So the borrowing plans that Labour initiated in 2005 should have simply been canned? What sort of impact on the economy do you think that would have had?
Besides borrowing (or debt) is not the biggest issue as it can be managed. Its deficit which is most dangerous and this is falling.
If you a 50% tax payer however you get a tax cut and a big increase in income!
Now that's what I call pandering to your client base!
Taxes have fallen for lower incomes, Labour's planned fuel increases, which the Govt have cancelled would have seen 20p a litre on your petrol. It might not feel like it but you'd be worse off right now under Labour.
If 50% upper rate tax was so important then why did Labour only bring that in 6 weeks before the GE? Because it was a political move, not a move which would see tax revenues increase. In fact of the £2.5bn they said it would raise in tax year 10-11 it only raised £1.1bn. Dropping the top rate to 45% could and should see that figure increase.
Does anyone still buy the line that the global economic downturn was Labour's fault?
Just as many who conveniently forget that you should never let a Labour government near the piggy bank.
Thought not
How about Gordon Brown selling half our gold reserves for a pittance, remember that?
Or David Cameron giving away a cut-price Royal Mail?
Again you're comparing apples and oranges. Brown sold at the bottom of the market, because he announced that we would be selling off one of the worlds largest bullion deposits on a certain date - guess what? The price fell.... A few months later it was back to its previous high.
Does anyone still buy the line that the global economic downturn was Labour's fault?
Just as many who conveniently forget that you should never let a Labour government near the piggy bank.
Thought not
How about Gordon Brown selling half our gold reserves for a pittance, remember that?
Or David Cameron giving away a cut-price Royal Mail?
Again you're comparing apples and oranges. Brown sold at the bottom of the market, because he announced that we would be selling off one of the worlds largest bullion deposits on a certain date - guess what? The price fell.... A few months later it was back to its previous high.
Whereas, by contrast, the sale of the Royal Mail was an unmitigated success all round?
Does anyone still buy the line that the global economic downturn was Labour's fault?
Just as many who conveniently forget that you should never let a Labour government near the piggy bank.
Thought not
How about Gordon Brown selling half our gold reserves for a pittance, remember that?
Or David Cameron giving away a cut-price Royal Mail?
Again you're comparing apples and oranges. Brown sold at the bottom of the market, because he announced that we would be selling off one of the worlds largest bullion deposits on a certain date - guess what? The price fell.... A few months later it was back to its previous high.
Whereas, by contrast, the sale of the Royal Mail was an unmitigated success all round?
Where did I say that? To compare the two shows that you really have reached some sort of nadir
You're comparing a loss of £3.3bn to the £trn's (debt + QE) which we experienced under Labour? You really need some different straws to clutch at.
Cameron wasn't Lamont's right hand man. He worked for a civil servant called Gus O'Donnell in the treasury. O'Donnell went on to work for Brown and Blair.
Our entry into the ERM was in Labour's 87 manifesto too.
The recent performance of the Euro Zone, and various papers on how the UK would have faired had we adopted currency union, demonstrates that the UKs decision to exit the Euros predecessor was a sound one.
Not all the blame for Black Wednesday can be laid at the Govts door. I would strongly suggest Googling George Soros and reading up on the facts.
Other than all of that your post was spot on mate.
I thought Cameron was a Special Political Adviser (SPAD) for Norman Lamont not a politically neutral civil servant managed by Gus O'Donnell .
Are you saying the unelected and politically neutral civil service manage SPADs ? I thought it was the other way around and SPADs gave them a sense of political direction and access to the politicians .David Cameron's Wikipedia entry confirms that he was Lamont's 'special adviser' (or right hand man) and no mention of O'Donnell.
One of the sad features of the current political situation is that all of the current 3 main Party leaders have a similar educational and employment background .
O'Donnell was classed as a "Treasury Mandarin" so Cameron in whatever capacity in No11 would have reported into him.
Incorrect I am afraid.
SPADs work only for the Minister they absolutely do not report to anyone in the Civil Service, this is why the position has become so controversial.
I have been working with SPADs in Australia (same set up as the UK) for about three years and they report only to their Minister who in turn deals with the Civil Service.
The Civil Service typically hates the SPADs because they can have the type of influence over Ministerial thinking that the Civil Service would like for itself.
Does anyone still buy the line that the global economic downturn was Labour's fault?
Just as many who conveniently forget that you should never let a Labour government near the piggy bank.
Thought not
How about Gordon Brown selling half our gold reserves for a pittance, remember that?
Or David Cameron giving away a cut-price Royal Mail?
Again you're comparing apples and oranges. Brown sold at the bottom of the market, because he announced that we would be selling off one of the worlds largest bullion deposits on a certain date - guess what? The price fell.... A few months later it was back to its previous high.
Whereas, by contrast, the sale of the Royal Mail was an unmitigated success all round?
Where did I say that? To compare the two shows that you really have reached some sort of nadir
You mentioned apples and oranges. And then went on to detail the apples. I just brought up the oranges again.
“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Does anyone still buy the line that the global economic downturn was Labour's fault?
Just as many who conveniently forget that you should never let a Labour government near the piggy bank.
Thought not
How about Gordon Brown selling half our gold reserves for a pittance, remember that?
Or David Cameron giving away a cut-price Royal Mail?
Again you're comparing apples and oranges. Brown sold at the bottom of the market, because he announced that we would be selling off one of the worlds largest bullion deposits on a certain date - guess what? The price fell.... A few months later it was back to its previous high.
Whereas, by contrast, the sale of the Royal Mail was an unmitigated success all round?
Where did I say that? To compare the two shows that you really have reached some sort of nadir
You mentioned apples and oranges. And then went on to detail the apples. I just brought up the oranges again.
My bad.
I stupidly assumed you'd see the difference without the need for a full and lengthy explanation of why the two are not comparable.
Oh man. The main problem in this country is the years we've had of swapping governments. Every single one wants to do something "different" and put its mark on the nation as soon as it can, because they're only guaranteed a five-year stint should they be elected. (I am in favour of term restrictions though of course.) So, they look for quick sweeping fixes to issues that are going to take ages - longer than any one government might last, even say Labour's 1997-2010 stint. Much longer than that.
For a nation to secure its long-term wellbeing, there has to be a consistent vote over decades for the same party in order for that party to really ground its ideology and make changes the way it wishes to.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Tories and Labour (sorry to narrow it down to two parties but I'm using historical electoral precedent) both want the same things - to improve the economy, reduce unemployment, so on so forth. They just have different philosophies as to the best way of going about things, and it's always really premature to say after three years "LOOK LOOK IT'S NOT WORKING" which is what everyone is guilty of. So either one stimulates the economy by tax and spend in public services (Labour, historically) or one does so by making public spending cuts and decreasing tax on the individual, thus giving them more disposable income in theory (Conservatives, historically).
Both have the same end goal; why can't there be a cross-party consensus on what economic philosophy to stick to and try it out over the long term?
Best example for me would be that of Sweden. The Nordic model as upheld by their Social Democratic Party has since the Second World War led to a relative prosperity as well as a basic safety net for the majority of the population. Yes, the SDP has generally been a minority government but the relative congruity of Swedish politics has led to their socioeconomic policy being enacted consistently over a number of decades.
I'm not saying the Nordic model is the one and only model, but I would venture to say it's proof that consistently applying one school of socioeconomic philosophy over a number of decades does good in the long run.
The problem with a two party or multi party coalition system is that individual politicians can make as much political capital out of blaming someone else as they can out of dreaming up strategic solutions. Just look at Farrage, Salmand etc. Some politicians are very bright but their ego in government leads to them trying push through reforms and changes rather than establish steady improvements. A couple of years back I did some reading and seminars around the 2007-09 crash and the €uro crisis. Neither of these events were terminal but neither has been leveraged to get reforms in place to make a difference. I took a look at the European centre left grouping position and it was horrendous! Anti bank, anti commerce... So who's paying for the social side. And it's widely known that the tories are in some weird right wing grouping. My simple point is that it is the think tanks and academics who need to supply the politicians with solutions which don't involve kicking countries out of the €uro nor isolating the UK. The challenges of global competition, youth unemployment and aging demographics are not going away. Perhaps I'm being naive but I would hope that there are politicians out there who want to deliver solutions for the long term. Turning these concepts into policies and slogans will take the challenge back to UKIP. Failure to do this will hand power to a bunch of crazy people.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
I would agree had not much of this been bankrolled by hugely expensive PFI deals.
The new Queen Elizabeth Hospital In Birmingham where Labour launched their 2010 GE campaign had a build cost of £670m the taxpayer has been left with an overall bill of £2bn.
Equally the BSF project was mostly funded by PFI deals leaving local authorities with massive bills and the need to cut costs elsewhere to meet these commitments.
Hence why we then needed to borrow huge amounts from 2005 onward and carry on needing to do so.
Again, no fan of Brown on this. PFI is a disaster for public services and has been since it was introduced by that well known Labour PM John Major. Cameron and Osborne criticised PFI in the run up to the last election. They have since gone ahead with PFI on a number of school and hospital projects. It has been described as the equivalent of putting your mortgage on the credit card.
When people complain that there isn't a fag paper between the Parties, it's stuff like this that brings it home. No major party thinks infrastructure should be funded by taxation and government borrowing, even though it is hugely cheaper. However, doing things from government borrowing would mean significantly lower fees for the banks and consultants involved. All of whom make donations and share staff with the Parties.
And the whole country generally benefits from investment in infrastructure. It won't get done by the private sector for a whole host of reasons, so the state is the only player able to do a lot of this (think roads, railways, bridges, schools, hospitals). When the private sector is responsible for it, it only ever gets built when the state guarantees it (eg Thames Sewer, HS1, Crossrail). Unfortunately, the orthodoxy that all the main parties buy into insist that it is paid for at a much higher cost than is strictly necessary.
Just like the banking de-reg wasn't supposed to go as far as Brown took it, PFI brought in by Major was never supposed to be used to the extent that it was by Labour.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
Mrs Thatcher as Education Secretary precided over the highest number of Grammar school closures or mergers with comps than any other Ed Sec.
I vote Tory and went to a Grammar. Just wanted to add that little nugget of trivia.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
Mrs Thatcher as Education Secretary precided over the highest number of Grammar school closures or mergers with comps than any other Ed Sec.
I vote Tory and went to a Grammar. Just wanted to add that little nugget of trivia.
Indeed. Just like Wilson closed more mines than Maggie did
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
More young people than ever now go to University following a big increase in the provision of higher education under the Labour governments of the 1960's, 90's and 00,s I am not aware of any studies linking attendance at University with the closure of Grammar Schools - The main influence upon performance at Schools, attendance at University and future earning, was and is, Socio - Economic class.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
More young people than ever now go to University following a big increase in the provision of higher education under the Labour governments of the 1960's, 90's and 00,s I am not aware of any studies linking attendance at University with the closure of Grammar Schools - The main influence upon performance at Schools, attendance at University and future earning, was and is, Socio - Economic class.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
.
I said Red Bricks not Universities in general.
Do some Googling. The papers are out there.
When most of the Labour Party are schooled or attended these sort if Unis it really shows that the old battle lines over class division which the left love to drivel on about proves this argument is now moot.
Maggie was working class and attended a state school.
Blair went to Scotland's equivalent of Eton / Harrow.
The tuition fees which Labour 05 manifesto said would not be introduced but then were?
Besides, what's more important? A degree which many will do nothing with, or something more vocational like apprenticeships?
If you look at Germany, who have a much stronger engineering and manufacturing base than we do, the emphasis is on vocational education.
The basic problem is that most voters want Nye Bevan's NHS , decent state education and welfare system but using Margaret Thatcher's free market economic policies to pay for it . In my view that is impossible to achieve . So what we have is a mishmash which leads to the current political situation. No one is happy about it.
Neil Kinnock led Labour into the 1992 election and was narrowly defeated by John Major which meant the Tories were in power for 18 years and had changed the public sector beyond all recognition .That led to a major rethink by Labour which ultimately resulted in Blair creating New Labour and return to power . Blair tried to embrace the free market and become respectable to the City. He also wanted to deliver on some of the traditional Labour priorities and renew crumbling hospitals and school infrastructure. This is why in my view why PFI became popular . Unfortunately as someone said above economically it is the equivalent of putting your mortgage on your credit card.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
More young people than ever now go to University following a big increase in the provision of higher education under the Labour governments of the 1960's, 90's and 00,s I am not aware of any studies linking attendance at University with the closure of Grammar Schools - The main influence upon performance at Schools, attendance at University and future earning, was and is, Socio - Economic class.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
.
I said Red Bricks not Universities in general.
Do some Googling. The papers are out there.
When most of the Labour Party are schooled or attended these sort if Unis it really shows that the old battle lines over class division which the left love to drivel on about proves this argument is now moot.
Maggie was working class and attended a state school.
Blair went to Scotland's equivalent of Eton / Harrow.
The tuition fees which Labour 05 manifesto said would not be introduced but then were?
Besides, what's more important? A degree which many will do nothing with, or something more vocational like apprenticeships?
If you look at Germany, who have a much stronger engineering and manufacturing base than we do, the emphasis is on vocational education.
An abiding myth, but completely untrue. Thatcher's father was a shopkeeper, which was not a working class position in the 1920s and 1930s - look up Charlie Chaplin and Ewan McCole's memoirs for some contextual evidence on that. Furthermore, prior to the 1944 (I think) education act, Grammar Schools were fee-paying. Thatcher's sister attended an independent school-proper, and she would have followed if she hadn't won a scholarship. The same is true of Heath and Wilson, although they wouldn't have been able to go without a scholarship - Jim Callaghan fell foul of this, I seem to remember.
The only state schooled Prime Minister of the 20th century was John Major, although Wilson and Heath (and possibly Callaghan) were working class scholarship boys.
The grammar schools question is also a contentious one, as their intake was - and remains now, even to a greater degree than before - a middle class preserve, with a smaller working class intake; social mobility was not reflective of the working class proper, but of "state school students" regardless of socio-economic background. One statistic that is often mooted is that the state school/private school intake of Oxford was higher in the late 1960s than it is now, but this is more reflective of the left-leaning leadership of colleges like Balliol (see Christoper Hill) and Hertford which brought the statistics up.
The most damage to the school-university route has probably been done by league tables, and by the national curriculum. Academia at the top universities is built on a very particular skill-set, and simply being really clever isn't going to help you if you've not been hot-housed and aren't able to/given the resources to adapt. Independent schools and top grammars have the resources both in and outside of the classroom (largely due to farming pupils from higher economic groups) to better prepare their candidates, and this has always been the case. I won't offer a solution because I can't, but restoring grammar schools is a populist suggestion built on very flimsy foundations.
On tuition fees no-one has a clean copy book, Labour said they weren't going to introduce them then did, Labour then said they weren't going to increase them, then did. Labour the commissioned the Browne review that proposed increasing tuition fees (with cap) which Labour and the Tories agreed with. The Lib Dems said they would get rid of tuition fees and pledged it in photographs, however they should have known that they wouldn't win the election and ultimately would have to give in to either Labour or the Tories and increase them.
One interesting element relating to poorer students being deterred from going to university by higher fees, It hasnt happened according to OFFA (Office of Fair Access to Higher Education) Disadvantaged young people are applying to and entering higher education at higher rates than ever before.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
More young people than ever now go to University following a big increase in the provision of higher education under the Labour governments of the 1960's, 90's and 00,s I am not aware of any studies linking attendance at University with the closure of Grammar Schools - The main influence upon performance at Schools, attendance at University and future earning, was and is, Socio - Economic class.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
.
I said Red Bricks not Universities in general.
Do some Googling. The papers are out there.
When most of the Labour Party are schooled or attended these sort if Unis it really shows that the old battle lines over class division which the left love to drivel on about proves this argument is now moot.
Maggie was working class and attended a state school.
Blair went to Scotland's equivalent of Eton / Harrow.
The tuition fees which Labour 05 manifesto said would not be introduced but then were?
Besides, what's more important? A degree which many will do nothing with, or something more vocational like apprenticeships?
If you look at Germany, who have a much stronger engineering and manufacturing base than we do, the emphasis is on vocational education.
I do not subscribe to the politics of envy, but the politics of opportunity, hope and justice for all - not just an elite few.
It is not moot that the Tories supported increased public spending until 2010 - they did and then did a complete u- turn and criticised Labour for economic mismanagement!
It is a fact that entry to University, especially the older ones is heavily related to Socio - economic class. It is also the case that Conservative policy has always been to restrict access to Higher Ed.
The reason that PFI was needed was due to years of under- investment - mostly under Conservative governments. Since coming to Office this time again we see School class sizes beginning to rise.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
More young people than ever now go to University following a big increase in the provision of higher education under the Labour governments of the 1960's, 90's and 00,s I am not aware of any studies linking attendance at University with the closure of Grammar Schools - The main influence upon performance at Schools, attendance at University and future earning, was and is, Socio - Economic class.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
.
I said Red Bricks not Universities in general.
Do some Googling. The papers are out there.
When most of the Labour Party are schooled or attended these sort if Unis it really shows that the old battle lines over class division which the left love to drivel on about proves this argument is now moot.
Maggie was working class and attended a state school.
Blair went to Scotland's equivalent of Eton / Harrow.
The tuition fees which Labour 05 manifesto said would not be introduced but then were?
Besides, what's more important? A degree which many will do nothing with, or something more vocational like apprenticeships?
If you look at Germany, who have a much stronger engineering and manufacturing base than we do, the emphasis is on vocational education.
By the way the reference to the supposed papers is about as accurate as your reference to Bevan!
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
More young people than ever now go to University following a big increase in the provision of higher education under the Labour governments of the 1960's, 90's and 00,s I am not aware of any studies linking attendance at University with the closure of Grammar Schools - The main influence upon performance at Schools, attendance at University and future earning, was and is, Socio - Economic class.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
.
I said Red Bricks not Universities in general.
Do some Googling. The papers are out there.
When most of the Labour Party are schooled or attended these sort if Unis it really shows that the old battle lines over class division which the left love to drivel on about proves this argument is now moot.
Maggie was working class and attended a state school.
Blair went to Scotland's equivalent of Eton / Harrow.
The tuition fees which Labour 05 manifesto said would not be introduced but then were?
Besides, what's more important? A degree which many will do nothing with, or something more vocational like apprenticeships?
If you look at Germany, who have a much stronger engineering and manufacturing base than we do, the emphasis is on vocational education.
I do not subscribe to the politics of envy, but the politics of opportunity, hope and justice for all - not just an elite few.
It is not moot that the Tories supported increased public spending until 2010 - they did and then did a complete u- turn and criticised Labour for economic mismanagement!
It is a fact that entry to University, especially the older ones is heavily related to Socio - economic class. It is also the case that Conservative policy has always been to restrict access to Higher Ed.
The reason that PFI was needed was due to years of under- investment - mostly under Conservative governments. Since coming to Office this time again we see School class sizes beginning to rise.
Way too many go to university and do pointless degrees and come out wracked with debt and struggle to find work.
Whatever else the Labour governments did post 97 , they should take credit for virtually rebuilding the capital infrastructure of the country. The extent to which they rebuilt schools and hospitals should not be underestimated. At the latter end of the Thatcher/Major period many if not most hospitals were Victorian and schools were falling apart.....
Getting rid of Grammar schools, one of the biggest acts of social vandalism.
So poor kids don't get the chance to gain an education that they wouldn't be able to afford in the private sector?
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
More young people than ever now go to University following a big increase in the provision of higher education under the Labour governments of the 1960's, 90's and 00,s I am not aware of any studies linking attendance at University with the closure of Grammar Schools - The main influence upon performance at Schools, attendance at University and future earning, was and is, Socio - Economic class.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
.
I said Red Bricks not Universities in general.
Do some Googling. The papers are out there.
When most of the Labour Party are schooled or attended these sort if Unis it really shows that the old battle lines over class division which the left love to drivel on about proves this argument is now moot.
Maggie was working class and attended a state school.
Blair went to Scotland's equivalent of Eton / Harrow.
The tuition fees which Labour 05 manifesto said would not be introduced but then were?
Besides, what's more important? A degree which many will do nothing with, or something more vocational like apprenticeships?
If you look at Germany, who have a much stronger engineering and manufacturing base than we do, the emphasis is on vocational education.
I do not subscribe to the politics of envy, but the politics of opportunity, hope and justice for all - not just an elite few.
It is not moot that the Tories supported increased public spending until 2010 - they did and then did a complete u- turn and criticised Labour for economic mismanagement!
It is a fact that entry to University, especially the older ones is heavily related to Socio - economic class. It is also the case that Conservative policy has always been to restrict access to Higher Ed.
The reason that PFI was needed was due to years of under- investment - mostly under Conservative governments. Since coming to Office this time again we see School class sizes beginning to rise.
Way too many go to university and do pointless degrees and come out wracked with debt and struggle to find work.
Which degrees are pointless then? There is ample research suggesting both increased employment of graduates to non - graduates and increased earning potential.
An aside on examination achievement at secondary schools, be they Independent, Comprehensive, Grammar, or whatever. There is a huge industry, both formal and informal, unregulated as it is, oF private tuition. If a family can afford to spend money having their son(s) or daughter(s) given extra lessons in this subject or that, it is very very likely that they will get better grades in the school examinations in whatever subject(s) they have been privately tutored in. The schools then take the credit. At a guess more well off families will get in private tutors than those struggling with the bills. I am not sure if I am talking about a meritocracy or free market economy here, but it is possible to purchase extra exam success for your child, and this is done by parents of kids at all kinds of schools, but mostly by the richer parents. We have just had schools go on about their results, and are now recruiting trumpeting those results. Why do I say all this? Well because to get a bit of an edge it may be better to send your child to a quite well achieving school with a low economic demographic, than to go for the better achieving Independent or Grammar, or seemingly 'good' school with a high economic demographic.
I will leave out the subtleties of school recruitment policies that manipulate the intake to get the students most likely to achieve, but I can't resist one example. Recruitment by proximity to the school. Now that might be great if it were concentric circles radiating out from the school...but no, the relative distances are altered by lines that are influenced by estates, transport links, major roads, borough boundaries, parish boundaries and other stuff, so the concentric circles end up looking like doughnuts with bites taken out, and lumpy bits added on.
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Besides borrowing (or debt) is not the biggest issue as it can be managed. Its deficit which is most dangerous and this is falling.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25944653
If 50% upper rate tax was so important then why did Labour only bring that in 6 weeks before the GE? Because it was a political move, not a move which would see tax revenues increase. In fact of the £2.5bn they said it would raise in tax year 10-11 it only raised £1.1bn. Dropping the top rate to 45% could and should see that figure increase.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I stupidly assumed you'd see the difference without the need for a full and lengthy explanation of why the two are not comparable.
For a nation to secure its long-term wellbeing, there has to be a consistent vote over decades for the same party in order for that party to really ground its ideology and make changes the way it wishes to.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Tories and Labour (sorry to narrow it down to two parties but I'm using historical electoral precedent) both want the same things - to improve the economy, reduce unemployment, so on so forth. They just have different philosophies as to the best way of going about things, and it's always really premature to say after three years "LOOK LOOK IT'S NOT WORKING" which is what everyone is guilty of. So either one stimulates the economy by tax and spend in public services (Labour, historically) or one does so by making public spending cuts and decreasing tax on the individual, thus giving them more disposable income in theory (Conservatives, historically).
Both have the same end goal; why can't there be a cross-party consensus on what economic philosophy to stick to and try it out over the long term?
Best example for me would be that of Sweden. The Nordic model as upheld by their Social Democratic Party has since the Second World War led to a relative prosperity as well as a basic safety net for the majority of the population. Yes, the SDP has generally been a minority government but the relative congruity of Swedish politics has led to their socioeconomic policy being enacted consistently over a number of decades.
I'm not saying the Nordic model is the one and only model, but I would venture to say it's proof that consistently applying one school of socioeconomic philosophy over a number of decades does good in the long run.
A couple of years back I did some reading and seminars around the 2007-09 crash and the €uro crisis. Neither of these events were terminal but neither has been leveraged to get reforms in place to make a difference.
I took a look at the European centre left grouping position and it was horrendous! Anti bank, anti commerce... So who's paying for the social side. And it's widely known that the tories are in some weird right wing grouping.
My simple point is that it is the think tanks and academics who need to supply the politicians with solutions which don't involve kicking countries out of the €uro nor isolating the UK.
The challenges of global competition, youth unemployment and aging demographics are not going away. Perhaps I'm being naive but I would hope that there are politicians out there who want to deliver solutions for the long term. Turning these concepts into policies and slogans will take the challenge back to UKIP. Failure to do this will hand power to a bunch of crazy people.
Cameron and Osborne criticised PFI in the run up to the last election. They have since gone ahead with PFI on a number of school and hospital projects. It has been described as the equivalent of putting your mortgage on the credit card.
When people complain that there isn't a fag paper between the Parties, it's stuff like this that brings it home. No major party thinks infrastructure should be funded by taxation and government borrowing, even though it is hugely cheaper. However, doing things from government borrowing would mean significantly lower fees for the banks and consultants involved. All of whom make donations and share staff with the Parties.
And the whole country generally benefits from investment in infrastructure. It won't get done by the private sector for a whole host of reasons, so the state is the only player able to do a lot of this (think roads, railways, bridges, schools, hospitals). When the private sector is responsible for it, it only ever gets built when the state guarantees it (eg Thames Sewer, HS1, Crossrail). Unfortunately, the orthodoxy that all the main parties buy into insist that it is paid for at a much higher cost than is strictly necessary.
Just like the banking de-reg wasn't supposed to go as far as Brown took it, PFI brought in by Major was never supposed to be used to the extent that it was by Labour.
Getting rid of Grammar schools was more like academic vandalism. Red Brick intake from state schools has dropped since grammar schools were abolished in most of England and there are studies which show that this has directly impacted on social mobility of the working class.
Again the politics of envy and wish to make everyone equal has actually widened the gap between rich and poor and not narrowed it.
I vote Tory and went to a Grammar. Just wanted to add that little nugget of trivia.
Personally I don't think that a party who's higher echelons were all schooled at Eton and the like and were members of elite University elite Toffs clubs know much about meritocracy or social mobility and care even less. The main influence affecting attendance for poorer students has been the abolition of EMA and massive hike in tuition fees.
I said Red Bricks not Universities in general.
Do some Googling. The papers are out there.
When most of the Labour Party are schooled or attended these sort if Unis it really shows that the old battle lines over class division which the left love to drivel on about proves this argument is now moot.
Maggie was working class and attended a state school.
Blair went to Scotland's equivalent of Eton / Harrow.
The tuition fees which Labour 05 manifesto said would not be introduced but then were?
Besides, what's more important? A degree which many will do nothing with, or something more vocational like apprenticeships?
If you look at Germany, who have a much stronger engineering and manufacturing base than we do, the emphasis is on vocational education.
Neil Kinnock led Labour into the 1992 election and was narrowly defeated by John Major which meant the Tories were in power for 18 years and had changed the public sector beyond all recognition .That led to a major rethink by Labour which ultimately resulted in Blair creating New Labour and return to power . Blair tried to embrace the free market and become respectable to the City. He also wanted to deliver on some of the traditional Labour priorities and renew crumbling hospitals and school infrastructure. This is why in my view why PFI became popular . Unfortunately as someone said above economically it is the equivalent of putting your mortgage on your credit card.
The only state schooled Prime Minister of the 20th century was John Major, although Wilson and Heath (and possibly Callaghan) were working class scholarship boys.
The grammar schools question is also a contentious one, as their intake was - and remains now, even to a greater degree than before - a middle class preserve, with a smaller working class intake; social mobility was not reflective of the working class proper, but of "state school students" regardless of socio-economic background. One statistic that is often mooted is that the state school/private school intake of Oxford was higher in the late 1960s than it is now, but this is more reflective of the left-leaning leadership of colleges like Balliol (see Christoper Hill) and Hertford which brought the statistics up.
The most damage to the school-university route has probably been done by league tables, and by the national curriculum. Academia at the top universities is built on a very particular skill-set, and simply being really clever isn't going to help you if you've not been hot-housed and aren't able to/given the resources to adapt. Independent schools and top grammars have the resources both in and outside of the classroom (largely due to farming pupils from higher economic groups) to better prepare their candidates, and this has always been the case. I won't offer a solution because I can't, but restoring grammar schools is a populist suggestion built on very flimsy foundations.
One interesting element relating to poorer students being deterred from going to university by higher fees, It hasnt happened according to OFFA (Office of Fair Access to Higher Education) Disadvantaged young people are applying to and entering higher education at higher rates than ever before.
It is not moot that the Tories supported increased public spending until 2010 - they did and then did a complete u- turn and criticised Labour for economic mismanagement!
It is a fact that entry to University, especially the older ones is heavily related to Socio - economic class. It is also the case that Conservative policy has always been to restrict access to Higher Ed.
The reason that PFI was needed was due to years of under- investment - mostly under Conservative governments. Since coming to Office this time again we see School class sizes beginning to rise.
There is a huge industry, both formal and informal, unregulated as it is, oF private tuition. If a family can afford to spend money having their son(s) or daughter(s) given extra lessons in this subject or that, it is very very likely that they will get better grades in the school examinations in whatever subject(s) they have been privately tutored in.
The schools then take the credit.
At a guess more well off families will get in private tutors than those struggling with the bills. I am not sure if I am talking about a meritocracy or free market economy here, but it is possible to purchase extra exam success for your child, and this is done by parents of kids at all kinds of schools, but mostly by the richer parents.
We have just had schools go on about their results, and are now recruiting trumpeting those results.
Why do I say all this? Well because to get a bit of an edge it may be better to send your child to a quite well achieving school with a low economic demographic, than to go for the better achieving Independent or Grammar, or seemingly 'good' school with a high economic demographic.
I will leave out the subtleties of school recruitment policies that manipulate the intake to get the students most likely to achieve, but I can't resist one example. Recruitment by proximity to the school. Now that might be great if it were concentric circles radiating out from the school...but no, the relative distances are altered by lines that are influenced by estates, transport links, major roads, borough boundaries, parish boundaries and other stuff, so the concentric circles end up looking like doughnuts with bites taken out, and lumpy bits added on.