Politics Thread!

[pogo]

You bemoan our education in another thread and flag that as a factor for the UK's terrible productivity and now start claiming that shcools don't make money.

Education is actually a very good example. The place with the best educated kids in international tests? China, who spend far less than us on education. Anyone who thinks you can get better education outcomes and so more productivity just by throwing money at it is deluded. Of course this is exactly what Labour tried under Blair. But our kids are no smarter, we just got richer teachers who were happy to pocket the money government was giving them without question.

[gravy]

What tests are you referring to?

The most commonly quoted ones pit individual Chinese cities vs entire countries. Shanghai comes out really really well.

But that's zero reflection of the Chinese governments investmeng in education.

You're part of the problem aren't you? Ex teacher IIRC

[gravy]

Here we go

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/20 ... the-boasts

[pogo]

Yes, PISA, which put Shanghai first in all three measured tests:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA_2012

In the other thread I didn’t highlight China as I wasn’t especially thinking of it but Asia in general: Greater China but also including Japan, Singapore and South Korea. The point is those are averages; it’s not that they educate the best children better, it’s that they leave fewer behind. It’s a cultural difference, not one that can be fixed just by throwing money at it.

Interestingly someone was discussing Germany’s education system on the radio a couple of days ago. A key difference is the day starts and finishes much earlier: 7:30 to around noon. They do this, and have the same contact time, by eliminating most breaks, only having short breaks and no lunch break. This leaves the afternoon for homework and after school activities, so there’s less problem getting them done.

[merman]

The law Osborne should have brought in is NOT SELLING GOVERNMENT ASSETS FOR LESS THAN THEY ARE WORTH.

RBS. Royal Mail. Eurotunnel.

[pogo]

I know, China is very diverse and unequal. The hukou system, or household registration system, limits access to things like education, healthcare. So e.g. people can move from the county to the city to work, as many do. But they cannot bring their children and have them attend schools in the city. They have to go to school wherever they are registered. There has been pressure to reform this but to date it is still in place. Cities are much richer, can spend much more on education; if people could they would desert rural schools en-masse, but the hukou system prevents that.

But again it’s not just Shanghai, or China. It’s much of East Asia. It’s not correlated with national income or education spending, clearly other factors are more important.

[gravy]

I know, China is very diverse and unequal. The hukou system, or household registration system, limits access to things like education, healthcare. So e.g. people can move from the county to the city to work, as many do. But they cannot bring their children and have them attend schools in the city. They have to go to school wherever they are registered. There has been pressure to reform this but to date it is still in place. Cities are much richer, can spend much more on education; if people could they would desert rural schools en-masse, but the hukou system prevents that.

But again it’s not just Shanghai, or China. It’s much of East Asia. It’s not correlated with national income or education spending, clearly other factors are more important.

Yeah I know all of that, I linked that article because you seemed to think highly localised educational testing said something about China as a whole. Which is wrong.

The series of events here is amazing. You use China as a perfect example that you don't need to invest in education to educate your population.

And then acknowledge that the quality of education across China is highly variable depending on the amount of educational investment.

And then IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH LATER switch back to claiming there's no corelation between investment in education and educational outcomes.

That's idiotic.

Back to Osborne, it's pretty clear what this stupid proposed law is. It's a intended to scupper any other party in government for political means while being potentially harmful to the country.

[VNVObit]

In a sense the bank bailout was borrowing to invest, in that the government will get back what it spent plus a little bit more. Which is what most people think of as investment: you borrow e.g. to invest in shares. Or a firm borrows to invest in expansion. In each case you hope to get back your money, when you sell the shares, or in growth and profit if you are a firm.

In no sense was it borrowing to invest. It was borrowing to avoid a complete financial meltdown.

But government ‘investment’ is very different. It’s on things like roads, schools, hospitals which do not make any money, they are just the normal things governments need to spend money on. As such it’s misleading to treat it differently from other sorts of borrowing. But this is exactly what the last Labour government did, shifting borrowing for off the balance sheet using PFI, then manipulating the books to ensure it stayed there.

Treasury 'manipulating' PFI books

Even worse treating it differently has a distorting effect, as if you tell people their normal spending is limited but their borrowing is not they will borrow more. If you tell them they can borrow but only for some things, such as shiny new hospitals, then we see lots of shiny new hospitals, even if keeping and fixing up ones would be cheaper and better.

PFI was introduced by Major's government (PFI for chieftain tanks anyone?). As for whether or not something should appear on balance sheet, well that's between the Treasury and their auditors (and IIRC the government accounts get qualified auditors statement in any event)

Government borrows so we can have things like new hospitals, transport links, infrastructure, education to support society, business, etc. The payback isn't always in taxes but in better use of society's limited resources to secure better facilities for all of society.

The law Osborne should have brought in is NOT SELLING GOVERNMENT ASSETS FOR LESS THAN THEY ARE WORTH.

RBS. Royal Mail. Eurotunnel.

he'd have to scrap Right to buy then and there's no chance of him squashing that precious policy

[pogo]

I never wrote or meant ‘China as a whole’, and even Shanghai has only a fraction the income of e.g. the UK. But you don’t need to consider China, or even Asia. Just look at the UK. In 2000 We came 9th, 5th and 8th in the PISA test. In 2012 we came 26th, 20th and 23rd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme ... Assessment

Some allowance should be made for the increased number of countries participating, but it’s still a dramatic fall, going from 1st or 2nd in Europe to below average. And this corresponds with massive “investment” in education, as spending rose from 4.5% of GDP to over 6%. The rise was even greater in real terms, as the economy was growing most of this time.

Which is why I’m skeptical of any Labour politician promising to borrow to invest. Because to them investment seems just to mean throwing money at problems, without any clear plan for spending it wisely. So of course the money gets wasted, just going into e.g. teachers pockets.

A cynic would say that was the point, that the whole point of New Labour was to enrich unions via their members, to keep them quiet over not reversing Tory union laws. I prefer to think they did actually want their spending to make a difference, but unions were much better prepared and determined than expected, and won the vast majority of battles over where and how money should be spent.

In any case almost all of it was wasted. This is visible in the marginal or non-existent improvements from increasing department spending by 50% or more under Blair/Brown. It’s also visible in the cuts the coalition was able to make, slashing spending and cutting a million civil servant jobs without significantly impacting the effectiveness of government.

[(o)(o)]

In a sense the bank bailout was borrowing to invest, in that the government will get back what it spent plus a little bit more.

The terms 'rescue package' and 'bailout' are not synonymous with 'investment opportunity'.

But government ‘investment’ is very different. It’s on things like roads, schools, hospitals which do not make any money...

Of course they fucking do.

There is an economy-wide ROI.

Or do you think an economy thrives best in a baron desert completely lacking in infrastructure FFS?

You're part of the problem aren't you? Ex teacher IIRC

Not seen that claim - did claim to signing off benefits due to receiving lump sum inheritance.

[pogo]

PFI was introduced by Major's government (PFI for chieftain tanks anyone?). As for whether or not something should appear on balance sheet, well that's between the Treasury and their auditors (and IIRC the government accounts get qualified auditors statement in any event)

It started under Major but expanded tenfold under Blair, to become a significant vehicle for government borrowing. The Treasury doesn’t have independent auditors, or didn’t as the OBR sort of does the job now; back then it was mostly up to the press. Such as the BBC:

The Government is manipulating new accountancy rules to favour future Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes, the BBC has been told.

New international accounting standards which Britain is adopting this year mean that, for the first time, most existing PFI schemes will be put onto the balance sheets of government departments.

But new guidelines issued by the Treasury earlier this month are alleged to be a deliberate way of avoiding treating PFI projects in the same way in the future spending budgets of government departments.

[gravy]

I never wrote or meant ‘China as a whole’, and even Shanghai has only a fraction the income of e.g. the UK.

Yeah sorry mate, when you said China I thought you meant China, not %0.9 of China.

It's all obvious now.

And to be clear I'm not talking your future nightmare of a labour government not being able to fritter away your hard earned money.

I'm saying that a law limiting any investment by any government irrespective of how appropriate the investment is fucking nuts.

It's pretty easy to understand.

You're part of the problem aren't you? Ex teacher IIRC

Not seen that claim - did claim to signing off benefits due to receiving lump sum inheritance.

Yeah pogo was a teacher, isn't this him?



Oh hold on, wrong link, this is it:

I am a teacher, though I haven't taught professionally for many years. I agree it is much nicer now for teachers than when Labour came to power. But education is meant to be about helping students and there's little evidence the doubling of money that happened under Labour made any difference to the education of students. One measure of that is how few state-educated students get into university. It has improved but mostly as there are now many more places and universities and entry standards are lower. But the proportion of state students getting into older, more prestigious universities has changed little, despite the universities doing they can to change this.

[VNVObit]

PFI was introduced by Major's government (PFI for chieftain tanks anyone?). As for whether or not something should appear on balance sheet, well that's between the Treasury and their auditors (and IIRC the government accounts get qualified auditors statement in any event)

It started under Major but expanded tenfold under Blair, to become a significant vehicle for government borrowing. The Treasury doesn’t have independent auditors, or didn’t as the OBR sort of does the job now; back then it was mostly up to the press. Such as the BBC:

The Government is manipulating new accountancy rules to favour future Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes, the BBC has been told.

New international accounting standards which Britain is adopting this year mean that, for the first time, most existing PFI schemes will be put onto the balance sheets of government departments.

But new guidelines issued by the Treasury earlier this month are alleged to be a deliberate way of avoiding treating PFI projects in the same way in the future spending budgets of government departments.

They had independent advice from "Big 4" accountancy practices regarding the transfer of risk/reward required to get things off their balance sheet at the time. It was favoured by the Treasury so rolled out extensively, although the accounting treatment wasn't the big flaw in the process (and having been involved on bidding for PFI schemes I understand all too well the real issues with it)

In any event accounting treatment should never dictate whether a deal is good or bad.

As for independent auditors the actual audit is carried out by a number of independent firms. The accounts follow CIPFA determined SORP (Statement of Recommended Practice) which is a guide to the application of FRSs (now IFRS). Just to be clear IFRS aren't a set of rules but a series of principles with guided application of them. They are more limiting than FRSs were but that's largely due to the American influence where accounting was a much more rigid (and therefore brittle) system that invariably involved lawyers!

[merman]

Proposals for Tax credits to be cut back to 2003/4 level, £5bn saving and thousands of families into poverty. Motivated by the fact they don't want to cut pensions and alienate elderly Tory voters, but hardly the act of a party "for working people".

Maintenance grants for poorer students next on the chopping block - hitting social mobility and reducing the chances for pupils from poor backgrounds.

[(o)(o)]

Proposals for Tax credits to be cut back to 2003/4 level, £5bn saving and thousands of families into poverty. Motivated by the fact they don't want to cut pensions and alienate elderly Tory voters, but hardly the act of a party "for working people".

It IS the party for the working people.

For fucking over the working people.

Well, anybody who isn't part of their clique.

Check this one :

"Young unemployed people should be forced to repay their benefit money when they get a job, an influential group of Conservative MPs has said." ... "..an additional incentive to find work rather than allow the debt to build up".