SNova
Player Valuation: £15m
The economy and immigration the main two things. Of course it's all opinions.
The 2015 Popularity Contest (aka UK General Election )
- Thread starter rascal
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The economy and immigration the main two things. Of course it's all opinions.
toffee matt
Player Valuation: £60m
How many Kitchens does Dave have more importantly?
The Esk
Player Valuation: £70m
Think almost everyone accepts immigration was an error, but not sure how you arrive at the economy argument, unless you hold Labour responsible for the global financial collapse created in New York
SNova
Player Valuation: £15m
Just seems to be the case that every time the economy crashes, labour is in power.
I'm not conservative btw. I wouldn't vote for any really.
the conservatives, have increased they debt by nearly double growth is still lagging behind were the last labour left it, and on top of that when they increased vat to 20% from 17.50%, which they said before that election they would not, giving them an extra boost to the coffers that the so called miss managing labour govement didnt have. its anywere between £48 to £70 billion extra, so if there so good , after the cuts, why isnt it shown in the figures?
by the way i am not a fan of a lot Labour do , just think they are well the lesser of the two evils, but i fear for my kids getting a decent job or home if this Tory shower get into power,my life is fairly comfortable i only want the same chance in life for them to get to that stage, not live in a country raceing to the bottom in wages job and security.
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The banks worldwide messed up this country - Labour bailed the banks out when we had growth of 4 percent!
I heard the former leader of the defence league on LBC over the Dudley MP rigging a false protest march, he has a two hour televised video of the events a gangster from Birmingham who is a millionaire was involved with the prospective MP ( who has now resigned) revealed that if elected DC had a high office for him, and DC had also met this millionaire at a Midlands gathering allegedly mind blowing sounded like the house of cards on Netflix imo!
He also slated the state of British politics all over the political spectrum in the Labour councils in the north in the sex grooming cases. he stated he had turned down a large amount of funds to go along with the fake anti Muslim March, but decided to blow the story - he has a body guard and fears for his family now!
He also slated the state of British politics all over the political spectrum in the Labour councils in the north in the sex grooming cases. he stated he had turned down a large amount of funds to go along with the fake anti Muslim March, but decided to blow the story - he has a body guard and fears for his family now!
Does he mention his breed of being related to the Royal family?
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Haven't read this yet, just posting it for your collective considerstion, but I imagine it's an interesting and illuminating read:
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti.../24/immigrants-in-their-own-words-100-stories
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti.../24/immigrants-in-their-own-words-100-stories
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
A sample:
An immigrant and a surgeon in York
I followed the footsteps of my teachers from India who all had Royal College of Surgeons membership. It's nearing 10 years since I first got a sample of working in the NHS. At first I thought, "what a fantastic concept, not having to refuse treatment to a patient who can't afford an operation". It was a dream we young surgeons often dreamt about in India, and finally I saw it transformed into reality with the NHS. Over the years, though, in addition to adopting England as my country I have also adopted cynicism and dissatisfaction towards the system.
What has not changed is how undervalued NHS is in the eyes of its patrons and politicians. From an 80-year-old patient with a life-threatening condition profusely apologising for wasting doctors' time to people who have had too much to drink and need a taxi home after their ambulance ride and a good sleep in accident and emergency for a few hours! I think to appreciate the NHS you need to realise how sickness comes without a warning and takes away all your life's earnings, which is a reality for 80% of this world.
I have to deal with prevailing Islamophobia, the rise of the BNP and anti-immigration rhetoric. Having finished a long day on call, I left the hospital and was racially abused by some football fans who were celebrating. I tried to move to America once, but I missed out on a fellowship there because I was refused a visa as I had visited Arab states. But 99% of my time I enjoy what I do – even if I miss the sunshine.
The photo is of me and my friend of 20 years who supported me during my initial months in UK. Friends make up an important part of ones identity in a foreign adopted land!
An immigrant and a surgeon in York
I followed the footsteps of my teachers from India who all had Royal College of Surgeons membership. It's nearing 10 years since I first got a sample of working in the NHS. At first I thought, "what a fantastic concept, not having to refuse treatment to a patient who can't afford an operation". It was a dream we young surgeons often dreamt about in India, and finally I saw it transformed into reality with the NHS. Over the years, though, in addition to adopting England as my country I have also adopted cynicism and dissatisfaction towards the system.
What has not changed is how undervalued NHS is in the eyes of its patrons and politicians. From an 80-year-old patient with a life-threatening condition profusely apologising for wasting doctors' time to people who have had too much to drink and need a taxi home after their ambulance ride and a good sleep in accident and emergency for a few hours! I think to appreciate the NHS you need to realise how sickness comes without a warning and takes away all your life's earnings, which is a reality for 80% of this world.
I have to deal with prevailing Islamophobia, the rise of the BNP and anti-immigration rhetoric. Having finished a long day on call, I left the hospital and was racially abused by some football fans who were celebrating. I tried to move to America once, but I missed out on a fellowship there because I was refused a visa as I had visited Arab states. But 99% of my time I enjoy what I do – even if I miss the sunshine.
The photo is of me and my friend of 20 years who supported me during my initial months in UK. Friends make up an important part of ones identity in a foreign adopted land!
Might be of interest @Clint Planet as it talks about inequality.
http://knowledge.insead.edu/economi...-starts-with-early-childhood-development-3914
"Income inequality may have the greatest impact on society’s most vulnerable: very young children. Without addressing early childhood development, efforts to close class gaps may fall short.
A growing body of research indicates that income inequality is playing an ever-greater role in shaping the destinies of children across the world. From health to education, the statistics show that rich and poor kids are on increasingly divergent tracks, a global condition with grave implications for the future of developed democracies. Perhaps even more troubling than the numbers themselves is the lack of political consensus about what should be done, not to mention the political will and capacity to take timely action.
Some believe that affordable higher education is the most effective counterweight to mounting inequality. In his address of the State of the Union in January, President Barack Obama laid out a proposal to offer two tuition-free years of community college. Others have argued that the most effective way to help those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder would be through tax interventions, for example, through expanding the earned income tax credit.
But the literature on early childhood development strongly suggests that such measures would touch many people too late in life. One’s chances for success as an adult, many studies show, largely depend on the acquisition of certain intellectual and interpersonal skills in early childhood – skills that are more difficult to obtain in conditions of economic hardship. As inequality lengthens the distance between rungs on the class ladder, helping poor families understand and cultivate these skills early in a child’s life becomes essential to maintaining social mobility.
The Self-Control to Succeed
Research across multiple disciplines from economics and sociology to neuroscience, and developmental psychology suggests that many important predictors of future success take shape even before a child enters school. “Self-control” – whether a person foregoes short-term temptations to prioritise higher pursuits – in particular has been implicated as a major causal factor in a child’s later life successes. One of the best-known studies on self-control is Walter Mischel’s marshmallow test. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mischel, then a psychology professor at Stanford, ran a series of experiments where he placed nursery school students in a room and gave them a treat.
He made the following deal with the kids: they could eat the marshmallow right away, or wait 15 minutes until the tester returned to the room. If they waited, they would get two marshmallows. Mischel followed the children over time and found that the children who had shown the ability to resist the temptation to eat the treat right away got better grades, were healthier, enjoyed greater success on the labour market, and even proved better at staying in relationships. Mischel concluded that self-control and patience and being able to tame one’s impulses are just as important as intelligence in predicting life success.
But is self-control a purely innate quality, or is social conditioning involved in its development? In 2012, a group of psychologists from the University of Rochester re-did the marshmallow experiment, with a key difference: Before offering the marshmallows, testers established their own credibility or lack thereof by promising the preschoolers a set of crayons, and fulfilling that promise for only half the kids. All but one of the kids for whom the crayon promise was broken didn’t wait for the second marshmallow; the majority of the fulfilled-promise group did.
This experiment shows the development of self-control is strongly conditioned by social trust. Kids growing up in an environment where promises are always broken and outcomes are far from reliable – circumstances seen more often in working-class contexts than wealthy ones – will likely find it rational to opt for immediate over delayed gratification.
Growing Up at Risk
Children from low-income families are at a much higher risk of adverse experiences associated with poor adult health, alcoholism, drug use, depression, and poor job performance. In our recent study, we analysed data from the 2011/2012 National Survey of Children’s Health and found that children from poor families are more likely to lose a parent before turning 17 and to live with a parent who has served time in prison than children growing up in wealthier families. Low-income children are also more likely to have witnessed or been victims of domestic violence or violence in their neighbourhood. Low-income children are also more likely to grow up in households where one resident parent suffers from mental illness or substance abuse problems.
image: http://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/www.insead.edu/files/images/ace_figure.png
Source: Snellman, Silva, and Putnam (2015)
The biological mechanism that links early adversity and future problems is stress. Children who experience chronic stress in early childhood find it harder to concentrate, to control impulses, and to follow directions. The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is linked to self-regulation and a set of cognitive skills known as executive functions. Executive functions are a bundle of higher-order mental abilities. When these are impaired, learning becomes much harder. Also impacted by high, sustained stress levels in early life is the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays an important role in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory. Damages to the hippocampus can lead to impairments in learning, memory, and the ability to regulate certain stress responses.
The Comfort Gap
Fortunately, the negative effects of early stress can be mollified if not totally canceled out by the right type of parenting behaviour. Parents who have a warm, nurturing relationship with their children can help them to build resilience. Psychologist Gary Evans observed middle school children playing the frustration-inducing game Jenga with their mothers and found that for kids whose mothers were particularly emotionally responsive during the game, life stresses such as poverty and divorce had little to no effect on stress hormone levels. Psychologist Mary Ainsworth found that babies whose mothers were quick to react to their crying became more self-reliant and intrepid adults.
However, there is a significant class difference in the amount of warmth and affection parents show their children. Analysing data from the 1997 Panel Study on Income Dynamics FI found that 75 percent of mothers with less than a high-school education hug or show physical affection to their child at least once a day, compared to 87 percent of mothers with a high-school diploma, 91 percent of mothers with some college, and 94 percent of mothers with college degrees. Similarly, more college-educated fathers (77 percent) report hugging their child daily than do fathers with less than a high-school education (68 percent) or fathers with a high-school diploma (70 percent).
Recommendations
A key insight stemming from the research on early childhood development is that the major determinant of child disadvantage is the quality of the nurturing environment, rather than just the number of parents in the home or financial resources available. Another important insight is that if we want to make a difference, we have to start early.
In a 2014 report, the U.S.-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission called for a shift in funding priorities to improve childrens’ health with an emphasis on early childhood education, community revitalisation, and a broader scope of healthcare. “Although the United States invests significantly in [these areas]”, the Commission wrote, “it does not invest as heavily in the earliest years when children’s brains are developing.” The report called upon leaders to “ensure all children have access to early childhood development programmes by 2025.”
Of course, we cannot ignore that the welfare of parents and children are deeply interwoven. Mothers who have had their share of adversity and insecure attachments in early childhood are less likely to establish a secure, nurturing relationship with their own children. To end the vicious circle of childhood adversity, we should design programmes that help mothers to overcome these problems."
http://knowledge.insead.edu/economi...-starts-with-early-childhood-development-3914
"Income inequality may have the greatest impact on society’s most vulnerable: very young children. Without addressing early childhood development, efforts to close class gaps may fall short.
A growing body of research indicates that income inequality is playing an ever-greater role in shaping the destinies of children across the world. From health to education, the statistics show that rich and poor kids are on increasingly divergent tracks, a global condition with grave implications for the future of developed democracies. Perhaps even more troubling than the numbers themselves is the lack of political consensus about what should be done, not to mention the political will and capacity to take timely action.
Some believe that affordable higher education is the most effective counterweight to mounting inequality. In his address of the State of the Union in January, President Barack Obama laid out a proposal to offer two tuition-free years of community college. Others have argued that the most effective way to help those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder would be through tax interventions, for example, through expanding the earned income tax credit.
But the literature on early childhood development strongly suggests that such measures would touch many people too late in life. One’s chances for success as an adult, many studies show, largely depend on the acquisition of certain intellectual and interpersonal skills in early childhood – skills that are more difficult to obtain in conditions of economic hardship. As inequality lengthens the distance between rungs on the class ladder, helping poor families understand and cultivate these skills early in a child’s life becomes essential to maintaining social mobility.
The Self-Control to Succeed
Research across multiple disciplines from economics and sociology to neuroscience, and developmental psychology suggests that many important predictors of future success take shape even before a child enters school. “Self-control” – whether a person foregoes short-term temptations to prioritise higher pursuits – in particular has been implicated as a major causal factor in a child’s later life successes. One of the best-known studies on self-control is Walter Mischel’s marshmallow test. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mischel, then a psychology professor at Stanford, ran a series of experiments where he placed nursery school students in a room and gave them a treat.
He made the following deal with the kids: they could eat the marshmallow right away, or wait 15 minutes until the tester returned to the room. If they waited, they would get two marshmallows. Mischel followed the children over time and found that the children who had shown the ability to resist the temptation to eat the treat right away got better grades, were healthier, enjoyed greater success on the labour market, and even proved better at staying in relationships. Mischel concluded that self-control and patience and being able to tame one’s impulses are just as important as intelligence in predicting life success.
But is self-control a purely innate quality, or is social conditioning involved in its development? In 2012, a group of psychologists from the University of Rochester re-did the marshmallow experiment, with a key difference: Before offering the marshmallows, testers established their own credibility or lack thereof by promising the preschoolers a set of crayons, and fulfilling that promise for only half the kids. All but one of the kids for whom the crayon promise was broken didn’t wait for the second marshmallow; the majority of the fulfilled-promise group did.
This experiment shows the development of self-control is strongly conditioned by social trust. Kids growing up in an environment where promises are always broken and outcomes are far from reliable – circumstances seen more often in working-class contexts than wealthy ones – will likely find it rational to opt for immediate over delayed gratification.
Growing Up at Risk
Children from low-income families are at a much higher risk of adverse experiences associated with poor adult health, alcoholism, drug use, depression, and poor job performance. In our recent study, we analysed data from the 2011/2012 National Survey of Children’s Health and found that children from poor families are more likely to lose a parent before turning 17 and to live with a parent who has served time in prison than children growing up in wealthier families. Low-income children are also more likely to have witnessed or been victims of domestic violence or violence in their neighbourhood. Low-income children are also more likely to grow up in households where one resident parent suffers from mental illness or substance abuse problems.
image: http://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/www.insead.edu/files/images/ace_figure.png
Source: Snellman, Silva, and Putnam (2015)
The biological mechanism that links early adversity and future problems is stress. Children who experience chronic stress in early childhood find it harder to concentrate, to control impulses, and to follow directions. The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is linked to self-regulation and a set of cognitive skills known as executive functions. Executive functions are a bundle of higher-order mental abilities. When these are impaired, learning becomes much harder. Also impacted by high, sustained stress levels in early life is the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays an important role in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory. Damages to the hippocampus can lead to impairments in learning, memory, and the ability to regulate certain stress responses.
The Comfort Gap
Fortunately, the negative effects of early stress can be mollified if not totally canceled out by the right type of parenting behaviour. Parents who have a warm, nurturing relationship with their children can help them to build resilience. Psychologist Gary Evans observed middle school children playing the frustration-inducing game Jenga with their mothers and found that for kids whose mothers were particularly emotionally responsive during the game, life stresses such as poverty and divorce had little to no effect on stress hormone levels. Psychologist Mary Ainsworth found that babies whose mothers were quick to react to their crying became more self-reliant and intrepid adults.
However, there is a significant class difference in the amount of warmth and affection parents show their children. Analysing data from the 1997 Panel Study on Income Dynamics FI found that 75 percent of mothers with less than a high-school education hug or show physical affection to their child at least once a day, compared to 87 percent of mothers with a high-school diploma, 91 percent of mothers with some college, and 94 percent of mothers with college degrees. Similarly, more college-educated fathers (77 percent) report hugging their child daily than do fathers with less than a high-school education (68 percent) or fathers with a high-school diploma (70 percent).
Recommendations
A key insight stemming from the research on early childhood development is that the major determinant of child disadvantage is the quality of the nurturing environment, rather than just the number of parents in the home or financial resources available. Another important insight is that if we want to make a difference, we have to start early.
In a 2014 report, the U.S.-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission called for a shift in funding priorities to improve childrens’ health with an emphasis on early childhood education, community revitalisation, and a broader scope of healthcare. “Although the United States invests significantly in [these areas]”, the Commission wrote, “it does not invest as heavily in the earliest years when children’s brains are developing.” The report called upon leaders to “ensure all children have access to early childhood development programmes by 2025.”
Of course, we cannot ignore that the welfare of parents and children are deeply interwoven. Mothers who have had their share of adversity and insecure attachments in early childhood are less likely to establish a secure, nurturing relationship with their own children. To end the vicious circle of childhood adversity, we should design programmes that help mothers to overcome these problems."
Donald Twain
Vide cor meum
Not the Falklands card again !
Not sure about that. There were two major recessions under Thatcher/Major.
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