UK Election!

Besides, it is actually verifiably, objectively true that the secondary education system in England is better than those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Sunak has actually managed to say something true for once!

According to the pisa rankings England did better than the other nations, not everyone would agree that pisa rankings are a verifiable objective measure of performance but even if you do, they are a measure of the output not of the system.   It’s entirely possible that if you took the same students and put them through the Scottish of Welsh systems they would have done even better and Jocks and Taffs are just thick!   Of course it’s also possible, when you look at who’s at the top of the table and the cultures that go with that – that countries further down the table have a different educational culture that is not about churning out drones who feel under massive parental pressure to perform.

That picture 🤣

I have to say, this GE campaign has been a real eye opener.  I thought that I was aware of the real depths of just how much of an alien species your standard Tory is; I was catastrophically wrong.

This link is about French politics but I think it’s relevant to us too and might be where we end up one day, along with much of Europe.

Effectively, the far right having a taste of power and having to actually implement the policies they scream from the sidelines could be their undoing. It wouldn’t be without sorry term pain though, it will have a price.

It’s an interesting read, not very long either.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/12/opinions/france-macron-snap-election-far-right-andelman/index.html

Where was that, looks a bit nice? 👍

The biking mecca that is Woburn/Rushmere. That’s right, next to Milton Keynes!

Cleverly on Peston just before squirming like an eel when asked about Tory boy’s gambling habits, completely deflated

The biking mecca that is Woburn/Rushmere.

Ah, cheers! 👍

I know that binners and ernie are actively campaigning.

Anyone else?

I ask only because the noise and frothing is pointless; as the phrase goes…’actions speak louder than words’.

As a measure – the minimum rate for stuffing leaflets into letter boxes is about 100/hour. No need to engage with punters on the doorstep; just stuff and move on.

21 days until Independence Day; one hour per day x 21 days = 2100 leaflets per person.

IF you want to make a difference, get involved; it’s painless.

Alternatively, spend hours on STW and other media where your comments will have ZERO impact.

IF you want a better life for yourself – and family, if applicable – do something about it.

Doesn’t need to be active involvement on the doorstep – look at ‘phone banking’.

Enough for today; tomorrow, Thursday, will be two sessions of leaflet delivery followed by canvassing.

The tories photo looks like it was taken just outside the bookies a couple of weeks ago

A bit of light relief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1ZK_mS8cM

Some great insight and observations on the state of politics and public debate here – well worth a watch.

Alternatively, spend hours on STW and other media where your comments will have ZERO impact.

As would stuffing leaflets through doors other than I would be wasting paper and more of my time.  The predicted result where I live is as follows;

Tory 40%

Labour 24%

Reform 16%

LibDem 13%

Green 7%

You are telling me that actively campaigning for Green is a good use of my time.  Just because you like doing it doesn’t make it right or are you suggesting I spend even more time and drive to a constituency where the polling is a lot closer?

According to the pisa rankings England did better than the other nations

There could be many reasons for that. Educational achievement is linked to economic background and Wales for example is poorer than England on average.

kerley
Free Member
Alternatively, spend hours on STW and other media where your comments will have ZERO impact.

As would stuffing leaflets through doors other than I would be wasting paper and more of my time. The predicted result where I live is as follows;

I think you’ve taken frank’s generalised comment way to personally kerley. The point he makes is valid but not mandatory.

Just my opinion, I’m not looking to start anyone’s day, including mine, with a dollop of poo.😁

Frank, I’m up working at Tweedlove this weekend, but next week I’ll be on leaflet drops. With my youngest now his exams are done. The eldest won’t be joining us this time though sadly … like many young people she’s angry with Starmer for not creating peace in the Middle East.

Also the pisa data was skewed. Which gave inflated pisa score. UK gov report.  Low response rate with a skew towards better performing schools oecd reckon it’s about 8 or 9 points worth of inflation.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/656dc3321104cf0013fa742f/PISA_2022_England_National_Report.pdf

You are telling me that actively campaigning for Green is a good use of my time.

I’d be actively campaigning for Labour in that seat, even if a Green member. Exactly the kind of seat the Tories are hoping to hold onto thanks to the voting system.

Alternatively, spend hours on STW and other media where your comments will have ZERO impact.

Political parties spend a hell of a lot of money on media campaigns, which rather suggests that online discourse does have some impact.

I’m not leafleting no: I’m a Greenpeace activist and their campaign throughout this year has been door knocking to convince people to become ‘climate voters’.  Not my bag at all.

Some early headlines from the Labour manifesto in the grauniad. One key point I want to emphasise

The Labour manifesto will promise to not raise corporation tax, and to launch a new industrial strategy with clean energy at its centre and enact rapid planning reforms to incentivise developers to build new infrastructure.

I was at an industry round table event earlier this week and this was the consensus in the room that we were in dire need for. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but we need a strategy to work within so we can do long term planning and seek investment.

Having a strategy to work within, hopefully with a clear roadmap on things like hydrogen and deployment of new technologies gives us more chance of securing funding for major step changes in decarbonisation. It’ll also make our parent companies/global leaders happier because they can see how little the Tories have done outside of freeports (which don’t help existing assets elsewhere)

Tory 40%

Labour 24%

Reform 16%

LibDem 13%

Green 7%

The sad thing about that data is that the Tory  “easily” be voted out. Instead of that the Libdems/Greens will wake up to a Tory MP in their constituency.

I’d be actively campaigning for Labour in that seat, even if a Green member. Exactly the kind of seat the Tories are hoping to hold onto thanks to the voting system.

I think they are more than hoping to hold it.  I would put a lot of money of them holding it.  You are getting absolutely none of the die hard right wingers in my area to switch to Labour by dropping some leaflets.

Also not sure why I would want to spend my time campaigning for Labour seeing that they are a complete let down.

I would be better served dropping Reform leaflets as that has more chance of dropping tory vote but if you now suggest I should go around dropping Reform leaflets then you can get lost I’m afraid.

Besides, it is actually verifiably, objectively true that the secondary education system in England is better than those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Sunak has actually managed to say something true for once!

You need better facts than PISA and an article which every year one academic stirs up and BBC run with. As others have said, PISA is deeply flawed and measures specific academic outputs, based on computer modelling of students as much as real student outputs, and tends to err on academic exam performance above creativity, responsible citizens, resilient children and young people, workforce preparation etc etc.

72% of the English population lives in southern and central England, so…yeah…

Just because there’s more of you doesn’t mean you’ve more rights or power than the rest of the UK home nations and regions.

with clean energy at its centre

Wasn’t there already a big green plan that Labour have dropped/diluted?

Wasn’t there already a big green plan that Labour have u-turned on already?

This is the media trap. The big green plan is actually pretty consistent in goals and mechanisms, the firm commitment for £28bn is the rollback.

While still undecided, stuffing my letterbox (fnarr fnarr) is futile on a par with posting here.   Doubly so if you are a hard brexshit tolerant party.

Presumably the moneybags lot will be hiring agencies to do their stuffing so, no telling the stuffers to get stuffed, they are probably innocent.

Is there a reason why, given the struggling state of the NHS, none of the main parties seems to be talking about well-being and the benefits of improving diet, lifestyle, active transport etc, and reducing the load on the health service that way?

Is it just not ‘sexy’? Potentially unpopular? At odds with Big Food and the automotive lobby? Or something else? Is it simply a basic human right to eat lots of ultra-processed food and sit on the sofa that whizzes past me in my middle class STW echo chamber?

It baffles me that the NHS is a major issue in this election, but preventative health policy is barely mentioned.

Call me slightly cynical, or possibly even a conspiracy theorist but was it just coincidental that Craig Williams – one of Sunak’s closest aides – announced that he was being investigated for possible gambling irregularities on the evening before the Labour Party manifesto is launched?

Normally this would be all over the front pages of the papers, websites, and new headlines, distracting from the real news.

Don’t think it’s worked this time, thankfully.

not everyone would agree that pisa rankings are a verifiable objective measure of performance but even if you do, they are a measure of the output not of the system.   It’s entirely possible that if you took the same students and put them through the Scottish of Welsh systems they would have done even better and Jocks and Taffs are just thick!…countries further down the table have a different educational culture that is not about churning out drones who feel under massive parental pressure to perform.

This is a really weird set of assertions to explain poor performance of education systems: that PISA rankings are meaningless, that Scots and Welsh are inherently “thick”, and that Scottish and Welsh education systems regard “15-year-olds’ [using] heir reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges” (which is what the OECD PISA survey mentioned measures) as being evidence of “drones” churned out under parental pressure. 😳 Important to note it’s a long term decline in Scotland’s rankings too.

It would of course be easier to compare the Scottish education system to others within the UK…but the SNP withdrew Scotland from other international benchmarking studies. Still, the education guy at the time (whatever happened to him?) said the SNP “was committed to OECD’s PISA survey which he described as an effective indicator of how the whole Scottish education system was performing“.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16862149.schools-withdrawn-global-surveys-to-save-cash/

https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,scotland-falls-behind-england-in-global-education-study

I haven’t noticed it among NI and Welsh people (although tbf I’ve never even been to NI) but in Scotland there is a smug attitude among some that SNP mismanagement or higher taxes or whatever is a price worth paying because the education or health services or social services are “better than down south”. But the evidence doesn’t show that, and certainly doesn’t show that they’re good. The state of all these things everywhere in the UK is unacceptable.

but was it just coincidental that Craig Williams – one of Sunak’s closest aides – announced that he was being investigated for possible gambling irregularities on the evening before the Labour Party manifesto is launched?

Nah that’s just standard tory corruption /incompetence

Hanlon’s razor

It’s conceivable that Williams thought he could mention it on a big news day and it would get drowned out, but the Tory party generally isn’t capable of a conspiracy to do that atm.

@badlywireddog it’s not just the NHS, it’s social care full stop that’s struggling as demand is rapidly out stripping the increasing spending. We need people as a whole to take a lot more responsibility for their physical and mental health but telling individuals they need to take some responsibility isn’t popular or to be honest works. The alternative is restrictions on personal liberties like controls on unhealthy food, LTNs and traffic reduction measures, all of which are about a popular with the masses as a fart in a space suit.

Meh we never had sky tv,(or a vhs player – not sure sky was a thing )but I didn’t get to go to Winchester either.

It baffles me that the NHS is a major issue in this election, but preventative health policy is barely mentioned.

Do they really want to talk about ‘anything’ that is really important  after the lessons learned with Brexit, or that which shall be not named. Reality/Truth is unimportant.

I overheard Rishi saying   that people must have been happy with the tories last time as they voted them back in,I vaguely remember people voted a charismatic bloke specifically to get Brexit done.

Anyway that nice chap also promised 40 new hospitals :-)

Effectively, the far right having a taste of power and having to actually implement the policies they scream from the sidelines could be their undoing.

I wonder where Macron was looking to make that observation? :-)

It’s lovely to have been living in Europe’s petri dish for the last decade or so. Perhaps the Tory slogan needs to be “We make  the mistakes that others learn from”

but the Tory party generally isn’t capable of a conspiracy to do that atm.

And someone thick enough not to realise that the bookies might take a certain interest in a tory mp successfully “guessing” the date of the election is unlikely to plan sufficiently ahead to hide the announcement.

“Not to realise that the bookies might take a certain interest in a tory mp successfully “guessing” the date of the election”

The two interesting things here are that he didn’t stick more on (£100 made him £500 – why didn’t he put ten times that much on?) and that the bookie succesfully identified him as a politically exposed person AND queried his “novelty” bet.

I know that binners and ernie are actively campaigning.

Anyone else?

I ask only because the noise and frothing is pointless; as the phrase goes…’actions speak louder than words’.

Frank:

I have been very politically engaged most of my life.  However in this election there is no party I can support.  How do you suggest I square that circle?  I’m in Scotland which changes things a bit

tories – obviously beyond the pale :-)

Labour – I cannot support a party that is pro brexit and lies about it ( no economic case to rejoin) and where they are anti democratic with regard to the devolved bodies and adherence to tory spending limits means no change in Scotland even if they do get in

Lib dems?  No apology for Carmichael the liar nor for the coalition

SNP – tired and too centralising and my MP is a liar

Greens – wasted all their political capital on trans rights and split the party over it

My constituency will only be labour or SNP – it matters not really as neither will support a tory government.  My SNP MP has lied to my face.  Labour candidate seems decent.

It really pains me to be this way about an election but there is no need for a tactical anti tory vote in my constituency and neither of the likely winners can I support.  Scottish greens having no MPs there is no “short money” arguement

So how do I square this circle?

Meh we never had sky tv,(or a vhs player – not sure sky was a thing )but I didn’t get to go to Winchester either.

The gross national average salary in the UK is only slightly more than the annual day pupil fees for Winchester College.

On the basis of your own post, TJ, Labour. Better a decent bloke than a liar to represent you in parliament.

However in this election there is no party I can support.

Only one party has demonstrated themselves to be utterly shit and callous along with it in the last 14years.  The others might be poor, they might be better.  So there is an obvious imperative to get rid of the incumbent; therefore vote the most effective way to do that.

You aren’t marrying the leaders, it’s just a probability calculation.

So there is an obvious imperative to get rid of the incumbent; therefore vote the most effective way to do that.

In this election it makes zero difference in my constituency.  Tories have zero chance

Charismatic far right libertarian with mad hair elected on simple solutions to complex issues, starts to enact mad policies in Argentina…

Inevitably, buyers remorse. Macron will be watching with interest.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm55yv0g0veo

Frank:

I have been very politically engaged most of my life.  However in this election there is no party I can support

Ahem….