Saturday 1st & Sunday 2nd October 2016

[tinyclanger2]

Oh dear.

Boris Johnson: Brexit vote was freedom for this country – video
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?

boris the brave2_cr.jpg (135.92 KiB) Viewed 8432 times

[tinyclanger2]

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-10- ... predicted/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Theresa May has said "the sky has not fallen in as some predicted it would" following the vote to leave in the EU referendum.

1. No-one predicted the sky would fall in; they predicted 10-year disaster
2. Brexit has not yet happened
3. "Great Repeal Bill". How utterly pathetic.

[PorFavor]

'Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Tories...'

Ed Bruce.

[PorFavor]

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-10- ... predicted/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Theresa May has said "the sky has not fallen in as some predicted it would" following the vote to leave in the EU referendum.

1. No-one predicted the sky would fall in; they predicted 10-year disaster
2. Brexit has not yet happened
3. "Great Repeal Bill". How utterly pathetic.

"The Great Repeal Bill" has a very Victorian ring to it.

[RogerOThornhill]

Oops.

NUT ‏@NUTonline 7m7 minutes ago

The Chair of the Conservative Education Society Steve Mastin says he is 'totally opposed' to new grammar schools #edfuture

Is there anyone in favour of this outside of the evidence-resistent right wingers?

Obviously not!

Chris Cook ‏@xtophercook 13m13 minutes ago Birmingham, England

Yet to hear any education sector panelists at #CPC16 support extension of grammar schools (to annoyance of plenty of activists)

[tinyclanger2]

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-10- ... predicted/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Theresa May has said "the sky has not fallen in as some predicted it would" following the vote to leave in the EU referendum.

1. No-one predicted the sky would fall in; they predicted 10-year disaster
2. Brexit has not yet happened
3. "Great Repeal Bill". How utterly pathetic.

"The Great Repeal Bill" has a very Victorian ring to it.

Indeed. It comes across as something that a bunch of excited kids (sorry children) came up with.

[RogerOThornhill]

So what do we think about Blue Labour?

Only ask since there seems to be some sort of event soon.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/blue-lab ... 8306180548

Have to admit to not really knowing much about it - socially conservative is all?

[tinyclanger2]

Blue Labour.

It's something to think about (and I will). But I do wonder about social liberalism and the wisdom of the left getting pulled to the right in order to get its foot in the door.

[tinyclanger2]

image cropped.

Thanks RFM!

[tinyclanger2]

RoT - what's your view? Am torn between pragmatism and having a party I am more or less behind.

[RogerOThornhill]

RoT - what's your view? Am torn between pragmatism and having a party I am more or less behind.

I need to read more about them before I take a view - the line I put up there was way too simplistic I know.

Might have a poke around and see what I can find on t'internet.

[Tizme1]

May's speech making it crystal clear we are leaving the single market and heading for hard Brexit.

And the only opposition I have seen comes from Nicola Sturgeon.

I think a lot of people still can't quite believe she means it yet, tbh. It could certainly explain her insistence (repeated yesterday) on ruling out an early election, mind.

I've been saying since May declared herself in favour of 'remain' that it was simply a career move on her part [reverse Boris] and that in fact she was really in favour of 'out'. Nothing she has said or done [or not done when it came to campaigning to remain] has altered my opinion. Hence I am not at all surprised.

As to calling an early election - as things stand, why would she? The Labour party are still in a mess and it seems unlikely they will get their collective act together [though I very much hope I'm wrong]. Corbyn is perceived as being unelectable in a General Election. From her perspective, she carries on until May 2020 by which stage we'll presumably be a year on from leaving the EU. Assuming Corbyn is still the Labour leader, she believes she'll win in 2020. She probably thinks she'd win in 2020 even if Corbyn has been replaced due to the problems Labour are having and the fact there is no obvious 'leader in waiting' that could unite the party.

So she reckons she'll win in 2020 and then have a further 5 years to move on from exiting the EU. Plus of course the Tory party won't then be tearing themselves apart over the EU............

Depressing eh? Still, there's always 'events dear boy events'...............

[Tizme1]

Labour's press release on the decision to go for hard Brexit is a bad joke

http://press.labour.org.uk/post/1512388 ... icle-50-is" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seems reasonable enough as far as it goes. This is headline chasing from our PM every bit as much as Dave ever indulged in.

Interesting that polls don't show a majority for "hard" Brexit, so why is so much of the Tory party so gaga for it?

Because there's a majority for hard Brexit among Tory voters, I imagine.

Meanwhile remain voters are looking for a party to represent their views. In England that party currently looks like the Libdems, possibly Greens.

Labour may well end up losing votes from both sides of the debate because neither leave nor remain voters are being given any sense that the Labour position represents them.

Official Green party policy is definitely for a second referendum once the exit terms have been decided.

[Tizme1]

Seems reasonable enough as far as it goes. This is headline chasing from our PM every bit as much as Dave ever indulged in.

Interesting that polls don't show a majority for "hard" Brexit, so why is so much of the Tory party so gaga for it?

Because there's a majority for hard Brexit among Tory voters, I imagine.

Meanwhile remain voters are looking for a party to represent their views. In England that party currently looks like the Libdems, possibly Greens.

Labour may well end up losing votes from both sides of the debate because neither leave nor remain voters are being given any sense that the Labour position represents them.

I was polled for Opinium [presumably for today's Observer] this week.
I was asked how likely I'd be to vote for all the various parties in the future.
I dithered about it but eventually scored the Greens, Lib Dems and even Plaid [much as I dislike nationalism] a notch or two closer to considering voting for them in the future.
That's purely because of Brexit. Feels odd not to feel one can automatically trust Labour over it.

Can you hear my siren call @yahyah? Come join us, come join us...............

Seriously though, this could land up being a fascinating period of political history/change to study in the future. There seems such fluidity now. Bummer living through it. Though the alternative is worse.

[Tizme1]

Thoughts?

https://www.facebook.com/houseourhomele ... NE&fref=nf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tinyclanger2]

http://www.tempohousing.com/projects/keetwonen.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Keetwonen is the name of the biggest container city in the world. Still today this is unique project. Living in a converted shipping container was a new concept in the Netherlands when launched by Tempohousing, but the city of Amsterdam took the courageous step to contract Tempohousing to go and realize it. It turned out to be a big success among students in Amsterdam and it is now the second most popular student dormitory offered in Amsterdam. The initial fears of some people that the container homeswould be too small, too noisy, too cold or too hot, are all not correct: : they turned out to be spacious, quiet and well insulated and certainly offer value for money, compared to other student homes in the city.

[55DegreesNorth]

From New Scientist.
IT’S rare that scientists are moved to tears by their research projects, but for Harvard neuroscientist Charles Nelson, that was once a daily experience. In the late 1990s he and his team set up a long-running study of children living in Romanian orphanages. What they witnessed was so distressing that they had to make a rule: if you couldn’t hold back the tears, make sure you didn’t let the children see you cry.

Nelson set up the study to find out what early adversity does to child development – especially cognitive development. The project is still ongoing and the results are not pretty: the institutionalised children are in terrible distress. A more recent project in the slums of Bangladesh is likely to reach a similar conclusion. Poverty and squalor in childhood can be a life sentence.

Children in the West rarely endure the desperate levels of deprivation seen in the orphanages of Bucharest or the slums of Bangladesh, but many do experience genuine hardship. According to the UK’s Child Poverty Action Group, 3.9 million children are living in poverty in the UK. That is more than a quarter of the country’s children, growing up in households with less than 60 per cent of the median income. In the US, 15 million children live in households with an income below the official poverty line. For a couple with two children, that’s $24,036 – about $16 per person per day. For everything.

“Children who grow up poor lag behind at school and have worse health than their wealthier peers“
You can argue the toss whether 60 per cent of median income, or $16 a day, is genuine poverty. It certainly isn’t anything close to the hardships endured by many in the developing world. But even Western levels of poverty can have detrimental and long-lasting effects. Children who grow up poor lag behind at school and tend to have worse physical and mental health than their luckier peers.

Alleviating child poverty can be done, but it requires political will. From 1998 to 2010, approximately 800,000 children in the UK were lifted above that poverty line, largely because of policies designed to do so. But progress is fragile. Over the past five years 500,000 have slumped back in. The Institute of Fiscal Studies forecasts that by the end of this parliament the number will have climbed back to its late-1990s peak, despite legally binding targets to reduce child poverty.

That is a shameful statistic. Politicians paying lip service to the goal while spectacularly failing to deliver it might be jolted into action by the fact that their abject performance is costing the taxpayer huge sums of money. According to one recent analysis, dealing with the consequences of child poverty directly costs the UK government £15 billion a year, £3 billion more than in 2008.

Why aren’t UK opposition parties holding the ruling Conservatives to account for not just failing to live up to their own targets, but for letting the gains of the early 2000s be lost – and squandering billions in the process? Why isn’t the Labour party trumpeting its own admirable record on this issue, if only to highlight the fact that it is possible to make a difference if you actually want to?

Science cannot tell politicians what to do, but it can alert them to hard-to-see problems. On child poverty, the evidence is solid and growing. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, it ought to be clear that tackling child poverty and its lifelong consequences is not a political choice but a humanitarian duty.

This article appeared in print under the headline “End this poor start in
Magazine issue 3093, published 1 October 2016

[thatchersorphan]

May speech makes it clear: We’re leaving the single market http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/10 ... gle-market" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[RogerOThornhill]

May speech makes it clear: We’re leaving the single market http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/10 ... gle-market" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wonder what Gibraltar think about that - didn't they vote remain by about 98-2?

[Tizme1]

'Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Tories...'

Clearly I am a successful mother CJA. Three children and they all despise Tory ideology. Job done. Well, that and keeping them alive. And healthy. And vaguely sane. Though that brings us back to point one - despising Tory ideology.

[tinyclanger2]

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/10 ... gle-market" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
In years to come, this will be seen as one of the most disastrous speeches ever made by a prime minister. Not only did she propose a goal which will devastate the British economy, she also gave away her own meagre leverage in securing it.

Yes but it's a democratic disaster. Moreover it's OUR disaster.
I mean it's not like the PM hasn't been voted into power or anything.

[citizenJA]

May speech makes it clear: We’re leaving the single market http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/10 ... gle-market" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ian Dunt may well be right but I don't know if he's not reading too much into it. Does anyone know? Is Dunt astute? Serious question.

"And then came the crunch moment: “We're going to be able to make our own decisions on how we label our food.”

It seems innocuous, but it was quite clear what it meant. Membership of the single market entails following regulations on goods and
services. That means that yes, decisions are arrived at on the nature of packaging and even the workers’ rights when they make it.
This is regulatory equivalence. It is clearly not something Britain will continue to be part of."

An aside, Dunt analysed the hell out of Labour leadership referring to 'access' to the single market finally writing

Is there any point to this analysis? Possibly not.

It may only be on my mind because I've read two of his articles within forty-eight hours and both times I've wondered if he's not using
slender threads to make conclusions. Then again, it could just be me. I desperately want him to be wrong.

[RogerOThornhill]

Greening's come up with some cunning plans...

Education blueprint for future: tutor-proof 11-plus and grammar schools among new reforms


http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/ ... ls-changes

Justine Greening has vowed to end the practice of wealthy parents paying for extra-curricular coaching to get their children into the best selective state schools. She has also pledged to allow the most academically-gifted comprehensive pupils to take selective subjects at neighbouring grammar schools and for those who fail the 11-plus to try again at different ages.

Ms Greening said she was examining the merits of introducing new entrance exams that are less susceptible to coaching to ensure the proposed new generation of grammar schools take in more children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

1. How on earth is she going to end private tutoring?
2. Tutor-proof 11+?

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... ged-pupils" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

3. Getting pupils to move to different schools for different lessons? Assumes that grammar schools have surplus places that other pupils can simply fill a certain times. How long are pupils going to spend travelling between schools?

[tinyclanger2]

The lunatics at the Tory conference applauded all of this. They cheered the Union, even as May announced the greatest strain she could possibly impose on it. They cheered when a speaker mentioned Gibraltar, even though it was now at risk like never before. They cheered dreams of British economic greatness, which are now in jeopardy precisely because of the policy they were jubilant about

Bless.

[citizenJA]

'Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Tories...'

Clearly I am a successful mother CJA. Three children and they all despise Tory ideology. Job done. Well, that and keeping them alive. And healthy. And vaguely sane. Though that brings us back to point one - despising Tory ideology.

I've read Tory literature and historical leadership records. I don't like their work, it's a bad club to join, in my opinion.

[Tizme1]

http://www.tempohousing.com/projects/keetwonen.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Keetwonen is the name of the biggest container city in the world. Still today this is unique project. Living in a converted shipping container was a new concept in the Netherlands when launched by Tempohousing, but the city of Amsterdam took the courageous step to contract Tempohousing to go and realize it. It turned out to be a big success among students in Amsterdam and it is now the second most popular student dormitory offered in Amsterdam. The initial fears of some people that the container homeswould be too small, too noisy, too cold or too hot, are all not correct: : they turned out to be spacious, quiet and well insulated and certainly offer value for money, compared to other student homes in the city.

Thanks tc2. The Thanet article was suggesting 'container living' as a temporary solution for homeless people. From what I've read so far, they are suggesting something much simpler than Keetwonen. On the face of it, it seems like a possible solution. But, one of my worries is that it could take the pressure off Councils to rehouse people in proper homes.

I need to research more I think.

[tinyclanger2]

contributor btl on politics.co.uk pointed out the irony of this displaying on the hard brexit story:

HEATHROW_OUTWARD_NATION_300x250.jpg (122.72 KiB) Viewed 8286 times

[AngryAsWell]

Greening's come up with some cunning plans...

Education blueprint for future: tutor-proof 11-plus and grammar schools among new reforms


http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/ ... ls-changes

Justine Greening has vowed to end the practice of wealthy parents paying for extra-curricular coaching to get their children into the best selective state schools. She has also pledged to allow the most academically-gifted comprehensive pupils to take selective subjects at neighbouring grammar schools and for those who fail the 11-plus to try again at different ages.

Ms Greening said she was examining the merits of introducing new entrance exams that are less susceptible to coaching to ensure the proposed new generation of grammar schools take in more children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

1. How on earth is she going to end private tutoring?
2. Tutor-proof 11+?

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... ged-pupils" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

3. Getting pupils to move to different schools for different lessons? Assumes that grammar schools have surplus places that other pupils can simply fill a certain times. How long are pupils going to spend travelling between schools?

They will just make bigger schools so pupils only have to move between classrooms, something like - Oh I don't know - say, Streaming? Then in another 5 years, when academy chains hand the school back (on realising they simply cannot make a profit) they can rename them Comprehensives! - or something.

[Tizme1]

'Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Tories...'

Clearly I am a successful mother CJA. Three children and they all despise Tory ideology. Job done. Well, that and keeping them alive. And healthy. And vaguely sane. Though that brings us back to point one - despising Tory ideology.

I've read Tory literature and historical leadership records. I don't like their work, it's a bad club to join, in my opinion.

I've mentioned before that my youngest son was in favour of Brexit and that caused some political tension between us [though not personal tension thankfully]. Given that I absolutely despise Tory ideology, I have occasionally wondered how I would have coped if any of my children had grown up to be Tory voters. Luckily I haven't had to find out.

One very close friend of mine has a daughter who has gone 'Tory' and it is causing difficulties. Another friend has a right old mixture. One sister has gone 'Tory' the other has gone UKIP, as has his mother. It drives him nuts!

[tinyclanger2]

http://dailytimes.com.pk/business/03-Oc ... n-knows-it" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?
Some pro-European Labour MPs are now backing an end to the four key EU freedoms of movement - of goods, capital, services and citizens - by calling for work permits and managed migration. They are dubbed "Red Ukip" and add to the confusion around how to respond to Brexit.

...

Substitute the European Union and Brussels for the UK and Westminster and the SNP rhetoric matches that of Tory-Ukip nationalists saying freedom requires divorce from our neighbours. Arguably the UK is a prototype European Union of four nations - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - with full rights of movement, residence and even voting afforded to all citizens of a foreign republic, Ireland.

[pk1]

Thoughts?

https://www.facebook.com/houseourhomele ... NE&fref=nf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There's a shipping container housing plot in Brighton. When it was suggested, I thought it sounded horrific but since being created, it's scooped awards for 2 consecutive years.

http://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2015 ... 283/43283/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[citizenJA]

Goodnight, everyone.
love,
cJA

[Tizme1]

Greening's come up with some cunning plans...

Education blueprint for future: tutor-proof 11-plus and grammar schools among new reforms


http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/ ... ls-changes

Justine Greening has vowed to end the practice of wealthy parents paying for extra-curricular coaching to get their children into the best selective state schools. She has also pledged to allow the most academically-gifted comprehensive pupils to take selective subjects at neighbouring grammar schools and for those who fail the 11-plus to try again at different ages.

Ms Greening said she was examining the merits of introducing new entrance exams that are less susceptible to coaching to ensure the proposed new generation of grammar schools take in more children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

1. How on earth is she going to end private tutoring?
2. Tutor-proof 11+?

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... ged-pupils" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

3. Getting pupils to move to different schools for different lessons? Assumes that grammar schools have surplus places that other pupils can simply fill a certain times. How long are pupils going to spend travelling between schools?

1 and 2 are nonsense. There are two grammar schools in Watford - Boys grammar and Girls Grammar. Actually the Boys school at least is now an academy. But in any case, neither were 'pure' grammar schools because they applied the sibling rule to one degree or another. My daughter is my eldest so when she sat the 'common entrance exam' the sibling rule was irrelevant. She was offered a place. As were 4 other girls in her school. It was a small primary school and I knew all the parents well. One girl was offered a place on her musical ability [12 such places were set aside each year]. Two had been having paid for private tutoring for at least two years. One had been having private tutoring for about 18 months provided by her mother's church.

My daughter did not have any private tutoring paid for or otherwise. However, from babies to toddlers, to home educating, my ex and I had always sought to encourage them to expand their knowledge. And we continued that when they went to school. You can not legislate against parental input. Whether that is parents themselves expanding their children, or parents paying for tutoring, or support from a Church or such like. Doesn't matter. You can't legislate against it.

I don't know the answer that will provide the best education for all, but I do know it isn't Grammar Schools. Nor 'Academies' or 'Free Schools'.