Levelling Up - more than a slogan or another Con con?

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Having read the document is is standard fare for a white paper, lot of initiatives will of course need legislation and even further white papers are promised, one as soon as spring. They normally role over funding, take account of recent awards like the LU funding for town centres at the end of last year, and there is reference to bringing forward changes in housing that were consulted on in 2019 and stopped by Covid, as well measures in the 2020 planning white paper with regard to developer contributions.

It does rightly point out by some measures London is a complete shit hole, high over crowding, excessive homelessness and chronic affordable housing issues. There are thriving cities in the north/midlands, but these regional city centres seem to drain the life out of their neighbours, like Leeds/Bradford, Sheffield/Rotherham, Liverpool/Knowsley, Newcastle/Sunderland, all two sides of the same coin. The paper looks to stop the disparity in growth mentioned, but I can't see it anytime soon.
 
bluethrunthru said:
Anyone just listening to 5Live will have heard a lass from Stockton on Tees who runs a marketing agency and runs a foodbank - they distribute food stuffs to charities - she was perplexed by the distribution and allocation of levelling up funds which are meant to help the most deprived areas. In Middlesbrough and Tees Valley the two highest priorities identified are Eaglescliffe and Yarm.

Anyone familiar with the area knows this is a joke - Eaglescliffe is about the 2nd most affluent area ( and oddly the home of the Stockton South MP ) and Yarm is home to current and former MFC footballers ( oh and also Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen )

Tory to the core - they take your money so their mates can benefit
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….and Janick Gers (Iron Maiden guitarist).

there is serious money in Yarm, it’s a lovely place bit too expensive me though!
 
axlgod said:
….and Janick Gers (Iron Maiden guitarist).

there is serious money in Yarm, it’s a lovely place bit too expensive me though!
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In my domestic adjusting years I did a few claims for footballers there - Matthew Bates - Pallister- Juninho and Robson to name a few - home to one of the best prep schools in the area and the highest house values - distressed area indeed - its like Wynyard up the A19 - full of millionaires on benefits
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
And that’s why it’s just a fairy tale from the current incumbents, used as a way to move the narrative on, as the timing shows.

So, in reality, and if you are prepared to use it in this way then it has no substance at all so negates the ‘good intentions’ that you suggest.

Looking at the furore over taxes and energy prices, you seem to put it down to a cultural issue when it’s far more than that. The only cultural thing that can be said is that those who are doing well can call it ‘Cultural’ whereas those, and there are many, cannot see it any other way other than ‘Surviving’.

I’m unsure if you are playing Devils Advocate or trying to reason to people as a Johnson supporter, either way, you are well worded but seem very much on the governments side. Which, I have no problems with, that’s why we have a forum for debate, but it would be nice not to hide the hand.
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Oh, I've no dog in the fight and am more interested in politics than any political party; I try to view and discuss things dispassionately.

The idea of leveling up was in the Conservative manifesto, so it was always going to appear at some juncture. One could naturally argue that the timing now is more than 'fortuitous' and is a brazen attempt to deflect from other matters; the counter to that would be that this Government has stumbled from one fiasco to the next, so whenever it arrived it was going to appear 'fortuitous'.

By cultural, I meant in relation to other European countries. England has now had a culture of low taxation for nearing half a century, but as you well know that has led to chronic underinvestment and disgusting disparities. Yet when offered an alternative in the last three elections, it flatly rejected that choice. That's what I mean by cultural; no party can succeed at the polls offering a higher taxation alternative. The question then arises as to how you finance a leveling-up project that should really cost trillions rather than billions of pounds, all at a time when you've borrowed and spent massively. The Government thinks it can achieve this through foreign and private investment, but that is likely to be far too little and spread far too thin.

All that said, the intention/idea remains honorable. I heard multiple politicians from all corners of the House today commend the intention. There isn't a politician in the House, well maybe some in the Gin-Belt, that would actually be against 'leveling up'. However, with no cash, no willingness to raise taxes, and foreign investment scarce, the likelihood of achieving anything meaningful by 2060, let alone 2030, is at best slim.
 
Gabriel said:
Oh, I've no dog in the fight and am more interested in politics than any political party; I try to view and discuss things dispassionately.

The idea of leveling up was in the Conservative manifesto, so it was always going to appear at some juncture. One could naturally argue that the timing now is more than 'fortuitous' and is a brazen attempt to deflect from other matters; the counter to that would be that this Government has stumbled from one fiasco to the next, so whenever it arrived it was going to appear 'fortuitous'.

By cultural, I meant in relation to other European countries. England has now had a culture of low taxation for nearing half a century, but as you well know that has led to chronic underinvestment and disgusting disparities. Yet when offered an alternative in the last three elections, it flatly rejected that choice. That's what I mean by cultural; no party can succeed at the polls offering a higher taxation alternative. The question then arises as to how you finance a leveling-up project that should really cost trillions rather than billions of pounds, all at a time when you've borrowed and spent massively. The Government thinks it can achieve this through foreign and private investment, but that is likely to be far too little and spread far too thin.

All that said, the intention/idea remains honorable. I heard multiple politicians from all corners of the House today commend the intention. There isn't a politician in the House, well maybe some in the Gin-Belt, that would actually be against 'leveling up'. However, with no cash, no willingness to raise taxes, and foreign investment scarce, the likelihood of achieving anything meaningful by 2060, let alone 2030, is at best slim.
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Did they commend the intention but also state that it was garbage?

As I said, mate, one chooses sides, and you have, in a subtle way.

Work tomorrow.
 
I am not going to pretend that I have read this paper, but the fact that perhaps the most loyal Johnson rag (his boss_ has laid into this morning does make interesting reading. Lets be honest the mire Johnson is this was not about policy more about lieutenant Gove stepping in to help his leader out of the mess, Its actually made things worse or more else hammered another nail in retaining those red wall seats.
 
Mike D said:
I am not going to pretend that I have read this paper, but the fact that perhaps the most loyal Johnson rag (his boss_ has laid into this morning does make interesting reading. Lets be honest the mire Johnson is this was not about policy more about lieutenant Gove stepping in to help his leader out of the mess, Its actually made things worse or more else hammered another nail in retaining those red wall seats.
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True - with the example I gave of pork barrel politics locally in the distribution of Levelling Up funds to "deprived" areas is now national news thanks to the Govemeisters cack handed operation - God they are all so shit at politics aren't they?
 
Gabriel said:
An interesting comparison with the 'leveling up' can be found in the area of schooling. Labour argues that private schools' charity status should be abolished, yet the Conservatives contest that it should remain and that instead, the 'poorer' schools should be leveled up. However, that presupposes that the private schools will somehow stand still and allow this to happen, which would show an ironic lack of intelligence. If the government cannot level up in one small area, how will it achieve the same across England writ large?

Sounds like lightweight thinking and lightweight funding; probably find more money written off to fraud and PPE than will be invested.
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Just to focus on private schools, what Labour propose is actually levelling down - it’s not a policy to improve the quality of the state education - to make private schools irrelevant - but just to make private education accessible by less people due to increased costs. What the Tories propose is just more of the same.

For me a real levelling up policy in this area would be to make private school fees payable ahead of tax - and therefore more obtainable to more families - along with perhaps something like a student loan but for the parents to help spread the costs again repaid ahead of tax. The state system will have smaller class sizes and better per pupil spend - which in theory would improve outcomes for those pupils as well (particularly if we also look at providing some skilled trades teaching at high school as well).

This isn’t about privatisation of education or even state education v private education, but about saying to those that can and want to afford it - do - and to those that can’t here are better state outcomes than we currently have. Now surely that is levelling up.
 
bluethrunthru said:
True - with the example I gave of pork barrel politics locally in the distribution of Levelling Up funds to "deprived" areas is now national news thanks to the Govemeisters cack handed operation - God they are all so shit at politics aren't they?
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But this is Johnson as Cummings describes him perfectly an absolute fuckwit. In the absence of the skills and grey matter to be able to do the job the smart person would surround themselves with people who could. Instead buffoon has surrounded himself with incompetent sycophants with barely 2 brain cells to rub together, The end result is that you get this a laughing stock that even the Americans are poking fun at having just booted our their own buffoon.
 
True ‘levelling up’ for Lincolnshire. As you may know Lincolnshire is just about total Nasty Party country; stick a blue rosette on a pig and it will be voted in, in fact I sometimes think they already have. This mornings local newspaper for Boston has reported that Lincolnshire has has £12m lopped off its road/transport budget. All the local councils (just about all Nasty Party) and MPs recently made representations to a transport minister but they are not hopeful of it being overturned. For people who don’t know Lincolnshire almost all roads are single carriageway even though we transport, just about, all the veg grown in the UK. Apart from the A1 which skirts the west of the county there is about 3 miles, total, of dual carriageway. I cycle most days and it is getting dangerous to do so because of the state of the roads; potholes and cracks everywhere.

Levelling up at its finest.
 
metalblue said:
Just to focus on private schools, what Labour propose is actually levelling down - it’s not a policy to improve the quality of the state education - to make private schools irrelevant - but just to make private education accessible by less people due to increased costs. What the Tories propose is just more of the same.

For me a real levelling up policy in this area would be to make private school fees payable ahead of tax - and therefore more obtainable to more families - along with perhaps something like a student loan but for the parents to help spread the costs again repaid ahead of tax. The state system will have smaller class sizes and better per pupil spend - which in theory would improve outcomes for those pupils as well (particularly if we also look at providing some skilled trades teaching at high school as well).

This isn’t about privatisation of education or even state education v private education, but about saying to those that can and want to afford it - do - and to those that can’t here are better state outcomes than we currently have. Now surely that is levelling up.
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There comes a point when a person's idealogical position and way of seeing the world becomes distorted from reality.

They are no longer wearing Royal Blue tinted sunglasses but looking through a kaleidoscope.

The above is one of them.

Where has something like that ever worked and achieved better social mobility?
 
Corky said:
Having read the document is is standard fare for a white paper, lot of initiatives will of course need legislation and even further white papers are promised, one as soon as spring. They normally role over funding, take account of recent awards like the LU funding for town centres at the end of last year, and there is reference to bringing forward changes in housing that were consulted on in 2019 and stopped by Covid, as well measures in the 2020 planning white paper with regard to developer contributions.

It does rightly point out by some measures London is a complete shit hole, high over crowding, excessive homelessness and chronic affordable housing issues. There are thriving cities in the north/midlands, but these regional city centres seem to drain the life out of their neighbours, like Leeds/Bradford, Sheffield/Rotherham, Liverpool/Knowsley, Newcastle/Sunderland, all two sides of the same coin. The paper looks to stop the disparity in growth mentioned, but I can't see it anytime soon.
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Just a linguistic thing but "disparity" now seems (in health outcomes and elsewhere) to be the government's preference rather than "inequality"...
 
Fode N The Hole said:
There comes a point when a person's idealogical position and way of seeing the world becomes distorted from reality.

They are no longer wearing Royal Blue tinted sunglasses but looking through a kaleidoscope.

The above is one of them.

Where has something like that ever worked and achieved better social mobility?
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So I’ve crunched some numbers and derived a policy of sorts.

Average salary is £25k. Let’s assume both parents work. So under out current system that family brings home about £3,400 a month. If we let them pay for private education ahead of tax that drops to around £2,700. £700 a month worse off, yeah I get that won’t work for many families - it will for some. So let’s also chuck in housing rent/mortgages as being payable ahead of tax - average is about £1,350 according to Google and that gets us to take home to about £2k a month but now they’ve also covered the mortgage/rent and are pretty much as they were before with take home of £3,400 and rent/mortgage still to pay. You can make the tax system progressive and remove the ability to offset 100% of school and housing costs as you move up the income ladder to the point those with the biggest shoulders get nothing.

So there you have it, two parents earning average pay, with 1 kid, can opt for private education and that should give you social mobility.

I’m sure someone will think but what if they have more than 1 kid and so on and so forth which I get but we can’t reach complete fairness and we aren’t trying to abolish state schools and by reducing class sizes the quality of their education ought to naturally improve as well. We will have a better educated population, improving social mobility, and we can do it relatively simply via tax policy.

I compel this statement to the house.
 
metalblue said:
So I’ve crunched some numbers and derived a policy of sorts.

Average salary is £25k. Let’s assume both parents work. So under out current system that family brings home about £3,400 a month. If we let them pay for private education ahead of tax that drops to around £2,700. £700 a month worse off, yeah I get that won’t work for many families - it will for some. So let’s also chuck in housing rent/mortgages as being payable ahead of tax - average is about £1,350 according to Google and that gets us to take home to about £2k a month but now they’ve also covered the mortgage/rent and are pretty much as they were before with take home of £3,400 and rent/mortgage still to pay. You can make the tax system progressive and remove the ability to offset 100% of school and housing costs as you move up the income ladder to the point those with the biggest shoulders get nothing.

So there you have it, two parents earning average pay, with 1 kid, can opt for private education and that should give you social mobility.

I’m sure someone will think but what if they have more than 1 kid and so on and so forth which I get but we can’t reach complete fairness and we aren’t trying to abolish state schools and by reducing class sizes the quality of their education ought to naturally improve as well. We will have a better educated population, improving social mobility, and we can do it relatively simply via tax policy.

I compel this statement to the house.
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Nice attempt mate but this is as realistic as Rascal's ideas about labour theory of value.

If you implement a policy like that you delegitimise the tax system even further by introducing a culture of opt-outs.

It would also undermine the value of good public services by encouraging and advocating people to use private provision.

What you have failed to grasp is that private school provision exists to reduce social mobility. Wealthy parents can maintain the social status of their children by buying a place at these schools.




Do you want another go at finding a real life example of something similar to your proposal?
 
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Vic said:
Just a linguistic thing but "disparity" now seems (in health outcomes and elsewhere) to be the government's preference rather than "inequality"...
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Disparity/inequity in health and inequality/inequity in economics. Just (mis)use disparity in all circumstances as it's the one that sounds least offensive to the electorate...
 
metalblue said:
Just to focus on private schools, what Labour propose is actually levelling down - it’s not a policy to improve the quality of the state education - to make private schools irrelevant - but just to make private education accessible by less people due to increased costs. What the Tories propose is just more of the same.

For me a real levelling up policy in this area would be to make private school fees payable ahead of tax - and therefore more obtainable to more families - along with perhaps something like a student loan but for the parents to help spread the costs again repaid ahead of tax. The state system will have smaller class sizes and better per pupil spend - which in theory would improve outcomes for those pupils as well (particularly if we also look at providing some skilled trades teaching at high school as well).

This isn’t about privatisation of education or even state education v private education, but about saying to those that can and want to afford it - do - and to those that can’t here are better state outcomes than we currently have. Now surely that is levelling up.
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Unfortunately supply and demand also come into this and good private schools are generally oversubscribed, many with waiting lists. So in reality what it would mean is that the best would just increase their prices making them inaccessible to people on normal salaries and you would end up with a second tier of not so good private schools just giving the impression that they are better than your ordinary comprehensive school but in reality are aren't.
Grammar schools based on ability are actually more progressive in my books, particular if there is no backdoor for those with money.
 
metalblue said:
Just to focus on private schools, what Labour propose is actually levelling down - it’s not a policy to improve the quality of the state education - to make private schools irrelevant - but just to make private education accessible by less people due to increased costs. What the Tories propose is just more of the same.

For me a real levelling up policy in this area would be to make private school fees payable ahead of tax - and therefore more obtainable to more families - along with perhaps something like a student loan but for the parents to help spread the costs again repaid ahead of tax. The state system will have smaller class sizes and better per pupil spend - which in theory would improve outcomes for those pupils as well (particularly if we also look at providing some skilled trades teaching at high school as well).

This isn’t about privatisation of education or even state education v private education, but about saying to those that can and want to afford it - do - and to those that can’t here are better state outcomes than we currently have. Now surely that is levelling up.
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Wouldn't mind private schools if they played on a level playing field. That would mean losing their charitable status and paying the right level of tax and losing the ability to provide pupils with 'softer' examinations such as International GCSEs and A Levels.

Your proposal would mean that anyone could go to a Private school ..... and theres no way the Tories will allow the ''great unwashed'' to do that.
 
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