Westministenders: Hey Hey we're the Monkies.

[RedToothBrush]

Welcome to the Listening Parliament.

Have you noticed it yet?

The Three Monkeys of See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil have been in a bit of a fight with didn’t fair well. Its funny how politicians of all shades and levels are desperate to prove just how good they at listening and how they see the problems.

Its quite incredible to think that officials elected to serve the public are even in this position where they are having suddenly think about how they show they are listening. It rather shows up that they have been accustomed to telling the public what to think and what to believe.

What they are still to work out, is that in saying they are listening, they also have to demonstrate they are listening and be credible.

The trouble is, that even though some of the monkeys have been killed off, we still have a lot of monkeys in parliament. 'Monkey say, Monkey do' actions still lurk. Politicians who imitate others without understanding the consequences.

There is no point in listening if you are only listening to one group and don’t understand the consequences of simply repeating the words of others.

Politicians saying they are listening when you can find dozens of incidents where they have said completely the opposition, without having the gumption to explain they have changed their position and without having the grace to explain the evidence that has lead them to change that position rather undermines the idea they are listening.

U-Turns are not a bad thing. U-Turns can show that you were making an error but were wise enough to admit that and why you were wrong. U-Turns are bad when you fail to acknowledge your failings and only do it to chase votes. This is where cynicism creeps in and lack of trust in politicians occurs.

Listening also requires actions to reflect words. There is no good in saying one thing, if your actions don’t reflect that. This is where the Listening Parliament is already failing. And I’m sure we will see it more.

Above all, listening is only part of a conversation. A politician is supposed to be accountable. They are supposed to have their eyes open to evil, not deaf to it and not unwilling to speak inconvenient truths where they recognise the evil.

Any politician who tells you they listen needs to back it up somehow. They need to demonstrate and justify their positions accurately. If they don’t they aren’t listening properly.

Isn’t it funny how it was in Hartlepool that the monkey got hung for being a Frenchman? No one was there to explain differently.

You should delurk more often dormant

Age polarisation and YouGov Poll

Partly due to tuition fee issue ?
VI may have become even more polarized wrt age over the last month:

18-24: Con 12%, Lab 60%
65+: Con 53%, Lab 15%
Giving overall:
CON 38%
LAB 46%
LD 6%

BUT in YouGov's final poll before the GE:
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulusuploads/document/d8zsb99eyd/TimesResultsFINAL%20CALLGBJune2017_W.pdf#page=33_
18-24: Con 15%, Lab 53%
65+: Con 50%, Lab 22%

dormant's link is the funniest for ages !

"Sodom and Begorrah"

Arlene & the burning bush: “We had this wee thing called the Renewable Heat Incentive, that hath just got out of hand”.

😂😂

Link to the President of the Royal Society's address which had lots of interesting analysis and ideas for the post Trump /Brexit world from a Science perspective royalsociety.org/news/2016/11/president-anniversary-address/

Awesome Dormant.

"for the promised land had not been fully costed in the manifesto"

Thought you lot might enjoy it :) It is a bit old (mid June) but my MIL is old school and likes to post me over clippings so I just got it this morning.

Keiran Pedley‏Verified account
@keiranpedley
Looking at YouGov tabs from Lab +8 lead. Niche point to keep in mind. Tory voters from June twice as likely to say DK as Labour.
This is something I didn't pay enough attention to in #GE2017 Lab had room to grow by winning its own supporters over that said DK in polls
Typically DKs are excluded from the headline VI numbers but it is worth reviewing who DKs are in case they skew a certain way.
It's a lesson I learned last time. So here we see some Tory voters unenthusiastic about the party (shock horror) but may come back
Nevertheless, Labour solidly ahead in this poll. If it continues Con jitters will only increase.

On your point about pay in academic careers in STEM, what, most of my friends who have succeeded in academia have high earning spouses. It's not so much the pay levels that are a problem (although they're low for the level of qualification required), but the career instability. You spend 4 years on low pay as a PhD followed by ~8 years on short term contracts where you often have to move jobs and cities every 2-3 years. There is no permanent employment for postdoctoral researchers and the constant threat of the end of your grant (usually 2-3 years) means you end up in an endless cycle of job applications. You can only really concentrate fully on your research if you know that your household is not dependent on your wage tbh. Then, once you've been a post doc for 8 years, you're automatically disqualified from a lot of fellowships and your chances of becoming an independent researcher diminish and you risk becoming too expensive for many employers. Many end up on the career scrap heap in their 40s. No-one is interested in their considerable expertise and experience, because funding bodies won't pay for them, preferring cheap PhD students instead. It's a massive pyramid scheme.

It's an utterly, utterly stupid system and the brightest and best invariably leave after 1 post doc to do careers which actually reward them for their hard work. The people left behind are either those with rich spouses or the terminal oddballs

Right, that's my quarterly rant about research done

Don't get me started on the pulling of science funding from the north either- another massive waste of talent. Building the big new institute in one of the worlds most expensive cities- GREAT idea

He has an isa he knows nothing about but by the the time he is 18 it will only have about £11k in it.

So fuck whatever the government say inflation is ... if you can say "only" about £11K (which I totally get, btw) then we really are fucked

And MASSIVE congrats to MoDs DS

Yep :(
Congrats to minidragon

Very funny dormant. Made me laugh out loud in queue at the butchers.
Then I got to the front of the queue and discovered that my regular items have gone up 20% overnight. That stopped me laughing sharpish.
Who voted to get poorer?

On the subject of uni DH and I are both agreed that we would not want dd to go straight to uni after school unless she was absolutely sure and focused on a career and direction. I would like her to work and travel until she has experienced life and knows what she is studying for. I really disagree with the policy of schools and colleges to practically force students to fill in UCAS applications and apply for uni straight away even if they have no idea what they want to do.

DH and I are both educated to Masters level and I have lectured (before I dropped out of my PhD). I have met lots and lots of undergrads who were there just because that's what they thought they should be doing. They had no real interest in the subject and no idea what they wanted to do with it. All they achieved was a mediocre result, tens of thousands in debt, and a degree they didn't really care about.

It is such a waste! I have friends who have gone out to work after uni and found a career they love, but now can't afford to go back and study the subject they would love to do as they would now be liable to paying the full costs with no loan. While I think everyone should be able to go to university I am not convinced that the drive and pressure to push people into it no matter whether it is the right direction or time for them is necessarily a good thing.

And that is my somewhat unrelated rant on universities...I shall go away again now.

Very sensible bigly
Dh and I feel the same
We think ds1 will want to travel

Congratulations to minidragon!

And YY to everything Bolshy said about academic research careers and science funding!

LH When I was a wee lass, I remember my late dad saying proudly that when I grew up I could work at Boots for good money: £20 per week !
That was mid-1960s.

We had massive inflation in the late 1960s through 1970s, around 25% for quite a while.
I remember mid-1970s when we needed to buy anything we wanted immediately, because no use having savings with interest only about 10%.

Of course now we are requiring £50K+ to get a student through University, there can be no going back. All we can do is ensure everyone is saddled with a £50K debt to level the playing field.

imo we need specifically to help poorer students much more.
There should be means testing, with all fees and maintenance grant paid for students from poorer families, phasing out to zero for income above a certain level.

Keep the loans option too, for anyone whose parents are over the income limit, but who doesn't receive the topup from them.

I would not have gone to uni at all if had meant taking out a loan.
That is a terrifying mountain when your family is very poor
Many mc or upwardly mobile wc just don't understand that

I was under pressure from friends & family anyway to get a job at 18 and help support my disabled widowed mum.
Many said uni was "getting ideas above my station"
I was already worried about the uni years of "lost money" when I wouldn't be earning.

I received fees and full maintenance grant for STEM Bsc, MSc, Phd - I changed my field from pure to applied during that time.
That was life-changing, or otherwise I might indeed be working at the Boots counter

I left without debt, in fact with a couple of thousand in the bank from an industry PhD sponsorship.
So, although mc students were mostly starting their careers & homes with financial support from parents, at least I wasn't starting with debt.
This gave me the opportunity I needed to break free from grinding poverty.

I'm just about to go and get my second student loan LH, so that should make everyone with a piddling £50k of student debt feel much better. Of course I never expect to pay either of them off.

I've always wondered what would happen if a student disappeared abroad with their student debt, and never came back ?

Which is basically what my DB did, (but he paid for the course - an MSc - himself).

Good luck Bigly !

It pains me that masters degree level is generally out of reach for many now. At least loans are available now but among my DDs contemporaries they have become the province of the privileged few who are from better off families. He partner is just completing his but it has taken him 5 years since graduating to be able to afford it

Re walking away from student debt. This is a question that comes up very frequently on UK>Aussie immigration forums. As I understand, you cannot be caught and forced to pay as long as you stay out of the country...it's often asked by medics before applying for skilled visas who can't hack working any longer in the NHS--

I only afforded my masters because my nan left me just enough to pay the fees when she died. DH worked for the uni and was allowed to do his for free. We both studied humanities subjects and any funding is incredibly hard to get.