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.

There's evidence in favour of synthetic phonics in France (and incidentally it is the main "reading rescue" method used by SALTs here for children with reading difficulties and dyslexia).

But this is in a a context in which most children are six when they start school, and where most schools do not use phonics methods. There is evidence here for look-say methods, and any other method which relies heavily on using context, being disastrous in schools with a less privileged intake and a lot of kids who are not native speakers - these children often cannot use context successfully because of a lack of vocabulary. Indeed, I taught my son to read in French using a synthetic phonic method because I was concerned about the damage that would be done to him by the look-say method used in our local primary school.

The problem here is no synthetic phonics, but the ideology approach it has inspired in some politicians and practitioners - in real life, dealing with real little humans with all their differences, and real teachers with different levels of competence, no single method will work every time. Nor does synthetic phonics dispense with the need for teaching other reading skills.

This debate is symbolic of the way government policy has evolved over the last few years, with its focus on ideologies, simplistic solutions for complex problems, and an unwillingness to listen to the people on the ground.

Ugh typos sorry, the app (did I mention HOW MUCH I HATE IT?) doesn't seem to have a preview window.

Seriously, mumsnet has to be the worst social media platform ever designed (from an IT point of view), if it weren't for this thread and its contributors I would be long gone!

Read write Inc is shit
And it's used primarily on children who struggle already with phonics - like dyslexic kids
When I was a school governer I asked for data proving this intervention worked for the kids using it...it never appeared...

Back to German politics again:

There are considerable differences to the rise of the far right in Germany and its rise in the UK and the US:

First, German history of course sends a shudder,
that makes it difficult to understand why so many Leavers are cheering for the AfD

• they may be unaware that it was the Nazis who hammered their Dunkirk heroes and almost defeated Britain in WW2 - do they think it was German liberals ?

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, in a statement
congratulated Angela Merkel on her fourth term,
but warned that positions espoused by the AfD “display alarming levels of intolerance not seen in Germany for many decades and which are, of course, of great concern to German and European Jews.”

In contrast to the UK & USA, the German economy is fine and most people here - and the markets - expect it to remain so.
An ARD exit poll showed 84 % of voters overall said their personal economic situation is good.
Even 75% of Alternative for Germany voters agreed.

All polls agree that AfD support is driven by anger at immigration;
also that they don't mind immigration from other EU countries

• no significant anger here about East European workers competing with Germans. It really is all about anger at MENA refugees & migrants - and at Merkel for temporarily opening the borders to them. Hatred of one easily identifiable group. Not good.

However, at least in Germany all the other parties, business leaders and trade unions are united in condemning AfD far rights views.
As with UKIP, AfD have many loons and bitter internal conflicts between neo-nazis and the hard right (different aims & demographics)
Hopefully, as with UKIP, being put fully under the public spotlight will reveal AfD weaknesses and cause them to implode under the weight of their own incompetence & squabbling

The main source of voter anger - MENA immigration - will almost certainly be capped, as the CSU is demanding,
but all respectable parties are refusing to allow far right demonisation of Muslims in general and especially of those already here.

The School cuts finder is back. Trying all the local schools I could think of, all bar one are suffering cuts. All the local village schools seem to be suffering major cuts, making me wonder how many of them will be viable in future.

Don't let anyone tell me there is no money for schools, some of which have been serving their communities for more than a hundred years and serving them well, when there is money for vanity projects like Free Schools, and silly salaries for heads of Multi-academy trusts.

The Tory party did some analysis of why the last election went so badly for them. They talked about a 'red tide' which was things like the head teachers pointing out the effect the cuts would have on their schools, and letting parents form their own opinions.

Hopefully regulars will see the connection ...

Just been listening to the news, and it seems that the Kurds have voted for independence by a "sizeable majority" in a non-binding referendum.

Can anyone here explain how the UK will keep a straight face when it tells the Kurds that they can - effectively - take their "referendum" and shove it up their arses ?

Sauce, goose, gander ?

Like I say, what goes around....

Trump's staff, inc daughter and SIL, using private email for WH business.
'Lock em up!'

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/09/25/white-house-email-trump-aides-used-personal-devices-and-private-email.html

Seriously, mumsnet has to be the worst social media platform ever designed (from an IT point of view)

(channels Fawlty Towers)

I won't have that ! .... There's a place in Eastbourne

Totally agree. However when I made as bold as to suggest some improvements I was slaughtered. It's worth reminding ourselves that the vast majority - 80% - of MNetters aren't even vaguely techie. Which - to be fair - explains me. I don't think I would have learned much about narcs and controlling behaviour on the Linux/Android/SQL/Homebrew forums I also lurk on ....

Meanwhile, back at the last outpost of the Empire:
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-the-tories-have-already-betrayed-the-dup-1.3233355?mode=amp

It's probably just an over active imagination (fuelled by 5g of G&Bs 70% cocoa chocolate) but hearing the Tories have stitched the DUP up (and I can't resist the qualifier right royally for extra irony) immediately makes the think of the final scene of "The Long Good Friday".

I seem to recall the DUP have some heavy friends ....

LH I'm only vaguely techie (writing excel macros is the summit of my tech prowess) - it's not that it's low tech but that the user interface is so awful.

BCF interesting posts about Germany as ever, thank you!

Mike Smithson @ MSmithsonPB
GQRR poll finds 70% of LAB voters wanting some form of 2nd referendum on Brexit. Amongst all voters it is 50%

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-the-tories-have-already-betrayed-the-dup-1.3233355?mode=amp
Fintan O’Toole: The Tories have already betrayed the DUP
Despite their deal, the Conservatives are cutting the ground from under their ‘mates’

I apologise to the Democratic Unionist Party. After it did a deal to keep Theresa May in power, I suggested it would eventually be stabbed in the back by its Tory friends. This has proved to be doubly wrong. It didn’t happen eventually – it has happened already. And it has been stabbed, not in the back, but in the front. Sorry about that.

The DUP’s enthusiastic support for Brexit is largely an exercise in identity politics, a way of expressing an emotional attachment to Britishness. But it has two political imperatives. The DUP’s own voters do not want a hard Border. And they do not want to lose the agricultural subsidies that account for 87 per cent of farm incomes in Northern Ireland.

They need their friends in London to swing these two big things for them. Otherwise Arlene Foster will look less like Moses

70% of LAB voters wanting some form of 2nd referendum on Brexit

The honest truth is labour is being run by the SWP now. It's the way they do things.

I think Maugham has a point here:.

@JolyonMaugham

Labour's a political party like any other. It will follow but it won't lead. Better to change public opinion than get angry with it.

And a crash out should be a political education like no other, for 'leavers' of all hues.

Impressed again that German business leaders and trades unionists speak out against a parties like Afd/UKIP, BCF Significant silence here.

DexEU current staffing level: 482^^
No of staff who've left: 124.

Incredible turnover of 25% in only a year !
A head teacher would be sacked if their staff left at that rate

DD is in transmit mode only and won't listen to any "negative", i.e. informed advice.
His civil servants are fleeing from the wreckage and those remaining are concentrating on protecting themselves from a Chilcott-style enquiry after a Brexit crash.

Good summary of where we are with DUP deal, and upcoming legal challenge that it breaches GFA:
publiclawforeveryone.com/2017/09/26/public-law-update-1-the-2017-election-fixed-term-parliaments-and-confidence-and-supply-arrangements/

A head teacher would be sacked if their staff left at that rate
Naah bigchoc they'd get a lucrative bung and a chain of tax free academies.

I find the Irish Times coverage is pretty knowledgeable, total contrast to ignorance in the UK media.
six's link has this clear summary of the DUP dilemma:

"The DUP’s enthusiastic support for Brexit is largely an exercise in identity politics, a way of expressing an emotional attachment to Britishness.
But it has two political imperatives:
The DUP’s own voters do not want a hard Border.
And they do not want to lose the agricultural subsidies that account for 87 per cent of farm incomes in Northern Ireland.

They need their friends in London to swing these two big things for them.

Otherwise Arlene Foster will look less like Moses leading her people to the promised land
and more like a scout leader who has lost the compass, forgotten the tents and dropped the sandwiches in the bog."

< bows to woman's superior knowledge of the education rat-race >

So successful were they in stitching up their first coalition partners, that it has gone to the Tories' heads. Can't see the DUP taking it as naively as the Lib Dems...

Have to say, as much as I love libraries and reading for pleasure, I'm also a big fan of synthetic phonics. Overlearning digraphs is the thing that got my dyslexic child not just reading well, but also spelling securely. (And it's spelling where a secure foundation of phonics really shows up in the 75% of children who would have learned to read easily with any method.)

No one on this thread is excited about Mays meeting with Tusk later today.

I didn't even realise that May and Tusk were meeting!

It was a statement, not a question.

lh 😂
Very true, though I'm hoping for something amusing to come from Tusk afterwards. Best I can hope for

When I heard the report on R4 this morning (the 7am one, not the 8am one) something tripped those spidey senses again.

The news story actually spelled out that Tusk was president of the European Council, and that the composition of the council was the leaders of individual EU countries.

There was then a report from the BBC correspondent which made the point that it was the Council which had set the terms of negotiations with the UK, and they are exceedingly unlikely to vary them.

Sounded more nuanced that the Brexiteers would like the public to believe.