DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

Love it

After the Guardian broke the news of the pair's resignation and the reasons they had given to Ms Tucker , she said she went away to look up the meaning of "occult". "It means that which is hidden," she said. "Nothing I do is hidden, nothing Glen does is hidden. It's all in the public domain. I have a website, Glen is very active on Facebook. There's nothing occult in what we do."I do call in archangels at times and in some of the meditations I do bring in archangels. Angels appear in all the major religions of the world."After the Guardian broke the news of the pair's resignation and the reasons they had given to Ms Tucker , she said she went away to look up the meaning of "occult". "It means that which is hidden," she said. "Nothing I do is hidden, nothing Glen does is hidden. It's all in the public domain. I have a website, Glen is very active on Facebook. There's nothing occult in what we do. "I do call in archangels at times and in some of the meditations I do bring in archangels. Angels appear in all the major religions of the world."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/30/ukip-resigned-occult-jake-baynes-graham-livings

what i take from this is apparently angels can be racist too

http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/woman-arrested-for-posting-photo-of-george-osborne-at-prostitutes-flat/

"Everyone's got their different beliefs. It's not for me to belittle anyone's beliefs. People have different views. But if Ukip is trying to shake off this fruitcake image thing, we're not doing a good job of it."

xp

I find it a bit odd – not bad, exactly, but curious – how little people seem to care about that coke/dominatrix period in Osborne's life.

I find it curious too, though I'm more than curious at why she was arrested for sharing the photo, and incredibly curious that this hasn't got more traction in the press.

Yes, the use of the police to keep your problems out of the press is more concerning.

The arrest may be unconnected. The police going round to 'have a word' is entirely feasible but actually arresting someone without valid cause would open them up to all sorts of repercussions.

OK, did everyone get this annoying questionnaire from the Tories?

"Which THREE of the following issues are most important bla bla bla Immigration bla Tuition fees"

Well, I think it's pretty important that we have more immigration and no tuition fees. Is that what the poll setters meant?

Also one option is "welfare - rewarding hard work" which is pretty weaselly, where is the extra sheet of paper to specify whether a tick in the "welfare" box means "more welfare" or "only welfare for 'hard workers'" or "the very existence of welfare actively outrages me, to think that someone might be given enough money to buy brand-x baked beans out of the tax I could only partially dodge on my multi-million inheritance" or what

(also, yes, wtf at arrest)

Our policy: only people In work will qualify for out-of-work benefits.

That's push-polling. It's actually illegal to frame poll questions thusly in America. xp

When did you stop trying to bring down the government?

Still, as long as HARD WORKING FAMILIES are feeling the benefit, that's all that matters.

"Mr Clapson did not appeal or ask for a reconsideration of the sanction or apply for a hardship payment."

hardly the government's fault if people choose to do this to themselves

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/03/the-british-jobs-miracle/

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many of the people actually doing these miraculous new jobs professional journalist Fraser Nelson has bothered to speak to?

(That's in response to Tom's link btw, the actual blog post is several months old)

Would be interesting to know the percentage of people in work whose salary has kept pace with inflation over the last four years.

hardly the government's fault if people choose to do this to themselves

Most people are not aware that they can appeal a sanction decision, or that they can apply for hardship payments. Job Centre staff are supposed to let people know, but they rarely do.

Clinically depressed people often have such dread of News In Brown Envelopes that they may not even open them, as it explains in the article.

Surely Britain's Job Miracle should have put a spring into the step of this mopey fellow

hard to see what a change of government would do for clinically depressed people at the moment

Since it wasn't actually a suicide I dunno if the Job Centre staff will get the usual bonus. PCS needs to get on that quick

Bloody immigrants, they come over here to take our copper and gold, leaving their decorative hair tresses lying all over the place.

poetry!

why do families work damn hard to get paid/While you splash millions on legal aid?

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/young-independence-conference-what-drives-ukips-youth-wing

i'm confused, does the MP who's stepping down because his hours and pay are inadequate to maintain a decent family life have any political links to the MP who's saying the government needs to continue to cut welfare benefits?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/03/schools-separate-pupils-ability-setting

as far as i'm aware the evidence that streaming is of benefit to pupils' education is, i'll be generous, inconclusive. fuck these twisted barbarian fuckers, fuck them all to death

how do private schools deal w/ differing levels?

the same in many instances

Setting according to ability for separate subjects is controversial since it is argued that it helps those with high ability and leaves those with lower ability behind.

this is really shitty writing

how do private schools deal w/ differing levels?

all children of wealthy parents extremely able and clever iirc

government already denying this is a policy according to Radio 4

there are several studies that indicate that mixed ability groups raise the achievement of "less able" students far more than they inhibit the "more able" students

high school education in the uk is so thoroughly rotten that I struggle to deal w/ one issue in isolation

oh yeah absolutely i think the structure's fucked top to bottom but for some reason i get extra angry when education policy continually pushes middle class prejudices over any concessions to pedagogic theory

cf. making 3 year-olds learn to write etc etc

this suggestion that every class be apportioned to a certain percentile grouping by 'ability', however that is meaured, is fairly extreme and not common in a global context

selective education for 'gifted' kids while leaving the rest 'mixed ability' is fairly common across the world

yes, all kids shd be challenged but this can be achieved within mixed classes or via supplemental learning opportunities, without necessarily introducing schoolchildren to the idea of intelligence as a hierarchy

As far back as 2006, David Cameron said: "I want to see setting in every single school. Parents know it works. Teachers know it works. Tony Blair promised it in 1997. But it still hasn't happened. We will keep up the pressure till it does."

has anyone done any research into this presumed parental support controlling for rosy expectations rather than getting people to agree with a vague version of separate development while many of them labour under the delusion that their children will obviously be in the elite grouping

as i say, education policy - across the political spectrum - seems to be more beholden to some kind of assumed folk wisdom than almost any other aspect of government in the UK. people get sentimental and stupid about their children, maybe

also teaching has always been held in low esteem as a profession here

without necessarily introducing schoolchildren to the idea of intelligence as a hierarchy

― Daphnis Celesta, Wednesday, 3 September 2014 18:07 (3 minutes ago)

they know this much anyway, it's merely a question of degree as to how much the scholastic system reinforces it

i thought about that but i think it's maybe not the same: perhaps outside of educational settings children recognize that some of them are more clever than others but school is an excellent mechanism for reifying those thoughts and turning whatever learning is into one more status race

I've talked to a couple of teachers separately about this, and they have both said something along the lines of "everyone thinks they're an expert, because everyone has been to school". And of course confirmation bias occurs- I was surprised to read Tony Judt, of all people, defending selective grammar schools, apparently on the basis that it had done him and a lot of his Cambridge mates the world of good.

the signature experience of being in various higher classes or groups in school (schools with some degree of academic selection on entry too) or 'gifted' type programmes outside of school hours is that the status dysphoria is probably at its most pronounced within those groups that are the supposed beneficiaries

for example the first group in mathematics was divided into two and within the new first group, which was very small, the slower kids seemed to get terribly downcast about their progress, as well as being subject to various unkindnesses from those without

if this were a martin samuel column he would probably post an embed of shot by both sides now

ftr i am favour of some form of 'gifted education', although if it were invented ex nihilo it wouldn't look like anything in the current uk education sector, public or private, and it would be important that its boundaries are fluid rather than set at a certain juncture and fixed forever more

my discomfort with this is less for its inegalitarianism and more that when abstracted it becomes a sort of utilitarian argument not categorically dissimilar to the 'we need to ensure future raymond kurzweils are given infinite nurture for the benefit of humanity' arguments that high functioning types come up with....and that invites the plausible argument that the world needs fewer proto-kurzweils

a thought I had in high school was that what parents who sent their kids to private schools were paying for was for certain kids not to be there. the loudest exponents of private schooling I have met have been motivated/aspirational types who went to shit state schools (yr post-thatcher working class in ilx terms mb). streaming might seem like another means to a similar end.

extra provision for kids who are struggling most, esp those with special needs, seems obviously most important, & ime the lowest sets always seemed to have the most resources concentrated on them (smaller classes, lots of assistants etc.). I think some streaming is inevitable when you're preparing students for different GCSE papers

right

p much with daphnis on this. will outline my own experiences (from the similar position to nakh of being generally towards the high-achieving end of top sets, yah boo sucks etc)

basically, there was absolutely no need to stream, even under the auspices of 'scholarship classes', 'oxbridge classes' & so forth. (the former & increasingly the latter are obviated, at high-end private school level, by extrascholarly tuition, hai dere)

in state schools, parents won't be able to afford tuition so much (but setting might encourage them to go down this route increasingly. money in the bank!)

actually though there's no need and it striates the school in ways that are entirely unhelpful, ensconcing complexes of intellectual superiority & inferiority that take years to erode (learning how stupid i truly was took a very long time & repeat ilx shamings to achieve) and don't reflect anything other than application towards testing

at the gifted & talented weekend/summer school courses i devise and run, i often teach classes whose ages vary between 14 and 18, 11 and 15 & so forth. some kids are already extremely well-versed in the material i'm teaching, some not at all. some are forthright and confident, some not. but here's the thing: they collaborate, work together, support one another, contribute, supply content, take something from the activity. some take more, some take less. that's ok. the main thing is that they've all chosen to be there, doing that activity, and they're prepared to give it a go

rather than setting we should be breaking down outdated notions of hierarchy-by-age, hierarchy-by-ability & allow students to commingle more abstractly, imo. this has the side benefit of not seeming quite so much the machine churning out baked entrepreneurs, kurzweils who've got nothing to boast aside from their own carefully-nurtured ambition, their sense of competition calibrated through the appellations of high achievement & elite cadres

a thought I had in high school was that what parents who sent their kids to private schools were paying for was for certain kids not to be there.

― ogmor, Wednesday, 3 September 2014 19:33 (2 hours ago)

this is part of it but there are positive, if merely auratic elements too

engineering the absence of non-desired groups seems more like a foundational element of the current mainstream state sector, now under the auspices of pseudo-marketisation, so that where this was once achieved once by catchment areas/land values alone, now these schools are further differentiated by their division of aptitudes, sports technology colleges vs humanities and enterprise academies etc

and lj i was reminded of those classes you were teaching here too

'gifted education', which is no more dreadful than any other euphemism circulated for it, at least in the humanities should be more about encouraging reflexity of thought, of getting to engage as early as possible in something like 'critical thinking'

the objective would be to bind something like conscience, to consider value systems rather than the sort of mimetic redeploying of tropes that you know will get you, or rather force the examiner to give you an a* which is virtually all most clever kids are doing at school

this is already achieved to some extent in mathematical subjects where the approach to 'gifted' kids begins by getting them to use the material of the normal syllabus in non-obvious fashions

absolutely agree, and ftr my courses largely do require some consideration of the metaphysical-educational, the process of study and induction itself. even with my primary tuition client i'm trying to ensconce some level of critical thinking, of close analysis of terms that transcends the dull presumptions appended in the classroom

Panic stations:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/03/calls-to-postpone-uk-general-election-scots-independence