Dad, husband, retired maths and computer science teacher, slave to two cats. I could, so I taught.
England
Joined March 2008
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For Christmas I got myself a Substack. Its my retirement project.
Hark, what light? open.substack.com/pub/mikerc…
I know of a school that is going through a redundancy process with a consultation period over Xmas and a significant input to the decision making will be based on a single lesson observation of all members of staff to be carried out in the New Year.
Merry Christmas everyone.
The UK electorate continue to lash around aimlessly in the dark trying to decide which political party is most likely to solve all their problems without increasing their taxes.
Recency bias looms large here.
Tomorrows front pages leave me with one nagging question:- why didn’t Rachel Reeves cure the kings cancer earlier? Why did she leave him suffering for so long?
#TomorrowsNewsTonight
#TomorrowsPapers
𝗦𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝟭𝟯 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱
𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲
𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲⬇️
puc.ie/papers604/
#TomorrowsPapersToday
Who would notice one more phoney dick in there?
🚨 NEW: Nigel Farage's former campaign staffer, who accused him of breaking electoral law, was expelled by Reform for allegedly keeping sex toys in Farage’s Clacton office
[@Telegraph]
Shock horror!
Original OBR estimates re private schools VAT changes turn out to be mostly correct, if anything an underestimate of the tax being raised.
Seen some negative comments about this. Seems a good way of prompting parents to get their kids into school and help with attendance issues, where every little helps.
And at a stroke, the BBC story is off the front pages and the airwaves are full of people saying how much they support the government.
Political journalists are so easy to play.
***What’s really going on with these No10 briefings that Keir Starmer is prepared to fight a leadership challenge?***
Here’s my best guess after a load of calls…
It seems clear tonight that Downing Street deliberately wanted out there the idea the PM will battle to keep his job
Well-informed pieces from Guardian’s @PippaCrerar, Times’s @patrickkmaguire and BBC’s @ChrisMasonBBC and @hzeffman dropped this evening carrying No10 figures / Starmer allies making that argument.
Downing Street folks have since told @Telegraph the same. One said: “Any attempt to bring political instability into a Government with a very stable majority would be economically and politically extremely unwise.”
The clear message tonight: Starmer will face down any challenge.
Some cabinet ministers - Wes Streeting in particular but also Shabana Mahmood - have had fingers of blame pointed at them from Starmer allies. Accused of being on manoeuvres.
An extraordinary night of briefing wars has followed. Streeting’s team on record has denied: “These claims are categorically untrue." Mahmood ally has called them “nonsense”.
The question then becomes… why has No10 picked this moment to elevate the idea his position is under threat?
It feels like an early attempt to smoke out any plotters and get Labour MPs rallying round Starmer before an incredibly tricky Budget (one in which he’s expected to break the manifesto by raising income tax).
Wes Streeting is on the media round tomorrow (as Downing Street figures well know). He’ll be bounced into publicly pledging loyalty to Starmer.
Starmer himself is at PMQs tomorrow. Presumably he will insist he’s not going anywhere, to cheers from Labour MPs (as usually happens for leaders in PMQs).
Perhaps the hope from No10 is to repeat the dynamic from Labour conference, when Andy Burnham publicly floated his ambitions and the party as a whole slapped him down / rallied to Starmer’s side.
This feels like an attempt to repeat, calling the bluff of other leadership pretenders to smooth the post-Budget fallout.
But there is also one resounding takeaway: That No10 even feels it needs to mount this operation shows there is at least some genuine degree of concern about Starmer’s position.
And that is why tonight has been so telling.
I wouldn’t trust politicians who are
A) this bad at maths, and
B) clearly incapable of checking what they say against reality.
Tesla have approved a $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk. That's 20 billion times more than a nurse in the UK earns.
Don't let anyone tell you immigrants or disabled people are the problem. It's the richest 1% hoarding all the wealth.
Time to tax the super-rich properly.
ALT WORTH 20 BILLION TIMES MORE THAN A NURSE? Wit image of Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw (for some reason...) REAL HOPE. REAL CHANGE. Green Party Promoted by Chris Williams on behalf of The Green Party, both at PO Box 78066, London SE16 9GQ
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
This post is mathematically and factually incorrect
1 Trillion (1,000,000,000,000) divided by 20 Billion (20,000,000,000) is 50.
Nurses in the UK on average earn between £31,000 - £47,000. Not $50.
nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/n…
This whole thread.
Children’s social care, in particular the taking of profit from those in great need, is a stain on our society.
And those taking the profit? I don’t want them in my society.
The road to peace in conflict is complex. Multiple pressures bought the sides to this place & this time. History will be able to judge who place what part.
I still maintain, for example, that the portrayal of Afrikaners as the bad guys in Lethal Weapon 2 helped end apartheid.
I’m old enough to remember when everyone thought Tom was the sensible one.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Idiot on #R4Today talking about watching 10 hours of video to catch bike thieves. Obviously never heard of a binary search.
The brutal truth is that Reform would be stupid to associate their brand with the toxicity of the Tories. That’s how bad British politics has become.
Half of Conservative Party members don’t want Kemi Badenoch to lead them into the next election
Some brutal numbers in this @SamCoatesSky report
