THE FOURTH OF JULY

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Like left wing MP Diane Abbot's son, for example.

Ms Abbott, then MP for Hackney North, was widely condemned for entering James for the £13,000-a-year City of London School. She admitted her decision was ‘indefensible’. She'd previously condemned Tony Blair, and Harriet Harman, then the solicitor general, for not sending their children to traditional state schools. She allegedly said of Ms Harman's decision to send her son to a grammar school: (not a Private school), "She made the party look as if we do one thing and say another."

So here was someone who purports to be a staunch socialist, who for two decades had railed against privilege. Here was a conviction politician from the Left who’d attacked senior Labour figures for putting their kids in selective schools, going one step further, putting her son in a far more exclusive school and buying him even better life-chances.

She made the racist comment: ‘White people love playing divide and rule. We should not play their game,’ and referring to ‘tactics as old as colonialism’. (Errm? Run that past me again please).

Professor Tim Brighouse, the London schools commissioner, interviewed in the Local Government Chronicle, said it was wrong to believe that the capital's comprehensive schools were worse than those in other parts of England. Exam statistics showed that the opposite was true. Even those serving the poorest communities in London outperformed those in other parts of the country, he said.

Prof Brighouse said that cross-referencing GCSE results with the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals - the standard poverty yardstick - showed that London schools did better than those elsewhere. It was "extremely sad" when people opted to go private, he added. "My experience in putting my children through urban schools is that they achieve in a vivid and rich environment that is determinedly improving its performance."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/nov/01/uk.schools

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/diane-abbott-i-sent-my-son-to-private-230293

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...th-delivered-1-2million-home-court-hears.html

After GCEs, when aged 20, James Abbott, was sent to study in the sixth form of the £6,000-a-year SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College in Tema, Ghana, which boasts facilities such as a ‘near-Olympic-sized pool’ and declares that its students ‘graduate with an internationally recognised baccalaureate and are then able to study at almost any university in the world’.

Lo and behold, like his mother, he went to Cambridge, and enjoyed a meteoric rise within the Foreign Office, after joining Diplomatic Fast Stream in 2014.

But sadly it didn’t end well. Maybe he mixed with the wrong crowd?

Aged 28, in late 1999, and July 2 2020 when he is accused of carrying out three attacks including two on emergency workers outside Homerton Hospital and elsewhere in Hackney where his mother lives. He was charged with 11 new offences including 9 assaults - most on police and medics. He also faces count of exposure in hospital and racially/religiously aggravated criminal damage

He had crystal meth delivered to her home when she was Shadow Home Secretary. He was said to have chased her around her £1.2million home with scissors, claiming he had a gun in his dressing gown pocket. James Abbott-Thompson was high on a cocktail of drugs when he started ‘threatening his mother with violence’. He then went on a drug-induced rampage, attacking nine police officers, doctors, nurses and security guards at various hospitals. It emerged the ‘rising star’ had been hooked on drugs even before he joined the Foreign Office fast-track scheme in 2014.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...th-delivered-1-2million-home-court-hears.html

As a parent of two adult sons, she has my deepest sympathy. She did what she thought was best for her son, gave him what she thought was a head-start in life, and she must be bereft at the outcome. I wish her well in her bid to be elected as MP at the General Election by those Labour voters who don't mind at all that she sent her kid to a private school, and then to do the baccalaureate at an exclusive private school in Ghana.
So she made some crap decisons and had a difficult life. Gloat and jeer away!
It should not have been the case that she thought she could buy educational advantage, but you can see why she might have wanted to. But it was a waste of money obviously!
"It turns out that James Abbott has serious mental health problems and was being sectioned at the time of the attack. It is particularly sad that this is being used against his mother"
 
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Hypocrisy prevails in politics. Quick Google search:
  • 4 of the 28 who attend shadow cabinet meetings went to private schools
  • 14% of Labour MPs went to private schools
  • 11 members of the shadow cabinet went to Oxbridge
That Oxbridge is over-represented at Westminster is no surprise. Nor would it come as a surprise that Tories generally reflect a more privileged education at all levels.

Reducing inequality should come through improving education available to the majority, not denying quality education to those unable to afford the increased costs. It is levelling down not up.

Public spending on education is £116bn. Removing VAT from private schools will raise £1-1.5bn (IFS estimate).

Not only is the tax benefit trivial (equal to a modern "farthing" - 0.25p on basic rate tax), it further exacerbates inequalities by elevating private education to those with greater wealth.

Dogma and envy trumps decency and common sense.
 
Here is somebody says she is very left wing, campaigned to win in 2017 and 2019 and she has accepted the public are only slightly left wing or centre and she wants Keir Starmer to win

I align with what she says. I dont have huge hopes, just getting some adults in power that don’t govern with culture wars and inflammatory hyperbole against foreigners would be amazing

 
Hypocrisy prevails in politics. Quick Google search:
  • 4 of the 28 who attend shadow cabinet meetings went to private schools
  • 14% of Labour MPs went to private schools
They were children, they didn't choose their school and no hypocrisy was involved
  • 11 members of the shadow cabinet went to Oxbridge
So they passed the entrance process? No hypocrisy involved here either.
....

Reducing inequality should come through improving education available to the majority,
yes
not denying quality education to those unable to afford the increased costs.
More a case of breaking the cycle of privilege and class. It is not good for the country.
....

Dogma and envy trumps decency and common sense.
Not dogma or envy, it's about a level playing field and allocating resources to where they are most needed.
 
Hypocrisy prevails in politics. Quick Google search:
  • 4 of the 28 who attend shadow cabinet meetings went to private schools
  • 14% of Labour MPs went to private schools
  • 11 members of the shadow cabinet went to Oxbridge
I don’t understand how that is hypocrisy, Labour are wanting private schools to not be allowed to have charitable status when they are profit making private businesses.

Labour aren’t saying they want rid of private schools - that would be hypocrisy.

Conservatives believe in the free market, so they should be pleased that private schools don’t get an unfair advantage when competing against other luxury items where 20% VAT is applied.
 
I've just finished reading 'Aftremath', the story of immediate post war Germany. The final quote is by Karl Jaspers who was reflecting on the dialogue of the German people in those years. I thought it was worth repeating here:-

Let us learn to talk to one another. That is, let us not merely repeat our opinion, but hear what the other person thinks. Let us not only assert, but reflect in context, listen for reasons, remain prepared to reach a new insight. Let us inwardly attempt to assume the position of the other. Yes, let us actually seek out that which contradicts us. Grasping what we hold in common within contradiction is more important than hastily fixing exclusive standpoints with which the conversation draws hopelessly to an end.

Brian
A noble idea, sadly history shows us it is hopelessly optimistic.
 
Here is somebody says she is very left wing, campaigned to win in 2017 and 2019 and she has accepted the public are only slightly left wing or centre and she wants Keir Starmer to win

I align with what she says. I dont have huge hopes, just getting some adults in power that don’t govern with culture wars and inflammatory hyperbole against foreigners would be amazing


Exactly. The policies of the old left have been offered to the public a number of times in the fairly recent past, starting with Michael Foot in 83. They have been soundly defeated every time. So you have a choice, reinvent yourself into something the public will actually vote for, Blair, Starmer. Or you can keep flogging the same long dead horse like Corbyn and Jacob, and in so doing consign yourself to political irrelevance.
 
I despise the Tories. The likes of Michelle Mone who enriched herself with millions paid for faulty PPE and then denied it, tax avoiders like Nadhim Zahawi who "made a careless mistake" and avoided paying £4.8m tax, heartless monsters like Suella Braverman denying her immigrant roots, nutters like Liz Truss who crashed the economy, put mortgages through the roof and ruined countless thousands of families, entitled, out-of-touch eton prefects like Jacob Rees-Mogg, bizarre aliens like Michael Gove, and all the awful, incompetent, useless rest of them.

I really don't care who wins, or what combination of government we get, just as long as we see the back of them. My children and granchildren deserve better.
So do you prefer the likes of Yvette Cooper, who thought it perfectly reasonable for her and her hubby to claim expenses on both their houses, by one saying house A was their main residence, whilst the other made an identical claim on house B. Rayner, with her potty mouth and questionable finances. Or Diane can't do sums Abbott, who has her kid privately educated whilst criticising others for doing exactly the same. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME, self serving liars who don't really give a s**t about you or I.
Sure there are those in all parties who enter politics for the best of reasons, but they rarely get very far.
If you think sleaze and incompetence will end by electing Labour you are delusional.
 
Looking at the posts on this thread one can clearly see, that there is a tendency. to demonise the opposition and treat them as less than human. As if we were dealing with cartoon characters , rather than real people. Whilst this might be useful in warfare and make it easier for us to kill "our fellow human beings" - it turns politics into tribalism

.All governments have to deal with the cards they have been dealt - not the ideal hand of our ( or their ) imaginings, It's what Macmillan referred to as " Events, dear boy". This is why governments, irrespective of their, political stripe, will end up having to do what is pragmatic, rather than what would suit them ideologically

Just as we can look at our colleagues at work and judge them for their competency. so too, we should rate our MPs, irrespective of the party they belong to.
We are all to blame for the politicians we end up with, if we don't vote for decent, hard-working, local candidates, to represent us at Westminster, but rather vote entirely on party lines. We can hardly then complain that we are poorly served.
 
If you think sleaze and incompetence will end by electing Labour you are delusional.
No I don't. I'm not delusional enough to think it will be all rainbows and unicorns. I just want to see the back of the Tories who have outdone any of the likely alternatives in sleaze and incompetence.
 
So do you prefer the likes of Yvette Cooper, who thought it perfectly reasonable for her and her hubby to claim expenses on both their houses, by one saying house A was their main residence, whilst the other made an identical claim on house B
To be honest, yes I do prefer it.

Michelle Mone cost the taxpayer £200m
Bogus PPE contracts to mates in the VIP lane cost £4billion


Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls might’ve cost taxpayer £45k
Angela Rayner might’ve cost tax payer £1,500
 
I’m not sure Conservatives campaign is going well.

Labour are talking about national security and Conservatives are talking about unisex toilets
 
I’m not sure Conservatives campaign is going well.

Labour are talking about national security and Conservatives are talking about unisex toilets
Murdoch's still on honeymoon isn't he? Dishy Rishi's probably been told to keep shtum till further notice.
 
To be honest, yes I do prefer it.

Michelle Mone cost the taxpayer £200m
Bogus PPE contracts to mates in the VIP lane cost £4billion


Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls might’ve cost taxpayer £45k
Angela Rayner might’ve cost tax payer £1,500
I would rather be represented by people who don't seek to line their pockets at our expense, whatever their political colour, or the scale of such behaviour. Problem being where do you find an honest hard working politician? I am sure they are out there, but how to spot them?
If you are happy with someone who has their fingers in the till on the basis that they are only in up to their wrist, rather than up to their armpit, so be it. Sad reflection when they are the sort of choices you have to make.
Unfortunately it has been a case of voting for the least bad option for a very long time, and seems no different this time around.
 

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Well, that's going to properly put the cat among the pigeons. Can only be good news for Labour.
Really? I thought Starmer was targeting the far-right vote?
 
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