Westminster: Brexit is the hard right's weapon of mass distraction

[BigChocFrenzy]

The fervour and divisions over Brexit have suspended normal party politics.

The staggering incompetence & unsuitability of Corbyn as a leader, together with the resulting impotence of Labour has removed the normal checks & balances in UK politics.
There is a vaccum where the Official Opposition should be, so Theresa May is under pressure only from her right.

I fear Thereas May and the Tory rightwing are taking advantage of Brexit to complete the destruction of the post-WW2 social contract and the welfare state.

Meanwhile, the constraints of civilised discourse have been loosened and those with racist or social Darwinist views now feel free to spout their poison openly.

Putin is pouring petrol on all the fires and Arron Banks is lurking < sinister emoticons required >

Zoe Williams:
"Behind a smokescreen of bogus patriotism, ideologically driven cuts to the NHS and all our public services are unpicking the bonds of nationhood"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/05/brexit-theresa-may-falklands-war-nhs-cuts

"We should be marching against the crisis in adult social care, the closure of care homes, the systematic exploitation of carers, the £4.6bn cut from social care budgets this decade.
We should be .... asking:

“What exactly is the plan, if we’ve decided we can no longer afford to care for the elderly and the disabled?
What do we do with them instead?”

"We should be marching against cuts in education funding"

"Every morning we wake up to someone on the radio explaining, despairingly, that you can’t fix the hospital bed crisis until social care is fixed, and you can’t fix that until council tax brings in more, and it can’t bring in more because wages are too low."

"But when everything breaks at the same time, that is not a coincidence: it is a plan.

As surely as Margaret Thatcher had an economic plan on employment, rights, industry and wages,
this century’s Conservatives have a plan on public services, which is to smash them beyond all recognition."

I was about to say that bigchoc. The United Nations of great celtica?

That has been suggested half jokingly

Tried to find one of the memes which illustrated this new "nation" but failed. They're out there though!

Cheers BigChocFrenzy 'Nevertheless, She Persisted' t shirt on its way to your bunker.

Any one else look back fondly to this time last year? Despite the referendum, life seemed more innocent some how.

Adapted Atticus Finch:
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a Daily Mail in his hand. It's when you know you've lost before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

Thanks for new thread BigChoc

great celtica
Count me in Badders can I be in charge of the whiskey?

woman first point of order. Will great celtica whiskey have an e in it? Important matters first

Any one else look back fondly to this time last year? Despite the referendum, life seemed more innocent some how.

Or even to the previous Autumn, when we were all horrified at the pictures of poor Alan Kurdi, and realised that these were real people fleeing for their lives. There was a real outpouring of compassion then; where has it gone to?

Going back to the end of the old thread: Semi - don't think people were criticising you as you've been one of the positive contributors to these threads not that I always agree with you

It was more a comment born out of frustration from the twisted ignorant visitors we've had recently who keep on trying to accuse Remainers as non-patriotic, Liberal Lefties, non-British, unwilling to accept a whiter-than-white literally version of British Empire history (perm any combination of the above).

Not aimed at you.

Remainers as non-patriotic, Liberal Lefties, non-British, unwilling to accept a whiter-than-white version of British Empire history

I just caught up with the end of the other thread and noted with amusement that the Slippery poster's mask slipped overnight

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit to being non-British born. However, my mum was born in Scotland a chance of war I have had a British passport since I was 10, ie as soon as we could be naturalised. That is over 40 years

I have only ever considered myself a citizen of this country - I have no memory (other than as a visitor) of the country in which I was born.

I used to be proud of being British (or rather, UK-ish, as Britain is the island which we share). However, for many years now, I have only been proud of being Scottish. The EU vote has only reinforced that.

this century’s Conservatives have a plan on public services, which is to smash them beyond all recognition

Spot on here.

As the opposition in US has successfully kept pressure on the Russian links with Trump's administration, the same focus should be maintained here on public services.

This is not about the EU, this is about our precious health, education and social services.

Grammar schools are used as free private schools by many. Watch out for the new technical education coming down the line. Up to 50% will fail the new GCSEs. Spot the strategy.

Agree with what Eeeeeowwwfftz said.at 8.02, And interesting that like the trump supporters they are so defensive.

Will great celtica whiskey have an e in it Depends on whether you mix it with irn bru or not.

Money and privilege has always been important in determining DC success.

When the grammar school system was originally introduced after the 1944 education Act, the % of wc children who obtained gs places was lower than most supporters think.
Also, once there those kids didn't do as well as expected:

The Gurney-Dixon Report (1954), “Early Leaving”,
found that even if children of semi-skilled and unskilled workers got into grammar schools they were more likely to leave early without gaining qualifications:

2/3 of the children of unskilled workers, who did attend Grammar Schools, left without 3 O-levels.
In the early 1960s, according to the Robbins Report (1963), 26% of children in the whole country were “unskilled wc”.
However, they were only 0.3% of those achieving two A-levels or more at grammar schools.

The 1950s saw a generation of bright young working class kids shine in them ( Alan Bennet generation), but absolutely not now, grammar schools actually cost a lot socially and physically. They receive very substantial parental 'contributions' uniform, kit and trips are often much more expensive. They are often very unfriendly places for working class students. Class based educational apartheid has got much worse in Britain.

How many other countries have estates agents' fees and house prices based on children's exam results? (apart from the US, before it abolished state education last week)

In the interests of full disclosure, I attended grammar school as one of the exceptions:
very poor (disabled widowed mum, we lost our home and sofa-dived a year) but getting A-levels and eventually a STEM Phd

However, even then a gs was a prosperous mc enclave:
I was horrendously socially isolated the whole time, only 2 friendly acquaintances in 6th form.

e.g. Every week, the form captain came around rattling her collection box dor chafity and every week I was piblicly shamed as I had no money.
I explained I received no pocket money and they said I should tell my mum to give me some, so i could donate like normal girls
I could never tell them that she couldn't afford pocket money.

(I admit part of the isolation is because I was an Aspie who didn't learn to "pass" until my 40s)

Thank goodness that was late 1960s-early 1970s, before the consumer society really took off and long before there were any electronic gadgets or designer gear.

I wonder how kids from poor families cope socially in gs now ?

At least then, all kids had a free school bus for joirneys over 3 miles, whether to gs or to 2ndary modern

Also, regarding grammar schools, many children receive very extensive tuition in order to get in. This is a big problem for university admissions, because it's very difficult to tell who got in and did well on the basis of their own merits, and who did because of all the extra help. We have admitted several grammar school students with top grades to my course, who went on to do very badly. One even asked me if I could find her a tutor to help with her university coursework!

woman I think there was a burst of social mobility after WW2, but it died off around the mid-70s.
Since then , the rich - yes the "elite" - have cranked down the hatches again and it's back to the Victorian class system that JRM and his nanny adore.

Think we should observe what is happening in US as our template:
abolition of ACA( NHS), decimation of civil service ( see civil service cuts and North's blog on IT systems and Brexit) and state education and charter schools ( academy chains).
www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a52934/who-is-betsy-devos-education-secretary-policies/

I'm a bit mystified as to how May's Monkeys are going to square grammar schools and free schools (academic, overwhelmingly middle class) with the need (which even they claim to see) for world-class vocational education in order to secure the skills the UK will require to produce stuff for export, for internal manufacturing supply chains, and to replace the imports we will no longer be able to afford due to the plummeting value of Sterling.

Joined-up thinking really isn't one of their strong points. is it?

I suspect with schoolkids being crammed for SATS, endless assessments, so much homework - I had none at primary school - that for many it has somehow killed off their natural curiosity and interest beyond what they have been taught to pass exams.

It has left them unprepared for a world in which they need to gather facts and different opinions, then make their decisions.

e.g. I gave up history after O-levels, but I have learned far more since then, whether from serious articles or searching online. Ditto general knowledge about the world and politics, different branches of science.
School is only the start of a learning process that should be continuous, for as long as we retain our faculties.

I'm constantly surprised how little knowledge, particularly of world history and politics, many graduates now have.
They are certainly as "intelligent" as we were - and imo more hardworking - just that spark of curiosity seems missing, maybe hammered out of them deliberately ?
i think life has been tougher for them

I see William Hague is calling for an election now ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39188042

Downing Street has rejected former Conservative leader Lord Hague's call to hold a snap general election.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Lord Hague said bringing forward an election "would strengthen the government's hand at home and abroad" which could help with Brexit negotiations.

(contd)

As BigChoc says - the Grammar schools really didn't help working class children shine - only a relative handful of the ones who made it to grammar school did.

I too went to a grammar school. As far as I remember we had one person whose father worked as a mill hand - in a textile manufacturing town. Otherwise - Building Society and Bank Managers' daughters, daughters of Senior Local Government staff, Farmers daughters, the local GPs' daughters.

What is also forgotten, or was the case in the two junior schools I attended, was that the classes there were rigidly streamed - and only children in the A stream had a chance of passing. I moved house, hence the two schools, and one in particular, drilled children for the 11+. Not surprisingly, it was the same sort of children in the A stream - not many children of factory workers, mostly children of fathers with middle class jobs.

You only have to think of Theresa May - she would have been a very typical example of the sort of girl who went to my grammar school.

Bigchoc In my Grammar School there was a genuine mix of backgrounds. We had something called the Thorne scheme which took the children that teachers assessed as at the border of the Direct Grant / LEA Grammar Schools and ordinary Grammar Schools / Secondary Modern and assessed them according to a range of tests and interviews. It may have been a bit misguided but they did test dexterity I failed and creativity as well as intellectual ability, and the Secondary Modern was actually successful in enabling pupils to go on to vocational training /apprenticeships. I do know a lot of girls from my school from working class backgrounds who went on to university (still rare then), careers and in some cases to have become well known journalists etc. As with Aspies the scheme also enabled those like me with SpLDs because the emphasis was on tests of ability rather than teaching /cramming. It surprised my teachers who had difficulty understanding why I could not match my ability in class on paper when I got into the Direct Grant Grammar School . It was not an entirely happy experience because few teachers got me in the Grammar School either, and it was assumed I was lazy or stupid or both but I do appreciate that it equipped me with aspiration, without which I might not have overcome my learning difficulties to carry on with academic study. Where Grammar Schools persisted in the area they carried on using teacher assessment into the 90s and they did continue to enable pupils from all sorts of backgrounds.

However that has now changed and the Grammar Schools are without doubt the alternative to private schools for middle class parents who can afford the tutoring necessary to get in. A combination of predictable reasoning tests (when private schools and business use reasoning tests they invest a lot of money in making them unpredictable) and savvy tutors means that even the tests of ability are tutorable. I cannot see a way given the legal need for fair and transparent admissions processes that won't leave schools vulnerable to being dragged through the courts by those middle class parents to get around the fact that Grammar Schools no longer reflect the demographics of the local community, whatever measures May puts in place.

This is not going to help the JAMs, it is going to please middle England.