Westminstenders: In the Brexit Lane

[RedToothBrush]

I honestly couldn't think of a better starter to the thread than simply just this tweet

Robert Peston @ peston
We’ve got an official opposition tearing itself apart over antisemitism, the founder of the EDL running rings around the judiciary and a government negotiating a Brexit plan that its own MPs and ministers tell me is dead. When will we pull ourselves together, as a nation?

But don't worry, your blue passport will get you an extra special long wait at passport control. And no deal could lead to continued freedom of movement anyway. Something for everyone in there.

The basic maths of many Eastern Europeans is significantly better than that of English students. This is a fault of U.K. governments and a cultural dismissal of educating the white, working class.

Yes, a dismissive attitude to vocational education has dogged this country for decades.

MN obsesses about Grammar schools but who cares about teaching maths to a reasonable level to working class boys?

When plans were being made to reform the Maths curriculum there were proposals to have a double award maths for those more able students and those wanting to go onto science A levels; a single award; and a more basic level variously called things like 'functional maths' which would teach every day maths. They sounded like sensible proposals. Gove scrapped them.

It's still OK to claim that you can't do Maths. Yes, someone said this to me about 10 days ago, and not someone who left school at 15 either, but degree educated. No one would dream of saying that their reading level was only that of an 8 year old, but maths seems to be an exception! I don't imagine that the brains of Polish children are different to those of UK children, so why do they have a better mathematical knowledge?

I work in apprenticeships. We train plenty of plumbers, the vast majority British. They need a C or grade 4 GCSE, or a Level 2 Functional Maths qualification. I help many obtain their FS Level 2 - they are often capable lads who messed around at school, or who were poorly taught, sometimes with 5 or 6 different Maths teachers during Y10 and 11. I think it's wonderful that they can be signed up and obtain the FS during the course of their apprenticeship.
Some of our apprentices are foreign nationals whose qualifications are not recognised, in which case they too do the FS exam. Out of four people (hundreds have taken the test) who have obtained 100%, three have been foreigners - one Portuguese, one Dutch and one Polish. (Our British 100%-er had at some point in the past obtained an A grade GCSE, but had no certificate to prove it.)

With the report of May going to meet Nicola Sturgeon, and her Chequers proposals, I could not help but think that this is what she should have been doing two years ago. Only now does May seem to have woken up to the fact that the clock is ticking! She seems to have forgotten that she wound the clock up in the first place.

As for things happening by accident, I can think of two events in my lifetime, one which didn't happen. The first is the way the Berlin Wall borders were opened. Didn't someone misread the instruction and throw them open immediately, instead of in a more controlled fashion? The second event is about the Russian who died relatively recently and had the gumption to disobey a computerised command to launch a missile strike, realising that it was a glitch and there were no missiles on the way from the US. We only found out about this years later.

Here are some FS Maths questions for anyone who wants a little diversion:

And another. Not so easy if you are not good at algebra:

Growing up, if you were too good at anything, you started to be socially excluded in (local primary+middle) school. No one likes a swot. Well not everyone liked a swot. An attitude which still lurks under the surface to this day. Not helped by the fact that clever kids can be damn clever at appearing not so clever if they find it helps them "blend in". It's a little cod-psychology, but it might explain part of the reasons why children of immigrants do so well. They've pretty much cottoned on to the fact that they're going to be picked on anyway, and may as well be hung for a wolf as a sheep ?

Regarding FoM, one of the problems with it (and it's ironic, because it is all to do with Empire, etc - the Leavers shibboleth) is it's asymmetry in terms of the UK. Because we have a large proportion of the EU27 wanting to come to the UK because they can speak our language. However, you have relatively stuff all EU-UK citizens spreading into the EU for the same motivation.

The inherently insular nature of the UK make language skills that much harder and unfortunately seem to instill a "why bother" attitude for the vast majority.

As for things happening by accident, I can think of two events in my lifetime, one which didn't happen. The first is the way the Berlin Wall borders were opened.

From memory it's not so much they were opened .... it was no one had an order to close them. The weakness of all totalitarian states is the terror they instill in the average person leads to an absolute refusal to use common sense if it means breaking a rule. You only need to look at the two security guards in Birmingham last month to realise it's now extant in the UK. (They were quite prepared to watch a baby die before their eyes than risk their jobs.)

My favourite accidental happening is when New Zealand legalised home distilling. The government certainly didn't intend to. But by the time someone had read the law, (it seemed) every household in the country had their own still. Which is why NZ is the worlds leading home distilling suppliers. A trade that I suspect will survive Brexit.

Anyone else come to the conclusion that as long as there's a bit of factual linking, and discussion, Brexiteers steer well clear ?

Anyway, here's a story which has enormous ramifications for the disgraced formed defence secretary Liam Fox and his peanut-brain analysis of the situation.

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/07/icann_whois_gdpr/

the TL;DR is the US-based ICANN has been thrice slapped in court over trying to force non-US companies (in this case a German one) to break EU law (GDPR) because their (pre-GDPR) contract says they must.

(Remember Trumps "big idea" was to sue the EU ?)

Not only have ICANN been handed their arse on a plate (3 times) more amusingly, the Cologne court refused to refer the case upwards to the ECJ, noting that ICANNS view of what the law said wasn't really the issue here.

I hope the less barking Brexiteers ("Leavers") note this and start to imagine how the UK would be treated if it started trying to tell the EU what EU law really means.

Personally, I am intrigued by the lack of any Trumpian bluster about the situation. Admittedly it's not sexy like steel tariffs. And it means knowing things (although that doesn't seem to matter these days). Much more likely is the hegemony that surrounds Trump has decided that ICANN has to go, and letting it repeatedly run into the door of GDPR in Europe is the best way to let it die.

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/06/theresa-may-blamed-chaotic-no-deal-brexit-preparations-row-breaks/
Theresa May blamed for 'chaotic' no deal Brexit preparations as row breaks out in Whitehall

Asa Bennett @asabenn
May blamed for 'chaotic' no deal Brexit preparations as row breaks out in Whitehall

"No-one really thought this through properly before the PM announced there would be 70 papers [advising on what to do to prepare for no deal]," an official told the @Telegraph. "We are being told we have to do several just so the total adds up to 70"

"When Theresa May announced last month that there would be 70 papers it was news to me," a minister said. "I was told that two or three of them would relate to me, but I hadn’t really been consulted before that.”

All I see is a return to the recession hit, grey, monotonous, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic hell of my youth.

Mrsr8 I hope not but I share your fears. There have been some alarming undercurrents these last two years and they are no longer just undercurrents - the horrible incident at Bookmarks being just one example.

Despite my earlier post I do have fond memories of the late 60s/early 70s but I was a child! I always think of Christmas 1973 as my ‘happy place’ and my mum even managed to turn power cuts into something fun and exciting for my benefit. Looking back from an adult perspective I struggle to understand the ‘we were doing just fine’ attitude of some.

"No-one really thought this through properly before the PM announced there would be 70 papers [advising on what to do to prepare for no deal].

That's a bit of a weird echo of when David Davis said there were impact papers on the costs of leaving the EU on the 58 sectors.Then they didn't exist, then they did.

Ukip suspends three members over socialist bookshop attack

I wonder if the unidentified 9 thugs were also UKIP, or EDL / Britain First / Democratic Football Lads Alliance etc

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/06/socialist-bookshop-support-after-rightwingers-attack-bookmarks

Just pondering May's visit to Scotland. Why now?

Last I read the case brought by the SNP, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green politicians to try and get the ECJ to say Scotland should have more of a say was failing?

The judges indicated that the Westminster parliament is sovereign so it is for Westminster to determine whether to listen to Holyrood or not?

So the case isn't a reason to be heading up there now. Is there any chance May wants to use Scotland as a sort of cover story for a soft Brexit announcement?

Well she can't use NI for a soft Brexit because of the DUP.

Pointless FE course" - that attitude may well be part of the UKs problems with trade education

there are plenty of courses both at Uni and FE where there is little chance of getting a job, even after 2 years of full time study and debt, even courses such a level 3 IT support wont get you a job, you've no experience and employers rarely give you a chance, why should they when they can get the finished article?

in any case, i believe many trade accredit ions require work placement, certainly in electrical work.

but the point is until we can appreciate that the free movement of semi skilled workers from the EU is an issue for the youth of today, brexit or no brexit , we ll not address the issues that some have identified.

However, you have relatively stuff all EU-UK citizens spreading into the EU for the same motivation

I beg to differ. There are around one million UK citizens permanently resident in the other EU countries. Working, bringing up families, living just as locals do. The stereotype of the British pensioner in Spain represents only a small percentage of the total.

In addition, tens of thousands more UK citizens live and/or work in the EU on a temporary basis, including 50,000 seasonal workers in the tourism industry, thousands of lorry, van and coach drivers, sales people spending Monday to Friday selling British products (you can meet them at the airports on Monday mornings), engineers installing and servicing British machinery exported to the EU, people working for European companies who spend much of their working week in the European offices, students studying under the Erasmus scheme as well as those studying in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, where university degrees can be studied in a mixture of English and local languages, and many more.

Yup, I agree with Havana. When DD was living in Amsterdam I quite often left work on Friday afternoon and got the plane which landed around teatime. There would be great big queues of people waiting for the return flight. This was 10 years ago. Of course, the flow might be drying up now, with the Brexit uncertainty.

BigChoc I posted a tweet identifying some of them up thread. Yes, at least three are UKIP and one is EDL.

Not a surprise. 🙁

Another problem with those FE questions posted up thread... apart from (maybe) the algebra one - I wouldn't say there was anything there that was tougher than appears on y6 SATS papers. I could answer all those FE questions easily - I've come across plenty of final questions on SATS papers that have left me ??????????

We teach too hard too early - so that, by the time children's brains are actually equipped to cope with those sorts of questions, they've already switched off years ago.

And that's before getting into how lengthy word problems are a barrier to children's mathematical capabilities. Children who struggle to read are often perfectly able to do the division and multiplication aspect of the question - they just can't fight their way through the lengthy exposition to find out what it is they are meant to be doing.

We set children up to fail in this country. It has been that way for years. Prior to the 2010 elections there were noises about dialling it all back... but then the election happened and Gove became education secretary. There will now be a lost generation of children who were taught things that were far too hard (and often pointless) way too young, who have been recorded as failures since their first official assessment - when they were 6 and so have completely turned their back on any form of education.

But then I think Gove would quite like an uneducated population to rule over. I wouldn't be surprised if his driving factor in designing his godawful curriculum was to make school so dreadful that no one would complain when he eventually scrapped it altogether - and sent poor children back out to work where they belong.

jasjas1973 as with a lot of other issues Brexit has brought the issue into focus but is is not the reason or the response.

We don't do trade education well in the U.K. and we fail many young people educationally but this is nothing to do with FOM.

Some employers do want well trained craftsmen but why can't the U.K. train these people? You give an example of IT support a job where good English (spoken and written) would be needed alongside IT skills. Why is someone from another European country better suited in terms of job specific skills and English?

And it isn't just because they come ready trained. Most employers would much rather employ someone from the locality. They are less likely to leave, more likely to be loyal to the employer and will be able to communicate colloquially with staff and customers.

We don't value the trades, employers won't fully support apprenticeships, people do want these jobs, the list could go on. The point is if we as a country could supply well trained, tradesmen the jobs are there but we don't.

Martin Costello was an innocent bystander. He just happened to be blamelessly visiting the left wing bookshop, wearing his Make Britain Great Again baseball cap and carrying his Fake News banner, when the protesting attackers arrived. He doesn’t know them from Adam (Richardson) and it’s entirely coincidence that they just happen to belong to the same party.
He condemns their behaviour.

Anything else is a dirty lie and fake news. Just so we’re clear on that (before the collective intake of breath shatters every window in the country).

I think part of the point is that those UK citizens are spread across the E27, so not concentrated in one country.

It's a mirror of the "They need us more than we need them" trope which ignores that the impact of Brexit import/export-wise on the UK is far more serious for the UK than when it is spread across 27 countries.

And that's before you factor in the benefits that the 4 pillars of the Single Market have brought to the EU

All I see is a return to the recession hit, grey, monotonous, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic hell of my youth

I was born in the 1970s but only remember the 1980s - and it was exactly as above. I don't want that for my DC

Interesting to get feedback on those questions (which btw are not necessarily FE questions - some learners do the FS qual in school) - they are ones that generally cause people some trouble, which is why I posted them. (Interpreting the graph seems particularly problematical.) The wordiness does cause problems, but then most everyday applications of maths (unless doing something simple like working out a percentage) do require skills to be applied in a context, which may require careful reading to ensure the maths is applied correctly. Having seen previous discussions about Maths on MN, I doubt that everyone would find them as easy as you, Icantreach. They are after all not designed to test higher level maths skills, but basic skills as applied in everyday situations.
(I should also say that engineers, electricians, plumbers and others also study subject specific maths, which is more advanced technically - but applied in a limited range of recognisable situations, and where skills are not necessarily transferable.)