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.

Lough Foyle, Carlingford Lough, and fishing rights.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/disputed-irish-loughs-present-brexit-conundrum-for-fishermen-a7618916.html

This article predates the latest piece of Brexit insanity wrt fisheries.

Mother - living overseas has given me a real appreciation that in so many things it's not them forrin folk that do things differently, it's us who are out of step with everyone else...

You pay $95 per AP exam unless you qualify for a waiver, which is issued through your high school - they give you a numerical code that you type into your AP registration online. It's a very straightforward process to get one if you qualify for free or reduced school meals/fee waiver/book price waiver. There are probably schools where most of the student body would qualify for a waiver. I am familiar with waivers because DD1 needed them when she was doing her ACT and SAT and AP courses due to family circumstances (exH had left, no support agreement in place).

My DCs' particular high school has started a big push to get more students to take AP classes and will therefore be issuing a good deal more waivers if the push is successful. They are also running summer school prep courses for students interested in doing AP classes, teaching study and personal organisation skills, emphasising attention to deadlines for applications, and helping counsellors keep an ear out for questions the students raise, so that aspect will be a learning experience for all.

AP-level courses can be taken any year of high school, if a student is sufficiently enthusiastic and feels prepared to do a rigorous course. There are a few students annually at my local high school who do AP calculus courses in their freshman year (most will do that in either last or second last year).

Students can get a waiver of application fees for some universities too. Last year some universities dispensed with application fees altogether. When DD1 was applying in 2007 she and I cobbled together the best part of $800 just for applications. DD3 applied without any application fees. It was a bit of a scandal that universities with maybe 40,000 applicants for a few hundred places were extracting $100 per application from students.

Meanwhile in the US after Trump tweets a video about violence towards CNN.

Jareds Sexton @ JYSexton
The far right media has been talking about a new civil war for the past few weeks. Things are escalating every single day.
We either take this seriously or look back and wonder why we didn't.

None of this happens in a vacuum. Politics represent, and affect, the mental health of the nation. The temperature is being raised.
Far right talks about civil war, cults of satanic pedophiles, liberals as trying to kill children and commit genocide.
The rhetoric is all about "stomping" and "crushing" and "assassinating." We're still in the early stages and are just watching it happen.
This going to have very real, very fatal consequences.

This isn't a presidency, it's a disease. This isn't politics, it's sickness. Confusing those things for each other only makes it worse.

If we can't pay attention to a dangerous bill AND the president emboldening fascist violence, we might as well wrap this experiment up.
Here's the man who made the meme Trump tweeted asking for someone to make a videogame map so he could presumably shoot virtual Mexicans.
[I'm not sharing. Check the thread if you are bothered]

There's somebody on Trump's staff mining these forums and they know the hateful, racist, misogynistic stuff that's going on there.
They have to see this hateful garbage and then pass it onto the president. That's what we're dealing with here.
Here's another meme from the guy Trump tweeted, this one showing CNN personalities with Jewish stars.
[If you want to see this check out twitter]

Think about that. He posts this, then a meme of Trump assaulting the network.

Again, Trump is giving power and voice to antisemitic people and emboldening them and their dangerous conspiracies.

So either I researched that meme more than Trump's staff or they don't care that it came from a total racist. I'll let you decide which.

And for those who think there's nothing behind Trump's CNN gif today, I've been told twice in past hour I'll be killed in a new Civil War.
Trump may be hurling idle threats, and he's not, but there are people, unhinged people, who are preparing for conflict.

It's everywhere now. These people talking about civil war. Shooting, hanging, beating journalists to death. This is real.

Journalists die in places that are not democracies. The reason they die is because the are the thing that protect us from tyranny. This is getting serious.

A journalist will be killed to make a point sooner or later.

This is headed the direction I feared many months ago. Trump wants conflict. It serves his purpose where ever it comes from. It will allow him to take the opportunity to seize more power. This is getting frightening.

And Trump is coming here. I hope he gets the most British of welcomes and France also give him their best on Bastille Day.

Brexit and closer ties with America any one?

Good luck to mother of four dragons son xx

red the sexton thread is sotrue. Bloody rapturists. All liberal America is scared and still persisting. We'll have a special tubular bell end welcome. It'll be a corker.

"Has Oxbridge considered that many poorer students are working part time while studying and can't afford to take off work to go to a summer course? Or they are caring for younger family members during the summer while a parent works three very low paid jobs..."

Yes, we do consider this! The summer courses are not necessary at all, any evidence of passion for the subject (extra reading, watching TED talks, etc.) helps. I once interviewed someone from an inner city very deprived neighbourhood, who had to look after siblings over the summer and didn't have the connections to organise a work placement relevant to her subject (top school arrange all this for them). She still managed to find some time to read and organised her own short work experience with a local charity working on a relevant topic. This made all the difference as it showed intitiative given her very serious constraints. So she got in ahead of people from top schools with much better grades.
On summer courses, yes, as ron says the university / colleges will help with the cost, Teach First also organise taster lectures / supervisions for younger pupils, but I don't know how they are selected.

With the EDL, the Fascist UKIP wing under Waters, we have our own thugs here, probably funded by Trump's Ku Klux Klanners and friends closer to home here in britain.

IMO Summer schools are just money making schemes for unis (ditto many masters courses). They're what you do when you need to further mark yourself out and pad out your ucas form or CV. Which, tbh, is more of an issue for pupils from independent schools who will be competing with many pupils who have very similar grades/backgrounds to them.
I have also spent time in Oxbridge and as Missmoon says, there is an appreciation that state school pupils will not have had the support and resources available to private school pupils, and the tutors don't expect them to. I didn't go to Oxbridge as an undergrad but I did do things like ask my school library to order me journal papers, and did a LOT of reading around my subject, which went down very well at interview for the unis of my choice. Enthusiasm and a deep seated interest in your subject will take you pretty far (with the correct grades, of course).

Financial Times @FT
Just published: front page of the Financial Times UK edition Monday July 3

Alexander Clarkson @APHClarkson
The City establishment has lost faith in the British state to such an extent that it is now trying to negotiate its own deal with the EU

whatwouldrondo fully agree with you on the damage caused by private schools in SE, especially London.

FE, as was, used to be the final frontier of comprehensive education until it was privatised and decimated in the early 1990s. Proudly picking up the educational baton with emotionally damaged
brainy hot housed refugees from the selective and private schools network, disabled, older and poor students, and sending them flying off into the future with a wad of great qualifications.

PainintheEar
There seems to be a two tier global hierarchy forming: failing nationalist states and the international business which will proceed despite them.

China is building first 'forest city' of 40,000 trees to fight air pollution

www.indy100.com/article/forest-city-china-air-pollution-town-trees-liuzhou-stefano-boeri-climate-change-paris-agreement-7809736?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100

Posted just because it has nice pictures, but looks like a good idea too.^

I have found the recent debate on tuition fees interesting, in that many have criticised the proposal to abolish fees on grounds that it would be a huge subsidy to the better off. But the students themselves are generally not better off - they probably have no (or very low) income or assets.

If people mean the students will become better off than non-graduates as a result of their education so should not be subsidised then that's a different point - the problem is it is a generalisation. That might be better addressed by a graduate tax - but then you have the problem of people who go to work abroad not paying tax in the UK.

Still, the current system is poor. One of the main problems is the high interest rate, which a few prescient people pointed out at the time it was introduced but is still not really discussed much.

The main problem is that the education system in the UK is designed to perpetuate the caste system, not to educate people.

There is strong belief in the need for an elite and the accompanying assumption that there will therefore be a majority who will never be in the running for that status. The education system is designed to produce that elite. The cost in terms of waste of human potential is considered worth it.

Johnson has apparently added his voice to scrapping public sector pay caps.
A Whitehall source said Mr Johnson "strongly" believed pay rises could be achieved in "a responsible way", without putting undue pressure on the public finances.
Dh wet himself laughing when I shouted 'eff off Johnson, there's no bloody magic money tree'

Boris Johnson in "Vote for Me" shocker .

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/how-shameless-pm-theresa-may-begged-david-cameron-for-help-in-a-crisis-z90hl565f
How ‘shameless’ PM begged David Cameron for help in a crisis

Theresa May called David Cameron to beg for his support over the DUP-Tory deal last weekend, causing embarrassment on both sides.

The prime minister is understood to have made the approach last Sunday, a day before the agreement was formally sealed. It was the first time they had spoken properly in several months.

Tweet from Cameron on 26th June

David Cameron @ David_Cameron
Task facing PM, given the circs, is to deliver the most stable govt possible - today's DUP deal helps achieve that. All Cons should support.

Beautiful pix of those Chinese tree cities, woman
China seems very innovative wrt environment - surprising because that same regime is politically repressive.

Maybot begging Cameron for help
Now we know she is in over her head

Maybe next year she'll end up begging Barnier for help

She's still a dictatorial control freak though :

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/may-s-terror-plans-condemned-max-hill-barrister-vd6dngbc9

"Theresa May’s plans to fine technology companies for failing to remove extremist material online have been likened to the actions of a Chinese dictator by her own counterterrorism watchdog."

"What is the appropriate sanction?
We do not live in China, where the internet simply goes dark for millions when government so decides.
Our democratic society cannot be treated that way.” < we hope, worried >

(Max Hill QC is the appointed independent reviewer of counterterrorism legislation)

" The arrangements during the transitional period prescribed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration are now history and of no practical significance."

"The British side has no soveignity, no power to rule and supervise Hong Kong after the handover"

Think about Hinkley Point and this.

The fear was that China could hold the UK to ransom with our electricity supply. Of course they said no we have no intention or interest in doing that.

But we gave away our sovereignty and power on the matter.

BigChoc how ironic those two posts next to each other. Who knows we could be a Chinese territory soon than we think.

BigChoc Ten years ago China was staring an environmental disaster in the face. Cities and rivers choked by pollution and toxins. People were dying. Even now you rarely if ever see blue sky over the Pearl River Estuary, Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing. Authoritarian though they are Xi and his cronies try to inhabit the mandate of the Confucian Emperors who had a duty to protect the lives and livelihoods of the people, so they have to be seen to do something, even if it is arguably too little too late. If anything it helps if you are an authoritarian government. Isobel Hilton who used to report for the BBC now focuses almost full time on the environmental issues www.chinadialogue.net

I am not convinced that Xi would be following a different line on Hong Kong if Brexit had not happened. The presence in Hong Kong of young people with an independence agenda (never mind that it is also for democracy) is not something that his brand of authoritarianism can tolerate. The loud messages about sovereignty are aimed at that. The issue for Xi is that his predecessors allowed the pro democracy elements in Hong Kong a certain degree of tolerance because One country two systems was a model they hoped would draw in Taiwan, at the same time fostering the development of greater mainland influence in the economy and society. The problem is that young people whose roots are in Hong Kong are finding themselves sidelined in terms of economic opportunity and this has fostered the development of a Hong Kong identity in opposition to a mainland one. It is exactly the opposite of what his predecessors aimed for, an example for the Taiwanese to protect their independence. This is all about the domestic.

Well this is interesting...

www.buzzfeed.com/aishagani/the-government-has-been-told-to-resolve-its-broken?utm_term=.pmbOKROL5#.xkBLj0L8d
The Government Has Been Told To Resolve Its “Broken Relationship” With Muslim Communities
A landmark report on Britain's Muslim communities in public life – from a commission led by the government's former top lawyer – calls on ministers to look again at counter-radicalisation and integration strategies.

The UK government must urgently rethink the way it engages with the country’s Muslim communities if it is to mend its “broken relationship” with them, a major report has concluded.

The study of Muslim participation in public life, published Monday by a commission chaired by former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve, calls for a review into the government’s anti-radicalisation strategy Prevent, which has been criticised as being counterproductive since being introduced in 2011.

Grieve, the government's top lawyer between 2010 and 2014, said unless action is taken, there is a real risk of "a downward spiral of mutual suspicion and incomprehension".

And

The commissioners said they were concerned about the impact of some recent media reporting and how "this may deter talented individuals – particularly youth – from playing a full part in British society". They pointed to the work done by Miqdaad Versi, the assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who has led a campaign resulting in over 30 corrections of national media's false or misleading reporting – such as a newspaper inaccurately claiming Ramadan was the cause of a train crash.

The impact of the government’s Prevent strategy on Muslim communities came up in every location the commission visited, and how the programme is generally understood to unfairly target Muslims, leading to a “'police state' atmosphere".

The report recommends:

- For the government to adopt a definition of anti-Muslim prejudice

- For the press regulator to consider providing guidance on accurate reporting on Muslim issues, to ensure that faith is not being conflated with extremism

- For the government to convene an independent review of Prevent via an independent panel comprising individuals with relevant expertise

- For local authorities to develop a Prevent advisory group made up of local stakeholders to share best practice and raise concerns

Dominic Grieve making a pitch for a 'Good Tory' badge.