Forum menu
What an absolute shitshow.
I'm hopeful (though prepared to be disappointed) that the massive backlash against Lab trying to water down environmental policies might make them think again on this one.
I was also under the impression Khan is happy enough being London Mayor (and as he's not an MP he's not really a threat to SKS)?
Now both sides are trying to argue the toss between 500 votes, Tory claiming they won on the basis of being anti-ULEZ, Labour claiming they lost for the same reason (or maybe “not anti enough”).
What an absolute shitshow.
Yet their utter drumming in the other two byelections doesn't mean that we reject their other policies - disingenuous w**kers.
Hey - Starmer has released a list - another list - of five missions as they're now known (can see the comms department coming up with alternative word for pledge.)
https://labour.org.uk/missions/
No one will believe in the missions or how they arrive at those missions.
Like a renewed 5 pledges.
Next month - 'My 2 promises'.
Well as the archetypal middle-class leafy borough I am guessing that Kingston upon Thames probably has above average number of wood burners per household, and below average number of over 8 year old diesel cars and vans per household.
No need to guess it's all set out in the annual reports. You might like to compare pollution hotspots with traffic congestion.
I am really disliking the language around "opportunity for all". It smells of the old grammar school ethos, where as long as a few people from poor backgrounds break through it will be sold as a success, and the majority will be blamed for their poverty for "not taking advantage of the opportunities presented to them".
It is just survivor bias. We don't need opportunity to fight for a small number of well payed jobs that only a few can ever be successful in gaining. We need all jobs to allow a reasonable standard of living, we need houses to be affordable, we need a decent standard of healthcare and education to be available to all. We need everybody to have choices in life, not just the lucky few who break out of poverty.
We don’t need opportunity to fight for a small number of well payed jobs that only a few can ever be successful in gaining. We need all jobs to allow a reasonable standard of living, we need houses to be affordable, we need a decent standard of healthcare and education to be available to all. We need everybody to have choices in life, not just the lucky few who break out of poverty.
Unfortunately too many of your fellow citizens disagree, it's why poor people still vote Tory.
I am really disliking the language around “opportunity for all”
Yes - they keep clucking on about hard working families.
Can't be helping those slackers not in work.
Yeah I particularly dislike Labour politicians using the term 'hard working families', it is nonsense Tory terminology. Which is presumably why centrists use it - to sound more like Tory politicians.
Hard is totally relative and suggests above the norm, no one should need to work hard for a decent wage. Working at normal intensity should be sufficient for people to earn a decent living wage.
“Bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families”
Using “just three words” is modern politics, annoying and dumbed down as that is. Labour has to learn from the success the likes of Johnson have had. That doesn’t make them Tories.
It is not about social mobility it is about social inequality. All social mobility does is tell the ones you left behind they should have tried harder and the ones that are up there already deserve to be. Both are bollocks.
That doesn’t make them Tories.
No it doesn't. Sounding like Tories and adopting their policies does.
and the ones that are up there already deserve to be
Social mobility has to be a two-way road, you cannot have everyone moving up without anyone moving down.
For that reason social mobility might be the answer to something but it isn't the answer to social and economic injustice.
All social mobility does is legitimise social inequality. Everyone deserves decent housing, job and income, schooling, healthcare, not just those who passed the exams and/or brown nosed their way up.
Gotta hand it to him, he's certainly focused on the big issues.
Teaching kids to speak proper, innit.
Never mind all the environment, pollution, cost-of-living nonsense, kids need to able to ask for their gruel nicely and politely and not to sound like that **** off the car adverts talking about Bri'ain cinching its mo'ors.
Combine that with the Victorian Pencil wanting everyone to learn Latin, we'll be awesome at holding court in 4th Century Roman Bri'ain which is seemingly where Government would like to send us back to.
Except with worse roads and public transport than the Romans managed...
Teaching kids to speak proper, innit.
No, it’s not about that at all. There’s a few brief quotes from professionals in the article you linked to that explain that. It’s about being able to articulate your ideas verbally, a skill more useful for most people later in life than being able to express them with the written word. A key idea is that spoken work and assessment should become a core part of all school subjects, not just those with language in the title.
I agree. A lot of kids leave school these days all lah-di-dah and without any street cred.
I am definitely not hearing enough double negatives and glottal stops these days.
They need more help with stuff like this
Gotta hand it to him, he’s certainly focused on the big issues
Smacks of rearranging the deckchairs while the ship sinks.
I'll be honest I preferred it when the useless idiot said nothing,which is funny really given this latest bollocks.
Can I have lessons to get rid of my posh voice and accent? its a bit of a liability here 🙂
It's obviously a bad thing that children might be taught how to express themselves effectively. It's 101 at public (private) schools, along with debating skills. I wonder how we end up being led by those who go through those educational establishments? 🤔
It's not an 'either/or'. But it would be useful if we could just teach children in schools rather than schools being the social services of last resort as they are currently.
As a teacher, oracy <> talking posh.
One IS actually very important (and should be taught/encouraged), the other really not so much.
Agree, being able to articulate and speak well is a good thing to have in life. As is understanding politics and economics, personal finances, critical thinking etc,. etc,. More important than a lot of subjects taught in schools so maybe go a bit bigger than just trying to get people to talk properly and put in a complete reform of what school is actually for and how people are 'ranked' at the end of it.
Doesn't fit on a one liner that will be forgotten tomorrow though does it.
I wonder how we end up being led by those who go through those educational establishments?
Boris? The pencil for the 17th centaury? The lettuce? May? Sunak? SKS? They are all extremely poor communicators, they all express their feeble ideas badly. It clearly isn't that they have been taught to communicate effectively that brings them to power.
It clearly isn’t that they have been taught to communicate effectively that brings them to power.
At private schools, debating is still held in high regard; the ability to argue a point even if you don't believe in it (quite often *especially* if you don't believe in it) and debating societies can be quite prestigious.
It's that ability to convince others, to argue your point (even if it's bollocks) that gets them where they are.
JRM, at about the time this whole "let's teach everyone Latin" thing was doing the rounds was on radio and he got absolutely owned by the DJ who put some Latin phrases up and JRM could only recognise his old school motto. Turns out of course he doesn't speak Latin, can't translate it etc but what he himself admitted to - his favourite book is the Oxford English Dictionary of Quotations and he reads that, memorises a lot of the pithy one-liners for use at opportune moments and comes out with these fancy sounding Latin/Greek quotes. Makes him sound educated, intelligent, well-read.
He's a ****ing parrot. Doesn't understand it, but because he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, people defer to him.
I don't have much time for that because I did a science degree and one of the main points we were taught in lab work was if you don't understand, ASK. Don't bluff, don't sound like you know what you're talking about, or argue that black is white. Ask. Ideally before you blow the lab up through incompetence.
It’s that ability to convince others, to argue your point (even if it’s bollocks) that gets them where they are.
That idea breaks down quite quickly when anyone listens to them, it isn't that they a great debaters or communicators that leads to their success, it is because they are given a platform. They are the throwback comedians given a stage and a microphone, it doesn't matter if people in the crowd are smarter and wittier they will always be drowned out by those given a platform.
Trumps self proclamations of brilliance are more newsworthy than actual achievements by brilliant people.
Farage whining about not being allowed a posh bank accounts is more newsworthy than hundreds of thousands actually failed and suffering from banking failures.
This isn't because they are great debtors, this is because the "news algorithm" (for want of a better term) gives them an advantage despite their oratory skills.
Maybe when Starmer is PM he can ask the RMT if they would look into the issue and perhaps make some recommendations, they seem to have cracked the issue, as demonstrated by Bob Crow, Mick Lynch, and Eddie Dempsey:
Or simply encourage kids to join the Communist Party, it certainly helped me to hone my debating skills. As it did no doubt Eddie Dempsey's.
What absolute crumbs of nonsense - what good are your communication skills if there are no good jobs available ; infrastructure is crumbling; you can't find somewhere to live; or your school is falling to bits?
This is desperate, desperate stuff from a man looking to change nothing of significance.
It sounds exactly like a Tory 'idea'. Get the kids doing as they're told without any resources put in place.
It's the same - oh it's your fault you can't get a job attitude - that pervades the Tory way - no amount of confidence boosts your chances if there aren't good opportunities created.
It's definitely not a priority - several months ago we were discussing heating or eating.
Labour deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth and replaced with something far far more progressive and brave. Every little defences I hear of this weasel - is a step back from where we should be going.
My girlfriend works at an independent school - where they do articulate themselves well, but they mostly belong to successful families who have supported them with money and opportunity in the first instance.
But you are at school anyway so why not become more skilled and knowledgeable in things that actually may make a difference in your life than say knowing the formula for a load of different acids.
But you are at school anyway so why not become more skilled and knowledgeable in things that actually may make a difference in your life than say knowing the formula for a load of different acid
Because the biggest changes to your life, especially currently are the things that government can implement from the top down.
(My partner is a Chemistry teacher that originally got a job in the pharmaceutical industry - knowing stuff about acids etc.)
I don't think it's any sort of priority - what's being discussed here. The pandemic showed us what the priorities were and we're only a few months out from that.
I would expect more children to leave school with an ability to communicate "better" if funding was increased to restrict class sizes to less than 20, if teachers were better compensated and numbers increased to ease the workload, so they could give the individual and group guidance needed. If less pupils weren't suffering the impact of poverty, if more parents weren't working every god given minute just to stay afloat.
Ending the child benefit cap would have a bigger impact on educational achievement, it is nothing but pure bullshit.
Because the biggest changes to your life, especially currently are the things that government can implement from the top down.
So what, that has nothing to do with what you are taught while at school. I stand by my comment that teaching kids things that will actually be useful in their lives is more important than knowing the formula of acids (you can learn that later if you need to but 99.9% of the population don't need to be know it for their life or work)
That however does not mean that I think it is a priority and if it were even in the list of 100 things to improve society in this country it would probably be at position 100.
I stand by my comment that teaching kids things that will actually be useful in their lives is more important than knowing the formula of acids (you can learn that later if you need to but 99.9% of the population don’t need to be know it for their life or work)
Agreed but not this by Starmer,
And I say this as someone who never went to uni. But some people get on in life by using your example - understanding acids.
Besides who gets to decide what's useful? Capitalism?
I broadly agree with you but not with Starmer's point.
Given Starmer's commitment to Tory budgets, it will probably just mean more 'reading around the class.' No bad thing for clearing up mispronunciations, 'com promise' etc, and for improving confidence but his implication I suspect is victim-blaming.
It is literally a game to them.
https://twitter.com/RachelReevesMP/status/1687402245095043073?t=XcogUK0HD4jNKcaAajyXJg&s=19
No one has any priorities these days.
Don't knock it. Imagine how different the lives of people will be if they can play chess.
I stand by my comment that teaching kids things that will actually be useful in their lives is more important than knowing the formula of acids (you can learn that later if you need to but 99.9% of the population don’t need to be know it for their life or work)
You would be mistaken, teaching should be to encourage the pupil to think for themselves so that they can undertake the part in brackets. It's not the job of education to save industry/commerce money. Without the ability to learn and think critically we do our young people a disservice and give potential autocrats a free ride.
I believe that chess helped Andrew Tate develop his cunning skills in the dark art of financially exploiting people, so I can understand the attraction it might have to the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1715336/andrew-tate-who-is-he-childhood-career-spt
He played chess competitively from the age of five, even competing in adult tournaments as a youngster.
Edit: To be fair I don't think that tables in parks for people to play chess is a bad, expect obviously issues concerning the British weather, and it's nice that they have managed to get half a million quid off the money tree to fund it.
Nor do I think that there is anything wrong with the Shadow Chancellor, a former chess champ, making an off the cuff comment asking the Prime Minister if he fancies a game.
I just wish that the Labour Shadow Chancellor would talk more about shifting the nation's wealth away from the a smay elite and towards ordinary people who actually create the wealth, ffs.
Don’t knock it. Imagine how different the lives of people will be if they can play chess
🤣🤣
Starmer’s commitment to Tory budgets
Uh?
Not totally overtly as Blair /Brown did but he has made it clear he will continue with much the same level of spending and that various things we all want are too expensive
Yeah lack of money blah
So increasing interest rates (by the fed) in the USA has added 65bn to bank reserves in interest payments alone - than their balances sheets have provided. That's a gift of money to the banks.
That's bank created money that eventually flows into the private sector.
And that's why inflation is sticky.
'There is no money ' - (for public purpose)
So Labour's plan for education is more chess and reading aloud, surprised they haven't mention issuing chalk for hopscotch. Nothing about salaries, recruitment and retention, leaky buildings, de-academisation. At least we have been warned.
NB. There's a never-ending chess tournament down the local pub. They'll be able to join in with that but they might not be able to afford the beer. They are woking on a pupil-deficit model rather than investing in children's/society's future.
lack of money blah
...is not the same as commitment to Tory budgets. If you actually want to change any minds blatant distortion is unlikely to help. If you're just sort of mumbling to yourselves I'll leave you to it.
…is not the same as commitment to Tory budgets.
It is exactly the same. Budgets are about income and expenditure, Labour, under the present leadership, has said they will match Tory taxation and spending levels, which makes their commitment the same as the Tories's.
It is not the first time that Labour have promised to match Tory expenditure, Gordon Brown did precisely that in 1997.
Starmer has promised New Labour on steroids. That is possibly one promise he might keep, who knows?
Btw;
"Senior members of the shadow cabinet expect to have no more money for public services if the party wins the election next year."
You can see how important that makes voting Labour.