tenebrisnox

Your analogy is only an analogy. Certainly, on issues I consider important Tories and Labour hold the same positions at the moment. For instance, many people are in utter poverty in this country. We have friends who both work and have to make decisions about whether they pay their extortionate rent or feed their kids. No one in the UK should have to put up with that.

And what do we hear from Labour? Nothing about rent comtrols, nothing about free school meals, nothing about raising the minimum wage to a genuinely living wage, nothing about taxing the excessively wealthy (or anything about redistributing wealth in fact). All we hear from Labour is that they will - like the Tories - “Grow the economy”. I’m sure you heard Rachel Reeves caught out on LBC recently by having her former words about the need to tax the wealthy.

Labour - with SIR Keir - are part of the Establishment and exist to make sure that the excessively wealthy and those with inherited wealth maintain their power and economic position.

That’s not an “optical illusion”, that’s looking at things very clearly in broad daylight. Perhaps your “moderate” postion where you can accept a country where half a million children live in destitution/extreme poverty is the vantage point that needs to be examined.

Groan. Western countries have at times used taxes on wealth to enable massive infrastructure development. Straight after WW1 and WW2 almost all Western countries introduced “profit” taxes of 80-90% and increased taxes on the wealthy. It was the only way the UK, for instance, could rebuild after the war and why we have an NHS and used to have a great welfare state.

I don’t actually believe we should tax the excessively wealthy. I think we should take what they’ve stolen over the centuries back into common democratic ownership.

Schools are also providing free meals and access to hardship funds for teachers who can’t survive on their salaries.

UK is a horror show of increasing poverty across the board.

It’s a shame that Labour can’t articulate what the differences in things like civil rights and foreign policy actually are.

Can you actually tell me a single major policy where Labour fundamentally disagrees with the Tories? (Not vague “We will just do things better” promises. Though I’ve no doubt Starmer and co will run a Tory economic policy better than the Tories.

At this point does it really matter whether the next government (or mayor) is Labour or Tory?

I can't tell them apart on any major policy. They have "stylistic" differences but there's now nothing of substance that differs.

What's left is politics of personality. And more austerity.

I’ve witnessed children forced to read three or four thin “books” in an Accelerated Reader lesson so they can be tested 3-4 times to improve their “data” / test results.

I’m HIGHLY sceptical about the quality of the data the tests produce (reading ages and some sort of AR “progress”).

The whole idea of ACCELERATING reading of books is just repulsive and wrong. Some children (and adults) get more out of a book by simply reading at their own pace and enjoying it.

Here’s a a report fron 2014 about it:

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/25/mockingbird-mice-and-men-axed-michael-gove-gcse

Here’s a a report fron 2014 about it:

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/25/mockingbird-mice-and-men-axed-michael-gove-gcse

As an ex-English teacher I can assure you that’s the case. It changed in the 2016 reforms (when, among other things grades turned into numbers). It’s the same for To Kill a Mockingbird, another much-taught US text.

Some schools use Of Mice and Men as class readers in Year 8 and 9.

It's not surprising. Reading for pleasure was phased out of schools a long time ago and replaced by "Literacy" and Accelerated Reader where kids are tested on the books they read and have to finish them as fast as they can.

We have a neo-liberal school curriculum in the UK that only sees reading as a function of employment or cultural indoctrination (in the case of the statutory requirement to teach Shakespeare and that no non-UK writers are allowed to be studied at GCSE).

Shakespeare is the ONLY author that has to be taught in schools by government directive. Everything else is at the discretion of exm boards and teachers.

Wonder if Apple are running the numbers and seeing whether pulling out the UK altogether wouldn’t lose them much money.