General Election 2010 Page 38

Quote: Timbo @ April 17 2010, 8:52 AM BST

There has never been a better opportunity to find out. If you are content to vote for one lot of lizards to stop the other lot of lizards getting in, then you deserve to be pissed and shat on.

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As I explained in the paragraph you omitted from my quote politics is an exercise in damage limitation. Another way of saying that is politics is an exercise in... politics. Politics exists because there are people and parties and tendencies that CAN'T agree. Socialism and Capitalism are irreconcilable. If you are left wing, the priority for you is to stop a right-wing government being returned. Secondarily you might consider the niceties of Labour's policies or whatever.

The Lib Dems have always pissed me off - they are not a 'third way', just a party of middle-class jam-makers who feel guilty about the poor but hate strikers and are too snobbish to vote Labour. It's true that they take Tory votes, but they mostly split the left wing vote and keep the Tories in power - which is what happened in the eighties.

But the Tories were in power in the noughties - they just went by the name of New Labour. Capitalism and socialism are irreconcilable, so they became capitalists, just rather inept ones. Under New Labour the gap between the rich and the poor widened and social mobility decreased.

The Lib Dems are now well to left of Labour on a lot of issues. They actually distrust business men and want to tax rich people! How un-New Labour is that? It is time you stopped living in the past and ditched your smug, lazy and outdated class war stereotypes. To the best of my knowledge Vince Cable has never made jam. And what's wrong with jam?!

I am not desperately pro LibDem, but I cannot imagine anything worse than this bunch of incompetent, sleazy, ideologically bankrupt f**kers getting back in. Even Cameron would be better, so long as he gets voted out again before he has a chance to show his true colours and do any real harm.

My objection to the Lib Dems is mainly based on their stance on Europe, which is where the Tories are hoping to take them down. But the truth is it is all hypocrisy. We are hopelessly enmeshed in the EU now, and none of the main parties would extricate us if they could. And that includes the Tories for all their Daily Mail pleasing rhetoric. The LibDems are just a bit more honest about it.

That's why I should be Prime Minister.

Pft. Rubbish It's quite clear I should take over. I go big plans for this hunk of rock.

Quote: Timbo @ April 18 2010, 1:29 PM BST

But the Tories were in power in the noughties - they just went by the name of New Labour. Capitalism and socialism are irreconcilable, so they became capitalists, just rather inept ones. Under New Labour the gap between the rich and the poor widened and social mobility decreased.

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If you want more social mobility you would be better off returning to the old Grammar school system which allowed many working class individuals to escape on the basis of merit. Of course, the 'egalitarian' Labour Party are ideologically opposed despite many of its older supporters having personally benefitted from it.
But I agree that Labour and Tories (plus the Liberals who are inexplicably left out) are pretty much indistinguishable now and have been since the Major administration. A good book on the subject is The triumph of the political class by Peter Obourne.

Quote: Cheesehoven @ April 18 2010, 7:22 PM BST

If you want more social mobility you would be better off returning to the old Grammar school system which allowed many working class individuals to escape on the basis of merit.

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I totally agree. The problem with good state schools is that house prices shoot up in that area and therefore only the wealthier children can attend them. Grammmar schools pupils traditionally come from far more diverse backgrounds.

And from a much wider area. The one I attended attracted students who lived everywhere from Reading to Hounslow. Quite a stretch. Certainly no catchment area hassle.

Quote: Cheesehoven @ April 18 2010, 7:22 PM BST

If you want more social mobility you would be better off returning to the old Grammar school system which allowed many working class individuals to escape on the basis of merit. Of course, the 'egalitarian' Labour Party are ideologically opposed despite many of its older supporters having personally benefitted from it.

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Having failed to get into a grammar school I am not hugely in favour of that proposition.

Because you failed to get in, or because you have sound other reasoning as to why they're not desirable?

Good reading. http://futurefairforall.org/post/531168235/the-brown-bottom-how-gordon-brown-against-bank-of

Because it is unfair to disadvantage children based on perceptions of their ability at age eleven.

I'm not keen on splitting generations into haves and have nots at the age of 11.

So when? I didn't goto grammar till 6th form and sort of did alright.

Not splitting kids is terribly unfair on the bright who can't afford pubic school.

Vocational training and adult education are not dirty words.

Quite. I Have worked with Oxbridge graduates and people who left school at sixteen and in my experience differences in innate ability are within a fairly narrow range; expectation and opportunity are far more important in shaping people's futures.

It's an imperfect world. It doesn't matter that some kids do badly because they're from a troubled background, or not so smart the result is the same.

Treating everyone is producing a growing generation of unemployable graduates.

Employers will simply look for multiple A passes, hard degrees and literacy tests.

The result is the same. You can't level the playing field. You can offer chances like adult education and none A level entrance to university to allow people to opt back into the system.

Quote: sootyj @ April 18 2010, 8:14 PM BST

So when? I didn't goto grammar till 6th form and sort of did alright.

Not splitting kids is terribly unfair on the bright who can't afford pubic school.

Vocational training and adult education are not dirty words.

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If at all, at fourteen would be preferable. But there is no objection to banding children within comprehensives, what is important is that children should not feel that they have been written off and that there is sufficient fluidity in the system for children to be re-evaluated as they develop. That did not happen under the old grammar school/secondary modern dichotomy.

Grammar schools did help a lot of working class children gain opportunities in the fifties and sixties, but by the seventies there was a sense that these new middle classes had pulled the ladder up after them, and that grammar schools were perpetuating rather than overcoming class divides.

Oh and I agree that there should be less emphasis on keeping young people in education and more opportunities for them to seek out self-betterment when they are ready to do so.