Westministers: May Shares the Cake

[RedToothBrush]

May's Speech Abbreviated:

We still have nfi how we are going to do this. EU this is your fault. You sort it out. We are too lazy, workshy and fighting like high school children to work it out ourselves. Be our whipping boy.

I support democracy as long as I get to do whatever I like
I support human rights as long as I can ignore them when I like.
I support the rule of law except when it doesn't suit my agenda.

Waffle waffle.

"Creative", "Dynamic" PR for my Premiership.

Waffle waffle

We really need policing cooperation, PLEASE keep it with us. I know I threatened to withdraw this, but I'm sorry, I was wrong and a bit of a dick about this.

Gets to the point FINALLY.

"2 year transition period"

(With another time bomb lock which is still too short for IT departments. Nothing to do with the next general election, honest).

RULE BRITANNIA!

Polite Applause.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2360dbfc-a209-11e7-9cc3-a3b3c6cd90b8
Philip Hammond refuses to back Theresa May as Tory leader for next election

Pesky tories:

Is this the second war of the day?

Brexit: EU chief negotiator says no talks on transition period until divorce bill is settled

The UK and EU negotiating teams are now more at loggerheads than ever, with Michel Barnier explicitly ruling out transition deal talks until the divorce bill, citizens' rights, and Northern Ireland are dealt with.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-transition-period-single-market-eu-chief-negotiator-michel-barnier-talks-brussels-davis-davis-a7966616.html

Breaking: America has declared war on North Korea. North Korea vows to shoot down American plans.

Oh joy. Just what we need. DH is supposed to be in Seoul in less than 2 weeks.

Place marking

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/brexit-paul-krugman-zero-chance-britain-better-off-eu-leave-single-market-custom-union-exports-trade-a7965871.html?amp

Sorry to derail back to education again...just had meeting with headteacher again. Both flummoxed about what to do. It's also going to get harder and harder to get parents to help as Brexit starts to bite harder (see the shopping thread for instance).

Tomorrow AM on FB:

Hmmm
Just got sent a yougov survey - questions on voting intention and brexit views.
Interesting...

flummoxed about what to do.
It's almost like what trump wants to do, public services are being quietly shut down here.

Private A level courses, include the National Extension College, Badders. www.nec.ac.uk/course-categories/a-levels

Thanks woman

Cripes, elements obv worrying for you both. Seoul is only 35 miles from the N Korean border
Keep checking the FO site in case they advise against travel there - in fact, check the German and French sites too, because the UK FO has sometimes been rather reluctant to warn off travellers

That's a worry elements 😔
Dh off to the US on Saturday...am hoping the storms have all buggered off...

Both Tories and Labour are being deliberately vague about what they want for Brexit, other than motherhood and apple pie, or rather cake.
No concrete proposals, just a lot of soundbites.

They can do that to voters - I wonder if any UK politicians are capable of anything more than waffle ?
However, Barnier will require specifics to negotiate on - empty platitudes will not suffice for him.

Red that lovely, lovely tory MP? He's my MP, that's why I get exactly nowhere with any concerns about anything, I'm on his black list. He is complete misogynistic scum.

I've been wondering how the hell brexiteers get off claiming that we need to control our borders but then being ok with a suggestion we don't control the border in Ireland whilst being angry that the EU would.

Then it dawned on me. These people don't think the EU control their borders, so doing so in Ireland would just be spiteful. Of course it couldn't be that they have bought into a lie in that regards of course.

Either that or they don't realise ROI exists in it's own right.

(paywall) More on the new Farage / Banks party

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/nigel-farage-poised-to-form-ukip-splinter-party-v5dvxq7sr

< blimey, looks like UKIP is turning too far right for even Farage and Banks >

Nigel Farage is poised to launch a new party if the anti-Muslim activist Anne Marie Waters becomes Ukip’s new leader this week.

The MEP could create the new movement within days of the result of Ukip’s latest leadership ballot being announced on Friday at the party conference in Torquay.

According to sources, the former Ukip leader has booked a room in Strasbourg for the following Monday when he is expected to announce the formal launch of his new breakaway party.
Almost all Ukip’s 20 MEPs, who have threatened to quit if Waters is victorious, are likely to line up behind him

According to insiders, Waters, 40, who has close links to the far right, looks on course for victory.
< well, the electorate is tiny, so a few hard nuts are enough to swing it >

Last night, the former Ukip donor Arron Banks, 51, said he hoped Waters would give the party a “decent burial” if she became leader.
The millionaire businessman said he feared Waters would turn the party into “BNP lite”
and her leadership of the party would “put the final nail in its coffin”.

Banks confirmed that he and Farage, 53, were in talks about the new party,
which has no name despite earlier suggestions that it could be called the Patriotic Alliance.

The party is likely to be bankrolled by Banks;
last week he reported a “significant find” of alluvial diamonds in eastern Lesotho

... saw the party slump from 3.9m votes in 2015 to fewer than 600,000 in June this year.
.....
Ukip’s members are having to pick their fourth leader in a year from a list of seven candidates.
....
Last week another candidate, Henry Bolton,
warned that Ukip could become the “UK Nazi party”
if it chose what he called “the wrong” leader — assumed to refer to Waters.

Hashi Many hardcore Leavers think the UK can force the RoI to Irexit and join the UK outside the EU
Some nostalgic hardright Tories even think the RoI can be bullied into becoming part of the UK again.
Neither is going to happen - for many political, historic and economic reasons

Yes bigchoc a wonderful combination of extreme arrogance and ignorance!

jackofkent.com/2017/09/michel-barniers-significant-comments-today-on-a-possible-transition/

David Allen Green points out the significant points in Barniers response to May's speech:

The United Kingdom requested for the first time a transition period for a limited amount of time beyond its withdrawal from the European Union and its institutions.
“This is currently not part of my mandate, but I would like to insist on a few conditions that the European Council has already set out.

Then

“1. The Union also must decide if such a period is in its interest.
“2. Any transition must respect the legal and financial framework of the Single Market. To quote the European Council: “Should a time-limited prolongation of Union acquis be considered, this would require existing Union regulatory, budgetary, supervisory, judiciary and enforcement instruments and structures to apply.”Those are the words of the European Council. I think that everybody should remember them.
“3. Finally, discussions on a transition – which will now take place since the UK has requested it –do not absolve us from the necessity of making “sufficient progress.” Progress on our three key issues remains more than ever necessary in order to build the trust needed to begin discussing our future relationship.

David Allen Green points out:

His quotation of the guidelines is crucial: that is the EU position on transition. The UK may not like it, but unless the European Council amends the guidelines then that is the only basis on which a withdrawal agreement can be done by the EU.

And the requirement of “sufficient progress” remains, and it remains unmet

In other words Davis can spit feathers at Barnier and the EU all he likes. Barnier isn't at liberty to just do this. Nor is the EU as such because if just one EU country says they don't think transition is in their interests, then there's a real problem.

Plus ECJ is non-negotiable.

Why does the UK make such a hash out of things that are accomplished without much fuss elsewhere? Why does the UK try to reinvent the wheel? This is related to Brexit insofar as the UK seems to be seeking a bespoke solution to a non-problem.

I am very interested in the 'systematic phonics and only systematic phonics' debate, having gone 13 rounds with some SP zealots a few years ago on a Primary Education thread (and thank you to whoever posted that 29% not at expected level for KS2 phonics progress - not at all unexpected imo). SP was introduced in the UK (maybe I should say England and Wales as I am not sure about Scotland) on the basis of research in the US on children at least a full year older than the Reception age children who are first exposed to it and expected to make measurable progress (cf the Rose Report). Why was research from the US misapplied? Was there ignorance of the fact that US children start school a year later than British children do?

The Clackmannanshire pilot study was trotted out as clear evidence of the superiority of SP and SP alone when SP was being rolled out in schools in England and Wales. As with the small detail of the age difference (and neurological maturity difference) of US vs UK students, most of what actually happened in the Scottish pilot was either deliberately or accidentally ignored. 'Bricks without straw' was what teachers were faced with in England and Wales, and the poor results bear ample witness to that. reclaimingschools.org/2016/06/04/the-scottish-phonics-miracle-myths-and-evidence/

ID cards - continental European countries have a variety of approaches, and it seems to me that none of them are complicated or highly expensive. The US uses driver's licences as a de facto form of photo ID - they are the size and shape of a credit card - and they even double (triple?) as an indicator of status as an organ donor in many states. State IDs are available for those who do not wish to get a DL.

reclaimingschools.org/2016/06/06/the-rose-report-on-phonics-playing-fast-and-loose-with-the-evidence/
The drawbacks of the Rose Report.

Math I know someone who is a TA who spent a year teaching a third of the class , without having had any training in SP , but then again if it so easy to learn why would they need training !

Remembers last weeks battle of wills argument about the words 'I' and 'eye'

Why was research from the US misapplied?

£25 million pounds matched funding?

From that report(thanks math):

Ofsted started policing schools to ensure that they followed this method rigorously. Ofsted also imposed this on teacher training courses, subjecting them to short-notice spot-check inspections. Failure to demonstrate full commitment to teaching systematic synthetic phonics could result in courses being closed down.

MN posters have written to the effect that kids can learn to 'decode' but not 'read'. Reading is to do with meaning, decoding isn't. And kids are not robots. SSP is do able, but learning to ape sounds from signs, seems educationally dubious. Testing them on this at such a young age seems just wrong. It's doing no favours to kids health.

Evidence in that report, and more recent evidence has shown SSP has very limited, if any, benefit.

In a wider context, in the absence of elected LEAs, vocal trades union and professional bodies, and efficient public accountability for the spending of public money on private initiatives, we end up with things like SSP.

Not to mention the apparent conflict of interest issues with:

Read, Write Inc is produced by Ruth Miskin, an enthusiastic proponent of synthetic phonics, a method of teaching reading endorsed by school ministers. She is director of Ruth Miskin Literacy Limited which received £546,614 in matched funding for training from the DfE.

www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2014/02/phonics-the-sounds-that-letters-make-kerching

Probably more importantly, this fascist is in our pay to promote other fascists. A very worrying use of public money:

Yashar Ali 🐘‏Verified account
@yashar
Nigel Farage just introduced Steve Bannon at the Roy Moore Rally calling him "the greatest political thinker in the Western hemisphere."

Worst of all, you just know that in 5 or 10 years time synthetic phonics will be thrown out in favour of a return to Look/Say or Reading Recovery or whatever. Which will be touted as the only way to teach reading.

But bringing it back to Brexit - this sort of approach probably informed Gove's "We've had enough of experts" i.e. being told adamantly that this is the way to do something, and people with other experience are not listened too. It's not expertise which is wrong IMO, it's zealotry. As Mrs May is now beginning to find out, having embraced the approach of her party zealots' with unquestioning enthusiasm.