DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

You wouldn't see Arry Redknapp working under no administrator iss not nachooroll

That's cos an administrator might query the expenses claims, amirite?

Also the idea that the best state schools will immediately be able to become academies, therefore pay more to attract the best teachers, will only make the playing field even less level than it is already. And that's without bringing in the question of who will provide additional funding to the academy and what agenda they might want to impose in return.

This is what we're ushering in? http://www.tes.co.uk/jobDetailsGold_schoolInfo.aspx?ac=2808541

Labour introduced a lot of "thin end of the wedge" private sector involvement over its second and third terms, it should have been screamingly obvious to them that it would make it easy for the Tories to accelerate it when they got back in. That said, not sure how much daylight there is between the Blairites and the Tories on this issue.

Half a slice of fuck all iirc

New Labour policy always seemed to be "let's make every school a grammar school and everybody can be middle class via the magic of education" which is dumbass on any number of levels.

corporate is corporate is corporate - rosette colour appears not to matter in the service of capitalism.

I'm trying to find stuff about schools run by corporations through history, having some vague idea that some philanthropic industrialist of the Victorian era must *surely* have set one up, but it seems even Cadbury's didn't build schools - the job was taken on by the "independent" Bournville Village Trust. 21st Century = naked capitalism, argh.

The Church qualify?

You leave Steve Kilby out of this.

New Lanark was mill/school/village all in one iirc.

I'm trying to find stuff about schools run by corporations through history, having some vague idea that some philanthropic industrialist of the Victorian era must *surely* have set one up, but it seems even Cadbury's didn't build schools - the job was taken on by the "independent" Bournville Village Trust. 21st Century = naked capitalism, argh.

― Also unknown as Zora (Surfing At Work), Wednesday, 26 May 2010 11:24 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah this is just because anyone running a school is going to set up a charitable trust for the tax breaks.

I'm pretty sure Crittall ran a school at Silver End.

yeah this is just because anyone running a school is going to set up a charitable trust for the tax breaks.

A fair point indeed.

The Church has to qualify but is it a special case? Can the Church be framed as a capitalist organisation in toto or does capitalism simple emerge from it in an opportunistic fashion? Suspect that might need its own thread, and I am not the gal to start a thread about religion. I've been burned before.

Looking up New Lanark - wondering if any examples in history or abroad (like that Shell link or the hotel chains forced to build schools on Malivian islands) can serve as precedents for how it might play out here.

Titus Salt definitely had one at Saltaire. What about Port Sunlight? There's a school there but I don't know if that was run by Lever Brothers. Interesting stuff.

It's interesting as history but I don't think Victorian philanthropists have anything to tell us about how a 21st Century school-for-profit is gonna work.

Answer: probly not much differently tbh. Faith schools are already slightly wackily different to their LEA brethren.

yeah it's a p different scenario

i don't think there was any state funding for education at all in the times we're talking about here

I have a dim recollection of some factory owner starting up a New Lanark style community, and in their school there was a cage where 'bad' kids got put, and hoisted up to the ceiling. Can't remember where it was though.

Church/Sunday schools were the only alternative to fee-paying schools until well into the 19th century. At some point during the second half of the 1800s state-funded education did happen for v. small kids iirc.

xpost

The cage was allegedly a popular Victorian punishment if my primary school teachers were telling the truth.

Sounds like my old grammer school.

showing ur age imo

At some point during the second half of the 1800s state-funded education did happen for v. small kids iirc.

yeah, but i think it was locally funded. the state only mandated education from 1870 iirc. when central government got involved in determining things, funding, etc, idk.

this is bad because it will probably 'create' a multiple-tier system. and LEAs are quite capable of doing that themselves thankyouverymuch.

x-posts re: cage - Ah, maybe it was more general then. (I did an Education module or 2 at uni, which was a lot of history, but I can't remember much. I guess schools for the blind etc. might have been funded from outside the church, but it seems something that would have been left to religious institutions)

For 'simple' read 'simply' and for 'Malivian' read 'Maldivian'. More haste, more typos.

Yah I get that it's p. diff. but I think the diffs are as interesting as any similarities, re. attitudes to corps vs. govts w/r/t control of education / social engagement in general.

x-posts

Guild schools: Merchant Taylor's, Haberdashers' Aske's etc etc. all 17th century.

attitudes to corps vs. govts w/r/t control of education / social engagement in general.

corporations VERSUS governments? i don't think you're getting it

This is bad because power shifts from dodgy locally accountable LEA to dodgy centralised HM Gov once again. Gove totally pretending this wasn't the case on the Beeb this morning, but it's bullshit. Paymaster calls tune, ultimately, plus where the money comes from doesn't mean too much as long as the current national curriculum/inspection system stays as it is.

Lever Bros/Cadburys/et al was as much about stopping Bolshevism as giving their workers a decent house. I can just imagine Cameron wandering about Bournville and looking at the pretty houses and thinking "Oh, why can't all of England be like this?" It's his Big Society with added temperance for the proles. Or something. tbh the more stuff they come out with the more confused I get.

Menawhile in the Commons Osbourne hasn't turned up for questions leaving Laws to answer questions about cuts, as was completely predictable. Come to think of it I can hardly remember Osbourne ever saying anything in the House, although he must have done.

corporations VERSUS governments? i don't think you're getting it

"People's attitudes to corporations" versus "people's attitudes to governments"

Ned that's exactly what I was thinking. Does d-cam really beleive that the free market will produce results in keeping with his ideas of social cohesion via modern capitalist mechanisms? Is he willing to try it because of some lingering fondness for the way red-brick corporations were once seen as indivisable from place and community? Which would be kind of naive for someone so allegedly big-up on political history.

x-post

I have no idea what Cameron really thinks. He seems to be terribly good at talking though.

Sounds like my old grammer school.

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname)

Did you see what I did there? A damning indictment imo.

Lever Bros/Cadburys/et al was as much about stopping Bolshevism as giving their workers a decent house. I can just imagine Cameron wandering about Bournville and looking at the pretty houses and thinking "Oh, why can't all of England be like this?" It's his Big Society with added temperance for the proles. Or something. tbh the more stuff they come out with the more confused I get.

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Wednesday, 26 May 2010 06:11 (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Liberalism

I don't think the people in this government have worked out what its supposed to stand for yet, let alone anyone else. Except for slashing public spending, they seem pretty set on that.

Still don't believe for 1 minute that Cameron is a 1 Nation Tory or any kind of Liberal other than economic. Don't understand where this impression of him might come from.

^OTM but he is up and down, through and through an economic liberal.

whoops, sent too soon

OTM but he is up and down, through and through an economic liberal and from this come a lot of social program. Saltaire and Port Sunlight are as much about productivity as they are about philanthropy, possibly more so. It's all about pure fordism, keep the proles happy and productive and they make more money for the bosses and don't gripe. Call it enlightened self interest but it is all about the money.

but

I got there eventually

ed, no disrespect, but you have no idea about/consistency in what you're talking about

it was the liberal party that pushed for universal state-provided education, consistently

Fordism is only one possible version of economic Liberalism tho and I don't think it applies so easily in our exciting post-manufacturing economy. Cameron seems much more of a Thatcherite/Monetarist and both those schools are too busy misreading Adam Smith to worry much about keeping a replaceable workforce content.

Private sector unprivatised Fordism back to the Govt in the guise of mass education for vocation, really.

cadbury's were quakers iirc -- i dunno what people are trying to argue, though, really. basically that victorian capitalism was bad and instead we should have had ________________? super

profit

Yeah they were Quakers. I lolled a little when somebody upthread said the ConDems are Victorian Liberalism plus Temperance I mean JEEZ.

Keeping a contented, productive workforce is only really an issue if you need to hang onto your workers. I don't see any valid points of comparison between 19th century and 21st century UK. Even Marx's critiques have been undone a lot by the fact that Capitalism didn't quite play out how he guessed.

xpost to history mayne - not sure it's an either Victorian capitalism or ... tho is it? (ignoring the counterfactual aspects). It's more a case of Victorian capitalism, plus a helluva lot more controls, checks and legislative protection for the unprotected ie not laissez faire (as indeed, through a mixture of evangelical concern, market necessity, social pressure in various forms, began, in a haphazard way, to happen, if I remember my history correctly)

ConDems are Victorian Liberalism plus Temperance I mean JEEZ.

I think that's you misreading me (or my poor phrasing). I was trying to think just what Cameron had in mind when he was talking about the Big Society (remember that?), I wasn't trying to suggest he was interested in bringing back temperance.

ed, no disrespect, but you have no idea about/consistency in what you're talking about

it was the liberal party that pushed for universal state-provided education, consistently

― long time listener, first time balla (history mayne), Wednesday, 26 May 2010 06:48 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think I have been very consistent on this point. Religious/economically motivated philanthropy -> universal education is a very short mental leap. It's all about the state providing a happy, healthy, skilled and compliant workforce. I'm not saying Cameron is a Fordist, I'm saying that Titus Salt was a progenitor of Fordism. There is no room for that kind of industrialist in today's world. I think that Cameron accepts that the state has to facilitate new actors to play the roles once played by Patrician Liberal Capitalists. He's not pure Thatcherite either, possibly only by necessity, vouchers haven't reared their ugly head again, there's no evidence of any moves to tempt people to abandon state provision.

Self interest is being played upon to give the opportunity to people who have the time and resources to be proactive to create the kind of schools where the middle classes can isolate their children, (possibly with the deserving poor), from the harsh realities of Broken Britain. In return Business and the state gets a class of better educated labour, whilst the class that always gets left behind, gets left behind.