Thread 12 Starmer: From Prescott to Rayner, working class grit

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5203242-thread-11-starmer-will-that-phone-call-be-to-harris-or-to-trump-the-decidedly-superior-looking-cats-thread?page=40&reply=139989436

Your view, perfectly entitled to have it. At least he is funny sometimes, unlike the three word argument to abolish the licence fee, Mrs Brown's Boys.

@derxa

’Rich farmers’? They’re coming for all of us.

Not true! You do seem to be doing a lot of catastrophising about this issue, and seem rather to have missed the whole point of it.

HIGNFY can vary depending on who the Host is imo. It’s not a patch on its glory days of Angus Deayton and tubs of lard, but it passes 28 mins or so once a week. I have a soft spot for it because my Granny found it relatively easy to watch as her dementia advanced, long after her favourite detective and factual programmes had become inaccessible to her.
I sacked off my 20 year Private Eye subscription earlier this year due to them turning a blind eye to an issue I thought they should have been all over (not discussing that) and find Hislop increasingly smug and, bizarrely, very Establishment. But he speaks boldly about causes he cares about, gives an elegant Fuck You to continued threats of litigation and I’m glad the BBC still gives a little slice of air time to him, Paul Merton and gentle satire.

I've driven from Portsmouth to Birmingham and back.

I think we had white a long visit with Bert! If we didn't his cousin was fierce 😂

Does anyone else find themselves losing empathy?
I start out assuming their anger comes from hurt and I feel for their loss. After a while though, it turns out that they do not afford the same respect to others. They cannot agree even the slightest bit with anyone who has a different viewpoint.
It becomes a childhood game where they have to win. Where I once respected their passion, I now think their bitterness is monotone.
I cannot breathe in their headspace and the empathy dies.

I think Hislop gets better as he ages. Private Eye piss off everyone. They carried on about the Post Office, Hillsborough, infected blood, Saville and his involvement with the Home Office… annoys Murdoch and Maxwell and super loony righties in the 1970s. I think it’s a necessary bit of journalism in a world where partiality is mostly the rule.

Hislop who is not exactly a socialist gave out about the last government’s approach to union relations (ie don’t negotiate). Of course he was right on that. I think he is excellent at pointing out clear self interests left and right. Private Eye would be extinct by now if he hadn’t taken that approach.

Excellent.

Chuffed to have come across this thread - now, where should one start….

Hope there weren't too many lorries on the road

@derxa , what do you mean by "coming for all of us"?

If you mean we are all going to feel some pain, well that is fair, isn't it? If we want decent public services etc. everyone who is not on the breadline is going to have to contribute something.

In our March 2023 forecast, net public sector pension spending increases substantially from £4.2 billion in 2022-23 to £7.9 billion in 2023-24, before increasing to a peak of £9.9 billion in 2025-26, and then falling to £7.9 billion by 2027-28.
OBR

Good luck to those who think they will see a material improvement in public services.

Really interesting analysis of the impact of Sure Start from the IFS on child evelopement, youth offending & referrals to social services and school absences -

"The youth justice system and children’s social care involve significant costs for government, as well as the individuals involved. We estimate that for every pound spent at its peak in 2010, Sure Start averted approximately 19 pence in public spending on youth justice and children’s social care, equivalent to £500 million (in today’s prices) of savings per cohort attending at the time."

"These services could lead to earlier identification and support for children with high health needs and disabilities, reducing health-related absences from school or the need for support via the social care system. Earlier research finds that Sure Start reduced the share of children receiving support for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and boosted educational attainment (Carneiro et al., 2024a). These improvements in children’s human capital (health and education) may have also made crime less attractive to adolescents due to improved earnings prospects, thus resulting in falls in offending."

Bert now gusting up to 60mph again - so was premature earlier to suggest he was gone

Whoops - forgot to link to the report.

https://ifs.org.uk/publications/effect-sure-start-youth-misbehaviour-crime-and-contacts-childrens-social-care

We have had SO much rain here, but not particularly windy.

Bert seems to have found us too now, heavy rain and wind and a few food bins flying about

He also edits a magazine that has been highlighting the criminal injustice of the post office scandal from day 1. Amongst many other campaigns over the past 40 years.

The suggestion from the IFS is that Sure Start centres led to a reduction of costs for youth custody & reduced social care costs. Its quite fascinating to see the long term positive impact of investing in these services.

Will freely admit I am a huge fan of Sure Start. I had PND and was fortunate that my GP was very supportive - but I contacted them after being encouraged to do so by someone at my local SS.

Yes indeed. We subscribe to Private Eye. But the tone of the magazine is different to the TV programme. They’re interested is justice and being anti corruption. HIGNFY seems to be scripted by a bunch of unfunny twats.

Er, the programme is a BBC production, not "Private Eye on TV". IH is merely a participant, not a producer.

(The last satirical magazine/TV combo I can recall was a brief attempt at a "Punch" TV show in the early 70s.)

You are of course free to feel whatever you want to feel about anything you want to feel it about. You don't even need to justify it.

Well put.

Pretty good shit stirring really.

Love Private Eye, Rotten Boroughs was an eye opener into corruption for me in the 80s.

I just makes you angry reading that report

It ties in with this as well
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz0m2x30p4eo

yep, early intervention and diagnosis (where appropriate) seems key. A different report outlined this -

'Overall, however, the net effect of these findings is that Sure Start reduced the financial outlay by the government in relation to children with SEN, in no small part because of the reduction in need for more severe plans at later ages."

'Our results imply that, even without accounting for the full range of potential effects, the benefits to society from the improvements in education outcomes reported herein equate to more than the costs of the programme at its peak in 2010. These benefits are primarily driven by a significant increase in lifetime earnings from improved academic performance at age 16, with the net reductions in spending on SEN making a small additional contribution. If we were to consider the reduction in hospitalisations identified in Cattan et al. (2021) and any additional benefits identified in ongoing research on the effect of Sure Start on children’s social care provision and juvenile offending, the cost–benefit figures might improve even further. And there may well have been other benefits of Sure Start that cannot be readily measured in monetary terms.
Our findings suggest that integrating services in deprived areas can make a material difference to children’s outcomes, but only if they are properly funded.'

https://ifs.org.uk/publications/short-and-medium-term-impacts-sure-start-educational-outcomes

Investing in services leading to cost savings overall.

Duncin plenty of lorries as we headed up Friday evening - we got re routed through M4 and 5 and M5 had lots of lorries - and was surprisingly hilly 😂

Coming back traffic was fine. The flooded roads in Birmingham and the A34 however .....: 👀😳