Politics, politics, politics

[the dza]

So the constituency has no MP for 4.5 years?

Unless he himself decides to resign (technically they can't even do that can they? they come up with some obscure job for them to go and pretend to do). But no political party can stop an MP being an MP, they can only take the whip away from them, so that they sit as an independent MP. That's what Labour have done in this case.

Personally, I'd prefer if it was easier for constituents to be able to recall their MP, trigger an election and boot them out.

 

[scaramanga]

Most OECD countries have similar levels of higher education now; the UK is hardly an outlier. If you have the misfortune to have to look at graduate CVs, you can spot the intellectual elite because they went to real universities and did proper degrees.

Also, you can interview people and see whether they are clever. Most people are improved by spending three years needing to take something abstract seriously, with a big fudge-off test at the end, so the societal contribution goes well beyond the ability to rank candidates.

Edit: charging the poor sods £30k for it and then making them pay it back at eye-watering rates of interest is all a bit off. But that happened later.

I regularly have the misfortune of having to read through the CVs of graduates - more often than not it is a disappointment.

I'm not convinced by the "Everyone else does it, so should we" argument if you'll forgive the paraphrasing. There was a value to holding a UK degree that is now diminished, and the only negligible effect that I can see from it is to keep people out of the job market who were never (and never will be) suited to academia.

The method of paying for degrees is good in principle and may still work, but there are some issues in the market that need ironing out first. It should be that over time, a degree in Sports Psychology from an ex-Poly becomes near worthless to those wanting to study as the post-grad pay scales are made public. Equally, a degree in Law or Accountancy from a proper university is likely to be worth more due to its post-grad opportunities. Over the longer term, it will become less valuable to "universities" to offer the degrees at the useless end of the spectrum and the education system will focus on reading the best subjects at the best universities.

 

[scaramanga]

Minimum wage is actually a pretty dumb idea too. All it does is cause wage and price inflation (plus discrimination against young people). Pay ratios are a much smarter idea - 15:1 between the CEO and the cleaners.

Agree with that except the last point.

Ratios are meaningless because the bottom of some businesses require higher skilled staff than others. That doesn't mean the CEO deserves a higher salary in one, nor does it mean the reverse. The correct answer is to allow all to be paid what the market deems them to be worth.

 

[ShipOfTheseus]

I regularly have the misfortune of having to read through the CVs of graduates - more often than not it is a disappointment.

I'm not convinced by the "Everyone else does it, so should we" argument if you'll forgive the paraphrasing. There was a value to holding a UK degree that is now diminished, and the only negligible effect that I can see from it is to keep people out of the job market who were never (and never will be) suited to academia.

The method of paying for degrees is good in principle and may still work, but there are some issues in the market that need ironing out first. It should be that over time, a degree in Sports Psychology from an ex-Poly becomes near worthless to those wanting to study as the post-grad pay scales are made public. Equally, a degree in Law or Accountancy from a proper university is likely to be worth more due to its post-grad opportunities. Over the longer term, it will become less valuable to "universities" to offer the degrees at the useless end of the spectrum and the education system will focus on reading the best subjects at the best universities.

Perhaps more people should go into the workforce at eighteen and then do degrees in their late twenties, once they are house-trained and have got used to the excitements of boozing and shagging and self-sufficiency, and have some idea of what they are vocationally suited to, and what actually interests them. It used to be that university was the only way of getting one’s horrible teenage children to leave home, but apparently the bastards are wise to that these days, and either return on graduating, or study locally.

Gone a bit off-topic, but then it’s your board, and presumably you’re happy with having a single thread to discuss politics, government and society. At least there’s a dedicated one for poo and guff.

 

[scaramanga]

Perhaps more people should go into the workforce at eighteen and then do degrees in their late twenties, once they are house-trained and have got used to the excitements of boozing and shagging and self-sufficiency, and have some idea of what they are vocationally suited to, and what actually interests them. It used to be that university was the only way of getting one’s horrible teenage children to leave home, but apparently the bastards are wise to that these days, and either return on graduating, or study locally.

Gone a bit off-topic, but then it’s your board, and presumably you’re happy with having a single thread to discuss politics, government and society. At least there’s a dedicated one for poo and guff.

We didn't used to have a single thread - it got really messy and pretty much every random thread was political in nature.

I'd be happy to see people returning to uni later - I changed careers at 25 and returned to education (in work) to do so. My issue is more with Blair's insistence that a certain proportion of the country would attend uni without any regard as to whether those people were suited to further education.

My wife is a GCSE teacher and so are plenty of our (her) friends. If you can get them to stop striking long enough to have an honest discussion about their students, they will tell you that most just aren't suited to a classroom. Many of them (in the parts of the world she teaches) are not even suited to schools and would be far better served learning how to not die on a construction site or getting fit for the armed forces.

 

[SpurMeUp]

We didn't used to have a single thread - it got really messy and pretty much every random thread was political in nature.

I'd be happy to see people returning to uni later - I changed careers at 25 and returned to education (in work) to do so. My issue is more with Blair's insistence that a certain proportion of the country would attend uni without any regard as to whether those people were suited to further education.

My wife is a GCSE teacher and so are plenty of our (her) friends. If you can get them to stop striking long enough to have an honest discussion about their students, they will tell you that most just aren't suited to a classroom. Many of them (in the parts of the world she teaches) are not even suited to schools and would be far better served learning how to not die on a construction site or getting fit for the armed forces.

Any nation that discourages education is damned. As the saying goes, if you think education is expensive try ignorance. That said, the value in doing a degree when you have real world often vocational experience, is very significant.

The New Deal in the US which gave returning service men from WWII the option of a free college education, is seen by some as a key reason for the USAs global strength and proliferation. People who had seen a fair bit of the world, chose to educate themselves, and became the lawyer, doctors and entrepreneurs that apparently powered the US forward.

The thing that keeps us, Europe and the US ahead of China is our education. Why do the wealthy in these developing countries send their kids to be educated in Europe or the US?

The Conservative ideal of a university educated elite with a working class of plumbers etc who doff their cap, is a bit like tying to recreate colonial Britain with Brexit: flawed on a number of levels. Education has to be for everyone.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

 

[glasgowspur]

Any nation that discourages education is damned. As the saying goes, if you think education is expensive try ignorance. That said, the value in doing a degree when you have real world often vocational experience, is very significant.

The New Deal in the US which gave returning service men from WWII the option of a free college education, is seen by some as a key reason for the USAs global strength and proliferation. People who had seen a fair bit of the world, chose to educate themselves, and became the lawyer, doctors and entrepreneurs that apparently powered the US forward.

The thing that keeps us, Europe and the US ahead of China is our education. Why do the wealthy in these developing countries send their kids to be educated in Europe or the US?

The Conservative ideal of a university educated elite with a working class of plumbers etc who doff their cap, is a bit like tying to recreate colonial Britain with Brexit: flawed on a number of levels. Education has to be for everyone.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

All true, but we aren't educating everyone as doctors, lawyers or educators.
A good percentage are taking useless degrees with no wage or real world value.

 

[Gutter Boy]

All true, but we aren't educating everyone as doctors, lawyers or educators.
A good percentage are taking useless degrees with no wage or real world value.

Depends what you see the point of universities as being

In the past decade or so it's become about training a workforce. But for the last 600 years the purpose of universities has been to civilise countries. So in that sense the more people we can civilise, the better

 

[SpurMeUp]

All true, but we aren't educating everyone as doctors, lawyers or educators.
A good percentage are taking useless degrees with no wage or real world value.

A degree, even one in a subject as applied as medicine or law, teaches you a capacity to learn, rather than provide you with vocational training. Most of what you learn in any subject is useless - academic - in practical terms. Even future Lawyers and Doctors have to train beyond their degrees in a vocational settings and they develop a specialisation. But studying gives people the ability to breakdown learning and work and apply it in the future. How many people follow the subject of their degree in the workplace? How many Geography undergrads go into town planning etc? That's not to say there isn't 'real world value' in studying Geography, it wasn't a waste of time, people just apply their ability to different vocations.

There are quite a few things that should be developed in our education system. The whole uni fees thing is a bit of a shambles with huge amounts of people not paying back anything that is lent to them (as much as £50k maybe), and some even access higher education so that they can get a £11k per year loan which they don't have to pay back (if or until they earn around £25k pa). There was a scam a few years ago where people were being ferried in from Romania to access these funds via privately run inner city higher education establishment that the Tories created. These private colleges were vessels with almost no teaching, just a means for the college and 'students' to take home funds from the government. Yet another example of how our Ministries and Civil Service fail to spend our money carefully.

 

[scaramanga]

Any nation that discourages education is damned. As the saying goes, if you think education is expensive try ignorance. That said, the value in doing a degree when you have real world often vocational experience, is very significant.

The New Deal in the US which gave returning service men from WWII the option of a free college education, is seen by some as a key reason for the USAs global strength and proliferation. People who had seen a fair bit of the world, chose to educate themselves, and became the lawyer, doctors and entrepreneurs that apparently powered the US forward.

The thing that keeps us, Europe and the US ahead of China is our education. Why do the wealthy in these developing countries send their kids to be educated in Europe or the US?

The Conservative ideal of a university educated elite with a working class of plumbers etc who doff their cap, is a bit like tying to recreate colonial Britain with Brexit: flawed on a number of levels. Education has to be for everyone.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

Some graduates can't spell or pass simple logic tests aimed at 11 year olds. Why would you insist on having them in a classroom when they simply don't have the cognitive ability to learn or reason?

I think we should educate everyone who is capable of being educated to the highest level possible. That number is much lower than the number in university now.

 

[SpurMeUp]

Some graduates can't spell or pass simple logic tests aimed at 11 year olds. Why would you insist on having them in a classroom when they simply don't have the cognitive ability to learn or reason?

I think we should educate everyone who is capable of being educated to the highest level possible. That number is much lower than the number in university now.

University doesn’t address literacy or basic skills, schools are culpable here.

If these graduates hadn’t taken a degree their ability would be lower still, is that what you would prefer?


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

 

[ShipOfTheseus]

Some graduates can't spell or pass simple logic tests aimed at 11 year olds. Why would you insist on having them in a classroom when they simply don't have the cognitive ability to learn or reason?
.

The jump between those two sentences is enormous. Lots of people can’t spell. I’ve met some extremely bright dyslexics. Logic tests are very tough to calibrate, and plenty of the rules in formal logic are counter-intuitive: humans are rather less instinctively good at logic and probability than they think. It’s easy to imagine someone targeting a question at tots which turns out to stump adults.

But who on earth lacks the cognitive ability to learn and reason? You’re suggesting that a large number of students are thicker than a roosterer spaniel.

 

[Gutter Boy]

A degree, even one in a subject as applied as medicine or law, teaches you a capacity to learn, rather than provide you with vocational training. Most of what you learn in any subject is useless - academic - in practical terms. Even future Lawyers and Doctors have to train beyond their degrees in a vocational settings and they develop a specialisation. But studying gives people the ability to breakdown learning and work and apply it in the future. How many people follow the subject of their degree in the workplace? How many Geography undergrads go into town planning etc? That's not to say there isn't 'real world value' in studying Geography, it wasn't a waste of time, people just apply their ability to different vocations.

There are quite a few things that should be developed in our education system. The whole uni fees thing is a bit of a shambles with huge amounts of people not paying back anything that is lent to them (as much as £50k maybe), and some even access higher education so that they can get a £11k per year loan which they don't have to pay back (if or until they earn around £25k pa). There was a scam a few years ago where people were being ferried in from Romania to access these funds via privately run inner city higher education establishment that the Tories created. These private colleges were vessels with almost no teaching, just a means for the college and 'students' to take home funds from the government. Yet another example of how our Ministries and Civil Service fail to spend our money carefully.

A graduate tax would sort the whole loans/funding situation. All new graduates pay e.g. 3 or 4% over £25k for 30 years. No personal debts, no interest rates, no funding black holes.

 

[scaramanga]

The jump between those two sentences is enormous. Lots of people can’t spell. I’ve met some extremely bright dyslexics. Logic tests are very tough to calibrate, and plenty of the rules in formal logic are counter-intuitive: humans are rather less instinctively good at logic and probability than they think. It’s easy to imagine someone targeting a question at tots which turns out to stump adults.

But who on earth lacks the cognitive ability to learn and reason? You’re suggesting that a large number of students are thicker than a roosterer spaniel.

Have you been in an ex-poly lately? Thicker than a roosterer spaniel would be a compliment to many of them.

 

[scaramanga]

University doesn’t address literacy or basic skills, schools are culpable here.

If these graduates hadn’t taken a degree their ability would be lower still, is that what you would prefer?


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

That ability is worthless unless it has a use. Graduates with good degrees from good universities have skills that I, as an employer, can use. If students have reached 16 years old and are still unable to display simple reading/writing/arithmetic skills, regardless of the quality of their education, then they are not cut out for academia. Bright kids in the worst schools will still achieve more than that by 16 - I see the evidence myself.

Students that have been thrown in (despite repeated intellectual failure up to that point) to a degree course just to make up the numbers do not tend to learn skills that have a use. In fact, those not suited to academia - by definition - would have learned a lot more in work than in university. Call me a cynic, but based on what New Labour did with the measure of poverty and how they fiddled the numbers, I wouldn't be surprised if this was all about unemployment figures.

 

[nayimfromthehalfwayline]

My wife is a GCSE teacher and so are plenty of our (her) friends. If you can get them to stop striking long enough to have an honest discussion about their students, they will tell you that most just aren't suited to a classroom. Many of them (in the parts of the world she teaches) are not even suited to schools and would be far better served learning how to not die on a construction site or getting fit for the armed forces.

Ive long held the view (since I was at school myself actually!) that when it comes to GCSE age kids should be split.

Those capable of academic success should go on through school and exams.

Those not, or those more suited to other fields, should be split off and educated appropriately.

Firstly, this stops all those non-academic kids from getting bored in class, messing around, enabling the more academic kids more chance of success.

And secondly, it gives those other kids something to actually get into and be productive with.

If they had offered me the chance of ditching traditional school at 14 and learning to be a plumber, mechanic, electrician, brick layer... Anything in the trades, Id have jumped at it.

And by the time I left school at 16 I would have joined the workforce already skilled and able to earn a decent wage. Within a few years I could have been set up in life.

Instead I kicked around school until 16, palmed off my exams, left as soon as I could and then started in the building industry with no skills at all. I was a simple labourer earning minimal money.

Not everyone is built for school/academia. Just as not everybody even wants that. A genuine opportunity to build a career from 14 in something I wanted to do, rather than being forced through pointless exams (to me) would have been life changing.

 

[scaramanga]

Ive long held the view (since I was at school myself actually!) that when it comes to GCSE age kids should be split.

Those capable of academic success should go on through school and exams.

Those not, or those more suited to other fields, should be split off and educated appropriately.

Firstly, this stops all those non-academic kids from getting bored in class, messing around, enabling the more academic kids more chance of success.

And secondly, it gives those other kids something to actually get into and be productive with.

If they had offered me the chance of ditching traditional school at 14 and learning to be a plumber, mechanic, electrician, brick layer... Anything in the trades, Id have jumped at it.

And by the time I left school at 16 I would have joined the workforce already skilled and able to earn a decent wage. Within a few years I could have been set up in life.

Instead I kicked around school until 16, palmed off my exams, left as soon as I could and then started in the building industry with no skills at all. I was a simple labourer earning minimal money.

Not everyone is built for school/academia. Just as not everybody even wants that. A genuine opportunity to build a career from 14 in something I wanted to do, rather than being forced through pointless exams (to me) would have been life changing.

There's absolutely a good middle ground between grammar schools (perfect system but gamed by parents at the 11+) and our current one which provides nothing for the more "trades suited" kids. A school my wife worked at in a particularly bricky part of the country used to have a scheme where all of the non-academic kids were only educated for the absolute minimum, state mandated classes - Maths, English, etc. For all of the rest of their school time they were taken to construction sites and technical colleges where they got themselves prepared for the real world and learned how to not die on the job. Those kids now have an advantage and a readiness that our current system cannot provide.

 

[nayimfromthehalfwayline]

There's absolutely a good middle ground between grammar schools (perfect system but gamed by parents at the 11+) and our current one which provides nothing for the more "trades suited" kids. A school my wife worked at in a particularly bricky part of the country used to have a scheme where all of the non-academic kids were only educated for the absolute minimum, state mandated classes - Maths, English, etc. For all of the rest of their school time they were taken to construction sites and technical colleges where they got themselves prepared for the real world and learned how to not die on the job. Those kids now have an advantage and a readiness that our current system cannot provide.

That sounds great, I would have loved such an opportunity at that age.

Of course, basic classes need to be met, especially as things like Maths are a big part of the building industries.

Two years spent, say 3 days a week, learning how to be a Plumber (for example) would have set me up for life - from 16 I would have been working full time and building a career. Maybe by 20 Id be a company owner, employer, homeowner? The possibilities would have been so much better than how it ended up.

 

[ShipOfTheseus]

Perhaps there's an equivalent of "being prepared for the real world and learning how to not die on the job" which applies to mid-ranking jobs in the service industry, and perhaps that's more or less what is inculcated by academic courses targeted at the majority.

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

You don't realise the misogyny that exists in the Labour party and Momentum if you think that's remotely possible.

You mention Stella Creasy, look at the kind of crap she has to deal with: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/squawkbox-stella-creasy_uk_5a44a3f5e4b025f99e19a10e and http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/skylar-bakerjordan/why-jared-omaras-misogyny_b_18371578.html

Misogyny and anti-Semitism are the two big internal blights of the left in this country

flimflam! You confuse a policy position by SOME in Labour that is critical of Israel with anti Semitism. They are not the same thing.