Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Grammar schools do not aid social mobility. Stop this deluded thinking

The figures show clearly that selective schools entrench inequality rather than help the poor. They should all be scrapped


John Harris

The Guardian, Monday 11 November 2013

What can we do about the seizing-up of social mobility, the yawning attainment gap between rich and poor, and all the other aspects of inequality about which politicians and commentators affect to fret? If you have never adequately understood the effects of post-Thatcher capitalism on inequality and always mistrusted the idea of comprehensive education, the answer is simple enough: rewind the clock to the 1940s, bring back selection at 11, and usher in a new age of exacting meritocracy.

Indeed, in certain parts of the country where children sit a version of the 11-plus and grammar schools have never gone away, little islands of wonder are allegedly thriving. Just listen to the former Independent columnist Mary Ann Sieghart, writing last year: "If you are bright but poor and you live in Kent, Essex, Buckinghamshire or Northern Ireland, your parentage doesn't have to dictate your progress. You have nearly the same chance of becoming a cabinet minister, a judge, a newspaper editor or a top rower as your privately educated neighbour. Why is that? Because these areas still have grammar schools, those turbo-chargers of social mobility."

Unfortunately, this is rot. Last week the Sutton Trust educational charity released a report about who exactly goes to England's 164 remaining grammar schools. Though the news was not exactly revelatory, the figures were still striking: 2.7% of their pupils are entitled to free school meals (FSMs) as against 17.5% in other state schools; 13% of entrants to English state–funded grammars come from fee-paying schools, more than double the proportion of 10-year-olds in private education; in areas that have stuck with selection, 66% of high-achievers at 11 who are not on FSMs get places at grammars; among those who are entitled to them, the figure is 40%.


More lefty claptrap here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/11/grammar-schools-social-mobility-deluded-thinking

nothing to do with peeps trying to buy £600k houses for sure!

there's help around and frankly, i see nothing wrong with that at all .... certainly houses prices and transactions etc are still well below what they were several years ago, so equally certainly, no bubble remotely in sight at present

btw, the salary multiple for buying is no more than 4x which is about what it always was, so again, that puts a brake on peeps getting hopelessly over-extended .... there's other quite strict parameters too .... this is from youngest who is no fool (surprise!) and who earns a good salary

Cynic, see my post 550. In the mean time I wish to correct you on the x salary, Think that you will find it was x2 which was generally excepted as stable and reasonable, it also worked for many years very well.

David Cameron: 95pc mortgages will help people buy their dream home

David Cameron defends government's Help to Buy Scheme as new figures show 75 people are using it to make offers every day



By Steven Swinford, Senior Political Correspondent

10:30PM GMT 10 Nov 2013



David Cameron will on Monday defend the government's controversial Help to Buy scheme new figures revealed that 75 people a day have used it to make offers.


The Prime Minister will say that the scheme is "already delivering" and by helping thousands of families to buy their "dream home".


According to the first official figures released by the government, a total of 2,384 have put in offers under the scheme, which enables people to take out government-backed mortgages of up to 95 per cent. Ten deals have been completed.


Mr Cameron will tomorrow meet some of the first people to apply for mortgages under the scheme in Downing Street. The meeting has echoes of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's meetings with the first right to buy tenants in their new council home in the 1980s.


The meeting comes amid continuing controversy over the scheme. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has warned it could lead to a housing bubble.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/10439606/David-Cameron-95pc-mortgages-will-help-people-buy-their-dream-home.html

for sure not when i bought in the 70's .... base was most assuredly 3x and, with persuasion, a bit more .... also, if buying as a couple, the second-earner's salary could be utilised (in some way) in the calc

It was 3 x main earner plus 1 x second earner.

Now it's 5 x main earner (at least) plus a bit more if you have a reasonable deposit. Not sure about the 2nd earner.

Whatever the x is, with the Low Wage rip-of Britain conditions that have gradually come in since you lot voted for them in successive Elections, then anything above 2 is ridiculous unless you work in certain Industries/Professions.

stan - bugger off and take your political soapbox with you :-) .... who says "anything above 2x is ridiculous" except you?

mk - categorically 4x is max .... youngest has just been through the exercise with a broker to see what he could borrow/afford and what property where

Another correction for you, I am talking about the "Economic Right Wing Extremism' that you lot continue to vote for that land this county in the usual cycle of mess after mess, So Cobblers to you... fish face -):

The low wage one hour contracts lark started under blair/broon..around 2008.

Wrong Max, The "Low Wage Rip-Off Britain" "Right Wing Extremist Economy" started with you lot voting for Thatcher in 79' time after time... and then the useless Major followed by Tory Blair.

stan - you're off on a (even more silly) tangent yet again .... it's the soapbox political ranting that is just so tiresome on this thread ... shame that a few of you cannot even start to discuss sensibly

That's just your "Usual Excuse" for not facing up to the "Facts of History"... Thanks for agreeing with me though.

'In January, the only thing left will be the goat': Romanian father-of-seven's boast as mayor says half the population of his villages are on their way to Britain for the higher salaries and generous benefits

Remus Neda, 37, is heading for the UK to take advantage of state handouts

He makes most of his money by begging on the streets of Paris

People in the villages of Berini and Uliuc live in abject poverty

Are forced to sleep in cramped clay huts surrounded 20 of their relatives

Mayor Koller Gabriel-Adrian claimed villagers were leaving 'because they do not have anything here'



Read more:

Oh p off Tanks, I've got "you know who" on the ropes again -):

the UK will be a complete shit hole next year .when you come home from work you may not get back in your home it could be taken over by immigrants and the law can do nothing about it as it is today . 47 homes in the south are already taken over by immigrants and getting worse destroying the homes they take over .

the locks will not stop them they have a lock smith to unlock them .
you have been warned . read about the latest homes taken over while the owners are out on hols

stan . CYNIC is to far up is backside to know that .he is in a world of is own to thick to see the wood for the trees

UKIP will get over 20% of the votes and take many seats .
get out and talk to voters . ask the voters of BOSTON in lincs

we are now going to remove the conservative from our CLUB

... Well there is that I suppose Tanks -):

'Truly shocking' that the private-school educated and affluent middle class still run Britain, says Sir John Major

The dominance of a private-school educated elite and well-heeled middle class in the “upper echelons” of public life in Britain is “truly shocking”, Sir John Major has said.




State school educated John Major with David Cameron, who went to Eton


Christopher Hope

By Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent

10:00PM GMT 10 Nov 2013







The dominance of a private-school educated elite and well-heeled middle class in the “upper echelons” of public life in Britain is “truly shocking”, Sir John Major has said.


The former Conservative Prime Minister said he was appalled that “every single sphere of British influence” in society is dominated by men and women who went to private school or who are from the “affluent middle class”


More than half of the Cabinet, including David Cameron, the Prime Minister, George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, are thought to have gone to private school and are independently very wealthy.


In the speech to Tory party grassroots activists on Friday evening, Sir John - who went to a comprehensive in south London and left school with three O-Levels - said: “In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me from my background, I find that truly shocking.”


Sir John blamed this “collapse in social mobility” on Labour, which despite Ed Miliband’s “absurd mantra to be the one-nation party they left a Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration”.


More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10439303/Truly-shocking-that-the-private-school-educated-and-affluent-middle-class-still-run-Britain-says-Sir-John-Major.html