there is a level of elite education that people can buy into - and let's not kid ourselves, how many parents do you know who have a spare £40K per annum + expenses on top - then there will always be the problem of the UK being ruled by a bunch of out of touch toffs because they are the only people presumed acceptable for the role of PM.

I feel sure that Sunak sincerely believes he is there by merit and I have to say whilst you are in the system you cannot see the system. It is only now at a distance and having read the book The Class Ceiling - although ironically I studied Sociology as an optional subject for my degree and read it for leisure - that it smacked me like a brick that _DOH! of course I was carried along by privilege all the time, without even realising it. All those times I turned up at a job interview and given the job without even a question being asked, it just suddenly became clear. We each thinkw e are ordinary but then wait! So my mother newly separated was able to buy a four bed house in a leafy area thanks to a deposit from her parents and I happened to go to a reasonably prestigious school which was nearby. I had a proper employment pension plan before they became compulsory. I had training contracts enabling me to bunk off once a week to a top shiny business college (no distance learning needed, everything needed to pass professional exams laid on) and then, here's the rub, once having passed a ridiculous number of mindbending exams...you still need to find two suitably qualified people to endorse you for membership (mentorship, sponsorship). Reading this tome just suddenly made me realise oh my goodness, yes, everyone in my family is naturally bright and able to pass exams, but I was cruising along on privilege and never saw it before. The class system in the UK means you can't just 'work hard and make sacrifices', you have to send out the right social code signals in order to even get your foot in the door. There were many times I was broke, and like everybody had good times and bad times, but all along I had the safety net which those who do not have inherited wealth never do, and I never saw it.

The idea of merit is just an illusion. Here in Finland schools like Winchester and Eton are actually illegal. You cannot buy yourself into the establishment. When you look at the scandinavian, nordic and baltic nations and even New Zealand and they manage to recruit perfectly decent prime ministers who don't look anything like Billy Bunter or Lord Snooty. PM Sanna Marin grew up in a social housing apartment with a single parent who was in a same sex relationship. She was in her early thirties when she took on the role and wears trendy clothes.

I think Liz Truss gets it as she went to an ordinary comprehensive and her parents took her on protest marches. Her dad is a professor, sure, but the lecturers I know rarely earned more than about £45,000 (some years ago) which is hardly super wealth league. When she got to Oxford she will have had the culture shock of being one of the rare ordinary middle classes. However, whilst you are the class system you really don't see how you are privileged, so people think Truss is criticising the quality of teaching or the school buildings and are incredibly offended by the perceived insult. However, I don't think that was the point she was making.

On the other hand you have John Major who became a Tory prime minister despite having a background which was about as far from elite as you can get, no university at all. Edward Heath came from a lower working class background and like Thatcher (from a lower middle class background) they benefitted from a state grammar school enabling them to get to Oxford. Certainly less elite than any recent labour prime ministers.

I suspect there was a period probably up to about the 70s when grammar schools did improve social mobility; they did take working class kids, gave them a veneer of middle class respectability and got them into universities. This at a time when upper middle class parents could afford to send their children to minor public schools and did so. Since that time social mobility has stalled. Of course the downside was the neglect of the left behind.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Re schooling back in the '70s: other factors can be at play than class and money.

I was at grammar school in Durham and everyone was encouraged to do as well as they could. We were the first co-ed year and female pupils got the same education as the males (my 6th form year was pretty evenly split on gender grounds, as were the proportions going on to university or other higher ed, including Oxbridge and red brick, now Russell Group, universities).

Carrot Flower Queen is a few years younger and went to a comprehensive on Tyneside, just de-grammared the year before she started and so taught by, in essence, grammar school teachers. Her dad was from a wealthier and poncier background than my family (commercial artists and designers), but at school the female pupils were all discouraged from study and discouraged from applying for anything beyond O-levels, just to go and be secretaries. And next to no one at all, definitely no females, went to university.

CFQ's descriptions of that, just ex grammar, school, a few miles up the road from me a couple of years later sound like a different world, heavily dominated by institutional sexism. And I'm sure Truss would have loved that level of sexism, as she complains about being taught HPSE and the like...

ETA A couple of other factors are that quite a few of our teachers had bairns, both male and female, at the school and that various teachers knew parents, either socially or had been at school with them or lived in the same streets, none of which applied where CFQ went to school. Durham was a place different to many others...

 

[Vixen]

I get what Truss means. My grammar school went from being highly academic, sporting and competitive to the opposite with the appointment of a headmaster who appeared to despise the grammar school lot and grades and ranking were changed from proper scores and class rank into an egalitarian 'A, B, C or D' as it switched to comprehensive for the new intake. Sunak keeps talking about 'levelling up' but how on earth does he propose to do it and does he really have any idea what he is talking about? The current system has exactly the same flaws as the grammar school system had: an elitist education for the few. In fact it is worse: at least grammar schools catered for 20% of the population. Public schools cater for just 10%. Think of the privileges of grammar school and how it gets you a ticket into the Civil Service or or other solid jobs and then magnify that manifold about the ticket Eton, Harrow and Westminister buy you into. To level up, you have to get rid of the two-tier system all together. It isn't going to happen because it suits those at the top. My father knew this and in his remarriage, made sure to send his sons to public school, from which it was natural to go to Sandhurst and then be sponsored to study electronics and communications at a decent uni. It all seems based on merit: work hard and you shall succeed, but in fact it is based on whether you get access to the fast track and you won't, if you do not know the rules and convey the right social signals. When I met my half-brother after not seeing him for many years, I almost swooned as he had such a wonderful 'gentlemanly veneer', the result of getting on the privileged track and coming out polished finished product like some kind of Simon Templar. Not that different from Sunak. A fine line between smarminess and charm.


To level up, this can't go on. Yet there is no intention to change the system.

 

[dudalb]

OK, can somebody post a link to a good basic description of the British Educational System, which is a total mystery to us Yanks?

 

[Lothian]

OK, can somebody post a link to a good basic description of the British Educational System, which is a total mystery to us Yanks?

I can explain it.
The norm is

Primary school which goes from reception (,optional) ~4 years old to year 1 through to year 6 ~11 years old.

Then there is secondary school which does school years 7-11. In year 11(age 16) kids will do GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) exams in around 11 subjects. Some kids leave School at this point.

Others will go to 6th form (school years 12 &13) where they will normally do 3 or 4 A levels (Advanced levels).
6 form colleges can be separate schools but often a secondary school has its own 6th form so the school caters from school years 7 to 13. (11-18 in age)
At 18 those staying in education go to university.


That is the basic set up.
Private schools and possibly some areas (the structure often depends on the area) can mess around and have primary schools, prep schools then secondary school. But the basic is primary to age 11, secondary to age 16 sixth form to age 18



Grammar schools are a secondary school with entrance exams those who fail go to a comprehensive secondary school

"6th form" follows the old numbering system that started with secondary schools covering years 1-5.Secondry schools have now changed to years 7-11 but sixth form has stuck.

GCSEs used to be called O levels (ordinary level)



.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I can explain it.
The norm is

Primary school which goes from reception (,optional) ~4 years old to year 1 through to year 6 ~11 years old.

Then there is secondary school which does school years 7-11. In year 11(age 16) kids will do GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) exams in around 11 subjects. Some kids leave School at this point.

Others will go to 6th form (school years 12 &13) where they will normally do 3 or 4 A levels (Advanced levels).
6 form colleges can be separate schools but often a secondary school has its own 6th form so the school caters from school years 7 to 13. (11-18 in age)
At 18 those staying in education go to university.


That is the basic set up.
Private schools and possibly some areas (the structure often depends on the area) can mess around and have primary schools, prep schools then secondary school. But the basic is primary to age 11, secondary to age 16 sixth form to age 18



Grammar schools are a secondary school with entrance exams those who fail go to a comprehensive secondary school

"6th form" follows the old numbering system that started with secondary schools covering years 1-5.Secondry schools have now changed to years 7-11 but sixth form has stuck.

GCSEs used to be called O levels (ordinary level)



.

Not all areas have Grammar schools, they have just Comprehensives.

Then of course we have the Academy schools that are taking over. Some are like Grammar schools in that they are selective, others aren't. They are semi privatised in that they are not controlled by local education departments and are run by a Trust that can have several schools in it.
Then there are the specialist schools. They are like the Academies but they specialise in one subject area like sport or engineering.

There are also faith schools like Church of England, Catholic and Muslim schools mixed in

There are also the new Tory 'Free Schools' that have complete self control and aren't subject to the same regulation levels as other schools and don't even have to employ qualified teachers.

 

[junkshop]

I can explain it.
The norm is

Primary school which goes from reception (,optional) ~4 years old to year 1 through to year 6 ~11 years old.

Then there is secondary school which does school years 7-11. In year 11(age 16) kids will do GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) exams in around 11 subjects. Some kids leave School at this point.
Others will go to 6th form (school years 12 &13) where they will normally do 3 or 4 A levels (Advanced levels).
6 form colleges can be separate schools but often a secondary school has its own 6th form so the school caters from school years 7 to 13. (11-18 in age)
At 18 those staying in education go to university.


That is the basic set up.
Private schools and possibly some areas (the structure often depends on the area) can mess around and have primary schools, prep schools then secondary school. But the basic is primary to age 11, secondary to age 16 sixth form to age 18



Grammar schools are a secondary school with entrance exams those who fail go to a comprehensive secondary school

"6th form" follows the old numbering system that started with secondary schools covering years 1-5.Secondry schools have now changed to years 7-11 but sixth form has stuck.

GCSEs used to be called O levels (ordinary level).

Highlghting mine, clarfication below¹

Not all areas have Grammar schools, they have just Comprehensives.

Then of course we have the Academy schools that are taking over. Some are like Grammar schools in that they are selective, others aren't. They are semi privatised in that they are not controlled by local education departments and are run by a Trust that can have several schools in it.
Then there are the specialist schools. They are like the Academies but they specialise in one subject area like sport or engineering.

There are also faith schools like Church of England, Catholic and Muslim schools mixed in

There are also the new Tory 'Free Schools' that have complete self control and aren't subject to the same regulation levels as other schools and don't even have to employ qualified teachers.

Also, sometimes Primary education is split between separate infant and junior schools.

An alternative to sixth form is Further Education college².

¹It should be noted that it is the law now that everyone must now stay in education up to the age of 18 (be that school, FE, or an apprenticeship).

²most FE colleges also offer GCSE and functional skills courses for those that have not achieved these at school, for whatever reason.

See? Simple, innit?




ETA- to use my own education as an illustration (for context, I was born in 1975 [so something of a spring chicken around here], and in Kent [which still has selective education]):

St. Alphege Infant's School,
The Endowed CoE Junior School,
Simon Langton Boy's Grammar*, up to half way through sixth form (when I was 'asked' to leave,),
Canterbury College (two years of A-levels, kind of ****** them up - discovered girls and other intoxicants),
A year of crappy jobs and dole,
Canterbury College (again) 2 year GNVQ - only funded for one year, so done in one year. That was fun.
Thames Valley University.

*As I had friends at various local secondary moderns, (there are a lot of schools in Canterbury) I was able to measure the facilities and breadth of sylabus of my historic, storied grammar school against their dirty, common little 'comprehensives'.

Suffice to say, I regretted my choice.

 

[The Don]

Interesting to see that Rishi Sunak has changed tack and is now promising to cut some taxes - specifically VAT on energy:

Tory leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak has pledged to scrap the 5% VAT rate on household energy bills if prices continue to rise later this year.

The former chancellor, who has not promised tax cuts so far in his campaign, said the plan would help families with rising living costs.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62309017

Whilst hardly a paragon of fiscal virtue, at least he wasn't previously living in cloud cuckoo land but that's out of the window now.

Not that it will matter one bit. He's too "exotic" for the Tory membership to vote for. He could promise to triple the pension and abolish all taxes and he still wouldn't get in.

 

[Darat]

Interesting to see that Rishi Sunak has changed tack and is now promising to cut some taxes - specifically VAT on energy:



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62309017

Whilst hardly a paragon of fiscal virtue, at least he wasn't previously living in cloud cuckoo land but that's out of the window now.

Not that it will matter one bit. He's too "exotic" for the Tory membership to vote for. He could promise to triple the pension and abolish all taxes and he still wouldn't get in.

I was thinking about this and despite his lack of morals and flexible ethics he's never quite fitted into the new tory paradigm, he still thinks that announcements of "policies" are meant to be delivered rather than the sole purpose of announcing "policies" is to gain positive headlines that day or week.

To be fair even if he had realised that and adopted it we still know he simply didn't have the one quality above all that the membership value.

 

[jimbob]

Well, the opposition party political broadcasts have been gifted lots of material

video in link

https://twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/status/1552004204524437509?s=20&t=_-JEokgyc9g3rj51UUwyOQ

 

[The Don]

Well, the opposition party political broadcasts have been gifted lots of material

video in link

https://twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/status/1552004204524437509?s=20&t=_-JEokgyc9g3rj51UUwyOQ

The thing that beggars belief is that a significant proportion of the British electorate will be convinced that it was all the fault of:

• The Labour Party
• Remoaners
• The Last Government - which has nothing to do with the current government at all

 

[Carrot Flower King]

OK, can somebody post a link to a good basic description of the British Educational System, which is a total mystery to us Yanks?

And a further point is that "public" schools are nothing of the sort, but are private, fee-paying (often eye-wateringly high fees) schools whose purpose is to enshrine and protect class privilege. The "public" bit is for historical reasons, which also apply to the tax exempt status of these institutions.

An equitable society, like several European countries, would get shot of these bastions of unearned privilege, but we don't have an equitable society, being run by the privileged, for the benefit of the privileged.

 

[Andy_Ross]

As far as I am aware, Covid rules were followed at all times

As far as I am aware, all donations in relation to the flat refurbishment were made with full propriety

As far as I am aware, no Government business was discussed


I see a pattern

 

[Vixen]

OK, can somebody post a link to a good basic description of the British Educational System, which is a total mystery to us Yanks?

It is all very simple. Imagine that education is running a race and you are running to win it.

Everybody is at the same starting line. However, a parent with a fistful of money, manages to persuade the starting official to let their little Boris have a ten-yard start. Thus, Little Boris wins the prize of having the selection of the best jobs, because he won the race, did he not?

That is the current UK education system in a nut shell.

 

[The Don]

It is all very simple. Imagine that education is running a race and you are running to win it.

Everybody is at the same starting line. However, a parent with a fistful of money, manages to persuade the starting official to let their little Boris have a ten-yard start. Thus, Little Boris wins the prize of having the selection of the best jobs, because he wont he race, did he not?

That is the current UK education system in a nut shell.

A decent summary, but for the likes of Boris Johnson, I'd say that they get a 50, 60, 70 or 80 metre start.

Meanwhile poor children from sink estates whose parents are unwilling and/or unable to actively advocate for their children's education and provide the myriad "extras" that other parents can provide are running the race in an old-fashioned diving suit.

 

[Vixen]

I was thinking about this and despite his lack of morals and flexible ethics he's never quite fitted into the new tory paradigm, he still thinks that announcements of "policies" are meant to be delivered rather than the sole purpose of announcing "policies" is to gain positive headlines that day or week.

To be fair even if he had realised that and adopted it we still know he simply didn't have the one quality above all that the membership value.

He's an opportunist, isn't he? He grabs opportunities with both hands. If he fails to make PM, it's no skin off his nose, I am sure.

Another opportunity will be along soon.

 

[Vixen]

And a further point is that "public" schools are nothing of the sort, but are private, fee-paying (often eye-wateringly high fees) schools whose purpose is to enshrine and protect class privilege. The "public" bit is for historical reasons, which also apply to the tax exempt status of these institutions.

An equitable society, like several European countries, would get shot of these bastions of unearned privilege, but we don't have an equitable society, being run by the privileged, for the benefit of the privileged.

A common misconception of 'equitable' that Liz Truss touched upon is that 'we are all grade C now'. So, when a race is run EVERYBODY should win first prize, even if the person who touched the tape first was the person who got up every morning at 5:00 to practice and then ran again after school for two hours and the person who came last just played on his XBox the whole time.


Because fee-paying school like Eton, St Paul's and Winchester, etc., are banned in countries like Finland, that doesn't mean there is no competitive spirit. There is a gymnasium system here (rather like a grammar school) whereby those who like to stick their head in a book or muck around in a chemistry or physics laboratory are encouraged to, and those who are not interested are not forced to, as long as everybody achieves a basic standard in reading, writing, maths, mother language, Swedish and English (usually). Going to a trade school instead to learn a vocation is no disgrace. What you can't do is buy your way in, as you can in the UK.

If you have ever worked in the city, civil service, in the banks, medical establishments, law firms, etc., you soon notice all of the top positions are inhabited by the very posh (even if the management is full of the working classes who did well). Look at their expensive clothes and cars and their CV's and you think, this is all natural. They are naturally superior, just look at their prestigious education! Everybody believes this is earned privilege but few understand how little is actually earned, including the privileged themselves.

So there will not be any 'levelling up' as soundbitten by Sunak whose parents 'bought' him into the establishment (and why not, they are allowed to and they were shrewd) because there is no way Slicky Rikki is going to change that system of privilege for his own kids. It is just empty rhetoric.

 

[Vixen]

As far as I am aware, Covid rules were followed at all times

As far as I am aware, all donations in relation to the flat refurbishment were made with full propriety

As far as I am aware, no Government business was discussed


I see a pattern

Definite Red Flag. Johnson is kompromat, hence his trying to get Evgenny accepted by MI5 (they refused to even let him in the building), ignoring the intelligence advice not to accept him into the House of Lords and by his refusal the publish the Russia Report unredacted.

Whilst he is Prime Minister, he has the power to do all of these things, but once he is out of office, he will be subject to criminal investigation like anybody else.

 

[The Don]

Definite Red Flag. Johnson is kompromat, hence his trying to get Evgenny accepted by MI5 (they refused to even let him in the building), ignoring the intelligence advice not to accept him into the House of Lords and by his refusal the publish the Russia Report unredacted.

Whilst he is Prime Minister, he has the power to do all of these things, but once he is out of office, he will be subject to criminal investigation like anybody else.

They may have kompromat on Boris Johnson but the man himself isn't

compromising information collected for use in blackmailing, discrediting, or manipulating someone, typically for political purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat