Westministenders: The Beginning of Negotiations

[RedToothBrush]

Transition has a few hours left.

Then negotiations start and trade stops.

Far from being over, there are huge numbers of issues that lay unresolved.

And businesses both now in the UK and EU will cease to trade with each other just because the red tape is such a pain.

So whilst people will celebrate and think things are 'done' that just shows how much people are paying attention.

It will be interesting to see people gradually realising what has been lost...

@ListeningQuietly , the bridge to Europe is now Ireland.
Or, at a pinch, the USA's first ally, France

And I used Erasmus. My parents are not wealthy - Dad left school at 14, Mum left school at 16.

I fear I kicked off the Erasmus rabbit hole. It was just an example of where we might end up negotiating a bespoke arrangement. There are literally thousands. The BOJO deal will evolve into such a web that our relationship will be near indistinguishable from membership.

RedTrees
It makes a change from me boring the pants off everybody with the details of the C88

Pick a tune and link it

This one for me is ALWAYS Malta Carnival

I don't see the discussion of Erasmus as a rabbit hole. This to me is one area Johnson, could and should have negotiated to stay in and it could have been presented as something of a coup, as a concession by the EU. Instead, it looks like petty spite.

But I agree I think there will be others bespoke arrangements - Galileo being an obvious one.

OK, I've looked at Fig 1 multiple times and it tells me NOTHING about how Erasmus students compare with other Uni students

Are you looking at figure 1 or table 1? From your response, it sounds like the latter. Figure 1 shows that, while uptake has improved, the ratio of uptake between economically advantaged students and economically disadvantaged students has remained fairly static.

Peregrina I'm not attempting to make the case to drop Erasmus on the grounds that it's elitist, I was trying to find a little hope that, perhaps, we might gain something with Turing. What you've said about UK universities resonates with me, I've thought a few times that perhaps the focus should be on improving the standing of establishments with a less prestigious reputation instead of purely balancing the ultimately small number of students who attend institutions at the very tops of the tables. I went to a rather sleepy university just before Erasmus was established but I've been around the world in the course of my career since then, sometimes even to places I wanted to go .

I just told my DD that the new border arrangements have JUST been published and her reaction was

"Fucking England ... "

And then: "I don't care, I'm French".

Amen.

@mistigri 😂

Actually I think this best sums up the UK tonight. My favourite Brexit theme tune.

I reckon Putin's definitely celebrating tonight.

we might gain something with Turing.

But this is like taking £1000 from someone and expecting them to be grateful when you give them £100 back.

Clavinova's already trotted this one out with the nursing and midwifery bursaries which were abolished, and something worth significantly less was put in place. Although they were not to do with Brexit - just telling us we must bow down and worship Johnson.

Or it's like the trade deals that the Brexiters are crowing about - little new, just roll over agreements.

Erasmus is not homogenous, by any means.
In the UK, it probably did - especially in recent years - favour MC students, partly because the approach to MFL, especially in England, has meant that more MC children study MFL now that they are not an obligatory part of the curriculum. Also, the fact that UK MFL degrees include a year abroad meant that Erasmus mobility was geared more to those students than to others, though many non-MFL students also undertook Erasmus mobility.

But the UK also handled Erasmus in a specific way, as compared to France (I can't speak for other countries, but I've 15yrs experience of UK/France Erasmus mobility coordination).

Here in France, Erasmus is not a "semester/year abroad" - students study the full quota of credits and all grades obtained during mobility are converted and count towards their degree. Almost none of the UK universities we have exchanges with require students to take the full quota of credits while on mobility. Some ask for other work to be handed in to them. Some merely require students to spend a semester/year abroad.

There was nothing preventing the UK from setting up exchanges beyond the confines of the EU before Brexit and some do exist. But the funding isn't always equivalent to Erasmus grants, and visas and travel are more complex - so less privileged students have always been less likely to access those exchanges.

Now, the UK seems to be hoping that EU member states will continue to fund Erasmus and also pay to be part of the UK's very own Turing programme.

I've been fighting since the referendum to ensure that our students, many of whom want to teach English, will be able to carry on going to the UK to hone their language skills and gain the cultural insights and knowledge that make good language teachers. But my colleagues from non-MFL backgrounds think those students might just as well go to the NL/Belgium/wherever and take some courses taught in English. So I can't see them being keen to take part in Turing. And it's too late now for 2021-22 anyway. Also, takeup would be limited by the fact that the UK is now imposing student visas & integrated healthcare costs that mean most of our students simply can't afford to go to the UK.

I'll fight to try and keep the door open, but our university is chronically underfunded and understaffed and my fellow Erasmus tutors (all hard-working lecturers, whose careers do not benefit in any way from the long hours they put into ensuring these exchanges work - in fact, their careers suffer because those hours are not devoted to research and publications) are tired of defending the UK, and tired of the comments UK ministers and media have made about France and the EU. These are French academics who chose to devote their working lives to English Studies, who were all very attached to the UK and who are deeply distressed by the direction the country is going in.

These things are reciprocal. If we don't send outgoing students to the UK, my colleagues are not going to carry on dealing with incoming UK students. It's as simple and as mathematical as that.

Sorry for the long post. I knew that the UK would pull out of Erasmus, but that hasn't diminished my grief at seeing it happen.

@AuldAlliance - I've been fighting since the referendum to ensure that our students, many of whom want to teach English, will be able to carry on going to the UK to hone their language skills and gain the cultural insights and knowledge that make good language teachers.

Send them to Ireland. They will get the language and cultural insights from a predominantly English speaking culture.

One aspect to Erasmus is that you to choose it you need come from a background or school where a year abroad is valued and encouraged.

Given the general insularity of the British, the general resistance to learnIng languages and the low priority given language teaching, it’s hardly surprising if the pot of students who did Erasmus tended to be drawn from families who understood the worth of the experience.

That would militate towards families with one or both educated or at least open minded parents. It doesn’t necessarily mean privilege though.

Privileged friends of mine often did gap yahs in European countries where their parents paid for them to study the language and get a boulot on the side. My sister managed to get a stage with Airbus in Toulouse and returned speaking fluent French. They didn’t really need Erasmus.

@OchonAgusOchonO
Ireland has been very, very much the focus of attention recently.
My department has Erasmus exchanges with 4 Irish universities and I'm hoping to set up 2 more. But we're losing around 80 exchange places in UK universities and our Irish partners will only compensate for some of those.

Insularity more of the English. There are far far too many who say, 'they all speak English anyway', when in fact, off the beaten track, i.e. small town places 'they' do not.

One of our problems is which language do we learn? It used to be French as the default, but that has rather lost prominence in latter years. German is more use for science and central Europe but is perceived as 'difficult'. Spanish is popular, and is often considered easy to learn, but is an easy language to learn badly.

Then of course, you get the fashion for Mandarin, but I feel myself that it is just a fashion - few of us will be able to learn it to a level of fluency.

@Kendodd

I reckon Putin's definitely celebrating tonight.

DH pointed me in the direction of this a few weeks ago, it is interesting reading.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

Xpost with AA - agreed.

In the UK, it probably did - especially in recent years - favour MC students, partly because the approach to MFL, especially in England, has meant that more MC children study MFL now that they are not an obligatory part of the curriculum. Also, the fact that UK MFL degrees include a year abroad meant that Erasmus mobility was geared more to those students than to others, though many non-MFL students also undertook Erasmus mobility.

I was truly shocked recently, looking at my old school mag which I normally ignore, to see the collapse in numbers of MFL A level students compared to when I was there.

It’s a terrible loss culturally to the UK.

I have a bottle of Siberian Vodka in the freezer, maybe I'll have a congratulatory shot to Putin at 11pm...

pmk

Then of course, you get the fashion for Mandarin, but I feel myself that it is just a fashion - few of us will be able to learn it to a level of fluency.

I don’t think so. It’s a language of business of the future. It’s an incredibly interesting place culturally. And with significant numbers of people with Chinese heritage here, and also many wealthy Chinese choosing to educate their kids in the U.K., I think it will grow.

Having said that you’re right it’s very difficult and a friend of mine’s son who started it at his new secondary school, had a nervous crisis over how hard he found it (and he’s exceptionally bright).

I think it would be great for more young people to learn Mandarin or Japanese or Korean, but we have to be honest about the likely returns on investment: these are very difficult languages even for gifted learners.

I think it's fair to say that my DD is a very able language student - she is trilingual, and has some basic Italian, Korean, German and Russian plus a decent level of Latin and beginner Greek. Of these languages she found Korean by far the most difficult, and its reputedly easier than Japanese or Chinese.

Also, the reality is that most of the Asian people that U.K. business people come into regular contact with will speak very good English. I work in a department of 13 people, of whom 5 are native Chinese based in China, and all of them have good English.

Looks like I’ve missed a few pages. PMK, and to take up something I saw quickly at the end of the last it would be great if these threads could continue. Mumsnet is often the best single place to come for information from all over!

I’ve already had to spend some time over the last few years mourning futures I thought I and my kids would have, but I am now and always European. I do not like what Britain has become. And good luck to the EU, I think it will be stronger without us. Until we return to sanity.

Right, WMers... I have had one too many glasses of bubbly, quaffed rather hastily before the 8pm curfew kicked in here in France.

So I'm just going to wish you all as peaceful and safe a 2021 as possible.

Here is this morning's sunrise in Provence, photographed by someone who knows only too well that certain sunlit uplands will now not be quite so easily available to UK subjects.

Thanks to all for the quality of posts and debate, and to RTB for keeping the threads going.

Bonne année. Happy Hogmanay.