2024 Election thread
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Would lettuce be better than none. 🤣🤣🤣
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I would agree with the none option, along with making mandates mandatory.
edit - that doesn’t make sense, how about making voting compulsory 🤭
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When I hear vox pops about politics and someone grumbles that "they are all as bad as the other" I don't automatically think that the person has thought anything through.
Besides, people can always vote Reform, just like they did with UKIP. It's basically the same thing as "none of the above".
The Scottish have been voting this way for 17 years.
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NO!
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Spoiled ballot paper is basically our equivalent of ‘none of the above’ I.e. the person wasn’t a lazy feckwit that simply couldn’t be bothered and took the trouble to register their displeasure (although some of them will also be genuine incompetence).
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Do those get formally counted? I googled but the results are swamped by nut job spoil the ballot campaign websites.
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I think they get counted and announced as rejected ballot papers. Despite the paper stating that you have to put an ‘x’ in the box it’s surprising how many different ways are actually accepted as showing clear intention. Some are actually bordering on comical in their stupidity but have been deemed acceptable through case law. It’s scary how people who don’t understand the concept are allowed a vote at all!
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Made me lol…..😂
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Lol
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!2 -
Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells
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It was my article 🙂. Just the first Google hit.
If we take the figure of £24k/year per child, adding VAT is another £400 a month. That feels relatively marginal if you are already spending £2k a month on a discretionary purchase.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Oops. We seem to be reaching the point where previous social media posts prevent anyone from doing anything.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
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For some sure, but there are plenty of other parents who are already making big sacrifices to pay the fees and that would tip them over, especially if say they have a fixed rate mortgage deal coming to an end too.
Lucky you if £4,800 pa is marginal to your outgoings, or £9,600 if you had 2 kids in the system.
All too often people seem to assume that all private schools are like Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Radley etc and that all parents are mega wealthy. That isn't the case. The are many far less well known private schools where the parents are pretty normal and just want the best for their kids.
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He asked about my view on European courts generally.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
It was on his podcast in 2022, but the guy's lived there for 27 years, it's obviously a silly joke. He says he's dropped out because there's probably other things he's said. Context never comes along. He's right that it would be all over the LibDem leaflets.
“I thought to myself - if they’ve got this on day one, I’ve done thousands of hours on LBC over the last 15 years, I’ve done hundreds of hours in podcasts... Imagine if the day before nominations close next week that they’d found something else that was even worse than this - I don't know what that would be but they could have done."
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Uncanny…
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£2k a month is already well out of my league. If that's what people want to spend their money on, that's fine, but it's still a discretionary spend. If they can't afford it I'm not sure that is top of the list for government spending/tax breaks.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Takes pressure off the public education sector by reducing pupil numbers, while the people who send their kids private still subsidise public education through their taxes. Win-win.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
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Creates an unfair system on children which disadvantages pupils because of their parents bank balance - yours is a pathetic argument.
The cost of privilege over ability which we see over and over costs Britain far more than it will ever gain.
This election is finally a reckoning for some of that.
If private schools are so great you should be glad they’re becoming more exclusive - after all, isn’t that the bloody point of them?
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What pressure? Schools are closing or being merged due to lack of pupils.
Seems mad as only 10 years ago they had to add an extra form to our eldest's year, but there you go. Funding is also based on pupil numbers so fewer pupils means less funding.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Tricky one to balance, I think.
The sums likely to be raised are likely not "game changers" in respect of public finance. But the sums will be non-trivial and it's hard to argue that those able to send kids to private school aren't in the demographic most likely to be able to shoulder some additional burden in trying time.
But equally, some parents will be forced to remove their kids and send them to the local state school, which might be considered harsh on the kids (who would be removed from their friends and thrust into a somewhat alien environment) for what could be described as little more than virtue signalling by an incoming leftiegovernment. And this might increase the strain on an already stretched state education sector.
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I don't think you have read my post or RJST's one either. Try re-reading and it might be clearer as to what was being discussed.
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So should VAT be charged on private GP services etc?
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Agreed. I don't think it's the most pressing battle to fight as on it's best day it would raise just over £2bn a year and probably a lot less where people opt out of the private system. But then Starmer doesn't seem to have a good eye for picking his battles
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Everything about life is unfair. Your kids have been born into a family that encourages them to learn and read etc. You use your wealth to buy them things that will assist in that. You pay for them to holiday and no doubt part of those holidays are educational. You chose not to live in a really crappy area with crappy schools - you are indirectly spending on your kids to improve their chances in life.
By your logic, there should be a cap on what you are allowed spend on your children or it's unfair on those that can't afford that amount. And what about the kids born into families where there is no value placed on learning to read or get educated?
For some strange reason you have a mahooosive chip on your shoulder about this.
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It’s not tricky to balance.
It’s a system that costs the UK a vast amount and is one of the major forces against social mobility.
Ive said it a million times, if 20% was the difference between affording it and not, you have bigger financial problems and your parents shouldn’t have sent you.
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Problem with using the education system for political purposes is 2-fold as I see it.
Firstly, those who are affected are children, who genuinely have "no skin in the game". So I think it's appropriate for extra thought to be given to the unforeseen consequences of virtue signalling / social engineering via the education system. Not saying that the system can't be changed to promote greater opportunity, but VAT on fees could just be a headline grabbing policy aimed at pleasing the "core vote" rather than a good policy. Or it might be the best policy ever. I don't think anyone has done the thinking to conclude either way.
Secondly, in extremis, the private sector disappears, and with it, a lot of funding (via fees) of education as a whole. If all current private school kids end up in the state sector, where does the funding for them come from? Or do we just increase class sizes and lower standards?
And a bonus third issue: What will be the impact on the existing state school customer base of a load of disproportionately "sharp-elbowed" upper middle class parents now lobbying actively for their own children?
Full disclosure: I'm not defending the private sector, as my kids went to state school and exceeded their parents' already inflated expectations re A-levels and Uni options.
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