Maybe it's a pond difference. Here the hiring managers would laugh in disbelief if offered grades from high school (except, perhaps, for a McJob), or even from college, unless it was in a specialty area where they needed to be very sure they were getting the best. Otherwise the question is, "Did they give you the degree?" and "Do you have anything else to show for yourself?" such as outside experience, internships, projects, papers, special awards...
Oh, and I've any number of national exam results, but the only people who ever cared about those were the gatekeepers at the schools I applied to, and occasionally the scholarship-offering-people. I don't expect my son to include his AP exams or his ACT/SAT results on his resume, or even to be asked out them during hiring.
Until relatively recently that was also the case in universities - lecturers were recruited on their research record without any consideration about their ability to teach, either in a lecture theatre or direct student supervision. And, training to help people gain those skills was decidedly lacking. The former polys generally had a higher quality of teaching because they primarily recruited for teaching ability, and research capability was secondary (or, even not a consideration). That has largely changed over the last couple of decades - partly because the large number of students paying fees mean that they expect to have a better quality of education, partly because research grants pay less than full economic cost and so research needs to be supported by a surplus income from somewhere else (and, tuition fees provide that). So, now teaching experience and ability are part of the decision making in appointing new lecturers (though research ability, or at least an ability to write lots of papers and BS that you'll get lots of research grants, still tops the list), and universities will now provide all new staff courses in delivering lectures and other aspects of teaching.
Whether Oxbridge continues the traditional approach of putting some very smart researcher in front of students without any teaching skills or programme to develop those skills I don't know. But the current cabinet probably went through the university system where lecturers couldn't teach themselves out of a paper bag.
I have some up-to-date information on that. First, a Cambridge PhD student who was "funded" by the university during their doctoral research for 2 years by teaching for 15 hours a week: fortunately they were a languages student and had spent time between first degree and the start of their research working in language schools abroad and teaching one-to-one. They said that without that experience they would have been floundering.
Second, we have living with us at the moment a Godchild who has just sent in his thesis for moderation. A scientist, he was given no guidance but also expected to undertake teaching. Deemed too young to go up at just 17, he spent a year as a lab assistant in a boarding school, an experience he said he drew on heavily.
Can confirm that "supervisions", which are like Oxford tutorials except the ratio can go as high as 1-6, are a cornerstone of undergraduate teaching in Cambridge, except they're done by grad students and postdocs instead of tutors. The students have a "Director of Studies" who sets them up with supervisors, I'm not sure what else the DoSes do. There's also "ticking" and "demonstrating" where you check students' lab work 5 mins per student, or answer their questions. You get paid by the hour; supervising requires hella preparation and marking, whereas ticking doesn't.
You pick and choose what supervisions you do; some supervision hours are expected of grad students each year, among other training and extracurriculars. It's considered a good way of learning subject matter outside your comfort zone. You do have to undergo a couple of hours' training before you supervise, but you're mostly working to question sets provided by the course lecturers. During training, you're told to never set a question that you haven't done yourself; however, a lecturer of a really heavy course I was ticking for said "oh no, it would take you hours". Quite a lot of the time you're painfully aware of teaching kiddies who can run circles around you, sometimes only because they're immersed in it at that moment and you're not; but sometimes they're just flat-out better than you will ever be (at least in CS, which it's possible to get very good at by a very young age if you're interested enough).
I sure am thankful for previous professional experience at various things like 1-1 tutoring, proofreading, copy editing and admin, because my job would be much harder if I weren't a whiz at those things already.
To get back to Mr Johnson. I did a bit of soothsaying a few weeks ago and said that he'd have resigned in six weeks. I think the time is more or less up (every week merges into the next at the moment) and in theory he is still PM. However he doesn't seem to be doing a great deal in public, and when he does show his face seems to be confusing more than clarifying. I hope he is actually working, somewhere.
I guess the rest of the sorry crew that are the conservative party don't want to chuck him overboard just yet, but I can't imagine it will be long before there are more overt mutterings
To get back to Mr Johnson. I did a bit of soothsaying a few weeks ago and said that he'd have resigned in six weeks. I think the time is more or less up (every week merges into the next at the moment) and in theory he is still PM.
I guess the rest of the sorry crew that are the conservative party don't want to chuck him overboard just yet, but I can't imagine it will be long before there are more overt mutterings
If the rest of the Party chuck him overboard it means one of them will have to step up to the plate and own both the catastrophe that is our recovery from covid and the catastrophe that is the no deal Brexit. If Mr Johnson is left in office until both of those are done and dusted to the point where someone else can realistically say "there's nothing I can do to make a difference" then they can put all the blame onto Johnson's shoulders and claim* to be squeaky clean and innocent of all the mess.
* whether enough people will believe them is another matter ...
I guess the rest of the sorry crew that are the conservative party don't want to chuck him overboard just yet, but I can't imagine it will be long before there are more overt mutterings
If the rest of the Party chuck him overboard it means one of them will have to step up to the plate and own both the catastrophe that is our recovery from covid and the catastrophe that is the no deal Brexit. If Mr Johnson is left in office until both of those are done and dusted to the point where someone else can realistically say "there's nothing I can do to make a difference" then they can put all the blame onto Johnson's shoulders and claim* to be squeaky clean and innocent of all the mess.
* whether enough people will believe them is another matter ...
They seem to have bought Johnson's claims to not be responsible for the parlous state of our care sector, public health system and public services in general despite him having been in the cabinet for much of the last 5 years.
Can confirm that high school exam grades have been explicitly gatekept in a number of hiring processes I've been through, even 20 years later.
Fair enough. The only place I've encountered this kind of nonsense has been government jobs and visa paperwork. I remember being rather surprised at the paperwork I had to produce for one of my visas - I'm sure it wanted A-level certificates, to prove that I had the equivalent of a high-school education (the degrees and career history apparently weren't sufficient).
Basically, big bureaucracy loves box-ticking. The other place that this seems to be creeping in is in some recruitment screening firms (who are basically big bureaucracy). Employers outsource their recruitment to some hiring company, who just automatically requires proof of lower education from applicants, because stupidity and box-ticking.
When I was working in Australia some years ago, and doing some training, the University of Melbourne wanted a break down of my degrees, that is, what grade I'd got in each paper. This took a bit of time to find, as I'd never thought of asking, but the institutions in question were very helpful.
When I was working in Australia some years ago, and doing some training, the University of Melbourne wanted a break down of my degrees, that is, what grade I'd got in each paper. This took a bit of time to find, as I'd never thought of asking, but the institutions in question were very helpful.
I had to dig out my transcript a few years ago when I had to prove to the GTCS that I had enough maths and physics in my degree (in Theoretical Physics with Mathematics) to be allowed to register to teach them both in Scotland.
To get back to Mr Johnson. I did a bit of soothsaying a few weeks ago and said that he'd have resigned in six weeks. I think the time is more or less up (every week merges into the next at the moment) and in theory he is still PM.
Sorry, but I can't respect any commentator who says, today, this afternoon,
I suppose what I really mean is that it’s just begun to dawn on me that he isn’t actually very good at the job.
.
Anyone whose perspicacity I can respect had reached that conclusion over three years ago.
But sorry, everyone. He's not going to go We're stuck with him until at least the next election. Any alternative, however deeply to be desired, is wishful thinking.
The opportunity was last autumn and our ruling classes fluffed it. For that a huge part of the responsibility rests firmly and inescapably upon the shoulders of Jeremy Corbyn.
To get back to Mr Johnson. I did a bit of soothsaying a few weeks ago and said that he'd have resigned in six weeks. I think the time is more or less up (every week merges into the next at the moment) and in theory he is still PM.
Sorry, but I can't respect any commentator who says, today, this afternoon,
I suppose what I really mean is that it’s just begun to dawn on me that he isn’t actually very good at the job.
.
Anyone whose perspicacity I can respect had reached that conclusion over three years ago.
But sorry, everyone. He's not going to go We're stuck with him until at least the next election. Any alternative, however deeply to be desired, is wishful thinking.
The opportunity was last autumn and our ruling classes fluffed it. For that a huge part of the responsibility rests firmly and inescapably upon the shoulders of Jeremy Corbyn.
Oh FFS how is half the country thinking "a national act of self-harm? What a wonderful idea!" Corbyn's fault?
Obviously, blaming the person whose message was correct but rejected by the Great British Public (the few thousand whose votes made a difference, at least) is the only way to go. May as well blame Swinson and Sturgeon while we're at it.
It's democracy. You vote for the party you think is best. If you voted Tory, you own that vote until you get a chance to vote otherwise.
It is Corbyn's fault because he and his entourage were so resolutely determined that it was his way or no way, that he made sure opposition to first May and then Johnson could neither collect round him, nor round anyone else.
It is Corbyn's fault because he and his entourage were so resolutely determined that it was his way or no way, that he made sure opposition to first May and then Johnson would neither collect round him, nor round anyone else.
There are probably as many reasons for people to vote the way they do as there are votes cast. IMHO re-hashing the result of an election past is pointless: time is better spent working to get the party of your choice elected next time by working out policies that are credible, feasible, and would have appeal beyond the party.
It seems eminently reasonable to assume that democracy is working as designed - that the election results represent the vaguely-formed preferences of the people, and that they elected the political entity that best reflects those interests (as they perceive them).
So, really, you're just annoyed that so many Britons are best-represented by xenophobic bigots with zero fucking clue. It turns out to be disturbingly common, globally.
It seems eminently reasonable to assume that democracy is working as designed - that the election results represent the vaguely-formed preferences of the people, and that they elected the political entity that best reflects those interests (as they perceive them).
So, really, you're just annoyed that so many Britons are best-represented by xenophobic bigots with zero fucking clue. It turns out to be disturbingly common, globally.
Except, following years of Tory gerrymandering, our election system is fucked up enough to allow ~ 45% of the 67% of the electorate that voted to outvote the ~50% that didn't want the current Government, a function of First Past the Post and the redrawing of constituency boundaries.
A significant proportion of the eligible UK population is/was not registered to vote, so the electorate is not fully counted in the 67%, partly as a result of deliberate disenfranchisement, further overstating the paltry 32% of the UK that voted for this incompetent xenophobic Government. It is really not the striking mandate for the current mess that is claimed.
And in passing, the list of people and organisations, including Tory MPs, that campaigned against the farming and food bill that's just been passed with no proper scrutiny was significant. The current powers behind the throne have just successfully forced through a whole load of deregulation to allow access to American markets, against public opinion.
It seems eminently reasonable to assume that democracy is working as designed - that the election results represent the vaguely-formed preferences of the people, and that they elected the political entity that best reflects those interests (as they perceive them).
But, democracy is not just about elections. So, if democracy is working as designed then there would be an opposition holding the government to account and pressing government ministers for answers on what they are doing, that Parliament would be scrutinising legislation and tabling amendments to make the final legislation better, that members of the public would engage in campaigns to influence the work of their MPs through such activities as letter writing and petitions, and a sizeable portion of the media actively investigating what the government is doing and showing where that deviates from the national good or even what the government had put in their manifesto.
Elections are the time when we get a say in who represents us. The rest of the time we get the opportunity to annoy the hell out of those who got voted in to get them to represent us by trying to get them to vote in Parliament as we think they should.
It is Corbyn's fault because he and his entourage were so resolutely determined that it was his way or no way, that he made sure opposition to first May and then Johnson could neither collect round him, nor round anyone else.
Any such explanation fails to account for the 2017 result against the backdrop of an ever declining vote share for Labour across a range of regions, and a similar phenomena affecting centre-left parties across Europe.
Johnson is in charge because the media in this country exists to turn outrage into cash - latest target teachers and health workers - and a substantial number of your fellow citizens looked at a clown car of a party leader driving a JCB through a polystyrene foam wall and said "That's our man!".
No it's not Corbyn's fault. Nor can the blame be pinned entity on the media. Media coverage reflects opinion as well as shapes it. We've got to look ok deeper and wider than personalities and platforms.
I'd argue the divide was widest between Corbyn's internationalism and Johnson's nationalism.
Say fuck the furrins often enough while painting your opponent as someone who doesn't care specifically about you (white, older, not necessarily perceiving yourself as well off, resentful about the modern globalised economy - pick some or all), you can probably pick up enough votes to scrape a win. (The seat margin flatters the Tories enormously.)
It's a populist message of simple certainties against a more nuanced suite of complex uncertainties. Most, if not all, of Johnson's promises were lies, but that didn't matter for the purposes of the election.
Is it all going to catch up with him though? I notice that the Government's whole strategy from the beginning of this crisis has been promising jam tomorrow. Now those promises are coming under more and more scrutiny as they fail to be met, or are fudged. When the contact tracing is in place by the 1st June (does anyone think it will be) what will be their excuse.
Except, following years of Tory gerrymandering, our election system is fucked up enough to allow ~ 45% of the 67% of the electorate that voted to outvote the ~50% that didn't want the current Government, a function of First Past the Post and the redrawing of constituency boundaries.
You know the current shambles got a greater share of the vote (43.6%) than any of the Blair governments (43.2%, 40.7%, 35.2%) and was only exceeded by the 1979 Thatcher government (43.9%) since 1970? You can blame this, and all post-war elections, on first-past-the-post, but your claim that it's because of gerrymandered boundaries doesn't hold water (in fact, the current constituency boundaries weakly favour Labour over the Conservatives.)
The only post-war government that has enjoyed the support of more than 50% of the voters is the 2010 Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, which had combined support of 59.1% of the voters. (But that's a very theoretical number, because it's clear from the results of the subsequent elections that that coalition isn't at all what the Lib Dem voters wanted.)
Yeah, the tories have manipulated the registration system, but they haven't (yet) managed to gerrymander the constituency boundaries. Their current goal is to use ID to exclude (predominantly younger and poorer) people.
Is it all going to catch up with him though? I notice that the Government's whole strategy from the beginning of this crisis has been promising jam tomorrow. Now those promises are coming under more and more scrutiny as they fail to be met, or are fudged. When the contact tracing is in place by the 1st June (does anyone think it will be) what will be their excuse.
He will keep up with throwing shit at the wall. He's now telling a QC used to close, forensic questioning to watch his tone, accusing him of talking the country down and not supporting the government in a time a crisis. Once the baying hordes are back behind him, it'll be more difficult to spot that he not only doesn't answer questions, he doesn't have any answers.
Starmer is very smart (not that Corbyn wasn't) but we'll have to see if he can maintain holding the government to account while being painted as an unpatriotic fifth-columnist, in cahoots with both the EU and the virus to undermine plucky Britain that won the war singlehanded and we can only be proud of our country if the Tories are in perpetual control. Or something like that.
When I moved to my current home and investigated tactical voting in a safe Tory seat, which has some geographic anomalies - for example, all the natural infrastructure connections are to marginal seats in the north, while there are no sensible connections to the main town in the constituency to the south, I found an account that suggested that the seat had been gerrymandered. A largely Labour voting town to the west had been moved in the Tory held seat, and other parts from the naturally connected northern seats. This probably accounts for the northern seats now consistently returning Tories, though the account that I read suggested that in the seat where I now live, it had meant the Lib Dems could not mount an opposition to the Tory MP because of the addition of Labour votes.
The borough council is almost entirely blue now, though some are of the "why is this person a Tory" sort, and at least one has dropped out. I used to hear him read the prayers in church and think "how can he read that and support" whatever unpleasant legislation was about at the time? He must have wondered as well.
The borough council is almost entirely blue now, though some are of the "why is this person a Tory" sort, and at least one has dropped out. I used to hear him read the prayers in church and think "how can he read that and support" whatever unpleasant legislation was about at the time? He must have wondered as well.
Not necessarily. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
As I've said before there is a wide range of people within the Conservative Party, even among activists and those elected to public office there are many who have significant disagreements with the policies of the current leadership. Part of that reflects the very rapid shift in the position of the leadership over the last decade - from being cautiously pro-EU membership to rabidly anti, from welcoming the economic benefit migrant workers bring to being extremely against any form of immigration (OK, that shift has been happening for more than a decade), I know Conservatives who are very uncomfortable with the impact of austerity and UC, etc. Part of the reason these people are still Conservatives is a lack of anywhere else for them to go, there's not another major party that is close to what they believe is the most important - although the LibDems do seem to be moving in that direction. Those who already hold elected office can go independent, and in some cases have done so. But, activists who hope to be elected or want to actively help someone be elected really do need some form of party to work for and in. It's not an easy position to be in; choose between being in a place where you have some small influence on the direction of government (locally if not nationally) while holding your nose, or go independent which preserves your principles at the cost of any influence much above that of any other member of the public.
As I've said before there is a wide range of people within the Conservative Party, even among activists and those elected to public office there are many who have significant disagreements with the policies of the current leadership. Part of that reflects the very rapid shift in the position of the leadership over the last decade - from being cautiously pro-EU membership to rabidly anti, from welcoming the economic benefit migrant workers bring to being extremely against any form of immigration (OK, that shift has been happening for more than a decade), I know Conservatives who are very uncomfortable with the impact of austerity and UC, etc. Part of the reason these people are still Conservatives is a lack of anywhere else for them to go, there's not another major party that is close to what they believe is the most important - although the LibDems do seem to be moving in that direction. Those who already hold elected office can go independent, and in some cases have done so. But, activists who hope to be elected or want to actively help someone be elected really do need some form of party to work for and in. It's not an easy position to be in; choose between being in a place where you have some small influence on the direction of government (locally if not nationally) while holding your nose, or go independent which preserves your principles at the cost of any influence much above that of any other member of the public.
I'd have more sympathy if they worked together to loudly denounce the things they oppose. The truth is they're still committed to seeing tory governments elected so keep their mouths shut in public. What's the difference between going along with something in public while chuntering about it in private and just plain supporting it?
Well, the fact that I know of these concerns (not being a member of the Conservative Party and all) does rather suggest that this isn't just "chuntering about it in private".
Well, the fact that I know of these concerns (not being a member of the Conservative Party and all) does rather suggest that this isn't just "chuntering about it in private".
Your knowledge doesn't come from private conversations? Sorry, I clearly misunderstood.
Define "private conversation". Certainly conversations, rather than (for example) statements made from the front at hustings - although I have heard a Conservative councillor state that public transport isn't working under private ownership and that these services need to be returned to public ownership within that sort of setting. But, is a conversation of 3 or 4 people within a hall with 20 or 30 others present public or private? Is any conversation between activists in different political parties ever genuinely private?
This may be slightly tangential but I think it is important to pause and consider perspective. As someone outside the Conservative party who disagrees with much of their platform, it's very easy for me to see the problems with multiple policies. I would argue very strongly that there are objective reasons to argue that many of the Tory party's positions are stupid and wrong but I am ever conscious of my own potential bias. It must be more difficult from the inside, even seeing these objective points to move to opposing the party you belong to.
As a parallel, I have been a member of the Labour party since before Corbyn was leader. I am still a member. Some of the behaviours reported to me about Momentum - if indeed accurate - would make me not want to be remotely associated with them. Now there's a big argument to be had about the truth about Momentum and I don't want to get distracted by that (i.e. I know that much that is reported is not remotely true); my point is simply that when challenging on my principle of behaviour I consider totally unacceptable (if real) I felt significant conflict with my loyalty to the parts of the party platform I very strongly believe in, as well as the very strong pull of the need to advocate that even with certain failings, Corbyn's vision for Britain was so much better than Johnson's.
I am not saying that that party members do not have a responsibility to challenge their party's platform. I am not saying that there isn't a real conflict for people who claim certain moral precepts and belong to the current Tory party - I believe there truly is. I am simply saying that it's much easier to see from the outside than the inside.
What kind of person is it who owes his life to overseas health workers and then not only insists they have to pay a surcharge to use the NHS themselves but also plans to increase that surcharge in the worst recession for 300 years. Answer: Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister.
Can confirm that high school exam grades have been explicitly gatekept in a number of hiring processes I've been through, even 20 years later.
Fair enough. The only place I've encountered this kind of nonsense has been government jobs and visa paperwork. I remember being rather surprised at the paperwork I had to produce for one of my visas - I'm sure it wanted A-level certificates, to prove that I had the equivalent of a high-school education (the degrees and career history apparently weren't sufficient).
Basically, big bureaucracy loves box-ticking. The other place that this seems to be creeping in is in some recruitment screening firms (who are basically big bureaucracy). Employers outsource their recruitment to some hiring company, who just automatically requires proof of lower education from applicants, because stupidity and box-ticking.
There are companies where they say the best "culture fit" is people who got certain grades in their school exams. They do generously allow you to explain extenuating circumstances if you didn't meet their standards. So it's not just bureaucracy or recruitment firms.
What kind of person is it who owes his life to overseas health workers and then not only insists they have to pay a surcharge to use the NHS themselves but also plans to increase that surcharge in the worst recession for 300 years. Answer: Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister.
But has Our Glorious Leader (Peace Be Upon Him) been seen alive lately? I think he was at PMQs the other day, but who knows? That could have been a hologram Sir Keir was verbally mangling...
In the UK boundary changes have favoured the Conservatives by 48 seats between 1987 and 2015, which is why pundits start looking at the percentage vote in this country {(pdf link),
So if I look at that PDF, it claims a 48-seat bias to the Tories in the 2015 election, as compared to a 54-seat bias to Labour in 2010, a 111 seat bias to Labour in 2005, a 131-seat bias to Labour in 2001, and so on. 1987 showed a 6-seat Tory bias.
These changes are really not to do with boundary changes. What it's calling "bias" here is a property of the first-past-the-post electoral system. The winning government in UK elections hasn't had a majority of the votes since the War. That's first-past-the-post for you.
The 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections were held with the same constituencies. There were no boundary changes. That's a change in what this document calls "bias" from 54 seats to Labour to 48 seats to the Tories without any changes in boundaries.
Back in January, I posted this. The winning government's ratio of seat to vote share is always rather greater than 1 (that's FPTP for you) but there is a systematic bias in favour of Labour governments.
If you read the document you referred to, you see that what the author calls "bias" (which is a mere mismatch between the vote share and seat share of the two main parties) has four components.
1. Constituency size. This favours Labour, always, by in 2015 at total of 24 seats. Labour seats have on average slightly fewer people.
2. "Abstentions". Turnout is lower in safe Labour seats than safe Tory seats. The effect of this is that Labour win their safe seats with fewer votes than the Tories do. I'd argue that one should ignore this number - I think there are plenty of reasons why a Labour supporter in a safe Labour seat might think they have something better to do than voting, and it's not fair to make Labour look worse because they do.
3. The third party effect. This was a big gain for Labour until the Lib Dem collapse (because there were more seats that were Lib Dem / Tory than Lib Dem / Labour). In 2015, this effect swung the other way, because the Lib Dems were wiped off the map, but the SNP won more or less everything in Scotland, so all the Labour votes in Scotland were worthless.
4. "Efficiency". How many of your votes were "wasted" by being in constituencies that you didn't win. Gerrymanders will show up here, but mostly, this means "who won the marginals" and that's usually the party that won the election ('cause that's how marginals work)
Of these, point 1 is a systematic bias in the system, and always favours Labour. Point 2 favours Labour in the computation, but I think should be discounted. Points 3 and 4 are ways of describing what happened in a particular election, and are features of the FPTP system. Looking at their long-term averages might disclose systematic bias, but looking at them for an individual election mostly tells you which party one.
This backtracking doesn't change the simple fact that this is a wicked and indefensible charge. It's morally wicked irrespective of whether a person works in the NHS or somewhere else.
The NHS is funded by our taxes and NI. Those who come here to work pay taxes and NI like everybody else. While they are here, they should receive the same benefits as the UK's indigenous peoples.
This policy is still so self-evidently grasping, dishonest, mean-spirited and dishonourable that it tarnishes those who align themselves with it with the same brush. I can't see any legitimate argument to modify that assessment. Can anyone else?
This backtracking doesn't change the simple fact that this is a wicked and indefensible charge. It's morally wicked irrespective of whether a person works in the NHS or somewhere else.
The NHS is funded by our taxes and NI. Those who come here to work pay taxes and NI like everybody else. While they are here, they should receive the same benefits as the UK's indigenous peoples.
This policy is still so self-evidently grasping, dishonest, mean-spirited and dishonourable that it tarnishes those who align themselves with it with the same brush. I can't see any legitimate argument to modify that assessment. Can anyone else?
Nope. Especially when you realise that the revenue generated from it is essentially a rounding error on the NHS budget.
There's a theme developing. A pair of gloves is counted as two items of PPE, a single test gets counted twice and immigrants needing one health check get charged twice.
But it is all worth this for Brexit isn’t it? Boorish won on Brexit. Never mind anything else Brexit is more important. I am being sarcastic by the way. That policy is bad anyway you cut it. The man and his policies should go away, far away, over a cliff maybe
O God. Why can't the blasted man just keep it in his trousers?
(If the allegation is true, of course...).
The thing is, the evidence above would by itself be a sign of systemic corruption -- but there is no corruption in the UK because no one openly trades suitcases of money for favours, everyone understands their role, no one is so gauche as to ever bring it up, and if all else fails the evidence can be lost (people have been convicted for perverting the course of justice for less).
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Oh, and I've any number of national exam results, but the only people who ever cared about those were the gatekeepers at the schools I applied to, and occasionally the scholarship-offering-people. I don't expect my son to include his AP exams or his ACT/SAT results on his resume, or even to be asked out them during hiring.
Can confirm that "supervisions", which are like Oxford tutorials except the ratio can go as high as 1-6, are a cornerstone of undergraduate teaching in Cambridge, except they're done by grad students and postdocs instead of tutors. The students have a "Director of Studies" who sets them up with supervisors, I'm not sure what else the DoSes do. There's also "ticking" and "demonstrating" where you check students' lab work 5 mins per student, or answer their questions. You get paid by the hour; supervising requires hella preparation and marking, whereas ticking doesn't.
You pick and choose what supervisions you do; some supervision hours are expected of grad students each year, among other training and extracurriculars. It's considered a good way of learning subject matter outside your comfort zone. You do have to undergo a couple of hours' training before you supervise, but you're mostly working to question sets provided by the course lecturers. During training, you're told to never set a question that you haven't done yourself; however, a lecturer of a really heavy course I was ticking for said "oh no, it would take you hours". Quite a lot of the time you're painfully aware of teaching kiddies who can run circles around you, sometimes only because they're immersed in it at that moment and you're not; but sometimes they're just flat-out better than you will ever be (at least in CS, which it's possible to get very good at by a very young age if you're interested enough).
I sure am thankful for previous professional experience at various things like 1-1 tutoring, proofreading, copy editing and admin, because my job would be much harder if I weren't a whiz at those things already.
I guess the rest of the sorry crew that are the conservative party don't want to chuck him overboard just yet, but I can't imagine it will be long before there are more overt mutterings
* whether enough people will believe them is another matter ...
They seem to have bought Johnson's claims to not be responsible for the parlous state of our care sector, public health system and public services in general despite him having been in the cabinet for much of the last 5 years.
Fair enough. The only place I've encountered this kind of nonsense has been government jobs and visa paperwork. I remember being rather surprised at the paperwork I had to produce for one of my visas - I'm sure it wanted A-level certificates, to prove that I had the equivalent of a high-school education (the degrees and career history apparently weren't sufficient).
Basically, big bureaucracy loves box-ticking. The other place that this seems to be creeping in is in some recruitment screening firms (who are basically big bureaucracy). Employers outsource their recruitment to some hiring company, who just automatically requires proof of lower education from applicants, because stupidity and box-ticking.
I had to dig out my transcript a few years ago when I had to prove to the GTCS that I had enough maths and physics in my degree (in Theoretical Physics with Mathematics) to be allowed to register to teach them both in Scotland.
Anyone whose perspicacity I can respect had reached that conclusion over three years ago.
But sorry, everyone. He's not going to go We're stuck with him until at least the next election. Any alternative, however deeply to be desired, is wishful thinking.
The opportunity was last autumn and our ruling classes fluffed it. For that a huge part of the responsibility rests firmly and inescapably upon the shoulders of Jeremy Corbyn.
Oh FFS how is half the country thinking "a national act of self-harm? What a wonderful idea!" Corbyn's fault?
It's democracy. You vote for the party you think is best. If you voted Tory, you own that vote until you get a chance to vote otherwise.
That's... not even slightly what happened.
So, really, you're just annoyed that so many Britons are best-represented by xenophobic bigots with zero fucking clue. It turns out to be disturbingly common, globally.
A significant proportion of the eligible UK population is/was not registered to vote, so the electorate is not fully counted in the 67%, partly as a result of deliberate disenfranchisement, further overstating the paltry 32% of the UK that voted for this incompetent xenophobic Government. It is really not the striking mandate for the current mess that is claimed.
And in passing, the list of people and organisations, including Tory MPs, that campaigned against the farming and food bill that's just been passed with no proper scrutiny was significant. The current powers behind the throne have just successfully forced through a whole load of deregulation to allow access to American markets, against public opinion.
Elections are the time when we get a say in who represents us. The rest of the time we get the opportunity to annoy the hell out of those who got voted in to get them to represent us by trying to get them to vote in Parliament as we think they should.
Any such explanation fails to account for the 2017 result against the backdrop of an ever declining vote share for Labour across a range of regions, and a similar phenomena affecting centre-left parties across Europe.
Johnson is in charge because the media in this country exists to turn outrage into cash - latest target teachers and health workers - and a substantial number of your fellow citizens looked at a clown car of a party leader driving a JCB through a polystyrene foam wall and said "That's our man!".
It ain't pretty.
Say fuck the furrins often enough while painting your opponent as someone who doesn't care specifically about you (white, older, not necessarily perceiving yourself as well off, resentful about the modern globalised economy - pick some or all), you can probably pick up enough votes to scrape a win. (The seat margin flatters the Tories enormously.)
It's a populist message of simple certainties against a more nuanced suite of complex uncertainties. Most, if not all, of Johnson's promises were lies, but that didn't matter for the purposes of the election.
You know the current shambles got a greater share of the vote (43.6%) than any of the Blair governments (43.2%, 40.7%, 35.2%) and was only exceeded by the 1979 Thatcher government (43.9%) since 1970? You can blame this, and all post-war elections, on first-past-the-post, but your claim that it's because of gerrymandered boundaries doesn't hold water (in fact, the current constituency boundaries weakly favour Labour over the Conservatives.)
The only post-war government that has enjoyed the support of more than 50% of the voters is the 2010 Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, which had combined support of 59.1% of the voters. (But that's a very theoretical number, because it's clear from the results of the subsequent elections that that coalition isn't at all what the Lib Dem voters wanted.)
He will keep up with throwing shit at the wall. He's now telling a QC used to close, forensic questioning to watch his tone, accusing him of talking the country down and not supporting the government in a time a crisis. Once the baying hordes are back behind him, it'll be more difficult to spot that he not only doesn't answer questions, he doesn't have any answers.
Starmer is very smart (not that Corbyn wasn't) but we'll have to see if he can maintain holding the government to account while being painted as an unpatriotic fifth-columnist, in cahoots with both the EU and the virus to undermine plucky Britain that won the war singlehanded and we can only be proud of our country if the Tories are in perpetual control. Or something like that.
The rest of that post has been cut but discusses disenfranchisement.
The borough council is almost entirely blue now, though some are of the "why is this person a Tory" sort, and at least one has dropped out. I used to hear him read the prayers in church and think "how can he read that and support" whatever unpleasant legislation was about at the time? He must have wondered as well.
Not necessarily. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
I'd have more sympathy if they worked together to loudly denounce the things they oppose. The truth is they're still committed to seeing tory governments elected so keep their mouths shut in public. What's the difference between going along with something in public while chuntering about it in private and just plain supporting it?
Your knowledge doesn't come from private conversations? Sorry, I clearly misunderstood.
As a parallel, I have been a member of the Labour party since before Corbyn was leader. I am still a member. Some of the behaviours reported to me about Momentum - if indeed accurate - would make me not want to be remotely associated with them. Now there's a big argument to be had about the truth about Momentum and I don't want to get distracted by that (i.e. I know that much that is reported is not remotely true); my point is simply that when challenging on my principle of behaviour I consider totally unacceptable (if real) I felt significant conflict with my loyalty to the parts of the party platform I very strongly believe in, as well as the very strong pull of the need to advocate that even with certain failings, Corbyn's vision for Britain was so much better than Johnson's.
I am not saying that that party members do not have a responsibility to challenge their party's platform. I am not saying that there isn't a real conflict for people who claim certain moral precepts and belong to the current Tory party - I believe there truly is. I am simply saying that it's much easier to see from the outside than the inside.
AFZ
That pretty much sums it up for me...
There are companies where they say the best "culture fit" is people who got certain grades in their school exams. They do generously allow you to explain extenuating circumstances if you didn't meet their standards. So it's not just bureaucracy or recruitment firms.
For me, too.
(If the allegation is true, of course...).
No wonder his hair always looks as though he's just got out of bed somewhere...
ITTWACW!
But has Our Glorious Leader (Peace Be Upon Him) been seen alive lately? I think he was at PMQs the other day, but who knows? That could have been a hologram Sir Keir was verbally mangling...
So if I look at that PDF, it claims a 48-seat bias to the Tories in the 2015 election, as compared to a 54-seat bias to Labour in 2010, a 111 seat bias to Labour in 2005, a 131-seat bias to Labour in 2001, and so on. 1987 showed a 6-seat Tory bias.
These changes are really not to do with boundary changes. What it's calling "bias" here is a property of the first-past-the-post electoral system. The winning government in UK elections hasn't had a majority of the votes since the War. That's first-past-the-post for you.
The 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections were held with the same constituencies. There were no boundary changes. That's a change in what this document calls "bias" from 54 seats to Labour to 48 seats to the Tories without any changes in boundaries.
Back in January, I posted this. The winning government's ratio of seat to vote share is always rather greater than 1 (that's FPTP for you) but there is a systematic bias in favour of Labour governments.
If you read the document you referred to, you see that what the author calls "bias" (which is a mere mismatch between the vote share and seat share of the two main parties) has four components.
1. Constituency size. This favours Labour, always, by in 2015 at total of 24 seats. Labour seats have on average slightly fewer people.
2. "Abstentions". Turnout is lower in safe Labour seats than safe Tory seats. The effect of this is that Labour win their safe seats with fewer votes than the Tories do. I'd argue that one should ignore this number - I think there are plenty of reasons why a Labour supporter in a safe Labour seat might think they have something better to do than voting, and it's not fair to make Labour look worse because they do.
3. The third party effect. This was a big gain for Labour until the Lib Dem collapse (because there were more seats that were Lib Dem / Tory than Lib Dem / Labour). In 2015, this effect swung the other way, because the Lib Dems were wiped off the map, but the SNP won more or less everything in Scotland, so all the Labour votes in Scotland were worthless.
4. "Efficiency". How many of your votes were "wasted" by being in constituencies that you didn't win. Gerrymanders will show up here, but mostly, this means "who won the marginals" and that's usually the party that won the election ('cause that's how marginals work)
Of these, point 1 is a systematic bias in the system, and always favours Labour. Point 2 favours Labour in the computation, but I think should be discounted. Points 3 and 4 are ways of describing what happened in a particular election, and are features of the FPTP system. Looking at their long-term averages might disclose systematic bias, but looking at them for an individual election mostly tells you which party one.
The NHS is funded by our taxes and NI. Those who come here to work pay taxes and NI like everybody else. While they are here, they should receive the same benefits as the UK's indigenous peoples.
This policy is still so self-evidently grasping, dishonest, mean-spirited and dishonourable that it tarnishes those who align themselves with it with the same brush. I can't see any legitimate argument to modify that assessment. Can anyone else?
Nope. Especially when you realise that the revenue generated from it is essentially a rounding error on the NHS budget.
Racism? If the shoe fits...
AFZ
The thing is, the evidence above would by itself be a sign of systemic corruption -- but there is no corruption in the UK because no one openly trades suitcases of money for favours, everyone understands their role, no one is so gauche as to ever bring it up, and if all else fails the evidence can be lost (people have been convicted for perverting the course of justice for less).