The 7th rebrand in 18 months - is this one any better?

They may have been doing it for some time. The child may be coming up to A levels next year. That’s not being dumb, it’s being able to afford something today the price of which shoots up by 20% tomorrow. Being unable to find an extra 20% is far from having a small margin of financial flexibility.

Imagine being so dumb that you send your child to private school with such a small margin of financial flexibility in your budget, in a cost of living crisis, post Brexit and post Covid and think you will ‘get away with it’ because we have a Tory Government though, how naive are parents who do that? This isn’t a new policy for Labour, and you didn’t need a huge brain to work out that they will get back into power after 14 years?

Perhaps some should try putting themselves in the shoes of the children who will have to leave their school and their friends simply because Labour has added VAT to the fees their parents were, by making sacrifices, managing to afford. Talk about rubbing the children’s faces in the fact that their parents are not as well off as their friends’ parents. Imagine also being the parent who has to tell their child they can no longer afford to pay the school fees. And imagine the bullying from the other children in their new state school, because children are cruel and will always pick on someone who they perceive to be different. All because Labour doesn’t like independent education and will do all in their power to crush it.

LizzieDrip

God forbid that we should promote a system of equality rather than one based on parental income and privilege😱

👏👏👏👏👏👏

Katie590

The private school issue isn’t about finance it’s about idealism because more state school places will be needed for those that drop out of private schools, increase in tax collected will be a lot less than they think

That aside I’m am expecting that the parents that send children to private school will find a way of avoiding VAT

Completely agree with all you’ve stated here.

There will still be choice.

God forbid that we should promote a system of choice, either!

God forbid that we should promote a system of equality rather than one based on parental income and privilege😱

LizzieDrip
What a nasty spiteful remark! Incidentally, not everyone else necessarily goes to a state school and nor will they if Starmer goes ahead with this policy. The ones who end up in a state school will be those from lower income families who can no longer afford the fees. Still, it’ll prevent them getting areas above their station, I suppose.

Pot and kettle come to mind GSM!

LizzieDrip

^The ones who suffer are the children who have to leave their school, because their parents have scrimped and saved as much as they can but can’t afford any more - but Labour doesn’t give a damn about them or their humiliation^

They’ll just have to go to the state school like everybody else!

Such compassion.

Amalegra

The Tories can’t even police our streets properly. They can’t control the outpourings of hate being levelled towards our Jewish citizens. They can’t stop those who openly advocate for Hamas and other terrorist groups. Even ‘Our’ BBC, our ‘National Broadcaster’, can’t be directed to call a spade a spade! ‘Our’ NHS (which according to Jeremy Hunt makes us proud to be British!) can’t be told to sack those who seek to harass whistleblowers. All these egregious wrongs should be within the remit of a strong government to control. To ask them to actually defend this country is expecting far too much! But I wonder if Starmer and his motley crew will be any better?

We can only hope!

Casdon

Camille333

Labour will stop Rwanda altogether,their alternative is talk to Europe!!!

Their alternative is to work with Europe. There is no other way.

We have been working with Europe and of course we are part of Europe, that didn’t end when we left the EU.
Nothing so far works.

The ones who suffer are the children who have to leave their school, because their parents have scrimped and saved as much as they can but can’t afford any more - but Labour doesn’t give a damn about them or their humiliation

They’ll just have to go to the state school like everybody else!

I have one DIL with 4 children at school who dodges the private school issue completely, they all go to the local school and she pays for private tuition.
So the kids get the best of both worlds, parents that care about doing the best for their children are always going to find ways of helping them, despite a poor state system.
They couldn’t care less about idealism

Some may be able to afford the extra 20%, others not. The ones who suffer are the children who have to leave their school, because their parents have scrimped and saved as much as they can but can’t afford any more - but Labour doesn’t give a damn about them or their humiliation.

That aside I’m am expecting that the parents that send children to private school will find a way of avoiding VAT

Very socially minded of them … wouldn’t expect anything else!

The private school issue isn’t about finance it’s about idealism because more state school places will be needed for those that drop out of private schools, increase in tax collected will be a lot less than they think

That aside I’m am expecting that the parents that send children to private school will find a way of avoiding VAT

MaizieD

Well, oh cynical one, let's not forget that, despite these changes, some of these governments managed to do excellent things.

Opinions might differ as to what was, and what wasn't, excellent, but implying that all we get is bad results is tediously negative...

Reading post after post saying well its all hopeless forget it - good has been done, can be done, changes can be made. they wmay be very small, but giving up isnt an option either - it just hands power over to a smaller and smaller number of people (who we then castigate for being "unrepresented")

Well, oh cynical one, let's not forget that, despite these changes, some of these governments managed to do excellent things.

Opinions might differ as to what was, and what wasn't, excellent, but implying that all we get is bad results is tediously negative...

Presently 6 pages of comments, most fed up with the Tories sinking into a self-administered quicksand, and rightly so. Any party whose members actually selected the serial incompetent and charisma-free zone called Liz Truss to be PM deserves a spell on the naughty step.

BUT --- let NOBODY have any great faith in what follows. We've seen this before, Tories gradually fall apart, the voters boot them out, Labour get in, big burst of enthusiasm, then sooner or later the voters decide THEY TOO are incompetent, and/or too interested in party and self to put us first, and the next set of Tories gets ushered in the Westminster revolving door.

Attlee didn't last that long (one and a bit terms), Wilson & Callaghan were such a hit with their union supporters that a couple of million of them voted with their wallets for the wretched Thatcher, and the lovely Bliar gave us those 2 pointless wars that have blighted the Middle East (& in follow-on terrorist activity, much of Europe) ever since. I'd suggest his role as Special UN Envoy to the Middle-east didn't pan out that well, though he did resign well before the present chaos.

So, depressing as it may be, don't get your hopes up?!!

There's no guarantee a change of Government will make things any better. We have to hope, because the current lot are making things worse all the time. I wont hold my breath though.

Freya5

undines

It seems to me that the Conservatives are cornered rats and thus dangerous to people in this country who need to be cared for by the State. I think they will 'please' their committed section of the electorate by draconian policies that will hurt certain vulnerable members of the public - and not only do I believe they do not care, I think they actively want those people to go off and die - which they will, either fairly quickly, through malnutrition, or more slowly through debilitating depression, leading to chronic disease etc. There is too much talk of 'benefit cheats' which is the usual rallying cry of committed Tories. I am not bothered about these 'cheats' nearly as much as I am about the many millions cost to the tax-payer by misbehaving bankers. I have a personal stake in this as my youngest son is autistic and unable to work, even though he seems very fit - I can see a case being made to take away his benefit, which will put even more pressure on me, at 73, and still working full time. So, to answer the question, the rebranding, depending on its nature (which I know nothing of) could work a little bit, if it further consolidates the usual hard-liners. I doubt if Labour will be any better, anyway. I don't get the impression that kindness and care for the vulnerable are high on the public agenda anywhere - but then that is just 'my impression'.

I think you've been reading, and swallowing, too many conspiracy theories from the Morning Star.

I suspect that undines, in common with most of our age group, don't include The Morning Star in their media selection and, if we ever did, stopped reading it decades ago.

Her view of the current party in power may not be mine, but it's no more conspiratorial than the frequent accusations made against the current Labour party.

The Tories are under threat of losing their seats, and they most certainly are casting around for votes, and both they and those with vested interests will quite naturally try to disparage those with the least representation - those on benefits either through sickness or disability, or through unemployment... because they are a constant in the right-wing media, wheeled out whenever the public appears to be dithering about the future economic welfare of the country.

In the same way that others immediately latch onto bankers' bonuses and the rich 'not paying their taxes', etc.

The reality of course is a lot more complex. There are benefit scroungers and there are those who, quite legally, can avoid paying their taxes. But this is down to the economic system of Capitalism and the way it functions. As much as it can lift people out of poverty, it can also condemn them to it. Neither is a conspiracy, it's how it works.

Faierynan, presumably the Labour your Father spoke of spent 'all the money' on social projects. What have these Tories in power now spent the money on?

Freya5, you don't rate the Morning Star newspaper as a reliable source. Is there a 'British' newspaper that you would recommend to us as being unbiased and truthful?