What she really wants is a good old boxer revolution, burn all the books and kill all the educated, so producing a mob she believes she can control. ReFuk light.
As someone whose degree includes philosophy and whose retirement income partly arises from making leaded glass windows I can testify that, like millions of others, I can think and make. At the same time. And yes, I can question those who would like to piss down my back and tell me it's raining. ( Thank you, Clint.) I had the benefit of an education that valued more than just the STEM subjects. I wish our children and grandchildren could say the same.
Once again spot on. When I look at the likes of Badenoch, i see full blown hypocrisy, borne out of jealousy and greed. Her parents were immigrants, ok for them but not for others in the Badenoch thinking, she studied at university and chose her subjects, god forbid that anyone else should be allowed a choice. She's fuelled by a fear that someone below what she thinks is a lowly station, might possibly one day, challenge hers. She's just a hate filled ignorant woman.
It’s the same Tory philosophy that abolished the Union Learning Fund. This had provided over 2 million people with the opportunity to learn new skills, when due to personal or family circumstances they had been unable to go onto further education. Many members in my union had learnt a variety of new skills from foreign languages, British Sign Language to photography, from Flower arranging to social history and the union negotiated with their employers so that their working hours could be rearranged to accommodate their classes. The Tories of course hated all this and removed the funding. After all, knowledge is power and who would want ordinary working people having any sort of power at all. What a despicable mindset.
I would love that BSL be taught in all schools from an early age. Why isn’t it? I did baby signing with my son, it was a thing then but has since disappeared. Why 🤷🏻♀️
I have an English degree. Scrapping this and others will have an impact. The language is a huge part of our culture, as is Gaelic, Scots, and Welsh. Not teaching English at university level will impinge on that culture. Shakespeare was more than a playwright, he helped with the shaping of the English language within this culture. A language that is evolving and expanding even as I write this.
(Off tangent somewhat.. Nowadays I feel pretty numb and dumb. Years ago, I had thought about the division of the populace into two groups: thinkers or the brain and labourers or the heart. We need both but so much goes towards the brain like in our own bodies.. More credit needs to go to the labourers. Badenoch is duplicitiously championing the labourers but wants to be an 'avaricious' or rapacious thinker/brain.)
I find it staggering really that her political policy justifies reform by devaluing disciplines like sociology, language, and history when these policies simultaneously rely on analytical frameworks derived from and populated by the very same! She is creating a self-undermining paradox.
She, and the rest of the wretched tories (including the turgid turquoise ones), don't want people to learn how to think for themselves, to think 'above their station'.
I may have fallen in love with this piece. At the very least I want to treat it to a candlelit dinner!
The last few days I have been kicking about some thoughts on Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation; thoughts which arose after spending far too long on Sunday doing all the ironing I'd been neglecting for weeks. I like to give my mind some exercise as well as the ironing muscles, usually by watching a box set on auto-continue. This weekend I chose The Prisoner (1968), and one episode caught my attention in particular, "The General" in which "The Professor" promises to deliver a university level course in just 3 minutes with a 100% success rate; ironically for Badenoch's speech, a degree in European History 1870-1914. "Speed learn" produced the appearance of universality and rigour whilst being empty of the practice of inquiry; efficient, auditable and centrally controllable, possessing all the virtues of modern KPIs alongside all the problems when the apparatus defines success. In hyperreality the appearance of education becomes indistinguishable from the reality, right up to the point a situation arises that requires a bit more than just mechanical computation and ritualised regurgitation. We must ask those questions before the system has determined which questions it will allow.
I really want to thank you for adding to and enriching my own thoughts with this piece; it has filled in a number of missing dimensions. Carpentry isn't too far from your demonstrable skills in wordwork!
Pardon me but, rather than rise to the bait, perhaps one might ask just why this view is so prevalent among the political classes.
It occurs to me that it may be a direct consequence of lobbying by groups whose profitability centres around the supply of cheap 'skilled' labour. The group who seemingly employ more ex MPS than any other - home & commercial property developers.
In any one year in the UK, some 40,000 kids leave college qualified as a plumber. The average number of kids who work in the industry is around 4000. Remember kids are these days forced into further education. The institutions these kids are trained at are only paid for kids who 'qualify'. If a kid is 'failed' then the college gets nothing.
Around the lobbies of Westminster, for the last 25-30 years property developers have beat the 'shortage of skills' drum to death which is why there continues to exist eternal funding for such training and why the 'shortage of skills' whine forms a central pillar in the justification for every increasing property prices. That 'shortage of skills' claim is true. However, what the industry fails to clarify is its context. If the industry offered a decent rate for the skill, they would be over supplied. Instead they will only off the lowest possible legal rates and when sensible people leave college, having worked for three years, they are increasingly refusing to prostitute themselves so the industry can go to westminster and w(h)ine to their friends and show them numbers which seem to validate their lies.
At the other end of the company, the marketing department are constructing masterpieces of deceit where they manipulate punters into thinking it's the 'trades' fault for not working with them to provide homes and being so greedy that they dare ask to be able to feed their families and live in a house rather than on the street. Talk about duplicitous!
Badenoch and sadly every other MP have seemingly stopped asking why? Stopped looking underneath the free tickets, retainer fees and other incentives. Many of them went to uni but far from teaching independence of thought and deed, it seems to have taught them nothing more than how to leverage old chums and to bury the stench of corruption now all pervading in the halls of Westminster.
Lastly, universities have existed for close to to a millenia. Fact is, they are today worse at turning out people of worth than they were way back when. Can anyone demonstrate to me parallel incompetence at the same or a similar scale? The natural order of things is such that one should have seen huge improvement in both output and quality of output in that time yet no. What instead undergrads are delivered, is work far more shoddy than the most dishonest of trades people and yet instead of a programme called 'Rogue Uni's' hosted by Nick Ross we choose to pillory Bill from Basildon who acts simply to survive /feed his family as he knows no better so cannot fight his corner.
Well if the tories under thatcher hadn’t got rid of apprenticeships and replaced them with YOP ( youth opportunities) schemes, there may not now be a shortage of skilled trades people.
Thatcher replaced excellent apprenticeships with these £1 an hour schemes that employers up and down the country lapped up, employed youths for 6 / 12 months, taught them next to nothing, then moved them on to put another youth in their place when the their £1 an hour time was up.
One might reasonably believe that a leader of the Conservative party has some experienced economists on her team with more than a technical science degree. The lady went on to show that she believes in the discredited trickle down economics of tax breaks. Stamp Duty is to be demolished on residential property. The property market is pure supply and demand theory in operation. Buyers pay the maximum they can afford with the finance available against valuation so the short supply means prices go up when tax is reduced. Purchase costs do not decrease and the extra gained by the seller is temporary as they will pay and borrow more for the replacement house. Every change in property law or property tax tends to be inflationary and the same applies to leaseholds, but that is another subject.
Apprenticeships are great but every skilled craftsman or executive needs unskilled labour to service their activities. With UK demographics showing a reducing population, who would have thought we might need more base level unskilled immigrants as well? Arts and humanity degrees are as important as technical subjects for our general wellbeing. My grandparents would say, "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". They had a point. Perhaps all politicians should be taught that a broader education helps think ideas through instead of blindly grabbing headlines.
In part of my working life I was involved in delivering a course training people to teach in a large organisation.
Largely open access by way of an assessment centre. We delivered the 1st year in house. 2nd year at Plymouth Uni.
We had people who had written themselves off at school. “I’m not academic”.
Strangely most having completed the course went on to do the BA. Some 1st class passes amongst them.
Badenoch is trying to put people back in their boxes.
In a world of automation, AI etc the country desperately needs more education, not less.
As the undereducated followers of Robinson demonstrated the other weekend.
What she really wants is a good old boxer revolution, burn all the books and kill all the educated, so producing a mob she believes she can control. ReFuk light.
As someone whose degree includes philosophy and whose retirement income partly arises from making leaded glass windows I can testify that, like millions of others, I can think and make. At the same time. And yes, I can question those who would like to piss down my back and tell me it's raining. ( Thank you, Clint.) I had the benefit of an education that valued more than just the STEM subjects. I wish our children and grandchildren could say the same.
Once again spot on. When I look at the likes of Badenoch, i see full blown hypocrisy, borne out of jealousy and greed. Her parents were immigrants, ok for them but not for others in the Badenoch thinking, she studied at university and chose her subjects, god forbid that anyone else should be allowed a choice. She's fuelled by a fear that someone below what she thinks is a lowly station, might possibly one day, challenge hers. She's just a hate filled ignorant woman.
It’s the same Tory philosophy that abolished the Union Learning Fund. This had provided over 2 million people with the opportunity to learn new skills, when due to personal or family circumstances they had been unable to go onto further education. Many members in my union had learnt a variety of new skills from foreign languages, British Sign Language to photography, from Flower arranging to social history and the union negotiated with their employers so that their working hours could be rearranged to accommodate their classes. The Tories of course hated all this and removed the funding. After all, knowledge is power and who would want ordinary working people having any sort of power at all. What a despicable mindset.
I would love that BSL be taught in all schools from an early age. Why isn’t it? I did baby signing with my son, it was a thing then but has since disappeared. Why 🤷🏻♀️
A bit off topic but why do people look at nice piece of wooden furniture showing the grain and think " What that needs is a coat of paint" ?
I have an English degree. Scrapping this and others will have an impact. The language is a huge part of our culture, as is Gaelic, Scots, and Welsh. Not teaching English at university level will impinge on that culture. Shakespeare was more than a playwright, he helped with the shaping of the English language within this culture. A language that is evolving and expanding even as I write this.
(Off tangent somewhat.. Nowadays I feel pretty numb and dumb. Years ago, I had thought about the division of the populace into two groups: thinkers or the brain and labourers or the heart. We need both but so much goes towards the brain like in our own bodies.. More credit needs to go to the labourers. Badenoch is duplicitiously championing the labourers but wants to be an 'avaricious' or rapacious thinker/brain.)
I find it staggering really that her political policy justifies reform by devaluing disciplines like sociology, language, and history when these policies simultaneously rely on analytical frameworks derived from and populated by the very same! She is creating a self-undermining paradox.
She, and the rest of the wretched tories (including the turgid turquoise ones), don't want people to learn how to think for themselves, to think 'above their station'.
They are a pretty poor advert for “acceptable” degrees.
I may have fallen in love with this piece. At the very least I want to treat it to a candlelit dinner!
The last few days I have been kicking about some thoughts on Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation; thoughts which arose after spending far too long on Sunday doing all the ironing I'd been neglecting for weeks. I like to give my mind some exercise as well as the ironing muscles, usually by watching a box set on auto-continue. This weekend I chose The Prisoner (1968), and one episode caught my attention in particular, "The General" in which "The Professor" promises to deliver a university level course in just 3 minutes with a 100% success rate; ironically for Badenoch's speech, a degree in European History 1870-1914. "Speed learn" produced the appearance of universality and rigour whilst being empty of the practice of inquiry; efficient, auditable and centrally controllable, possessing all the virtues of modern KPIs alongside all the problems when the apparatus defines success. In hyperreality the appearance of education becomes indistinguishable from the reality, right up to the point a situation arises that requires a bit more than just mechanical computation and ritualised regurgitation. We must ask those questions before the system has determined which questions it will allow.
I really want to thank you for adding to and enriching my own thoughts with this piece; it has filled in a number of missing dimensions. Carpentry isn't too far from your demonstrable skills in wordwork!
At least this way I know I have something other than my Kindle to read on the way home this evening.
Hairy bummed plumber here...
Pardon me but, rather than rise to the bait, perhaps one might ask just why this view is so prevalent among the political classes.
It occurs to me that it may be a direct consequence of lobbying by groups whose profitability centres around the supply of cheap 'skilled' labour. The group who seemingly employ more ex MPS than any other - home & commercial property developers.
In any one year in the UK, some 40,000 kids leave college qualified as a plumber. The average number of kids who work in the industry is around 4000. Remember kids are these days forced into further education. The institutions these kids are trained at are only paid for kids who 'qualify'. If a kid is 'failed' then the college gets nothing.
Around the lobbies of Westminster, for the last 25-30 years property developers have beat the 'shortage of skills' drum to death which is why there continues to exist eternal funding for such training and why the 'shortage of skills' whine forms a central pillar in the justification for every increasing property prices. That 'shortage of skills' claim is true. However, what the industry fails to clarify is its context. If the industry offered a decent rate for the skill, they would be over supplied. Instead they will only off the lowest possible legal rates and when sensible people leave college, having worked for three years, they are increasingly refusing to prostitute themselves so the industry can go to westminster and w(h)ine to their friends and show them numbers which seem to validate their lies.
At the other end of the company, the marketing department are constructing masterpieces of deceit where they manipulate punters into thinking it's the 'trades' fault for not working with them to provide homes and being so greedy that they dare ask to be able to feed their families and live in a house rather than on the street. Talk about duplicitous!
Badenoch and sadly every other MP have seemingly stopped asking why? Stopped looking underneath the free tickets, retainer fees and other incentives. Many of them went to uni but far from teaching independence of thought and deed, it seems to have taught them nothing more than how to leverage old chums and to bury the stench of corruption now all pervading in the halls of Westminster.
Lastly, universities have existed for close to to a millenia. Fact is, they are today worse at turning out people of worth than they were way back when. Can anyone demonstrate to me parallel incompetence at the same or a similar scale? The natural order of things is such that one should have seen huge improvement in both output and quality of output in that time yet no. What instead undergrads are delivered, is work far more shoddy than the most dishonest of trades people and yet instead of a programme called 'Rogue Uni's' hosted by Nick Ross we choose to pillory Bill from Basildon who acts simply to survive /feed his family as he knows no better so cannot fight his corner.
Well if the tories under thatcher hadn’t got rid of apprenticeships and replaced them with YOP ( youth opportunities) schemes, there may not now be a shortage of skilled trades people.
Thatcher replaced excellent apprenticeships with these £1 an hour schemes that employers up and down the country lapped up, employed youths for 6 / 12 months, taught them next to nothing, then moved them on to put another youth in their place when the their £1 an hour time was up.
CBS didn’t moan about them too much either.
Another great piece Bear, please never stop doom scrolling you whiskery old devil…
One might reasonably believe that a leader of the Conservative party has some experienced economists on her team with more than a technical science degree. The lady went on to show that she believes in the discredited trickle down economics of tax breaks. Stamp Duty is to be demolished on residential property. The property market is pure supply and demand theory in operation. Buyers pay the maximum they can afford with the finance available against valuation so the short supply means prices go up when tax is reduced. Purchase costs do not decrease and the extra gained by the seller is temporary as they will pay and borrow more for the replacement house. Every change in property law or property tax tends to be inflationary and the same applies to leaseholds, but that is another subject.
Apprenticeships are great but every skilled craftsman or executive needs unskilled labour to service their activities. With UK demographics showing a reducing population, who would have thought we might need more base level unskilled immigrants as well? Arts and humanity degrees are as important as technical subjects for our general wellbeing. My grandparents would say, "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". They had a point. Perhaps all politicians should be taught that a broader education helps think ideas through instead of blindly grabbing headlines.