Thursday 23rd July 2020

[refitman]

Morning all.

[RogerOThornhill]

Morning.

this is good to see - a pushback against No 10 trying to run and control everything.

Julian Lewis warns Dominic Cummings not to politicise ISC inquiries

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -inquiries" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Julian Lewis, the new chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), has demanded that ministers prevent Dominic Cummings and other special advisers from politicising its future inquiries.

The independent MP told a Commons debate on the Russia report on Wednesday that he had been warned by a journalist that “some people within government” had tried to sack the committee’s civil service secretariat and “make political appointments” instead.

I'm always wary of using slightly hysterical language but there are people who dislike the way that Parliament works and would prefer a quasi-dictatorships so that they "could get things done". So its good to see Lewis and other resisting it.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Well yes, Johnson isn't exactly the first PM to get such "urges".

[RogerOThornhill]

I have no problem with a Conservative government appointing those with ideological sympathies to positions of influence but draw the line at those who seem to have had little experience in the field.

Teach First graduate and Conservative Teachers founder to be new schools policy adviser

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/teach-first-g ... y-adviser/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Schools Week understands that Will Bickford Smith will take up the role of schools policy adviser with Rory Gribbell leaving to become head of education at the No 10 policy unit.

Like Gribbell, Bickford Smith is a Teach First graduate. After being placed at Hatch End High School, in Harrow, Bickford Smith taught government and politics for two years up to August 2016 at Wellington College, before leaving the profession for a short stint as a management consultant.

He joined the Department for Education as a policy adviser on T levels in 2017, and most recently led on overseeing the well-received teacher recruitment and retention strategy.

Gribbell taught for two years before being headhunted for the teacher in residence post at the DfE, and now he's in No 10. I remember reading his blog posts and they were lazy, ill-informed biased tripe.

And it's amazing how many of the teachers who are well thought of by Ministers seem to get fed up with teaching after a short while and can't wait to get out of the classroom.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Quiet today, anything to report?

[RogerOThornhill]

Only this fool seemingly unaware that outsourcing jobs to other parts of the globe has been going on for a decade ir more.

The home-working revolution will derail the middle-class gravy train

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/0 ... avy-train/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Britain’s upper-middle-class professionals cannot believe their luck. They have, once again, emerged as the great winners from a crisis: ensconced in spare rooms, they are coping so well with the Zoom economy that they want to make it the new normal....

Trouble with home-working is that yes, it may save you time getting into your place of work...but you end up not switching off. I found that when I went part-time more than a decade ago to do my MA dissertation - as I had online access to work I ended up answering emails and doing things on what were my official days out of the office.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Ah, the Borisograph at its "best" again.

[RogerOThornhill]

The twitter account under this name seems to have corrected itself after a long absence...and I've seen this classic piece of nonsense from "the country's strictest head".

But our Ed system won’t teach history chronologically, won’t give kids a schema on which to hang more knowledge and don’t have memory as part of their goal

Except that is precisely what the National Curriculum does...she comes out with some awful rubbish but rarely gets called out on it.

[RogerOThornhill]

Yes, the DfE were always a bunch of hypocrites.

John Dickens
@JohndickensSW
While the DfE names and shames academy trusts for not submitting accounts on time, and looking to do the same for councils, it's own record on transparency needs highlighting: The DfE last published its own board minutes in February 2018!! ...
12:36 PM · Jul 23, 2020·TweetDeck

They are better but still pretty poor. Five years ago they didn't even have who attended or what they discussed - merely that the SoS opened the meeting and they discussed the work of the department.

That would get a big FAIL from our LA and Ofsted.

[GetYou]

I would like to say thank you to AFinch for posting The Russia Report Debate from Novara Media last night.

I am still angry about the payoff and the consequences it has for journalism, propaganda, and the internal workings of the Labour Party, and the vid was a very clear analysis of the failings and terrible decision making.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Alternatively, there is the tweet that RoT also posted last night to consider.

Political parties very rarely choose to have their dirty linen exposed for all to see in a courtroom, if they can possibly avoid it.

[gilsey]

And it could have gone on for years, providing handy squirrels for the tories.


I'm uncomfortable with Starmer's action but on balance think it was right. I'd like to think he's uncomfortable with it too.


The programme shouldn't have been aired in the first place, the BBC are a disgrace.

[gilsey]

Also, just before I move on, Sam Matthews is a scumbag.

Panorama quoted Formby’s stated intention to challenge the party’s national constitutional committee (NCC) “on the panel for the Jackie Walker case”. It did not quote the second half of the sentence in which she explained the reason for her intended challenge: “in view of what I was told by Sam Matthews in relation to the deliberate decision to delay [the hearing] by over a year — a delay for which Jeremy has of course had to bear the blame.”

https://novaramedia.com/2020/07/22/bbc- ... -response/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Justin Schlosberg.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Don't disagree, nobody should pretend all the claimants in question were nice people or indeed that they have been "exonerated".

Btw this will be my 11,111th post - not really sure how that has happened tbh.

[GetYou]

Alternatively, there is the tweet that RoT also posted last night to consider.

Political parties very rarely choose to have their dirty linen exposed for all to see in a courtroom, if they can possibly avoid it.

I understand, and I can see why the decisions were made, but if you have to dump (some of) your principles overboard to make yourself electable, we are entitled to ask "what do you actually stand for?"

[RogerOThornhill]

In other news Nick Timothy has come up against Jonathan Portes...it hasn't gone well for him.

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[citizenJA]

And it could have gone on for years, providing handy squirrels for the tories.


I'm uncomfortable with Starmer's action but on balance think it was right. I'd like to think he's uncomfortable with it too.


The programme shouldn't have been aired in the first place, the BBC are a disgrace.

I agree with you. All of it.

[citizenJA]

Alternatively, there is the tweet that RoT also posted last night to consider.

Political parties very rarely choose to have their dirty linen exposed for all to see in a courtroom, if they can possibly avoid it.

I understand, and I can see why the decisions were made, but if you have to dump (some of) your principles overboard to make yourself electable, we are entitled to ask "what do you actually stand for?"

Look at his voting record, his work, actions & words. I'm a Labour party member because Tories mess people up.

[gilsey]

I understand, and I can see why the decisions were made, but if you have to dump (some of) your principles overboard to make yourself electable, we are entitled to ask "what do you actually stand for?"

Phil BC thinks so too.

https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The problem Labour has, even though polling shows the voters like Keir Starmer so far and prefer him to Johnson, is he and Labour aren't selling anything. More worryingly his flat footed treatment of Black Lives Matter, the reticence to say a cross word about the government, and distance put between him and Labour's platforms of 2017 and 2019 runs the risk of losing its already existing support. Thanks to the collapse of the old institutions, family relationships, and workplace organisation that used to inculcate the spirit of collectivism and class consciousness, the rising class of immaterial workers are predisposed to Labour precisely because it offered a programme complementary to their interests. Their support was conditional on this, and if Keir retreats too far from these positions they won't bother. Staying home on polling day or giving the Greens or LibDems a punt is more than possible.

[RogerOThornhill]

I don't actually get what principles are involved here - it's either try and defend a libel trial which you'll almost certainly lose and in the meantime have legal teams crawling all over you unearthing all kinds of stuff...or simply pay up and move on.

The sooner the party gets to put this behind them the better.

[citizenJA]

I understand, and I can see why the decisions were made, but if you have to dump (some of) your principles overboard to make yourself electable, we are entitled to ask "what do you actually stand for?"

Phil BC thinks so too.

https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The problem Labour has, even though polling shows the voters like Keir Starmer so far and prefer him to Johnson, is he and Labour aren't selling anything. More worryingly his flat footed treatment of Black Lives Matter, the reticence to say a cross word about the government, and distance put between him and Labour's platforms of 2017 and 2019 runs the risk of losing its already existing support. Thanks to the collapse of the old institutions, family relationships, and workplace organisation that used to inculcate the spirit of collectivism and class consciousness, the rising class of immaterial workers are predisposed to Labour precisely because it offered a programme complementary to their interests. Their support was conditional on this, and if Keir retreats too far from these positions they won't bother. Staying home on polling day or giving the Greens or LibDems a punt is more than possible.

"the problem Labour has..."
The problem we all have is over ten years of degenerate Tory governments causing more harm year after year.
Tories have every fiscal advantage and use it wrecking those threatening their staying in power.

[citizenJA]

I don't actually get what principles are involved here - it's either try and defend a libel trial which you'll almost certainly lose and in the meantime have legal teams crawling all over you unearthing all kinds of stuff...or simply pay up and move on.

The sooner the party gets to put this behind them the better.

hear, hear

[RogerOThornhill]

Today's Tories - bought by Russia.

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[PorFavor]

https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The problem Labour has, even though polling shows the voters like Keir Starmer so far and prefer him to Johnson, is he and Labour aren't selling anything. More worryingly his flat footed treatment of Black Lives Matter, the reticence to say a cross word about the government, and distance put between him and Labour's platforms of 2017 and 2019 runs the risk of losing its already existing support. Thanks to the collapse of the old institutions, family relationships, and workplace organisation that used to inculcate the spirit of collectivism and class consciousness, the rising class of immaterial workers are predisposed to Labour precisely because it offered a programme complementary to their interests. Their support was conditional on this, and if Keir retreats too far from these positions they won't bother. Staying home on polling day or giving the Greens or LibDems a punt is more than possible.

The paragraph, quoted above, outlines much of what worries me, too.

[frog222]

https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The problem Labour has, even though polling shows the voters like Keir Starmer so far and prefer him to Johnson, is he and Labour aren't selling anything. More worryingly his flat footed treatment of Black Lives Matter, the reticence to say a cross word about the government, and distance put between him and Labour's platforms of 2017 and 2019 runs the risk of losing its already existing support. Thanks to the collapse of the old institutions, family relationships, and workplace organisation that used to inculcate the spirit of collectivism and class consciousness, the rising class of immaterial workers are predisposed to Labour precisely because it offered a programme complementary to their interests. Their support was conditional on this, and if Keir retreats too far from these positions they won't bother. Staying home on polling day or giving the Greens or LibDems a punt is more than possible.

The paragraph, quoted above, outlines much of what worries me, too.

My old Korean War vet artillery troop sergeant had more OOMPH in his little finger than SKS has in his whole body . GRRRR !

[adam]

Just to lower the tone towards the unnecessary and irrelevant here is my latest high score on the US election simulation thing. (Yes yes, this isn't a game. Honest.)

Screenshot 2020-07-23 at 21.36.43.png (346.48 KiB) Viewed 6186 times