General UK politics

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shuttlt said:
Sure. It's nightmarish what one would have to do to make it otherwise. The big attempts that I mentioned earlier to end this - dismantling the grammar school system and expanding university entrance has had entirely the opposite effect.
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I absolutely disagree with you about both dismantling the grammar schools and expanding university entrance. I think both are good ideas. What is bad is that there is insufficient funding of the educational system with still a disproportionate amount of resources being directed at those who don't really need them as much.
 
shuttlt said:
I can go with that. You are meaning upper class to be the same as aristocrat. Sure. I would say though that the fact that he thought it was shaming to have to work indicates he was operating under an aristocratic / upper class set of rules rather than middle class ones.

Maybe that autistic reddit admin who went on Fox News to talk about the anti-work movement was actually an aristocrat?
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Either by the old definition of upper class - aristocratic, or the one that I prefer which is someone with sufficient assets that they can afford to live comfortably from the income generated by those assets so that any work is either directed at managing those assets and/or is for personal amusement - Churchill wasn't upper class, he was upper-middle class.
 
The Don said:
If you grew up living from salary packet to salary packet with little or nothing in the bank for a rainy day, then started working in much the same way and at some point in time found yourself in the comfortable position that you've got a house bought and paid for, a nice nest egg in the bank (or in the market), comfortable pension prospects (either because of an occupational pension or a substantial pension fund) then you can reasonably consider yourself to have moved from working class to middle class.
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That describes me, and I still consider myself working class. As, I suspect, would anyone who really is middle class who heard me speak (Gloucestershire accent).
 
The Don said:
You've completely misunderstood me. I don't think grammar schools are important, which is why I was very careful to say "grammar school boy makes good, regardless of whether they went to grammar school".

"Grammar school boy" in this context is shorthand for "clever person from the working classes with adequate access to good quality education who takes advantage of the opportunities".

I'm very much against the idea of grammar schools for a variety of reasons including:

  • The selection process at a specific age discriminates against "late bloomers"
  • A disproportionate proportion of meagre educational resources are directed at a small number of pupils to the detriment of the rest
  • Unless they have to spend an inordinate amount of time travelling, children from poor and/or rural areas don't have access to (typically urban) grammar schools
  • The selection process mitigates against pupils who are left to their own devices and towards those pupils whose parents can afford tutoring to help them through the selection process
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Plus, it used to be routine to take a parents profession and membership of things like Golf Clubs in to account when deciding who got in if there were more students passing the exams than there were local places.
 
Johnson’s Jimmy Savile swipe, Speaker says “Procedurally, nothing disorderly occurred”.
 
The Don said:
Either by the old definition of upper class - aristocratic, or the one that I prefer which is someone with sufficient assets that they can afford to live comfortably from the income generated by those assets so that any work is either directed at managing those assets and/or is for personal amusement - Churchill wasn't upper class, he was upper-middle class.
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We disagree, I'm not sure there is any point in continuing. For my money the grandson of a Duke, the son of a Lord, and a member of the order of the garter is upper class. I wish you well, but I'm not sure I have any more to say on this topic.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Johnson’s Jimmy Savile swipe, Speaker says “Procedurally, nothing disorderly occurred”.
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Hoyle really is a useless wanker, isn't he?

Repeating an old, debunked lie isn't unparliamentary language? Or whatever the phrasing is...

Mebbe all the opposition MPs should start everything at PMQ with, "Many people are saying that the PM is an utter lying bastard, but I tell them this isn't so. Would the PM like to comment?"

But someone having previously told the truth and been thrown out is against "convention". How about ignoring "convention" for the better functioning of Parliament? And clamping down on lying liars who lie, especially as we all (except Nadine Dorries, clearly) know they are actually lying.
 
Another one which pisses me off is MPs claiming that their constiuents aren't interested in Topic Of The Day Which Embarrasses Their Party.

The MP for Kidderminster tried it yesterday in the Commons; Tory Girl up here tried it with our local press back during the Owen Paterson bollocks, so I've taken to sending her regular e-mails informing her of what this household is interested in. I don't think she's amused, but then neither am I by some Tory apparatchick telling the press what I think.
 
shuttlt said:
We disagree, I'm not sure there is any point in continuing. For my money the grandson of a Duke, the son of a Lord, and a member of the order of the garter is upper class. I wish you well, but I'm not sure I have any more to say on this topic.
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Winston Churchill's father's title an honorific one and he was considered a commoner being the third son of the Duke. In other words, he was well down the pecking order. Sooner or later non-inheriting members of a noble family have to be considered no longer upper class otherwise we're all upper class (because statistically we're all descended from Charlemagne). IMO Winston Churchill fits the bill.

Churchill was a member of the Order of the Garter but that was for services rendered at the end of a long career rather like John Major, Baroness Amos or Mary Peters who are current members. It doesn't indicate high birth or necessarily that the person is upper class.
 
I see Johnson is threatening "instant UK sanctions" against Russia at the first sign of a Russian boot on Ukranian soil.

UK exports to Russia in 2021 amounted to £14.6B, or about double the amount the UK Govt. cheerfully spaffed on fraudulent covid claims and wasted PPE. I suspect that Russia is unimpressed. Meanwhile, several European countries are heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies.
 
GlennB said:
I see Johnson is threatening "instant UK sanctions" against Russia at the first sign of a Russian boot on Ukranian soil.

UK exports to Russia in 2021 amounted to £14.6B, or about double the amount the UK Govt. cheerfully spaffed on fraudulent covid claims and wasted PPE. I suspect that Russia is unimpressed. Meanwhile, several European countries are heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies.
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Boris Johnson is very good at announcing things, but rubbish at actually following through. Vladimir Putin knows this and knows the threats are completely empty.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Boris should threaten the Russians with confiscating their London property.
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Ah, but think of the lost donations to the Tory party. Think of the dirty secrets they could reveal. I wonder if they have the equivalent of the "golden shower" on him and/or other top Tories?
 
GlennB said:
Ah, but think of the lost donations to the Tory party. Think of the dirty secrets they could reveal. I wonder if they have the equivalent of the "golden shower" on him and/or other top Tories?
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Well, there is a reason he won't release the Russia Report.
 
GlennB said:
I see Johnson is threatening "instant UK sanctions" against Russia at the first sign of a Russian boot on Ukranian soil.

UK exports to Russia in 2021 amounted to £14.6B, or about double the amount the UK Govt. cheerfully spaffed on fraudulent covid claims and wasted PPE. I suspect that Russia is unimpressed. Meanwhile, several European countries are heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies.
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Or about £1.6Bn more than the waste/fraud that has been announced/discovered since Thursday. Which my working makes £13Bn
 
The UK Government has relaunched its "levelling up" plan for England.

Long-awaited plans to close the gap between rich and poor parts of the country have been announced by the government.

The strategy, unveiled by Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, will take until 2030 and aims to improve services such as education, broadband and transport.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60216307

Very little of it is new, and there's hardly any extra funding for these regions.

One area getting funding is keeping the UK's obsession with home-ownership going.

Create more first-time homebuyers in all areas, and reduce the number of "non-decent rented homes" by 50%
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60216307

As Darat pointed out upthread, convincing working class people that they were middle class by saddling them with huge debt so they could buy a house was the greatest trick the Thatcher government pulled.

The timescales on this are sufficiently long that by the time that it's clear that levelling up isn't working, it'll be too late to do anything about it. Of course the government doesn't really want to do any "levelling up" it just wants to be seen to be doing it - you don't actually want those Northern oiks catching up - not least because the chronic, and worsening, inequalities in the UK can only properly be addressed by large scale wealth distribution like in Germany post-unification:

But where a mission such as this has been achieved, for example in post-unification Germany, there have been massive fiscal transfers from rich regions to poor ones approaching one and a half trillion pounds, or £70bn a year.

The stark fact is that GDP per capita in some east German regions now exceeds that in some northern English regions.
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That absolutely will never happen under a Conservative government, and IMO is highly unlikely under a Labour government (because that kind wealth redistribution wouldn't get them elected).
 
jimbob said:
Or about £1.6Bn more than the waste/fraud that has been announced/discovered since Thursday. Which my working makes £13Bn
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Yeah, but a fair chunk of that £13bn has gone to friends of the Conservative Party so it hasn't really been wasted, it's just a transfer of wealth from the less well off to the very wealthiest in society - as is right and proper. :mad:
 
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