TerryB

Retired literacy specialist.
A Digital Champion - London Borough of Barnet
#PhonicsIsntReading
North London Openly Jewish 🇮🇱
Will follow accounts with interesting posts. Will mute accounts that post stuff w/o context-especially if they don't even say what country they're in.

Digital Champion: [#BarnetGetOnline](https://ohai.social/tags/BarnetGetOnline )

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Last Notes

2026-06-21 17:38:33 UTC

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No. To me Labour seem to have a habit of giving leadership to the wrong candidate. One that suits internal politics rather than unselfishly choosing one who can lead a country. Like the wrong Milliband. Maybe, just maybe, this will be right.

2026-06-08 07:46:55 UTC

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AI also differs from previous new technologies in that its financial benefits are largely presumptive rather than demonstrable. It’s not laying off weavers because now we have a steam loom. It’s merely the generalised belief that AI will do jobs that people did. Laying off people because they believe that AI can do their jobs. Mostly because the C Suite haven’t a clue what staff put into it. The effectiveness or reliability of this is largely magical thinking by bean counters.

2026-05-13 09:01:21 UTC

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Is it that? Or merely a learned lack of basic empathy and heightened self-regard? My thought turns to the young idiots driving their supercars through London.

2026-04-25 09:21:23 UTC

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There is an undoubted issue here for British Jews. Most of us traditionally tending towards the Left. It is that whatever Israel does is always seen as bad by the current Left. If it is actually bad it’s treated as worse than if other nations do it. And here in the diaspora we’re responsible for it. OTOH If Israel is the victim it’s treated as irrelevant. And in general it doesn’t much matter what happens to us because as Badiel’s book puts it Jews Don’t Matter.

2026-04-20 09:32:13 UTC

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It does that. But it also reflects a grudging view of education as offered to the working classes. In many eyes (not just on the Right) Education for Education's sake is not considered a good thing. The Toffs are expected to have a rounded education in their "Public" schools. But the children of the working classes are meant to do Maths, English and Woodwork (as it was in my day).

2026-04-07 09:48:14 UTC

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This seems to have been in built since Thatcher. In my ignorance of such matters I do wonder why a Labour party seems so wedded to this thinking. A collective loss of belief in the possibility that the UK can design, make and sell physical products?

2026-04-06 09:44:11 UTC

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There's another aspect to that. The cap was an illustration of the " Why should I..." mentality. "Why should I pay for schools I don't have kids/use private schools" "Why should I pay for the NHS I have insurance". And so on. In this case it was "Why should I pay for other people's large family". Which politically is the hardest to resist, I guess. Trouble is it's the kids who suffer- not the parents.

2026-04-03 08:58:53 UTC

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I think that is the precise definition of what they are. The loud pub bores. Sounding off against everything they don’t like and don’t understand. Shouting “It stands to reason dun it!” at every challenge, when even a cursory look says it has no reason behind it. And it’s driven UK politics for at least 40 years. But at least now they’re corralled into a “party”.

2026-03-29 09:34:51 UTC

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Interestingly it seems that there’s a vocal section of society wants to remove rules and expenses etc that don’t benefit themselves, but strangely want to keep the ones that do. They’ll happily see cuts to the NHS and equally happily accept a govt subsidy. Or see their council close libraries and schools as long as the roads are repaired.

2026-03-29 09:01:10 UTC

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Policy is wonderful. Over a lifetime of teaching kids with SEN in their own schools I’ve seen lots of policies. Policies in folders, in booklets,in packs,in websites,in pamphlets. They come, they go. What I haven’t seen since about 1986 has been the funds to actually meet the kids’ needs. On the contrary, the expensive, shiny policies seem to exist to replace actually paying for teachers to get stuff done.

2026-03-29 08:53:37 UTC

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In other words; If markets are already not working “properly” whatever that even means, there’s nothing to stop those caps anyway.

2026-03-26 18:40:39 UTC

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It also assumes that the market works towards maximising competition and all that stuff. Whereas it likely works towards maximising cherry picking, short termism, corner cutting, collusion etc.

2026-03-23 08:55:40 UTC

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How much of that, I wonder, is directly connected to the political approach of promising increases in “front line” service by cutting backroom “waste”, but ignoring that in backrooms are health promotion teams, admin support (to free up doctors, teachers etc), maintenance staff (so people actually have somewhere to work), teaching support staff, advisory teachers and a whole bunch of others who aren’t just superfluous luxuries. Arguably none of these are. That’s why they exist.

2026-03-17 18:30:02 UTC

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Ah yes. Don't blame our problems on shooting ourselves in the foot. Obviously it's the pavement.

2026-03-14 17:27:07 UTC

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Not *always*. It was always, in fact, seen as a social duty to take on apprentices. A normal part of business in construction and engineering. Until the mid-70s.

2026-03-14 13:58:38 UTC

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When I was at school in the mid 70s a lot of the lads left to take up apprenticeships in the local engineering companies. By the time I left 6th form many of those a couple of years behind were finding that much harder to do. Some of the companies had decided it was better to poach time served trades than to train their own. And of course the others followed because they didn't want to train lads who'd jump ship for higher pay. So the companies effectively killed their golden goose.

2026-02-23 08:41:38 UTC

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Maybe. And maybe the way we teach reading in schools now kills the pleasure of reading and the incentive to read. It's tempting to look at the distractions and alternatives, but maybe this is a wood and trees issue. Maybe the kids don't see reading as a pleasure because they're taught it's a mechanical chore.
Phonics isn't reading.

2026-02-21 13:34:14 UTC

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This is not new within the Labour Party; or the Labour movement as a whole.
Racism and Antisemitism has been there from the start. The article below (chosen at random) is one of any number documenting this. They all say pretty much the same thing.
Whether it's sterotyping Jews as being rich capitalist conspiritors or claiming that Moslems are nefarious abusers stealing the jobs there is a thick vein of racism.
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/116/108/876/433/162/284/original/09363947bdea3a49.png

2026-02-18 10:43:35 UTC

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And, as ever with these spurious complaints, the Ts and Cs of taking a job (Local authority,NHS,Teaching etc) include the package --including the benefits as well as the problems. That's the job, that's the pay, that's the benefits. That's The Package. Anyone who wants the package can apply for the job.
Anyone who takes a job with (maybe) higher pay, better conditions and poorer benefits can't then moan that some people have better benefits in retrospect.

2026-02-12 18:58:31 UTC

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A first step would be to row back on the view that a company's first responsibility is to current shareholders and make it to the long term health of the enterprise. iow making it illegal to asset strip or boost short term share value at the expense of long term investment.

2026-02-01 10:23:51 UTC

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In France this was pretty much deliberate, as I understand it. For example France used to have numerous dialects and even languages. But Parisian French was made compulsory. What we think of as the “French language” was just Parisian. Spain less rigorously did so with Castellano.

2026-02-01 10:17:54 UTC

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This sounds very similar to the education sector, where commercial interests have dug in deep, (under the radar), by taking control of exam boards they sell highly profitable curriculum materials etc. And PFI.
The common core is that in both sectors there’s a tiny pot of cash per kid, but with a lot of kids in the system that means a lot of cash to siphon off.

2026-01-24 11:17:16 UTC

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Side effect of this is it hits departments. Elevating mediocre depts in "prestigious" universities while restricting intake to excellent depts in newer unis.
e.g. Birmingham City has a Speech& Language Therapy dept second to none (at the very least) producing arguably the most highly desired professionals But,say, Reading would find it easier to attract undergrads. In some fields a prestigious name will trump employment opportunities from better departments in "lesser" universities.

2026-01-24 11:01:31 UTC

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Also, is the contract under duress?

2025-12-29 11:32:26 UTC

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I prefer the changing a light bulb one.
“Successfully delivered a critical lighting infrastructure upgrade within time and zero budget overruns, improving visibility and operational efficiency while mitigating future maintenance risks.”

2025-12-17 15:34:07 UTC

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I used to think I understood some of this stuff. But current price rises seem to be due partly to items beyond local control ( chocolate e.g) so how is this inflation?

2025-12-13 10:50:25 UTC

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The problem here is that for politicians it's clear that too many of the actual workers see "workers rights" as a kind of zero sum. They support their own rights, but resent others'.
IMHO Thatcher's green light was when the wider union movement failed to support the Grunwick strikers. And down the line there were other similar failures of mutuality.

2025-12-13 10:26:19 UTC

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I'm somewhat dubious about that list- noting that Open University is fairly low. And I wonder how objective the criteria can be. "Ethical" is pretty much weighed by subjective views anyway. And one of the lowest for "ethical investment" is a cancer research place. Then there's the matter of how so many criteria can be weighted against one another.

2025-12-09 12:46:10 UTC

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Maybe. But I'd point to businesses that once would have employed a lot of youngsters as an investment for the future now choosing not to add those extra few quid to the payroll. Because every penny contributes to "share holder value" in the short term.

2025-12-03 11:01:41 UTC

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This fits well with my own thoughts. It runs very deeply in the upper classes' views.

2025-12-03 10:44:58 UTC

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I'd argue that this is a split we make/have learned to make in all sorts of areas.Think businesses that see customer service or IT security as a "cost centre" but C-Suite pay and bonuses as an investment.

2025-12-01 11:25:12 UTC

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There's lots of reasons to keep kids in school for 5 days- child minding is only 1 of these. Whether it would be better to have one day/week in primary schools for sport and arts with specialist teachers is another matter.

2025-12-01 11:17:00 UTC

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The answer is of course money. Non-contact time is constrained by pupil/teacher ratio. Even 20% is not adequate if lessons are planned & personalised & marking to be more than a quick tick + comment. The Maths of this is easy to see & totally ignored. Spend 2 min considering each kid's work and that's 1 hr gone. For each lesson and you can pretty much use as many hours "marking" as teaching. The word "marking" diminishes time required to do a proper job of examining kid's work.

2025-11-15 10:43:30 UTC

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I guess an equivalent would be New York Yellow Taxi shields. Not earned like London’s Knowledge. They’re permits to operate the taxis and can be traded.

2025-11-03 23:20:01 UTC

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This is almost inevitable. OFSTED was instituted under the guise of making HMI inspections more frequent (they were so rare a teacher might never have seen one before retirement) and more rigorous than they considered local authority inspections. In reality it was a means to enforce idealogical teaching methods against teachers' professional judgement. With additional "benefit" of delegating LEA funds to schools (under LMS)to then pay on to OFSTED teams rather than employ more HMIs

2025-11-03 13:15:53 UTC

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It seems to me, in my naive way, that non-profit services don't fit into productivity measures. The nature of productivity is that it measures the cash value of workers' output. But services that are freely given on an individual basis by complex teams are largely not measurable in such terms.

2025-11-01 18:42:33 UTC

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Simpler just to say that an insurance system is adversarial by definition - the insurers are (literally) invested in avoiding paying claims.
Everything else just follows; needing to get approval for treatment, uncertainty, limitations etc.
No one who has had to deal with an insurer would have any doubt about this.

2025-10-28 18:33:54 UTC

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It has appeared over the years that decisions about children have been viewed almost like property rights rather than the children's best interests

2025-10-28 09:35:59 UTC

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I do wonder how much fossil fuel companies' pressure on governments is slowing down the uptake and complicating the installation of clean energy systems. Why is it so difficult to get sensible advice about the costs and benefits of domestic solar? for example.

2025-10-26 10:33:36 UTC

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And some notifications appear for some posts.

2025-10-19 13:02:35 UTC

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I don't understand the mentality that thinks cliff-edge benefits are sane or ethical. "Earn 1p more than we permit and we take away all your support"

2025-10-17 08:18:04 UTC

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Ponzi scheme to some extent. And a good old fashioned investment bubble. But I think key is that unlike the traditional forms of those, these are driven by large institutions demanding something they believe will provide the excessive returns they demand, rather than by small individual investments driven by greed and fear of missing out

2025-10-12 15:01:47 UTC

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I have to disagree somewhat. There’s a split between Bletchley and the computing museum. At one point quite acrimonious. I don’t know what the computer museum says But in Bletchley Flowers, as much as any of the Codebreakers, has plenty of coverage. What the story does tend to emphasise though is the choice of Oxbridge to recruit the code breaking puzzlers like Turing.
And we do tend to make that group the stars of the story. Perhaps understandable, they were the code breakers.

2025-10-05 09:21:06 UTC

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Yes…and no.
I worry when volunteers are letting powers that be off funding stuff properly. As a volunteer librarian in the community library I felt that this was a job that should be done by paid staff. OTOH I’ve been a school governor
& My wife is a governor & a Brown Owl. Which is right. Yet, as a Digital Champion working in a team of volunteers & 1 paid worker, I’m v aware that this is run on less than a shoestring which a properly supported Digital Inclusion service couldn’t be.

2025-10-04 15:49:40 UTC

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My own feeling on this is that revolutions eat their children. The history of revolutions seems to be repression The Terror (French revolution ), Stalinism, Mao,Iran etc etc.

2025-09-29 12:21:47 UTC

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Also, the Behaviourist "Reading is Phonics" movement that took control in the 90s was/is idealogically opposed to kids reading real books. Instead they were to be fed a diet of phonically regular primers (to use the dread American term). These deliberately make no or little sense and words aren't predictable from context but existed to practice the " skill" of decoding. No need, therefore, for a library.

2025-09-29 09:05:35 UTC

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Before “Local Management of Schools“ (LMS) LEAs would have had a central library service with rotating collection of graded books, themed selections and advice from professional librarians. Just one area lost when schools were devolved budgets. Loss of economy of scale, shared services & specialised support for curriculum,SEN etc by LMS was a disaster in so many ways. All framed as a benefit to schools able to manage their own budgets v “greedy” (BBC’s term) LEAs holding on to money

2025-09-12 08:49:35 UTC

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I'm fairly convinced that a great chunk of Brexit and the general attitude towards the EU, immigration etc is that deluded belief is that we still rule the waves.

2025-09-10 11:57:00 UTC

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Correlation doesn't = cause. Maybe both were the result of not having a rapacious construction model seeking to raise extra payments at every turn.

2025-09-10 11:43:57 UTC

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But I 100% agree. The secret of the Right, of demagogues in general, and indeed of leaders on the revolutionary Left (think Marx) are that they weave a story in front of people's eyes. The Liberal Enlightenment attempt to establish Reason is candyfloss compared to a vision of the Land of Oz.

2025-09-05 11:59:17 UTC

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Or simply were happy to stand back and let the flames spread. That (conspiracy) or even Labour's apparent inability to stand up to populist winds (cf Brexit).

2025-09-01 13:25:54 UTC

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Before the "Local Management of Schools" local authorities could make up for this. And the ILEA famously filtered resources towards poorer boroughs too. But the then Tories hated all that- and the LEAs were demonised for holding on to budgets that supported poorer schools and less privileged kids; paid for specialist teaching etc.

2025-09-01 09:02:27 UTC

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It starts earlier..In primary schools. Even within localities. Posh Kids Primary at one end of the road has a minibus, spare staffing, helpful parents. Lots of enrichment of language and experience. Poor Kids Primary at the other end has none of that, relies on expensive coaches, can't get parents to help and can't afford supply cover.And of course it's a vicious circle- which school do aspirational and commited parents choose?

2025-09-01 08:57:21 UTC

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How much of this could be due to siloing of trusts, internal markets and all that nonsense - not to mention the extensive admin to make it work.

2025-08-29 13:03:38 UTC

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Or of mistrust of their own staff.

2025-08-28 09:11:10 UTC

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Perhaps more to the point - the longer they leave it the more Farage etc. will be able to blame Brexit's consequences on them.

2025-08-27 09:02:50 UTC

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Underlying this, of course, is companies being largely unconcerned about the quality of service they provide because it won't affect short term share value (especially if all the competitors are doing the same thing). So replacing humans who can do a job well with AIs that produce a faint resemblance but for nominal cost suits them well.

2025-08-26 08:45:49 UTC

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The "courier fraud" scams have been world wide for years and that Fox News clickbait isn't helpful. It's far from just older people who can be victims; but older people are more likely to get spooked to act, more likely to trust apparent authority roles and to think of money as physical cash.
The conversation needs to be about not getting panicked into action, not being secretive about calls purportedly from a bank etc. not trusting contacts from people you don't know personally.

2025-08-23 07:51:09 UTC

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It's worth considering also that fossil fuel extraction requires significant up-front investment, which is regained from sales but still leaving massive profits, by creating barriers to competition, because they're extracting a resource that is, in effect, free once the investment is made. With additional earning from refining etc. Renewable energy is free but without most of those barriers to competition or upstream profits.

2025-08-17 03:17:44 UTC

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That may not simply be bed vacating. I think the evidence is that remaining in hospital longer correlates with poorer outcomes (after allowing for other factors like type of condition etc).

2025-08-10 07:15:36 UTC

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I thought it had been for a long time, anyway. At least since about the 70s when our UK food culture started to diversify more.

2025-08-08 03:40:32 UTC

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IMHO the idea of "public good" is being beaten out of our nation. Libraries,NHS......etc. are somehow becoming seen as opt-in cost centres. The Tories created this culture change, but Labour don't stand up to it, they bend and bow in front of it like reeds in a torrent. This seems to be at the heart of almost all their policies.

2025-08-08 03:27:10 UTC

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In all of these cases --there have been many -- is the stupidity. OK. These people have been hypocritical and greedy. But far worse is the stupidity of not realising "I'm the minister for preventing xx.So I need to avoid doing xx while I'm in this spotlight". But instead they go and do it because they can ( it's still legal). I find this stupidity even more depressing than the greed and hypocrisy.

2025-08-06 09:55:33 UTC

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He did. In his philosophical writings. But his ideas as played out through News From Nowhere are what made me sceptical of idealistic Socialism. Our hero is fortunate to meet someone who, that day, fancied a bit of manual work as a ferryman. My late-teenaged self was forced to question a) what would have happened if our dreaming hero had arrived on another day and b) who cleaned the sewers?

2025-08-06 07:44:00 UTC

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Much of this has its roots in a 19thC view that workers need to be driven. IMHO there's something in the Anglo-Saxon/Protestant tradition which drives this. Workers can't be trusted, more can be assumed work-shy. And this can arguably be true if doing work is an unrewarding response to compulsion. I realise I've gone all William Morris here.

2025-08-03 03:28:02 UTC

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This is the logical disconnect in all privat(ised) public services. The private owners are in it for the earnings and the service is a means to the ends- a cost centre to be minimised. There's no difference whether it's water or Toblerone. Privatisation was built on the Magical Thinking of the power of the Free Market's Hidden Hand. But reality was always different.Think the age old tradition of food adulteration- which required strict regulation like the German beer laws.

2025-07-25 16:48:38 UTC

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The IMF is not intended to focus on the social or political needs of a nation. Listening to them tell us what would we should do with the NHS is like listening to a random roofer telling us we need our tiles replacing.

2025-07-13 12:10:27 UTC

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Copied from USA MBA culture. Which seemed to suit British business like a pond to ducks.

2025-07-13 10:52:49 UTC

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My earlier training came via my boss--the ILEA's deputy principle Ed Psych and the wider service. Very much focused on collaborative working. And then after that the Uni of London's Institute of Education. Ditto. I had a lot of good Education Management training. So I wasn't reliant on the govt mandated NPQH programme -much material borrowed from American management models. Which seemed to be adversarial at best. And that adversarial view seems to be how it works in UK industry.

2025-07-13 09:24:35 UTC

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My late father talked about this over half a century ago. As did his (a union organiser) before him. I've grown up seeing layers of petty management, penny pinching resistance to investment, fear of innovation and mean minded selfishness. I have no reason to expect change. Much of my training in education leadership (parralel to the NPQH) was rooted in commercial management texts about ways to manipulate and control staff. Luckily my earlier training during ILEA was more enlightened

2025-07-10 17:32:07 UTC

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The Tax Resistance built into the public psyche gives camouflage for not taxing the rich. It blankets any discussions about taxation.

2025-07-10 13:10:24 UTC

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Precisely. But how much does a History A level tell us about kids' understanding of actual History. When I was the supervisor for the NVQ- School Administrators the only real useful written content was a list of stuff they'd done. The rest was portfolio for portfolio's sake. The Powers-that-be struggle to accept soft assessments. They want numbers to rank and compare.

2025-07-10 09:12:31 UTC

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My own (informed) view is written exams at any stage, from 7yo to degree are vastly overvalued. Relying on short term memory, self-confidence (which are mostly innate not subject related) and cramming, (aided by private tuition to get into expensive schools) rather than actually proving we have the subject embedded. How many adults can remember anything they learnt for GCSE. But it's a great method for embedding social inequality. Why they would want to extend this to skillls?

2025-07-08 15:42:00 UTC

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Less a metaphor, more a suggestion that it's all part of normal behaviour, or more cynically, something that the Powers That Be take advantage of.

2025-07-08 11:28:08 UTC

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I do, in retrospect, wonder if this is a general human failing. In a cost saving exercise years ago we went from a two to a 1 car family. Arguing that most of the time we didn't need the second vehicle so it would be more economical to just get a cab on those rare occurences. BUT. Never once have we done that, begrudging the cost of the cab and just not making that other journey or rearranging it.And maybe that's what happens to those kind of public expenditures too.

2025-07-07 12:41:43 UTC

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A thing though, that I alluded to is that changes justified as best practice to use resources more cheaply & effectively with appropriate funding (such as supporting SEN in the classroom) by transferring existing resources is seen as an expensive item in the next cuts round. i.e. cash allocated to schools in a money saving exercise 5 years ago is now seen as extravagant sum for something the schools should be providing out of their own budgets. All previous promises being forgotten.

2025-07-07 09:31:25 UTC

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This is the old paradox. A lot of SEN would be best met in the classroom by well funded local schools able to draw upon shared expertise as required. Instead, to save money the responsibility for those kids is thrown back to schools, but without the funds or support system. Or if those are provided at the time, they're lost in the next round of cuts. Frequently funding allocated to part replace services that have been cut is then cut too once the original cut is history.

2025-07-03 23:25:07 UTC

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In fact, devolving budgets to schools (LMS) was one of those Shibboleths which couldn't be questioned -BBC even ran a headline about "greedy" LEAs withholding cash, as if the ££ was being used for expensive dinners. But that money was for; specialist teachers to support kids/schools with SEN, discretionary grants to schools with additional burdens like late unfunded admission of kids with additional needs. Educational stuff that individual schools can't fund or source on their own.

2025-07-03 15:20:15 UTC

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This is my wheelhouse. Schools should be able to provide for all but a tiny proportion of SEN with local authority specialist support. And ideally even some of that could be shared part time provision. But to do that schools need funding for the level of SEN they're holding-not some notional component in the total budget. And LA teams were long since abolished or delegated -- which amounts to the same thing. Local Management of Schools was a disaster for SEN support (my role) etc.

2025-07-01 08:10:57 UTC

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The perception of class being significant may have declined. The reality hasn't much changed since 1066. At the top are still the great land owning families. Leadership is still mostly concentrated in the public school and Oxbridge rich. A few self-made millionaires just gives protective camouflage to the unending control.

2025-06-29 10:25:00 UTC

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Not just that but in the longer term our foreign students have become our foreign customers. A soft spot for the UK growing from 3 or 4 happy years at one of our universities. Rather than them going to China or wherever, more welcoming. The converse is also true. If we seem hostile…….
But that’s too long term for our political establishment who only see up to the next election.

2025-06-27 08:23:41 UTC

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I don’t have your expertise. But a cynical view of the world suggests to me that certain politicians think that conservatism on the Right is Safe Ground In A Storm. i.e that being economically left wing is a luxury ideal for some illusory Good Times.

2025-06-23 15:14:17 UTC

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There is so much in this. I'd draw attention to reputation management being allowed to trump problem solving, and scapegoating/passing the buck down the chain as two major issues. Whereas at the top failure seems just to be another rung up the ladder. The elites doing each other a favour.

2025-06-20 07:06:20 UTC

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This whole "debate" is just a confection; built upon the view that university is either an investment in future skills or a luxury. (And to some extent this applies right down the age range.)
Rather than being part of a civilised society. We should educate our kids because that's what society is about. Otherwise, why bother with anything. We become just products for the small elite.

2025-06-19 07:40:36 UTC

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Crown Estate money goes to the Exchequer I think. In return for their "settlement". Only the Royals' private estates go into their pockets directly.

2025-06-14 09:12:42 UTC

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These were somewhat exceptional, quirky, novelty items surely. It was the quirkiness that gave them appeal. Bur in the 70s there weren't digitised back catalogues to promote at almost zero cost and negligible risk. A beancounters dream. (Cynical, me? Surely not).

2025-06-14 09:01:58 UTC

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I just find it shocking (and question whether the industry have had a malign influence). In, say, 1970, would there have been a big resurgence of 1930s tunes?

2025-06-11 12:59:57 UTC

@npub12pw…zvxn
Well Chris. This is your area, I guess. So how do schools have "extra productivity". Does Rachel Reeves think they breed the kids as well as teach them? Or maybe she thinks every primary class should have a couple of kids from year 1 sitting at the back, instead of them being with a teacher of their own. Or every year 9 Maths class could have a group of year 8s and the older kids could teach the younger ones.

2025-06-10 10:44:36 UTC

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I do wonder whether offering free installation of solar panels and community solar PV projects with storage and small wind generators where suitable might be a better solution. How much would it cost to install these on all Town Halls, schools etc. Currently payback on domestic solar pv is up to 10 years. Making it free or even just subsidised and more affordable seems much better use of the money.

2025-06-06 08:44:32 UTC

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The minister on R4 this morning kept referring to interfering with private companies when asked about water CEO salaries. But the problem is these are not truly just private companies, serving shareholders. They are monopoly essential public services and pretending anything else is pure fantasy.

2025-06-06 08:35:07 UTC

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Maybe so. But in this case I'd first point the finger at the usual mantra of cutting staff who are not seen as "front line" as if administrators were just a wasteful bureaucratic indulgence. Someone needs to do the filing. The skills, let alone the time, of a copper aren't well suited to filing systems. Even Poirot had his Miss Lemon, dedicated to creating the perfect filing system if my recollection of the books is correct.

2025-06-04 09:21:55 UTC

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We need to call out the definition of public debt. Borrowing to repair the roof is debt for future generations. But failing to repair the roof is (even greater) debt for them, too. The cost is just hidden from the books, by refusing to acknowledge it. Until the roof collapses.

2025-06-03 08:52:14 UTC

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My worry is that we are in this fix-and others- because of a sea change in the 70s or thereabouts that saw any public expenditure as an inherently bad thing and anything done by commerce for profit as inherently a good thing. Then removing regulations and privatisations. Not just utilities, but even placing school exams & inspection in the hands of private companies. It's a big juggernaut to turn and no one seems to want to hold the steering wheel in case Murdoch or someone objects.

2025-06-02 22:42:56 UTC

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That sounds as if we are in agreement, then. The questions are, surely, how the fiscal rules when I bought my home, maximum three times salary loaned and a decent deposit have been relaxed to such an extent; and how we enable young people to buy a home for a realistic price-(that they can sell when they need to rather than some part purchase new build scheme that leaves them stuck in an unsuitable home that they can never sell when they need something suitable for raising kids).

2025-06-02 17:39:28 UTC

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The problem is surely more nuanced-and problematic than this, even. Houses increasing in price with inflation sounds reasonable. Some increase due to real growth in prosperity is surely inevitable and a sign of that prosperity. But actual house price inflation caused by increasing loans to chase increased prices caused by increased loans is lunacy.

2025-05-30 11:07:23 UTC

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Not even parsed. From the outset local authority outsourcing was directly mandated to mean lowest bid. And that translates into inadequately resourced services, with tightly controlled provision. A local authority maintenance team would just fix it. An outsourced team works to tight specifications.

2025-05-30 09:33:18 UTC

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I’m sure. But the idea of buying in niche skills has been conflated with buying in core service responsibilities. The difference between a body bringing in (say) an asbestos removal team and scrapping its entire inhouse repair service to bring in contractors.

2025-05-29 22:04:48 UTC

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The outsourcing model is disgraceful anyway. There is a whole pile of beliefs and prejudices about public v private employees; that public employees are indulged, lazy, incompetent etc which governments have encouraged to justify their decisions. There are also parallel assumptions; that the hierarchy of corporate costs- offices, -managers, C-Suite & of course shareholders will cost less than ( imagined, but even if it was real) inefficiency in directly employed services.

2025-05-29 17:31:21 UTC

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It’s an issue when there are ages old built-in disparities of opportunity. Thems as can buy their way into Eton or similar private school, wiggle into Oxbridge (possibly because your titled parent phoned the master of his old college) and have a friend/member of the family get them a law training placement or into a major financial firm, have opportunities undreamt of by a working class kid at the local comp.

2025-05-25 11:32:34 UTC

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Is it then that they’ve fallen for the 21st C UK equivalent version of the myth that “What’s good for General Motors is good for America “. A 1950s statement (probably slightly misquoted) by a GM executive who became a US politician.