Sunak asks a homeless man if he works in business

DaisyAnne

I wonder why you think I don't know this. Do you think you must be right simply because have a more extreme answer to the challenges?

My answer was simply that the wealthy tax-avoiders pay their tax. If you think that is extreme, then I don't know what to say.

Getting yourself in a pickle over it will not solve it.

I'm not in a pickle DaisyAnne, I'm despondent, and I'm angry - angry that Tory governments, which are the interface between the wealthy elite and the rest of us have for years deliberately neglected and underfunded the public services that the majority rely on, to the point they are collapsing - all of them, the police, social care, the NHS, mental-health care, while the rich simply get richer and the poor get poorer. But I'm not advocating hunting them down with pitchforks and burning torches... I just want them to pay-back to the society that has enabled their wealth and their prosperity.

You must know that not all those who are wealthier are as you describe. Just as not all those with less are angels in disguise. Sadly, the extremist will deny any grey area.

Yes, I'm sure - in fact I know - that some very rich people are happy to pay their tax... some have come out and publicly said so, but they are very much a minority. The fact remains that a small percentage of the population own most of the wealth. Wealth accumulates wealth, it is handed down through the generations - they didn't acquire it through working 12-hour shifts in the NHS.

I'm tired. I'll leave it there.

Wyllow3

Finland: it's through income tax.

this 2022 article focuses on special needs and in doing so also describes the system as a whole.

www.heischools.com/blog/finlands-approach-to-special-needs-inclusion

Although Finland has a wonderful approach to the value of education to the individual and the country I don't think we would be able to transpose it intact to the UK.

I can already imagine the comments on GN when it was discovered that children will not start school until they are seven. Then there are those who will blanch at no testing at all for the first six years of education (they trust the teachers). I can hear the outcry now. I hope I'm wrong but I can't see the Daily Mail and it's readers going along with this, sadly.

Dickens

DaisyAnne

There does seem to be a lot of envy on this thread...

Do you really think this is what it's all about?

Do you know what the real problem is? People in poverty, poor people, people on low wages... they ask for a lot, they want a lot more. But the greedy, those very very wealthy elite whose whole existence is in pursuit of ever more wealth... they don't want a lot, they want it all.

Nobody envies them, or their wealth - most on here would not feel comfortable having so much wealth whilst a huge percentage of the world's population are going without the basics of life, we simply want them to pay the taxes that many, if not most, seem able to avoid - not evade, it's all legal, but avoid. They metaphorically rape the world's resources and the people who work to provide them in usable form, because sheer greed can never be satisfied, never sated.

That's the reality.

I wonder why you think I don't know this. Do you think you must be right simply because have a more extreme answer to the challenges?

Getting yourself in a pickle over it will not solve it. Being extreme will not solve it. You must know that not all those who are wealthier are as you describe. Just as not all those with less are angels in disguise. Sadly, the extremist will deny any grey area.

The envy I spoke about comes from those who will not accept that if you want to improve state education, you have to be pragmatic. Labour already has plans to impose VAT on the private payment for education. This plan is popular with voters. Labour needs the less extreme voter as much as it needs those who would insist only the state provides services such as education. Putting the VAT money into the state system and improving that will bring a natural drift from Independent to State. It happens all the time and this will increase it.

It's appalling that wealth inequality has grown so much wider. It's also appalling that it will probably take a generation to improve our education and our Health Service. However, you need people to plan to turn it round, not shout and scream, no matter how much anyone may feel like it.

Blame me for not being you if that makes you feel better. I'll continue to help those I can and use my single vote when the time comes, but if "us" are the group I can see on here, jumping up and down as if they can achieve something by rudeness and loud voices, making themselves the object of their own posts because they believe that equates to being heard then no I will never be an "us" but yes, I think I know just as well as you do what it is all about.

It’s all inadequate. It was back in the time of EPAs, and that was only given to the poorest schools. It didn’t make parents any keener to send their children there.
We’ve already established that the government needs to do more-what I was hoping to hear was a) clarification from posters who mention other countries about what and how it is organised and
b) how those who keep reiterating the fact that schools should be better funded, (I don’t dispute that), propose to make all schools/parents opportunities equal.

One of the things which was making a huge difference to the lives of many children from deprived backgrounds was the Sure Start programme. Which was of course destroyed by the Tories.

As for the Pupil Premium it is inadequate.
This government has made more cuts to education than at any time since WW2. And the more deprived areas have suffered the most. The level of spending in 2024 will be the same as 2010. www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/tory-education-cuts-worst-since-second-world-war-303094/

Special needs inclusion has been important in the UK for some time.
Fleurpepper mentioned countries and how they identify the families in need of help with education and how the funds are allocated.
Thanks for the mention of tax. Who is taxed to provided the funding for the families/schools in need of help for education?

Finland: it's through income tax.

this 2022 article focuses on special needs and in doing so also describes the system as a whole.

www.heischools.com/blog/finlands-approach-to-special-needs-inclusion

Fleurpepper I never suggested it was anything to do with communism.
Schools do receive extra help, extra funding once supplied to schools in EPA, now known as pupil premium, regardless of where children live. But to which countries are you referring when you mention,
some countries choose to support all schools, and give even more support to those with children who have less support and chances due to their home/parents/background, etc.
I’d be really interested to hear which countries do that, how they decide which schools need it, how they allocate the funding and how it is funded -taxation or other means.

I agree, Dickens.

I'm sure envy cones into it as individuals - but in our rapacious consumer world, that is inevitable. Politically, socially, however, it is a matter of social justice. I don't detect envy in the posters here, but a desire for that justice.

A roof over ones head, enough food, enough resources to be free enough of fear of old age and ill health, are not luxuries in any society we would wish to be part of.

DaisyAnne

There does seem to be a lot of envy on this thread...

Do you really think this is what it's all about?

Do you know what the real problem is? People in poverty, poor people, people on low wages... they ask for a lot, they want a lot more. But the greedy, those very very wealthy elite whose whole existence is in pursuit of ever more wealth... they don't want a lot, they want it all.

Nobody envies them, or their wealth - most on here would not feel comfortable having so much wealth whilst a huge percentage of the world's population are going without the basics of life, we simply want them to pay the taxes that many, if not most, seem able to avoid - not evade, it's all legal, but avoid. They metaphorically rape the world's resources and the people who work to provide them in usable form, because sheer greed can never be satisfied, never sated.

That's the reality.

And it is, whatever anyone says

a POLITICAL choice

Have you really just quoted your own post so you could reply about yourself?

Yes.

volver

^I'd tell you but someone would call me a communist...^

Or say I was suffering from envy....

Have you really just quoted your own post so you could reply about yourself?

No one, as far as I am aware, has called anyone a communist. Nor, again as far as I am aware, has anyone said you are suffering from envy. Although maybe, as you seem intent on being the centre of this conversation, you have said it of yourself so you can come back and complain who knows!

Which is just nonsense. It is very possible to have gone to private school, have children and GCs at private school- NOT be envious- AND say that it should not be this way.

Mollygo- some countries choose to support all schools, and give even more support to those with children who have less support and chances due to their home/parents/background, etc. There are two main reasons for this a) because it makes total sense and helps to redress balance. And b) because if they don't, they know that the cost, long term, for the whole of the country and society, is MASSIVE, in 1000s of ways, and actually cost so so much more. And those countries are NOT communist, at all.

I'd tell you but someone would call me a communist...

Or say I was suffering from envy....

Fleurpepper

Glorianny

Did you know volver that the children of army families are still entitled to have a boarding school education for which their parents only pay 10% of the fees? This is because it is assumed the parents are still mobile. One family I know of moved once during the father's army career, but all 4 children went to boarding school.

And the relevance to this thread?

Those boarding schools are linked to very normal State Schools btw, not 'private' schools.

Threads meander. but my goodness this has gone totally off piste. Back to Sunak and his comment- perhaps?

Obviously it is considered relevant because Glorianny knows exactly what it can be like as a child in a forces family.

There does seem to be a lot of envy on this thread now so I doubt you will turn it back round. Perhaps everything was said about Sunak's PR stunt.

What would you do if you were in government?

I'd tell you but someone would call me a communist...

Fleurpepper is right, this has wondered way off topic. Its almost as if there is a correlation between having a hereditary, privileged Head of State and an education system that depends on how much money you have.

*Daisy-Anne a while back you suggest that actual communism is close to some current socialist values.

I was brought up in a Communist family and studied History and Economics at Uni so I have a pretty fair idea of what it means. But any reply would part resemble a theory essay, and I'm inclined to ask, as MaizieD, what you think communism is, as it is very different from democratic socialism. (which is where I am now and have been since Uni))

Fleurpepper

Mollygro- where you/I/we would send our children is not the issue. The issue is about all children- NO child should have to go to school C- NONE- zero. And this IS a political choice/decision, which has nothing to do with communism.

Flurpeper
No child should have to go to school C, so how would you prevent it?
One way could be to pump more money into C schools. They used to do that in EPA’s but it didn’t make the schools any more attractive to parents who didn’t have to send their children there. It didn’t make the parents any more able to provide their children with extras that other children had. Pupil Premium has helped to boost funding but it doesn’t change the school.
What would you do if you were in government?
Maybe make sure that all parents earn the same amount of money as those in A and B schools. That would certainly have an impact.
How would you do that if you were in the government?
I’m not supporting this government but I’d love to know how people think the problem of parents choosing where to send their children and making schools ‘equal’ could be solved, rather than just saying, It’s wrong.

Fleurpepper

Glorianny

Did you know volver that the children of army families are still entitled to have a boarding school education for which their parents only pay 10% of the fees? This is because it is assumed the parents are still mobile. One family I know of moved once during the father's army career, but all 4 children went to boarding school.

And the relevance to this thread?

Those boarding schools are linked to very normal State Schools btw, not 'private' schools.

Threads meander. but my goodness this has gone totally off piste. Back to Sunak and his comment- perhaps?

Actually some of those schools provide specialist help for things like dyslexia. But really even if they only provide standard education why should armed forces personnel who may or may not move during their career have subsidised education, when others who may also have careers which require them to move regularly just have to manage?

Glorianny

Did you know volver that the children of army families are still entitled to have a boarding school education for which their parents only pay 10% of the fees? This is because it is assumed the parents are still mobile. One family I know of moved once during the father's army career, but all 4 children went to boarding school.

And the relevance to this thread?

Those boarding schools are linked to very normal State Schools btw, not 'private' schools.

Threads meander. but my goodness this has gone totally off piste. Back to Sunak and his comment- perhaps?

Glorianny

The perception that an academic education is why people pay for private schools is just wrong. Many rich people realise that their child will not prosper in the state system and has special needs. They then choose a school where the academic record may not be brilliant but their child will receive the extra help they need and where she will be taught in small groups or as an individual. Meantime of course state schools struggle with large classes and inadequate staffing.

That's an interesting perspective Glorianny. The much vaunted (including by me) Finnish system expects schools to be responsible for all different needs and styles. So no withdrawal of funds after x number of weeks.

Of course, like so many things, dealing with challenges early and for as long as needed means the child gets the best opportunity to thrive educationally.

Did you know volver that the children of army families are still entitled to have a boarding school education for which their parents only pay 10% of the fees? This is because it is assumed the parents are still mobile. One family I know of moved once during the father's army career, but all 4 children went to boarding school.

Luck?

Yes, I'm being sarcastic.

People with good educations understand the Normal Distribution Curve.

You don’t know the whole story.