Westminstenders: Compromise is a difficult word

[RedToothBrush]

Today the HoC had a water leak. It closed the house for the day. This isn't without consequence; any hope for the opportunity of Indicative Votes on Monday had cold water poured on it.

Meanwhile talks between talks between May and Corbyn were about as productive as you'd imagine. But apparently they had nice tea and biscuits.

The Cooper Bill, the last minute lock on May getting a extension to prevent no deal, has been in the Lords today. I say it's been in the Lords but Tories have filibuster Ed on procedure for over 6 hours to prevent the chance of it passing the house. Tory whips are timetabled until 6am but the opposition benches have vowed to go to 7.30am. So far the votes to ruin the procedure have failed comfortably so the opposition have the number. Its just a question of time.

The trouble is with the Lords not sitting tomorrow that means the bill won't get passed until Monday and there are fears it won't get royal assent until Tuesday.

The bill doesn't prevent accidental no deal but it would be a barrier to May.

It therefore looks like May's gambit with the EU to get an extension is to say her plan is ongoing talks with Labour for a cross party solution. It won't wash.

No deal looks more and more likely.

It probably can be done by ipad - but getting all the ipads to work at the same time can be as much as a nightmare as trying to get the really old computers. It varies by school, of course, but the I.C.T access in lots of primaries is a joke.

My school days ended before we had new-fangled tech like calculators 😂

• we had slide rules for large multiplication & division and we used logs on paper too

I learned my tables v early and v easily - my particular Aspie mind just works that way

Mum used to walk me to kindergarten 2.5 miles each way - this was 1959/1960 when most ordinary folk didn't have cars
We recited the times tables, reportedly while I was skipping along the whole way
(must have been a great help to Mum, to burn off some of my energy then !)

So by the time I started school, I knew my times tables up to 12

• 12 was an important number then, since we still have pounds, shillings & pence, several years before decimal currency

In early secondary school, I memorised for my own benefit all the squares of numbers up to 30

I found all this memorised data a great help in my understanding of how numbers related to each other and to do mental arithmatic

• in later life I have stopped a few howlers from people who mistyped on a calculator, since I could always do rough sums in my head to check

I can imagine that making the kids do exams in a timed situation on old iPads will be a nightmare! Poor kids.

Louisecollins Working time is part of workers rights, like maternity & disabled rights,
all of which, to be blunt, cost firms money

The EU insist on a "level playing field" if we have more than bog-standard Turkey-style CU, because their firms would otherwise be seriously disadvantaged,
if they have to obey a bunch of expensive workers rights and environmental regs too, e.g. materials in goods to be restricted to those in recycling regs
and the UK didn't

So when May last year choose the CU approach, she said from the beginning Turkey-style was insufficient.
The word is: if it hadn't been for NI, the EU would never have allowd her to get so close to SM benefits without FOM, but NI swung it
However, Barnier went to the outer limits of his remit there and several E27 countries are reportedly unhappy with this concession

SO, the EU would be happy with a plain CU, so long as there is an NI-only backstop

Ds2s primary has macbooks.

I've no idea what's going on.

Hard right Brexit think tanks boasting in previous years about their "Bonfire of Red Tape"^after Brexit

costed the savings that business could make from removing all these pesky rights for workers and the environmental regs.
It was several billion

DGR, how so? Newport West has been a labour seat since 1987, it's no surprise that it still is IMO.

2017 result Majority = 5658
2019 result Majority = 1951

Also, I know this is really crude since Conservative doesn't = Leave, but, combining Conservative and UKIP votes:
in 2017 = 18165 (c4000 short of the winning Labour vote)
in 2019 = 9380 (Labour winning result = 9308)

I've no idea what's going on.

I'm smelling rubber from turning tyres.

For Newport, the voters knew that the Labour candidate was a Remainer
but in spite of voting Leave in the referendum (as far as we can deduce for the particular consituency)
still chose her
Or indeed maybe partly because of that, since all Labour consituencies now have a Remain majority

UKIP increased, so those who rated Leave as the most important issue expressed their wishes there

Really DG?

Interesting.

Louise the more interesting stat is adding the 2019 Conservative and UKIP result would have unseated Labour. Given the turnout I am not sure how much you can read into it at all though.

DGR, how so? Newport West has been a labour seat since 1987, it's no surprise that it still is IMO.

I was looking a bit deeper than the surface, to be honest. The candidate elected is a clear Remain supporter, despite the fact the constituency is majority Leave.

Which completely blows the myth of "Labour voters punishing a Remain policy" that has been peddled by some in the Labour party as an excuse for their limply supporting the referendum.

The reality seems to be they could quite openly campaign for Remain and not really lose too much - if any - support.

Any other WMenders concur ?

I like to look at Daily mail headlines and comments v the guardian online (as both are not pay per view yet. )
At the moment the Daily mail readers are very angry indeed. More so than normal.

I've always disliked maths. Was in school in the 80's (Indy) and my teacher ripped up my maths book in front of the class and made me stay in for every play time for 2 months to learn my tables. She had a meter stick she would whack onto the desk and you'd have to stand and shout the answer immediately or have to stand at the front of the class by the blackboard for the rest of the day. She was terrifying. Weirdly for numeracy I always score massively high. We had IQ and career aptitude tests in Y10 and I somehow scored 98.7% on the numeracy section which was higher than the 2 girls who went to Oxbridge to do pure maths! Still no idea what happened there. My maths teacher was equally as baffled as I was in what was called 'remedial' maths too .

“Our school has started using the app timestablesrockstars to try and get children used to the time pressure element of it in a “fun” way.”

That’s what DD has to use. It is not fun

DD’s school says it’s vital that they know their tables with instant recall because it links in to so many mathematical concepts

@Sostenueto dunces hats and knuckle rapping are thankfully gone, but I don’t agree that obsessively testing children and publishing the school’s results in league tables is better.

Take the writing SATs, if a child achieves “greater depth” in y1 (the highest of 3 scores, then in their y6 test they will be expected to get a greater depth score as well. If they do they get a progress score of 0. If they get the expected level of achievement in writing (or below) then they’d get a negative score. There is no way for that child to get a positive score!! Yet the league tables are shown with those schools getting positive scores as being better.

Concur DGR
@Otto_English
Also interesting to see the loonier Brexit parties picking up no more than a handful of votes. Is this the far right resurgence we keep being warned about?

Tanith - I agree it isn’t fun, that’s just the desperate spin from the school

Louise the more interesting stat is adding the 2019 Conservative and UKIP result would have unseated Labour. Given the turnout I am not sure how much you can read into it at all though.

The turnout is in itself fascinating. If nothing else it puts these forums into a perspective that may have been missed.

Once again, I am reminded of the walkout my MP decided to publicise a few weeks back. The takeaway message was how nobody was talking about Brexit.

One interpretation of the past few days or weeks might be that it's a very carefully gauged plan to test the water for a softer (if at all ?) Brexit. Using a boiling-frog (I know !!!!) strategy. If nothing else, the complete lack of anything happening on the 29th must have had some impact on the nations psyche ....

What is interesting is that the rightwing / Brexit vote is split between 2 parties

If this were to happen nationally, the Tory party would be hammered by such a split, because of how FPTP works for the number of seats

• this is why Cameron called his bloody stupid referendum: to avoid losing seats

As well as making the rightwing vote impotent wrt HoCseats, it would do the same for Brexit

With 160 Tory MPs being for No Deal, plus an unknown additional number wanting the WA with a PD of varying softness / hardness,
90% of Tory members and 70% of Tory voters wanting Brexit
the Tory party really is the Brexit party

Labour with its 70% of voters and all its constituencies now being Remain is really a Remain party, with a Lexiter leader & friends

Up to you if you choose to be dismissive.

The previous MP was a Remainer, and his majority increased between 2015 and 2017. That more Labour voters support remain is already "priced in", no? The seat is a very red Labour seat, it is now slightly less so.

Agree on your later post tho DGR. Imo that turnout is shocking!

I concur DG

I think some labour majorities would be cut but they would not suffer as much as they think.

Disillusioned voters don't vote.

The EU referendum was unusual in that so many people voted for the first time. Not sure that after seeing the utter mess the govt have made of Brexit and the lies that were told by leave.eu that they would bother to vote again tbh.

I somehow scored 98.7% on the numeracy section which was higher than the 2 girls who went to Oxbridge to do pure maths! Still no idea what happened there. My maths teacher was equally as baffled as I was in what was called 'remedial' maths too

Maybe your times tables helped.

My mum put my times tables onto tape and I used to listen to them when I wasn’t going to sleep. I can still repeat them verbatim.

was not wasn’t ^