Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th November 2014
Posted: Sat 29 Nov, 2014 8:24 am
Morning all.
Pitting the mansion tax against immigration 'control' measures is stretching it more than a bit. I don't see the mansion tax as born out of, or appealing to, envy and resentment. I see it as trying to address a big imbalance in the amounts people pay towards the public coffers in relation to what they have ... if it wasn't this tax it would probably be higher bands of council tax to address massive rises in property values.Mike Smithson @MSmithsonPB · 7h 7 hours ago
David Herdson says "Harnessing envy and resentment could be the key to GE15" http://bit.ly/1uUlES1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick 15h15 hours ago
Grant Shapps seems still at old trick: follows ppl on Twitter, hoping maybe they'll follow him, & boost follower figs. Drops them days later
John PrescottVerified account
@johnprescott
@MichaelLCrick It's all part of @grantshapps' Long Term Algorithmic Plan
Otto English @Otto_English · 40m 40 minutes ago
Ukip's Neil Hamilton recreates "that scene" from Ghost. If you have eyes prepare to rip them out #why via @PickardJE
Shelter @Shelter · 19h 19 hours ago
JUST IN: It's outrageous that two MPs obstructed a Bill with cross-party support to end #revengeevictions.
They haven't been worthy of the name for some time. But, yes, it will be truly disgusting if they support Grayling's latest slash at the unchosen many. And they will.Ian Dunt @IanDunt · 18h 18 hours ago
Any liberal who votes with the government on Monday against judicial review is not worthy of the name.
#CameronMustGo still at number 2
Jeez.rebeccariots2 wrote:I'm sorry for all those of you trying to eat your breakfast - or not feeling that good this morning. This won't help.Otto English @Otto_English · 40m 40 minutes ago
Ukip's Neil Hamilton recreates "that scene" from Ghost. If you have eyes prepare to rip them out #why via @PickardJE
Although no one's listening to him and it won't gain him any more votes, I do think Ed Miliband's proposals around immigration will help to a degree. We have a lot of unskilled labour coming in because UK businesses are actively going to Eastern Europe to recruit it. Ensuring jobs aren't being solely advertised abroad will help, many would be filled domestically before the Romanians could pack their bags. Also enforcing minimum wage much more effectively, policing employment conditions, ensuring people are given proper breaks and so on would eliminate the advantages to employers of employing immigrants over home grown employees.Sticky99 wrote:Morning all,
It has been interesting to see David Cameron’s proposals for toughening his stance against EU migrants yesterday.
Most of it was of course a load of irrelevant hot air. David Cameron knows this deep down, that most EU migrants arrive in the UK to work without any social security whatsoever - restricting JSA and tax credits is a false economy. However, the hostile reception that Cameron’s speech received from EU nation suggests that he’ll have no chance in amending EU treaties to actually make his proposals happen. Even his tinkering at the edges won’t happen, let alone doing something that would absolutely stop uncontrolled migration – boarder control and amendment to the absolute freedom of movement.
It is an inconvenient truth for the right that the vast majority of migrants come here to work. If anything the Tories set themselves up for an even bigger fall after yesterday’s speech. The speech, like his infamous immigration target in 2010 has been much publicised. Even if Cameron’s proposals over social security were agreed by other EU nations, the tougher regime would do nothing to deter EU migrants from coming to the UK. Already today voters sounded awfully skeptical today in the news bulletins, imagine how they’ll feel when they realise Dave’s window dressing achieved absolutely nothing in terms of reducing EU migration?
My own view is that EU migration is growing too fast. I don’t think we have the private and social housing or the jobs for incoming EU migrants without further inflaming tensions in communities and creating very real employment and housing issues. In terms of private-sector housing I know this is a particularly prevalent issue in my town.
Even though unemployment has been steadily been declining (officially anyway), there are still only about 500,000 vacancies for about 2 million people. And whilst people might argue we need a different economic model so that more jobs are created, in the short-term the demand for labour is only going to proliferate and the supply/demand ratio will worsen.
I don’t think it would be unreasonable for the UK to cap the number of unskilled migrants coming to the country because we already have an over-supply of lower-skilled labour. Also, whilst EU migrants may not particularly use the NHS or other public services to a great degree now, that doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Our public services are already under great strain, a substantial factor in that strain are austerity measures, but better population-control would allow policy-makers to better plan public services.
Just how can we plan public services with any sort of accuracy if we don’t know how many people are entering the UK to reside? I think this will get worse as the EU expands.
Is my suggestion unrealistic on planet earth? Absolutely, purely because the freedom of movement is not negotiable in anyway. But I’m not a politician or indeed the PM of the country, the difference is that Call me Dave actually blurts out his unrealistic proposals in public as “policies”….that will never actually become policies.
Cameron was particularly silly in making tax credit restrictions his flagship announcement. As Jonathan Portes illustrated yesterday, the number of Eastern Europeans claiming tax credits in first year of arrival has been declining since 2010. He is well and truly chasing an issue that doesn’t exist.
I was thinking about Aufwiedershen Pet yesterday - and wondering what the Germans made of the influx of British construction workers at the time ... presumably their economy was robust at the time, whilst ours definitely was not, well not for the ordinary people anyway. Who can forget Giss a job?mikems wrote:If we do not have the right to leave our countries, then we will be prisoners of capital.
No more Aufwedersehen, Pet because British workers will not be allowed to work elsewhere. I can't see how it would be good for us if we are kept inside while our bosses can move their money to Romania or wherever they like.
That is fantastic!TheGrimSqueaker wrote:Just when I think Susie Boniface aka The Fleet Street Fox only does clickbait a la Orr she goes and writes something like this!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fo ... te-4712385" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
What an excellent article. It really cheered me up. I've been quite down about Black Friday as I'm just disappointed really, disappointed that British companies would want to give away items at stupid prices at a time they could expect to get full price for them simply because it's what they do in America. Disappointed that British shoppers would have anything to do with such an obviously artificially hyped event - we don't even have Thanksgiving ffs. And disappointed that both bosses and manic shoppers could have so little thought for the shop floor staff who have no choice about being there and really do deserve considerably more respect from everyone involved. It just makes me wonder what kind of a country we're turning into. I remember shopping in WH Smiths at Christmas back in the 80s and it was very busy with a queue for the till that snaked around the entire store, but everyone just waited quietly to buy their papermate pen for their niece/nephew simply happy in the knowledge that it was nearly Christmas and they could look forward to a nice day with all the family. And no one expected to get a discount, they just bought presents to suit their budget, which did mean rather a lot of soap-on-a-rope and pairs of socks, I admit, but no one got a telly in the face so it's hard not to look back without a small sense of nostalgia.TheGrimSqueaker wrote:Just when I think Susie Boniface aka The Fleet Street Fox only does clickbait a la Orr she goes and writes something like this!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fo ... te-4712385" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The really depressing point is that both she and Orr can do good stuff - but most of the time they don't want to.TheGrimSqueaker wrote:Just when I think Susie Boniface aka The Fleet Street Fox only does clickbait a la Orr she goes and writes something like this!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fo ... te-4712385" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Boboty @robyatkins 7m7 minutes ago
The silence here is deafening #cameronmuststay #CameronMustGo
Yes, there is a level of smugness and cynicism displayed in their writing that is quite depressing; Orr especially has become a very lazy writer, trotting identikit clickbait articles, minimum effort required to meet her deadlines it seems - a classic GMG problem to be frank, following the trend set by Barbara Ellen with her tendency to recycle & rehash old articles.AnatolyKasparov wrote:The really depressing point is that both she and Orr can do good stuff - but most of the time they don't want to.TheGrimSqueaker wrote:Just when I think Susie Boniface aka The Fleet Street Fox only does clickbait a la Orr she goes and writes something like this!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fo ... te-4712385" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Oh, and has Suzanne Moore produced evidence of this "polling showing UKIP more popular with working class voters than Labour" yet?
tinyclanger2 wrote:Camergone experiment update:
so far 529 say he must go; no-one's saying he should stay.
(since my last post that is)
Æðelfriþ Iding @jamessteel100 1m1 minute ago
@LabourEoin stupid unpatriotic lefties who want to destroy this nation whinging about foodbanks is getting tiresome. #CameronMustStay
I love that final sentence. 'The Tory party declined to comment'. I'll bet they did.AngryAsWell wrote:As we have mentioned several times on here, this will do more to quell immigration problems that any "cap" or fiddling with numbers will ever do.
Ed Miliband will BAN firms from advertising jobs to migrants before Brit workers
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ed ... ng-4714877" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
EU contract workers fill these job (on sometime poor pay and conditions) whilst UK workers don't get a look in, it's not that they are to lazy to work.
A very large national hotel chain uses EU contract workers to the exclusion of UK nationals, if they employ 150 staff at each hotel (the larger ones will employ more) being forced to advertise those jobs in UK first (not excluding EU workers, but advertising here first) it would make a big difference to our workforce - and to the make up of towns and cities.
Does he really count? From my previous dealings with him I'm not convinced he is even on the same planet as the rest of us; for somebody who claims to be a physics teacher his grasp of facts and empirical evidence is woeful. You just know the kids in his class spend all their time taking the rise out of him, we certainly would have done in my school.tinyclanger2 wrote:here we go - 714 Go : 1 Stay with the insightful and massively informed:
Æðelfriþ Iding @jamessteel100 1m1 minute ago
@LabourEoin stupid unpatriotic lefties who want to destroy this nation whinging about foodbanks is getting tiresome. #CameronMustStay
That one has always wound me up, been around for years too (in various incarnations). As I know I've said before, when I used to work in Housing we had to find properties for a group of Bosnian Serb asylum seekers; they got the shittiest properties on our books, the ones everybody else had rejected several times, and left them in better nick than when they moved in. But we still used to get complaints about them "coming over here, taking our jobs and/or scrounging of the state" * because of course living in a drab, rundown 60s estate in East Anglia and existing on food vouchers is the pinnacle of everybody's ambition.ephemerid wrote:On EU migrants -
I have no idea where this idea that they are entitled to social housing comes from. They really really aren't.
If you want to get on the waiting list, before you even get that far, most councils will insist that you complete a very long application form.
You have to prove, in the vast majority of cases, that you have been resident in the area and/or have ties to the area for some time (usually years rather than months).
There are other criteria, often part of a points-based system, including make-up of household, children/dependents, disability, care-leavers, or fleeing domestic violence.
It's not easy to get on a waiting list in the first place, and in most parts of the UK the wait is a very long one - over 10 years in parts of London and the South East.
I lived on a council estate in Cheltenham before I moved here to Hay; my block had 16 flats, and only 4 of them were council-owned; the rest were privately owned and all rented out. We had 1 flat rented by Turks, 4 by Poles, and the rest were mainly locals renting privately.
I got my flat because I was an essential worker, with ties to the area, resident in the area for 17 years, and had a disability - I had to wait a few months; in that area most local people were waiting for at least two years.
I suspect that if there are lots of EU migrants living in what people think is social housing, but is probably not social housing - a lot of the flats and houses on council estates are now BTL. I doubt any young, fit, EU national coming here to work gets social housing unless they stay for years.
I am getting a bit pissed off with this idea that Brits are waiting for years for social housing because EU immigrants are getting it instead.
They're really not.
along withhttp://metro.co.uk/2014/11/29/david-cameron-might-have-photo-bombed-obama-selfie-4967331/?
which includes the quite reasonable proposal that:http://162.13.14.158/uknews/uknews-uknews/93375/8-possible-reasons-media-yet-report-cameronmustgo/
4. They’ve mistakenly assumed #CameronMustGo is actually about Cameron Diaz
1000 to 1 and still not anywhere in the MSM. How odd.Boboty @robyatkins 8m8 minutes ago
#WBAvAFC #CameronMustGo v #CameronMustStay
Cheltenham, my home town!ephemerid wrote:On EU migrants -
I have no idea where this idea that they are entitled to social housing comes from. They really really aren't.
If you want to get on the waiting list, before you even get that far, most councils will insist that you complete a very long application form.
You have to prove, in the vast majority of cases, that you have been resident in the area and/or have ties to the area for some time (usually years rather than months).
There are other criteria, often part of a points-based system, including make-up of household, children/dependents, disability, care-leavers, or fleeing domestic violence.
It's not easy to get on a waiting list in the first place, and in most parts of the UK the wait is a very long one - over 10 years in parts of London and the South East.
I lived on a council estate in Cheltenham before I moved here to Hay; my block had 16 flats, and only 4 of them were council-owned; the rest were privately owned and all rented out. We had 1 flat rented by Turks, 4 by Poles, and the rest were mainly locals renting privately.
I got my flat because I was an essential worker, with ties to the area, resident in the area for 17 years, and had a disability - I had to wait a few months; in that area most local people were waiting for at least two years.
I suspect that if there are lots of EU migrants living in what people think is social housing, but is probably not social housing - a lot of the flats and houses on council estates are now BTL. I doubt any young, fit, EU national coming here to work gets social housing unless they stay for years.
I am getting a bit pissed off with this idea that Brits are waiting for years for social housing because EU immigrants are getting it instead.
They're really not.
AngryAsWell wrote:Anti Academies @antiacademies · 4 mins4 minutes ago
Academy principal with luminous intelligence (according to #Gove) suspended http://www.enfield-today.co.uk/news.cfm ... ol%20staff" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …
And people on the right wonder why he was said to be so divisive..Michael Gove has been a regular visitor to the schools and in January 2013 Gove visited Woodpecker Hall, in Nightingale Road, where Sharon Ahmet was then acting headteacher, and used the visit to heap praise on Mrs Sowter who he said ran schools “better than the local authority”.
Cheers.AngryAsWell wrote:Anti Academies @antiacademies · 4 mins4 minutes ago
Academy principal with luminous intelligence (according to #Gove) suspended http://www.enfield-today.co.uk/news.cfm ... ol%20staff" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …
Tubby Isaacs wrote:Cheers.AngryAsWell wrote:Anti Academies @antiacademies · 4 mins4 minutes ago
Academy principal with luminous intelligence (according to #Gove) suspended http://www.enfield-today.co.uk/news.cfm ... ol%20staff" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …
Leaving out this sub iudice stuff, look at those collapsing 2013 SATS. Bottom in Enfield, not a well off borough.
Would be interesting to hear if Gove and Cameron got back in touch.
ephemerid wrote: What the flipping heck is "luminous intelligence"?
Maybe that "small critical group of staff" found out what was going on...Cuckoo Hall 'derailed' by its own staff
One of Michael Gove's favourite primary schools, Cuckoo Hall academy (pictured below) saw its results collapse in this year's rankings, making it, staggeringly, the worst performing of all 59 primaries in its local authority on the main headline measure. The school's explanation for the disappointing results is that its ambitions were derailed by "the actions of a small, critical group of staff" who have now left.
Cuckoo Hall, in Enfield, north London, had just 54% of its pupils achieving the expected level in reading, writing and maths, compared with 86% in 2012. It was one of only two Enfield primaries not to reach this year's DfE floor targets.
The 870-pupil school, which has an outstanding Ofsted rating dating from 2009, before it became an academy, was praised by Gove for its 2012 results, although, as we reported at the time, he got the name of the school wrong.
In a statement, Cuckoo Hall blames the results on "a small number of staff, who ... opposed the ethos and direction of the Cuckoo Hall Academies Trust Board and left the school by mutual consent at a critical time". The trust has now appointed a new management team, which means that "the actions of a small, critical group of staff cannot derail the ambitions of our school community in this way again," it adds. We wonder what the implications of this fall from grace will be.
Ah memories for me. Brother and sister (lot older than me) grew up in Arle and went to Arle School.ephemerid wrote:I lived in Gloucester in the Martial Home (no typo) for a very long time - then rented in Arle (Sterling Court) than got a council flat in Wasley Road on the "poets" estate facing Lansdown Road just before the GCHQ roundabout.
Show had a bedsit in the Suffolks - posh or what - and we used to spend hours in Moka drinking coffee. We started the little swap library there; I wonder if it's still going?
Where are you?
How do a small critical group make kids get low SATs scores?RogerOThornhill wrote:There's some stuff in an old Warwick Mansell column about some curious goings on at Cuckoo Hall.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/20 ... ademy-gove" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Maybe that "small critical group of staff" found out what was going on...Cuckoo Hall 'derailed' by its own staff
One of Michael Gove's favourite primary schools, Cuckoo Hall academy (pictured below) saw its results collapse in this year's rankings, making it, staggeringly, the worst performing of all 59 primaries in its local authority on the main headline measure. The school's explanation for the disappointing results is that its ambitions were derailed by "the actions of a small, critical group of staff" who have now left.
Cuckoo Hall, in Enfield, north London, had just 54% of its pupils achieving the expected level in reading, writing and maths, compared with 86% in 2012. It was one of only two Enfield primaries not to reach this year's DfE floor targets.
The 870-pupil school, which has an outstanding Ofsted rating dating from 2009, before it became an academy, was praised by Gove for its 2012 results, although, as we reported at the time, he got the name of the school wrong.
In a statement, Cuckoo Hall blames the results on "a small number of staff, who ... opposed the ethos and direction of the Cuckoo Hall Academies Trust Board and left the school by mutual consent at a critical time". The trust has now appointed a new management team, which means that "the actions of a small, critical group of staff cannot derail the ambitions of our school community in this way again," it adds. We wonder what the implications of this fall from grace will be.
Tubby Isaacs wrote:How do a small critical group make kids get low SATs scores?RogerOThornhill wrote:There's some stuff in an old Warwick Mansell column about some curious goings on at Cuckoo Hall.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/20 ... ademy-gove" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Maybe that "small critical group of staff" found out what was going on...Cuckoo Hall 'derailed' by its own staff
One of Michael Gove's favourite primary schools, Cuckoo Hall academy (pictured below) saw its results collapse in this year's rankings, making it, staggeringly, the worst performing of all 59 primaries in its local authority on the main headline measure. The school's explanation for the disappointing results is that its ambitions were derailed by "the actions of a small, critical group of staff" who have now left.
Cuckoo Hall, in Enfield, north London, had just 54% of its pupils achieving the expected level in reading, writing and maths, compared with 86% in 2012. It was one of only two Enfield primaries not to reach this year's DfE floor targets.
The 870-pupil school, which has an outstanding Ofsted rating dating from 2009, before it became an academy, was praised by Gove for its 2012 results, although, as we reported at the time, he got the name of the school wrong.
In a statement, Cuckoo Hall blames the results on "a small number of staff, who ... opposed the ethos and direction of the Cuckoo Hall Academies Trust Board and left the school by mutual consent at a critical time". The trust has now appointed a new management team, which means that "the actions of a small, critical group of staff cannot derail the ambitions of our school community in this way again," it adds. We wonder what the implications of this fall from grace will be.
Don't worry - here's a piece with enough moronic trolls already thereAnatolyKasparov wrote:A "was Gordon Brown really that bad?" piece over there - surprisingly low on moronic trolls in the comments so far, but give them time