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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/11/04/labour-councils-academy-schools-education/ https://schoolsweek.co.uk/labour-plans-to-curtail-academy-freedoms-in-schools-bill-amendment/ And we can at least argue that academies are no worse, because if they were they would be closing. If...

I suppose certain types of people like the idea that "we the elite" get a say in what goes on while "they the common people" have to do as they are told by "we the elite". They used the same logic to ban women from voting, strangely enough - they didn't think they were sufficiently savvy to be...

They're going after the state schools as well. There appears to be strong support for closing academies, for the same reason as they closed grammar schools - because they think it's better that everyone's education is equally poor rather than some have poor education and some have good...

The reason is to encourage people to save for their pension. It has long been believed in some quarters that giving people tax benefits to saving for a pension is a good thing because it reduces the need for government to support them in old age. Alternatively, of course, this government seems...

You're assuming that it's beyond the wit of central government to adjust the grant. If your authority has to pay extra taxes to government, it would be trivial for government to increase its grant to your authority. And if it doesn't, it amounts to a change in allocation of government spending...

The beauty of increasing NIC from the government's point of view (at least employer's NIC, which I would presume they are on about) is that it only affects the private sector. Effectively, employer's NIC doesn't affect public sector workers because the government is paying it to itself. So...

There was quite a lot of discussion about freeing the prisoners at the time, and I don't think people's opinions of the policy have improved as time goes by - even though it's no longer on the front burner, so to speak. Workplace reform hasn't happened but (along with all the other anti-growth...

It's believed they are working on a way to give public sector workers some form of exemption from the charge, because public sector pensions are so generous (and unfunded, incidentally) that the charge would hit the public sector (the ones with the highest pensions) too hard. The Tories had to...

Tennis does involve throwing a ball, so it's not a silly answer.

Prescriptions.

Obviously if you are given a long list of conditions to read before you sign a document, the same document 52 times a year, you need to read it in detail every time. Not everyone knows that. My problem with the "official mind" is that it is interested (like the parking companies) in getting...

Especially if that conversation goes straight through his ears rather than in front or behind him. Possibly interspersed with the question "I hope we're not annoying you- would it be easier if we swapped? every three minutes or so.

That attitude is just one of the problems with "the official mind" nowadays. If a private company, eg. a parking company, were to charge a woman on benefits several hundred or thousand pounds because she hadn't read the small print on the sign, and saved the penalty up for a year so as to charge...

You're assuming that no-one else is involved apart from the landlord and these two customers. If you expand the horizon a little and think of the next customer along, who would like an "all you can eat buffet" but can't have one, then has the problem been truly solved? One advantage of...

If there are schools with fewer pupils and smaller class sizes and still people don't want to go to them, then it suggests that making children go to them is bad news. "This school is appalling, let's expand it" is not my recipe for success.

It's 20%, probably a standard penalty. I dare say if the greedy customers don't come back, the landlord won't be upset.

A "half what you can eat" option? Seems unlikely to work. 😉

The surgeon shouldn't have to find a scalpel. He ought to be holding out his hand and saying "scalpel" and one will be put there. Surgical skills are too valuable to be wasted on looking for kit.

It's an impossibility. There is no way on earth that the UK will have sufficient power from non-wind sources to supply the whole country when the wind isn't blowing. It may be possible to get 100% energy from renewables on days of reasonable winds and sunshine, but not for all day and every day.

About half the 37,396 are what passes for soldiers in Hamas. Albeit they don't wear uniform. If we accept that killing soldiers who are making war against you counts as genocide, then no country in the world is innocent and the word genocide has completely changed its meaning. Just to...