WTF is happening in the UK?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Any more news from Drowning Street?
I was expecting floods of it!
Maybe it'll just be a daily drip-feed for the next 6 weeks.

[FD2]

On Your Marks!.png (185.4 KiB) Viewed 1059 times

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[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Tory election campaign music announced
"Things can only get wetter"

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The Scottish Tories will be using 'Wishing I was Lucky' by Wet Wet Wet.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I see the PM is in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast today, presumably rearranging deckchairs, as a record 76th Conservative MP announces he is standing down.

[Boac]

THis from Twatter

[Woody]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpddxy9r4mdo

[Ex-Ascot]

Well that's going to be a real vote winner for him amongst the young people, much.

[Boac]

It say much for the opinion the Conservatives have for the intelligence of their voters when Sunak says "I will do xxx" when his actual chances of being PM after the election are 3/10 of the square root of ********

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... te-places/

Private school parents looking to escape Labour’s VAT raid have been warned there are very few state school places available.
One mother who contacted her local council about the possibility of moving her child from private to state education ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s proposed 20 per cent hike in fees was told that secondary schools are so oversubscribed that students are on a waiting list and if “any” places become available they will be “extremely limited”.
The message from officials at Newcastle city council is echoed across the country, with at least eight authorities warning that there are few to no places available and one stating that there is “no guarantee” of an immediate space.
It comes amid fears of a pupil exodus from private to state schools after Sir Keir promised that he would initiate the tax raid on “day one” of a Labour government.
It has been estimated that up to a quarter of students will be removed from private schools if the policy goes ahead and headteachers say some parents have already started pulling their children out or cancelling places at fee-paying schools.
Now, The Telegraph can reveal that parents wishing to escape the increase in fees may struggle to get a place for their children in any local state schools, which have already allocated places for September.
Councils that have issued warnings about availability for so-called “in-year” transfers include Cambridgeshire, which says on its website it has “no available spaces in secondary schools in the Fenland area”, and Oxfordshire, which lists several areas that have “very few or no” places.


Wokingham borough council has told parents that “all schools” are “heavily oversubscribed” and “there is no guarantee of an immediate school place”.
According to the Leeds city council website, there are no places at all for year 10 students and for year 9s only one academy has a handful of spaces.
Vale of Glamorgan and Solihull both warn that a child may not be able to leave their current school, with the Welsh council saying pupils should not be taken out of a school until a new place is confirmed.
When a parent wrote to Bromley council concerned about Labour’s policy, they were told that the “majority” of schools in the area are oversubscribed, and the application would go on a waiting list.
An admissions officer in Newcastle told the concerned mother that the only way students have succeeded in getting places previously “is by the parents winning an appeal after their application was refused”.

Newcastle is one of a number of councils that advises against moving secondary schools on the basis that it could “adversely affect your child’s education”.
Others state that it can be “disruptive”, and they do not recommend it at all while a child is preparing for GCSEs.

Education Not Taxation, a grassroots campaign group that has compiled the warnings, said that parents are now worried that children may be left without a school to attend in September.
Loveena Tandon, a spokesperson for the campaign group, said that the plans were “not only disruptive” but “unfair” and leave young people as “collateral damage”.
A number of analyses have said that the plans will not raise the £1.7 billion Labour has promised, Ms Tandon pointed out.
The group is calling for a consultation on the plans if Labour wins the election, amid growing pressure on the party to re-think the pledge.
When challenged on the policy at his first major speech of the general election campaign on Monday, Sir Keir said that he understood and respected that “many parents work hard and save hard to be able to send their children to private schools” but there were “difficult choices to be made”.
The comments were an apparent softening on the positions taken the day before by Rachel Reeve, shadow chancellor, who said that she was “sure that private schools can make efficiencies”.

One seventh, approx, of British pupils are educated privately.
Most schools operate in quite a narrow band of profitability, on premises which have evolved to cater to a particular number of pupils. It is simply not possible to sustain the school if numbers drop by 20% or more.
Speaking from experience, none of the schools I worked at could have made more than about 3% efficiencies even with the world's best employees. The Bursars who run the finances at private schools are not idiots.
Furthermore, the cost of running schools is increasing relative to the median wage.
Chucking VAT on private schools could well result in the rapid, widespread collapse of the system, leaving only places like Eton viable.
"children may be left without a school to attend in September" is not an option. "All children in England between the ages of 5 and 16 are entitled to a free place at a state school.", and a putative Labour government will have to find places for them, which they cannot without hugely overpressuring the state system. Labour have planned this as a tax grab, and to continue the reduction of the private system, but a collapse will trigger huge problems in the state system, and they won't get the taxes either.
Nor should anyone assume that the private teachers will look to move into the state system. Many will retire, emigrate, or find other careers.

[Ex-Ascot]

Well said Fox. The estimate I have seen is that 40% of pupils will be removed from private schools. Can private schools run at that loss. The state education system will collapse. with the demand.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Most private schools couldn't handle a 10% drop in numbers, is my estimate.
At my first school, we had just such a crisis in numbers, and the Head was honest enough to open the books to the staff, so I know exactly the financial problems in this situation.
What will happen is that about 30% of private schools (by capacity), will close.
The idea that a Labour government knows anything about "efficiencies" is the funniest thing I've heard this decade, Ricardian's posts excepted.
The day they do anything efficiently, there'll be 9-ship formations of pigs doing low level barrel rolls down the A5 Pass.
I happen to know of one school which is already going to close in expectation, as the pupil entrants for next year are way down due to parents already deciding to try to get good state school places. Another nearby closed a few weeks ago for the same reason.
What many fail to realise is that private schools are not packed with arrogant geniuses. Many pupils are actually below state averages in intelligence and/or confidence, which is precisely why their parents opted for the additional care and nurturing they get in a good private school. I am not going to say better teaching, because most state school teachers could do better if their kids were fewer in each class and much better disciplined. It is, however, different teaching, and universities will also suffer if their input from an overloaded state sector increases.

[Boac]

Why should private education be VAT exempt? Private health care isn't. No-one is saying you cannot educate your child privately, are they, just as you have the right to private health care?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I have no opinion on whether it should be or not.
I am pointing out the likely consequences of changing it now.
The functional difference is that, whilst everyone has a right to state healthcare, they may have to wait years for it.
Making children wait years to enter state education is not viable, not least because the system is set up in age cohorts that assume the child has been educated from age 5 to their age.

[llondel]

Why should private education be VAT exempt? Private health care isn't. No-one is saying you cannot educate your child privately, are they, just as you have the right to private health care?

The other side of that is to look at the relative cost of imposing VAT, how much they'd actually get from it if a significant number of schools closed, and what it would cost to provide places for all those displaced children and fight a bunch of legal cases when the children get assigned to highly inconvenient schools 20 miles away. I suspect it's way cheaper to leave them VAT-free.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Ah, but we are talking about Socialists.
They don't do whole cycle and consequential estimating, because it would show up over 90% of their ideology for the b#llocks that it is.
The problem for the UK (and similarly for Canada, the USA, etc), is that all political parties are now functionally socialist - they are incapable of making the decisions to balance the national budget.
So, one is screwed whoever one votes for, it's just a choice of which road to ruin, and the speed one gets there.
https://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/

[Boac]

I suspect it's way cheaper to leave them VAT-free.

Careful, now - you are applying logic. It still does not answer the primary question - why?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Private schools are largely registered charities in the UK, and are VAT-exempt for that reason.
It is thought that charities, as exempted, benefit the country by a value that exceeds the amount the government would have to spend to replace them.
Labour wants to have its cake and eat it.
Right now, due to the economics of the country as a whole and private education in particular, the majority of private schools will not be able to continue - they can't absorb the expense and too many parents couldn't afford the costs if they were passed on in fees.
As I said earlier, it's not a continuous variable. One can't run a private school with any number of pupils, so it doesn't follow a normal supply-demand curve.
Cut the number of pupils by 10% and the whole school has to close.
Generally speaking, the economics of private schools mean a school size of 350-400, or 700-ish, or 1,000+ (for secondary schools - prep schools are different, but also have size groupings that are viable). And it is impossible in a short amount of time to switch from any one size to any other (land, facilities, etc).

Bear in mind also that the state sector knows how many pupils it will get in any area for any year, and a private school doesn't. The number of closures may skyrocket quite shortly, unless the Labour Party unequivocally dumps its current policy proposal. Neither schools nor parents can take an unlimited amount of risk in this area.
The further problem is that unequivocal means nothing in modern politics - if Labour were dumb enough to make the policy up in the first place, and as they recently stated, important enough to do on Day One of their putative new government, then any statement about suspending the policy won't fool anyone.

[Karearea]

Fascinated to read this account,

DM: Construction stops at 300-home estate after works caused a neighbouring street to collapse

...Locals living in George Street, in Huthwaite, Nottinghamshire, woke to find their gardens had sunk when vibrations from diggers working in nearby Ashland Road West caused cracks to open up in the ground. ...

I have observed that where land has not previously been built on, there is usually a reason for that...
Former farmland, former mining area, bottom of a slope, ponds, wetlands, "Quarrydale", looks like maybe a flood-plain for the River Meden, what could possibly go wrong?

edit to add: interesting history of the nearby area at

https://www.ashfield.gov.uk/media/8d83d ... n-2017.pdf

[FD2]

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[PHXPhlyer]

UK ambassador to Mexico sacked after pointing gun at colleague, FT reports

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/01/uk/uk-am ... index.html

The UK ambassador to Mexico was quietly fired earlier this year after pointing a rifle at a local embassy employee, the Financial Times reported Friday. The incident was captured in a video shared on social media.

The five-second video, published May 26 on an X account called Subdiplomatic, appears to show Jon Benjamin sitting in the front passenger seat of a vehicle, picking up a rifle, and pointing it toward a person sitting in the back. At least one person is heard laughing in the video during the episode.

CNN has reached out to Benjamin but has not received a response.

A spokesperson for the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told CNN Saturday, “We are aware of this incident and have taken appropriate action,” adding, “Where internal issues do arise the FCDO has robust HR processes to address them.”

People familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that Benjamin was reportedly fired soon after the incident occurred during an official trip to the Mexican states of Durango and Sinaloa in April.

CNN has also contacted the Mexican foreign ministry for comment but has not received a response. When asked for details, the UK embassy in Mexico deferred CNN’s questions to the British foreign office.

The UK government website indicates that Benjamin is no longer an envoy. His biography page reads: “Jon Benjamin was UK Ambassador to Mexico between 2021 and 2024” – and that position is listed under a section titled “Previous roles in government.” The site does not explain why he no longer holds that role.

Mexico - which holds presidential, national and local elections Sunday - faces rampant violent crime, with sky-high crime and homicide rates.

PP