Keir Starmer

pirate said:
its progressive as it taxes the rich, those in the 7% who are rich enough to send their kids to private schools.
and in fact it only taxes them if the private schools choose to pass the tax increase on
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By definition it’s regressive not progressive, it makes no distinction between someone earning £40k, £100k or £1m. I believe it lacks fairness (our tax system should be fair) as only a small section of society will, on average, pay the £3k more in tax to fund state education irrespective of their income. Both a fair and progressive solution would be to raise more funds from those in the top tax band to increase state education funding. That would raise far more funds and allow the government to do it properly.

I can’t get away from it being ideologically driven gesture politics which I thought we’d had enough of! Country before party? On this evidence? Nah.
 
BobKowalski said:
Oh, I don’t know. I can see you being tempted to vote Tory out of concern of a Labour ‘supermajority’ - otherwise known as ‘a lot more seats’ - to ensure a strong opposition and in the interests of democracy.

But then I’m bit of a cynic.
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You don’t know me so that’s just made up nonsense. Like most of the shit you post in all honesty.
 
metalblue said:
You said:

The private schools wants the brightest kids, not because they want to make a difference to society. They want them because having bright kids pushes up the standards of everyone, and brings up their exam results, helping them attract more rich kids.

I assumed you meant profit.

On profit - which schools are you talking about? Private schools that aren't paying VAT are charities/non-profit

Correct. I was waiting for someone to twig they don’t make profit but put it back in to the school.

Teachers at private schools are no more or less likely to favour the private education system. No more than a doctor or nurse who works in BUPA would favour private over NHS.

Anyway why do you think having the brightest achieve their full potential is bad for the state system? What do you think more likely…that bright kids lift the class or the kids that fuck around drag the bright kids down?
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A lot make a lot of money, it’s just that they then have to deploy that into the school or elsewhere - some expand their footprint including overseas.

It’s the main thing I haven’t liked about the reporting around the private schools - the assumption that they’ll all just pass the cost on to the fee payers. They don’t have to, plenty could choose to swallow it themselves, they’ve raised prices themselves over the last decade but that hasn’t created the furore, despite pricing out far more people themselves already.

Might mean the new swimming pool might have to wait or the extension to Singapore but when we’ve got a state education sector where schools are having their real budgets cut and curriculums are narrowing, I find it a policy that’s very hard to argue against.

I agree with everything Sam Friedmans written about them.
 
meltonblue said:
A lot make a lot of money, it’s just that they then have to deploy that into the school or elsewhere - some expand their footprint including overseas.

It’s the main thing I haven’t liked about the reporting around the private schools - the assumption that they’ll all just pass the cost on to the fee payers. They don’t have to, plenty could choose to swallow it themselves, they’ve raised prices themselves over the last decade but that hasn’t created the furore, despite pricing out far more people themselves already.

Might mean the new swimming pool might have to wait or the extension to Singapore but when we’ve got a state education sector where schools are having their real budgets cut and curriculums are narrowing, I find it a policy that’s very hard to argue against.

I agree with everything Sam Friedmans written about them.
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That footprint isn’t about opening schools overseas but having campuses to attract students to the UK for education - that’s a good thing as it brings foreign money in to UK. Certainly not something to be sniffed at.

The schools themselves will certainly wear some of the 20% as they will be able to offset their existing costs which they cannot do today. They are under no obligation to apply it to fees and I imagine will look very carefully at not adding it to kids in their final year and those in 6th form. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that fees increasing over a decade versus going up by double digit % in a single hit is very different.

Regarding Sam Friedmans he also states how great state schools are and how they’d have no issue absorbing kids from private schools - that’s at odds with labour’s justification for this .. saying sometimes kids are taught math by the PE teacher so he’s either chatting shit or Starmer is. Which one is it??

Anyway it already looks like it’s been booted in to 2025 and I suspect will get forgotten about as they are talking about making SEND kids with EHCP exempt from the VAT. Good luck getting that to not be discriminatory unless you create an entirely new type of school for those kids and exempt them that way. They tried this approach of excluding certain people from thresholds with pensions and doctors and had to back track on that one- this already looks a cluster fuck likely to go the same way.
 
metalblue said:
By definition it’s regressive not progressive, it makes no distinction between someone earning £40k, £100k or £1m. I believe it lacks fairness (our tax system should be fair) as only a small section of society will, on average, pay the £3k more in tax to fund state education irrespective of their income. Both a fair and progressive solution would be to raise more funds from those in the top tax band to increase state education funding. That would raise far more funds and allow the government to do it properly.

I can’t get away from it being ideologically driven gesture politics which I thought we’d had enough of! Country before party? On this evidence? Nah.
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it does broadly differenciate on wealth

a person on 40K cant afford school fees of even the cheapest fee paying school (that's 15K per year if you are looking at Stockport Grammer for example)
a person on 60K also would struggle
a person on 80K could do it if they only have 1 child
a person on 100k could struggle to send 2 children etc etc

why is it gesture politics? its taxing the wealthy to redistribute to the rest of society.
that's basic socialist doctrine.
 
metalblue said:
You don’t know me so that’s just made up nonsense. Like most of the shit you post in all honesty.
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I know you as the man who consistently makes the wrong choice when it comes to voting day. If there is a bad option that will guarantee a bad outcome you will vote for the fucker. Every time. It’s almost a gift.
 
pirate said:
it does broadly differenciate on wealth

a person on 40K cant afford school fees of even the cheapest fee paying school (that's 15K per year if you are looking at Stockport Grammer for example)
a person on 60K also would struggle
a person on 80K could do it if they only have 1 child
a person on 100k could struggle to send 2 children etc etc

why is it gesture politics? its taxing the wealthy to redistribute to the rest of society.
that's basic socialist doctrine.
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A person can afford it on £40k if they have a partner on a similar salary. It depends what sacrifices they are prepared to make, like fucking off sky tv ;)

It’s gesture politics because it’s singling out private schools and it will barely raise £500m or so. Seriously what good is that going to do to our state system? Tax the wealthy and fix our education system properly - which I agree is underfunded.
 
BobKowalski said:
I know you as the man who consistently makes the wrong choice when it comes to voting day. If there is a bad option that will guarantee a bad outcome you will vote for the fucker. Every time. It’s almost a gift.
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I voted for Brexit due to TTIP and the impact it would have on our public services particularly the NHS. I’d vote leave tomorrow for exactly the same reasons. I will never change my mind on that.

It’s called being consistent and not being a hypocrite. You should try it sometime.
 
metalblue said:
I voted for Brexit due to TTIP and the impact it would have on our public services particularly the NHS. I’d vote leave tomorrow for exactly the same reasons. I will never change my mind on that.

It’s called being consistent and not being a hypocrite. You should try it sometime.
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As I said. Wrong choice for the wrong reasons. Every time.
 
metalblue said:
I voted for Brexit due to TTIP and the impact it would have on our public services particularly the NHS. I’d vote leave tomorrow for exactly the same reasons. I will never change my mind on that.

It’s called being consistent and not being a hypocrite. You should try it sometime.
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You’d vote leave tomorrow if we were still EU members to avoid a trade deal that was scrapped 5 years ago without ever being implemented?
Really?

Johnson would have signed up to a US trade deal in a heartbeat with much worse consequences if it had been on offer.
 
west didsblue said:
You’d vote leave tomorrow if we were still EU members to avoid a trade deal that was scrapped 5 years ago without ever being implemented?
Really?

Johnson would have signed up to a US trade deal in a heartbeat with much worse consequences if it had been on offer.
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Absolutely. TTIP talks lost traction after Brexit vote.

What US/UK trade deal was put in front of Johnson that was much worse, particularly on the main issue of investor disputes? Or are you just making stuff up?
 
metalblue said:
Absolutely. TTIP talks lost traction after Brexit vote.

What US/UK trade deal was put in front of Johnson that was much worse, particularly on the main issue of investor disputes? Or are you just making stuff up?
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No US deal was put in front of Johnson but he was on record as being desperate to sign up to one. Johnson was more keen on the optics of getting a deal done than the contents of any deal as demonstrated by the terrible Brexit deal so it’s fairly safe to say that any deal offered by the US would have been disadvantageous to us. Unfortunately for Johnson and fortunately for us, the Biden administration weren’t interested.
 
west didsblue said:
No US deal was put in front of Johnson but he was on record as being desperate to sign up to one. Johnson was more keen on the optics of getting a deal done than the contents of any deal as demonstrated by the terrible Brexit deal so it’s fairly safe to say that any deal offered by the US would have been disadvantageous to us. Unfortunately for Johnson and fortunately for us, the Biden administration weren’t interested.
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It’s worth remembering that a US / UK trade deal would have also suited Trump so he could demonstrate his free trade credentials. That said I do concur that a UK / US trade deal would certainly favour the US, we don’t carry the same punch as the EU that’s for sure and Johnson does have a bit of an ego so I can certainly see why you think the way you do - and might well have been proven right..
 
BobKowalski said:
Fortunately for Labour, the Tory Party and campaign keep feeding us headline grabbing fuck ups on an almost daily basis. This latest betting scandal will run for days, maybe even up to polling day. It has that partygate drip effect. New day, a new name in the frame. It is truly remarkable how bad they are.
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The tables will turn when Labour are in the hot seat though - there will be anger and scandals thrown at Labour all the time, especially in todays social media world where everyone can get easily whipped up into a frenzy over anything.
 
metalblue said:
A person can afford it on £40k if they have a partner on a similar salary. It depends what sacrifices they are prepared to make, like fucking off sky tv ;)

It’s gesture politics because it’s singling out private schools and it will barely raise £500m or so. Seriously what good is that going to do to our state system? Tax the wealthy and fix our education system properly - which I agree is underfunded.
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I've just dipped back into this thread and so apologies if what I'm about to say is irrelevant or already covered.

I don't know where the £500m number has come from but let's just take it on it's merit. I know at one level it's a drop in the ocean compared to our needs but another way of looking at it is this...

By my fag packet calculations £500m would fund approx 18-20k TA's fully loaded exc initial training (which is obvs an issue). There are about 16.5k primary schools in England. So in simplistic terms that equates to an additional TA in every school. Might not seem much but if I take the school I'm a governor at I know the SLT would bite your hand off. Post the damage covid did to our schools (partly nothing we could have done and partly absolutely crap strategy and execution by DfE/gov) most schools remain very challenged. The number of interventions required for pupils, whether taking to the toilet children who aren't toilet trained, through to targeted group sessions to get writing back up to standard means that any additional bandwidth to create a bit of flexibility to allow some of those interventions to take place will make a huge impact on the life chances of the kids in question. It is a drop in the ocean but it's enough to make a difference to some children and shouldn't imo be sniffed at.

For the next few years everything is going to be about the art of the possible and making every quid make a difference. I cant tell you how much time and money has been wasted in education in the last few years on ideological bollocks from the centre but we can't turn back the clock we need to move forward. I know my school is more than capable of making a few quid go a long way and whilst we wait for the great leap forward and better strategy and sustainable funding models, putting a bit in their hands would change some kids lives.
 
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