The Irony.. PM's donation was for ‘son to study for GCSEs’

[JustSpeechless]

PM suggests £20,000 donation was for ‘son to study for GCSEs’ | The Independent

Sorry if there are other threads, but I did search and nothing came up.

“My boy, 16, was in the middle of his GCSEs. I made him a promise, a promise that he would be able to get to his school, do his exams, without being disturbed,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“But if you’re a 16-year-old trying to do your GCSEs and it’s your one chance in life – I promised him we would move somewhere, get out of the house and go somewhere where he could be peacefully studying.

So its OK for the PM to be worried about his child's "one chance" GCSE year being disturbed ...but he's not so worried about other people's children feeling stressed during their GCSEs by introducing the private school VAT during an academic school year.

I don't have a child in private school doing their GCSEs. And I know that there are lots of people who support the VAT and those who don't.

But I think there is a midline where lots of people on both sides of the fence agree making this change during an academic year is not fair on the kids in key exam years...and I am one of them because not all parents have a Lord Alli to step in to ensure their child's "one chance" GCSE year is not being disturbed.

For Voting:

Unreasonable - I am with Keir and I am not really bothered with other people's children's "one chance" school year being interrupted.

Not Unreasonable - I agree Labour should not interrupt the academic school year and introduce the VAT in September 2025.

Wow. The hypocrisy and self entitlement knows no bounds.

I agree OP, I am not against the VAT but I think it should have been for new students only, so all pupils changing school or joining but not for those who have already committed and who are in the system.

It's a false equivalence.

All this ridiculous media coverage about donations to Labour, when the Tory government was infamous for its beneficial agreements with rich people. I mean, come on... have people forgotten Boris Johnson existed? The man lives his entire life funded by other people.

I don’t know enough about the VAT issue it to say that it should or should not happen but i think it would have been better to start with the new intakes with each level school

or at least with the senior school so that the current year 10’s and 11’s were through

What about schools affected by RAAC where y11 students have had to do remote learning, and who haven’t had access to science labs for practicals etc and yet who Ofqual decided shouldn’t get any special consideration in their GCSEs?

It certainly seems that Labour have deliberately made it much more disruptive for private pupils than it needed to be. A short consultation period over the summer holidays. Bringing in VAT in the middle of a school year. Leaving it so late that many schools and pupils don't know if they will be affected (eg the rules on SEN pupils, vocational training and military schools are still up in the air). Most private school parents and schools still have no idea at what rate their fees might go up in January but most schools stipulate giving a term's notice.

Even if you agree with the VAT in principle (I don't) the way they have gone about it is as disruptive as it's possible to be.

So yes like with a lot of what Labour does it is hypocritical of Starmer to accept £20k so his son's GCSE preparation is undisturbed while deliberately disrupting the education of thousands of pupils in Y10 and Y11. Many of whom will have to change their GCSE subjects and exam boards if they have to leave their private schools during Y10 or Y11. That's much more disruptive than your Dad being an important politician.

The PM reportedly said "I'm not pleading a special case". Mmmm yes you are mate!
No reason why his son couldn't have gone to the local library to study, just as my kids, being in London the local library probably has better opening hours than ours.
There is no space at home for the kids to work, and I'm sure we're not the only family with these difficulties (I mean my kids could lie on the floor to do their work but I'm not sure that's comfy or conducive to good study techniques!).
I wish my kids school had longer opening hours for the library (closes 15 mins after school and opens 10 mins before registration).
What gets me is the VAT won't make any difference, and I'm strongly opposed to it, not least because it's a diversionary tactic, but I want is my kid's school (and all comps) to be have proper funding. It feels like the VAT is akin to sitting in a small boat, pointing to a floating log shouting 'shark' whilst the real shark is swimming behind the boat readying its jaws whilst everyone else is looking in the wrong direction.

They're all a bunch of hypocrite champagne socialists, "do as we say, not as we do".

This is a false equivalence.

And it is not easy to be the teenage son of the Prime Minister, studying for your GCSEs but also trying to make sense of life when you have hostile journalists and photographers outside your front door, day and night.

I strongly disagree with charging VAT on education and I hate it every time Starmer says "my boy" (I get he doesn't want to name his DC but it sounds so dehumanising to do that in public, like Mr Banks from Mary Poppins or something).

However, I don't see the hypocrisy regarding school VAT specifically here, as he didn't accept a donation of tuition; it was accommodation and his argument is that his son wouldn't have required this had his father not been fronting an election campaign and had constant press intrusion. Which makes sense, as it's not the son's fault.

I do, however, find his accepting donations and these successive arguments he's coming out with to justify each one as hypocritical, given all his talk during the campaign of being a man of principle who wouldn't even seek out private healthcare for a family member who needed it.

To now be saying "well, obviously, you do your best for your family, don't you?" which is effectively the opposite from what he said during the campaign, reveals he's happy to find a way to justify whatever the hell he wants to do, regardless of how hypocritical it is.

Why are there constant threads on here ATM trying to paint the Keir as Boris Johnson?

Is it disgruntled Tory voters sulking or something more organised by a Comms team linked somehow to Tory Party support?

Your voting options are ridiculous and emotive.

I hadnt heard about this

shocking and so unfair

I just heard this on the radio while I was doing the school run. Ugh! He makes me sick. It's one rule him and his kids and one rule for everyone else. He can accept donations, as long as it's to ensure his kids are happy, apparently. He used taking his son to watch the football as justification for accepting free tickets to that too. He's a fucking hypocrite! All those years he stood on the other side of the dispatch box carping at the Tories and making fun of BJ and his fancy wallpaper and here he is, doing exactly the same things. Piggies with their snouts in the trough, all of them. And they always have some bullshit reason why it's okay for them, but not for everyone else.

They’re not even ashamed of their hypocrisy.

The fact he is content to, or sickeningly happy to disrupt the education of thousands of children during their GCSE years - but accepts a donation to ensure ‘his boys’ 🤢’ education is not disrupted, is despicable. Says all we need to know.

The Labour Party of today is fcking hideous.

Well you're conflating two things here. First of all Starmer had no choice in the summer election and it must be really hard for his kids, I'm not saying harder than what other kids have to deal with but still, to deal with modern day media intrusion is difficult. You might not like or agree with the PM but it is an act of public service and if he wants to protect his family then fair enough. My parents divorced and massively disrupted my A-levels, it can be really crap. VAT on private schools I don't have much sympathy with I'm afraid, private schools have continuously hiked prices and sold eye wateringly expensive kit and parents just saw that as a badge of their success.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed over the last couple of days that as soon as Labour MPs are criticised for having their snouts in the trough the immediate response is 'it's for muh KIDS'? Starmer said he wanted to keep his children private - unless he needs a human shield of course.

(Which doesn't have anything to do with the OP so I'll just say I think private schools should be abolished because all they do is shore up unearned and unmerited privilege and lower public standards at the top as we've seen for centuries, look at the state of things. So I haven't totally tried to derail)

Also, it's pretty shitty and tone deaf to be stating that kids get one chance at GCSEs at 16 when obviously a large proportion of 16 year olds end up having to retake them or leave school without them, and lots of SEN pupils will be taking them much later or doing alternative qualifications or not taking any.

What struck me about his notion that 16 year olds only get one shot at GCSEs was the elitism inherent in that statement and how out of touch with reality it makes him look.

I get that he's talking about his own child, and obviously having a child pass GCSEs with stellar grades at 16 is the ideal for most parents, but it's interesting that he views passing GCSEs at 16 as an essential (hence the apparent necessity of the donation), whereas for most parents it's simply an unattainable pipe dream.

It seems like it was an ill-advised attempt to appear relatable to other parents, but in many cases it will have the opposite effect because it's such an elitist view that one's life is ruined if they can't achieve a perfect set of GCSE grades the first time they try.

Yes, however Ofqual said that loads of state school kids were learning in schools with inadequate facilities and didn’t even have teachers so if they gave special consideration to the RAAC kids then they’d need to justify not giving special consideration to all the kids disadvantaged by the various deficits in state schools.

And I guess I can see their point.

If only there were the same number of threads about those issues as the VAT one….

From where I'm sitting 'the Keir' seems to be significantly worse than Johnson. To me, it seems like Labour comms are out robotically reciting 'grown ups' and '£22 billion black hole' and 'fix foundations' and I couldn't give a toss about some has-been from a couple of years ago, Starmer is here and now unfortunately.

Would all those parents carping about being happy with the VAT on education, be happy to increase their taxes to improve all state schools. No. Thought not.

The greed is astounding - claiming for this and that, when millionaires with big salaries. Even if you have no morals doing this surely they have advisors who identify how bad visuals are impacted by certain actions.

I actually get what the OP is saying - some private school children will have to move during GCSE / A Level years and this also could lead in an increased class size in state schools impacting their GCSE learning too. It's is ironic that the PM is preserving his child's right to a non-distributive GCSE year. I'm sure a lot of elderly would also like an undisruptive year, where they can reside at home without worrying about the heating and having to decamp to libraries, etc for warmth.

I should imagine it's more likely to be because many expected more from a labour leader, especially when a huge shift to a government of morals and principles was what was sold to the electorate by Starmer.

It's like when Trump does something awful but no-one's remotely surprised because it's Trump.

But people were promised so much from a labour government and were expecting the change they were promised. So it's more disappointing as people had higher hopes.

Yep. Ludicrous people