Seanjd
Player Valuation: £30m
I'd rather they don't select on ability or finance.
Current Affairs 2017 General Election
- Thread starter neil999
- Start date
- Status
I'd rather they don't select on ability or finance.
The binman chronicles
Player Valuation: £80m
Because the ability can be bought by well to do people in terms of extra tuition and by being in better schools to start with before you get assessed and sorted. Sure a few brilliant students from poorer backgrounds may get a better education, but you are condemning most lower income children by the age of 11 to be deemed as not as good as someone who may have been coached to pass the grammar entrance exam.
It doesn't take into consideration if the child is a late bloomer or had issues that forced them to move schools alot etc.
I'm a product of a grammar school, I'm not sure I would have done as well without it. My parents certainly couldn't have afforded to send me to a similar school so I think it worked well. Unfortunately academic ability varies, not all kids will be as bright as each other. It's vital that schools, headteachers etc remember how valuable vocational training is. It's not secondary or less important, it's equally as important.
The binman chronicles
Player Valuation: £80m
Obviously a grammar education helps and great if you get one, but the point is it's far better to have great secondary schools that give everyone the same chance up to the age you take your final exams.
11 is just too early to tell and it is weighted in favour of the wealthy. There will still be plenty of people of differing abilities anyhow and then like you say they can go down the vocational route instead of an academic one.
If May gets lots of Grammar schools then it's simply another way to divide people, employers will sort potential employees by whether they went to grammar schools or not.
zzr45
#MURDERINGSCUM
But is possibly a solution to the skills shortage we have in this country - especially if non grammars focus more on vocational training.
The binman chronicles
Player Valuation: £80m
One way of looking at it, but isn't that kind of saying you are going to get a second class education but you may be more 'hands on' than your grammar equivalent?
zzr45
#MURDERINGSCUM
That's true. I'd look for a move more towards the German system. If there's the ability for those that academically shine in later years to transfer then it is better than the forced 'equality' which is really damaging atm
An old story but still hugely relevant:
Exclusive: Chancellor Philip Hammond took personal stake in food technology company months before it won share of £560,000 Government contract
Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has a 15 per cent stake in a food tech company called Hydramach CREDIT: JANE BARLOW/ JANE BARLOW
11 JANUARY 2017 • 10:00PM
- Christopher Hope, chief political correspondent
Philip Hammond took a personal stake in a food technology company just months before it won a share of a £560,000 Government grant and he became Chancellor, The Telegraph can disclose.
Mr Hammond, when he was Foreign Secretary, took the 15 per cent stake in Cambridgeshire-based Hydramach in October 2015, according to records at Companies House.
Months later – in April 2016 – Hydramach was one of eight companies which won the grant to develop low fat and low sugar soups, ready meals and sauces from Innovate UK, a tech start up quango run by the Department for Business.
Last night a former standards watchdog said Mr Hammond’s failure to make public his shareholding was “a serious failure” because “there is clearly a potential conflict of interest”.
Hydramach has now withdrawn from the consortium. However the first instalment of the money from the grant is due to be paid to the consortium – which includes J Sainsbury and the University of Chester – on February 1.
The project’s title was “reduced fat and salt in soups, sauces and ready meals by utilisation of novel procedures to create novel micro-structures”.
A project description, provided by the eight organisations in the consortium and published by Innovate in the UK in April 2016, describes how the work “will help to facilitate progress on some key government initiatives outlined in the Public Health Responsibility Deal”.
Philip Hammond, the Chancellor CREDIT: REUTERS/JANE BARLOW
Details of Mr Hammond’s investment were only made public eight months later in December 2016 edition of the register of ministerial interests.
At the time of his investment Mr Hammond was foreign secretary. He did not to declare them in December 2015’s register.
The fact that Mr Hammond took a direct stake in a company when he was a Cabinet minister with the possibility of receiving advance knowledge of Government plans for start-up companies will inevitably raise eyebrows.
It is highly unusual for serving Cabinet ministers to take direct stakes in private companies.
Last night Mr Hammond's friends said Hydramach had pulled out of the consortium after winning the contract.
A source said Mr Hammond “didn’t know that the company had entered the assessment stage as part of this consortium, until after the assessment phase was complete.
“Mr Hammond has no involvement in his capacity as Chancellor in the process of awarding Innovate UK grants.”
Innovate UK sources said: "Hydramach was certainly part of the successful consortium." The source declined to say if Hydramach remained in the consortium.
Last night, Mr Hobbs, Hydramach's director, told The Daily Telegraph: “Hydramach withdrew from the proposed consortium and declined to enter into the agreement with Innovate UK and therefore Hydramach has not received nor will receive or benefit in any way from any grant paid to the other members of the consortium led by Sainsbury
Hydramach, based in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, was set up by Sean Butler, 61, a university teacher, and Richard Hobbs, 49, an engineer, in October 2014. The pair had equal 50 per cent stakes in the company.
Mr Hammond took his 15 per cent stake along with four other shareholders – diluting Mr Butler’s and Mr Hobbs’ stake – 12 months later in October 2015.
Mr Hammond has a well-publicised experience as an entrepreneur, buying and selling Ford cars from the Dagenham plant near his home and drove one himself as a student at Oxford University, and running a series of companies in the 1980s and 1990s.
His sole entry in the most recent House of Commons’ MPs’ register which makes reference to the fact that he is “a beneficiary of a trust which owns a controlling interest in Castlemead Ltd, a company engaged in construction, house building and property development”.
The Daily Telegraph has established that Mr Hammond took such a close interest in the company that he met with other shareholders at company events.
The company was £15,340 in debt according to the only set of accounts lodged at Companies House, for the year to October 31, 2015.
No one was available to speak to The Telegraph at the company’s offices on Thursday. A worker in a nearby office said the team were in Buxton, Derbyshire.
Since Mr Hammond became Chancellor – and before the stake was made public – he has spoken up for technology companies in general without declaring his interest.
In the Autumn statement, Mr Hammond unveiled plans to give £400million to small tech companies that are looking to “scale up”.
Alistair Graham CREDIT: NONE/NONE
Sir Alistair Graham, the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life from 2003 until 2007, told The Daily Telegraph: “I am really surprised that someone of his seniority and experience has not seen fit to declare publicly all of his shareholdings because it leaves him open to challenge of a potential conflict of interest.
“It certainly raises a very big question-mark – somebody like the Chancellor of the Exchequer really can't afford to be seen to be in such a position.
"Most people probably thought he was very straight in these matters and would have been concerned to be seen to abide by the spirit of the rules. It is a failure of leadership that he hasn’t.”
However a spokesman for Mr Hammond said: “The shareholding has been fully declared to the Director General for Propriety and Ethics [Sue Gray] at the Cabinet Office and the independent adviser on Ministers' interests [Alex Allan] who were content with the arrangements”.
He added: “Hydramach initially joined the consortium, but later withdrew its participation and did not bid for, or receive any research funding. Mr Hammond does not have any day to day involvement in the company.”
An aide to Mr Hammond added: “He declared his shareholding as part of the usual Ministerial interests process - as set out in the Ministerial Code - whilst Foreign Secretary.
“It wasn't published in the List of Ministers' Interests whilst he was Foreign Secretary because it wasn't considered to be relevant to his role at that time.
“It wasn't declared in his House of Commons’ register because it didn't meet their threshold for declaration.”
A spokesman for Mr Hammond was unable to provide a date for Mr Hammond's declaration of the interest, but indicated that it was made while he was Foreign Secretary and that it was the decision of the Cabinet Office not to publish it on the basis that it was not relevant to his role.
Vote for the Tories and you're voting for crooks.
It clearly should have been declared, but you're accusing the people at InnovateUK of being crooks for awarding the money to a consortium containing this company. I know many of the people that work there and they're a long way from being crooks. You'd know that if you had the first clue about how they work, but that would interfere in point scoring.
Last edited:
I disagree. Don't think it divides anything. It gives kids who's parents can't afford top schools an opportunity to show their merit that otherwise they wouldn't get. People aren't all the same. We can't force everyone into being equal. Race to the bottom that. Better to encourage poor kids to get a leg up and bring others down to that level.
The binman chronicles
Player Valuation: £80m
Good post. There is always things that can be tweaked and improved but I'd rather a student be in the same school in different classes just so there is isn't a sweeping differential later on in life.
Of course that may not help improve more of the early top performers as much as going to a separate grammar school, but what % improve to what % are going to be hampered by the separation. I would need to see the full details before I can really comment but my initial views are negative.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Am I? Okay, then.
The binman chronicles
Player Valuation: £80m
Wouldn't you agree that a fairly well off family have got more chance of getting their child into a grammar by paying for private tuition and probably living in an area that has a better school so their base education is already at a higher standard than someone who goes to a primary school that serves a relatively poor neighbourhood?
It will become an arms race and I know who I would place my bet on. If this comes about I will be paying for a tutor with the single objective of getting my child to pass the 11+ with flying colours.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Is Labour's manifesto living in fantasy land? Quite the opposite
Imperfect it may be, but Labour’s manifesto recognises the economic status quo can’t be kept going for much longer
Comments
917
Larry Elliott Economics editor
Sunday 14 May 2017 12.32 BSTLast modified on Sunday 14 May 2017 16.41 BST
Ten years ago this month, Britain was on the cusp of change. Two things were about to happen, one planned and one unexpected.
The change everybody knew about was that Tony Blair was going to stand down as prime minister after 10 years in the job, during which time he had won three elections on the trot.
To mark his going, Dan Atkinson and I wrote a book summing up his legacy. Fantasy Island, as the title suggests, was not exactly flattering about Britain’s departing PM. It painted a picture of Britain as mired in debt, where the public sector was on the brink of meltdown, where the country was trying to play the part of world policeman on the cheap, and where the growing size of the trade deficit exposed the perils of allowing manufacturing to shrivel.
Fantasy Island was not exactly a bestseller but it sold reasonably well. The reason for that (apart, obviously, from the book’s razor-sharp analysis and polished prose) was that the biggest financial crisis in a century erupted within two months of its publication and a month after Blair’s departure from Downing Street. This was the unexpected event.
Britain, as a result of what happened between the first inklings of trouble in July 2007 and the bottoming out of a deep slump in the early part of 2009, is an utterly changed country. There has been a lost decade of living standards. Dismal productivity growth and the proliferation of low-paid, insecure jobs have made a mockery of the idea that Britain was forging ahead in the knowledge economy. A decade of investment in the public sector has been followed by a decade of cuts. Without sounding unduly boastful, quite a lot of what was predicted in Fantasy Island came true.
Daily Mail front page, 12 May 2017. Photograph: Daily Mail
And, to be frank, not a lot has changed in the subsequent 10 years. The economy is still over-dependent on the financial sector and on the willingness of households to load up on debt. When the housing market slows – as in 2011-12 and currently – so does the economy. Income and wealth are highly concentrated because not only has growth been slow it has also been unevenly distributed.
In the workplace, management is strong and unions are weak, which helps explain why real wages have grown more slowly since 2007 than in any decade since the 19th Century. London is rich and thriving but might as well be a separate country given how different it is from other, less prosperous, regions. Relative poverty, as the former prime minister Gordon Brown has shown, is heading for levels not experienced even under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
Imperfect though it is, Labour’s draft manifesto at least tries to tackle some of these glaring weaknesses. Sure, there is a perhaps naive belief in the ability of the state to administer top-down solutions. Certainly, the document can – and will – be criticised for being stronger on how to spend money than how to create it. No question, some of the individual measures don’t really cut it. The £8bn bung to scrap tuition fees, for example, is not especially progressive.
That said, though, there are plenty of good things in the manifesto. The employers who whinge constantly about the poor quality of school leavers and graduates will be asked to contribute more to the education budget through higher corporation tax. Labour plans to broaden stamp duty to a wider range of financial instruments, including derivatives, which will raise £5bn and help lessen volatility.
There is a recognition that macro-economic policy since the crisis has been flawed, with far too much emphasis on ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing and too little on tax and spending measures. Austerity has been tested to destruction, with both deficit reduction and growth much weaker than envisaged. There is a strong case, as the International Monetary Fund has noted, for countries to borrow to invest in infrastructure, especially when they can do so at today’s low interest rates.
Indeed, it is sign of how much ground has been ceded by the left over the last decade that these ideas are seen as dangerously radical. Germany and France have higher levels of corporation tax than Britain, but they also have better trained workforces and higher levels of productivity. A group of eurozone countries are planning a financial transactions tax. Balancing day-to-day spending while borrowing for roads, railways and superfast broadband, which is what John McDonnell is suggesting, is more Keynesian than Marxist.
What’s more, these essentially social-democratic ideas will seem even more mainstream if – as is entirely possible – there is another crisis.
Mohammed El-Erian used to run Pimco, the world’s biggest fund manager. He told the Observer this week that in 2008-09 there was a chance to construct a new growth model, but the opportunity was passed up. Financial markets have been kept happy by an unceasing diet of cheap money but the economic fundamentals are poor. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the eclipse of both the traditional parties of government in the French presidential election are warning signs that something is seriously amiss.
El-Erian says the developed world is “either going to take a turn towards higher, more inclusive growth that will reduce political polarisation and the politics of anger. Or alternatively, low growth becomes recession, artificial financial stability becomes unsettling volatility, and the politics get a lot messier”.
Things, in other words, are back where they were in the run-up to the crash of 2007-08. Then, the series of regional financial crises in Mexico, south-east Asia, Russia, and Latin America were warnings that something bigger and much more serious was about to happen. These were akin to someone who is obese and a heavy smoker suffering a series of mini strokes and failing to change their lifestyle.
The leak of Labour’s draft manifesto led to some predictable headlines – “Britain heading back to the 1970s”; “This was the most expensive suicide note in history”. For me, though the most memorable given its personal connotations, was the Daily Mail’s “Corbyn’s fantasy land”.
Think about this for a moment. Real incomes are falling. Inequality is rising. The NHS is kept going on a wing and a prayer. The economy is barely rising despite more than eight years of unprecedented stimulus from the Bank of England. Personal debt is heading back towards its previous record levels. International co-operation has rarely been weaker. There is a profound disconnect between the financial markets, where asset prices regularly scale new heights, and the state of the real economy.
Now ask yourself this. If any of the above rings true, what is the real fantasy: Labour’s idea that income, wealth and power should be a bit more evenly distributed or the idea that the current state of affairs can be sustained for very much longer?
He didn't mate. He inferred tories are crooks, not his work colleagues.
Talk about point scoring.
No MPs should have a 2nd job!
- Status