Corbyn's disdain for spin is all very well but there are times when considering what PR people would advise and then doing the complete opposite is not a good idea.

...and he now wants to tax private schools to pay for free school meals for kids in public schools.

 

Even in the darkest days of poverty (the 60's) free school meals were meant for the very worst off (ie me and my free meal ticket handed in at lunch time) and they weren't universal by any means.

 

Most parents these days are more concerned that their kids get good teachers and facilities, not that they are getting ricketts from lack of a decent diet (and if they are it's usually parental ignorance on vitamins).

 

As usual living in cloud-cuckoo land and ignoring the real issues...

Slightly related to what I posted yesterday, but I'm loving the videos of Corbynites protesting outside the offices of the New Statesman for being...too right-wing. I've only ever bought the New Statesman once in my life, but now I'm seriously tempted to buy the next copy. Well done, protesters.

Ooh love the word Corbynite. Sounds like a new geological discovery - in its natural environment it comes over as a thick lump of rock that's surprisingly easy to push over as it has no sturdy supporting attributes. In a level playing field it will just sit there, where landscapes are more difficult has a tendency to roll downhill as it plummets to new depths. Corbynite. (Pronounced as a rhyme for fright, trite, shite...)

..and a rather good piece of writing about why Ken L & his comments are (shall I be generous? Yes I shall, I still use my Oyster Card) UNWISE...

 

https://www.facebook.com/david.baddiel.1/po...505?pnref=story

...and he now wants to tax private schools to pay for free school meals for kids in public schools.

 

Even in the darkest days of poverty (the 60's) free school meals were meant for the very worst off (ie me and my free meal ticket handed in at lunch time) and they weren't universal by any means.

 

Most parents these days are more concerned that their kids get good teachers and facilities, not that they are getting ricketts from lack of a decent diet (and if they are it's usually parental ignorance on vitamins).

 

As usual living in cloud-cuckoo land and ignoring the real issues...

It's not really taxing. It's closing a VAT loophole. Private Schools really technically should charge VAT as while the supply of education is typically exempt those institutions are by and large publicly owned or universities and colleges so run as nfp's. Private schools are more like education providers Kaplan who do charge VAT. I think this is something that should happen. VAT is a consumption tax and if you make the choice to send a child to private school you are buying a service at the end of the day so it's right that it should be treated as a taxable supply rather than exempt. [/VATAccountant]

 

There's some sketchy evidence that it helps with attainment. What it does do though is reduces the stigma of being on free school meals and provides a welcome relief to parents on the breadline or (who this is really aimed at) those in working poverty. A vastly growing number of people. It seems like a small measure but it could have a huge difference for a massive number of families across the country. It's a great policy and one of the first Corbyn policies thats very firmly grounded in reality and feasibility. (Probably coz it's stolen from Milliband, David).

 

 

Incidentally when the P1-3 free lunch entitlement was introduced north of the border Scottish Labour were rather scathing about it. Party is a f***ing mess.

I agree about the VAT, I'm less convinced about where the money should be spent. Anecdotally some schools are struggling with providing teachers and courses for actual Education.

 

Re stigma of free school meals for those that really do need it (and I'm in favour of) - it's not a major trauma for Primary school kids, trust me, compared with plenty of other bullying issues, and there are ways of keeping it private and undisclosed. Spending money on relatively well-off family kids meals I just see as better spent on their education.

Well at least he has started a discussion even amongst the gauranteed disbelievers!!

oh Corbyn doesnt get slagged off for his basic bread n butter policies (such as they vaguely are) it's mostly because he's lazy and useless, charmless, has no leadership skills, no idea how to appeal to voters, has hare-brained schemes of minor inconsequential impact while ignoring glaring gaping problems and potentially catastrophic consequences to his apathy (eg Brexit).

 

I, would, however, be happy to watch him on a gardening TV programme, or jam-making bake-off. It's where he excels....

It's as if you know him personally....

Following the Labour Party going a record 3 months without any major boo-boos, Labour's shadow Women's Minister Sarah Champion has resigned from the front bench after penning an editorial for The Sun claiming that Pakistani rape gangs were targeting white girls in Britain. Not sure what was more key to her forced resignation - her racist writing, or the fact that she thought that a Labour MP writing a column for The Sun was a jolly good idea.

so corbinman doesn't want us to stay in the single market as this will stop him nationalising stuff when he gets into power for 10 years. Blaming the EU for not being able to nationalise the trains. This must come as a shock to Spain's Renfe - which I travelled extensively on only yesterday and is fabulous - and the French energy companies that own British firms......

 

Does he actually know anything about anything? Basically telling lies, that he assumes will appeal to the fanboys and working class voters who quite fancy a bit of nationalising, as an excuse for keeping Labour away from anything that isn't a hard Brexit....(BTW no votes for Labour members on it).

Can we change the topic title?

 

Oh, Jeremy Corbyn thread would do :wub:

No.

so corbinman doesn't want us to stay in the single market as this will stop him nationalising stuff when he gets into power for 10 years. Blaming the EU for not being able to nationalise the trains. This must come as a shock to Spain's Renfe - which I travelled extensively on only yesterday and is fabulous - and the French energy companies that own British firms......

 

Does he actually know anything about anything? Basically telling lies, that he assumes will appeal to the fanboys and working class voters who quite fancy a bit of nationalising, as an excuse for keeping Labour away from anything that isn't a hard Brexit....(BTW no votes for Labour members on it).

Nor Deutsche Bahn who I've spent the week travelling on (on a lot of modern trains). DB subsidiary Arriva operates like 6 franchises in the UK...

so corbinman doesn't want us to stay in the single market as this will stop him nationalising stuff when he gets into power for 10 years. Blaming the EU for not being able to nationalise the trains. This must come as a shock to Spain's Renfe - which I travelled extensively on only yesterday and is fabulous - and the French energy companies that own British firms......

 

Funnily enough this was something that came up during the EU referendum - in Andrew Neil's pre-referendum interview with Jeremy Corbyn, he mentioned that the EU would make it harder for the re-nationalisation of the UK's railways. It isn't something that I've looked into since then, so I am not sure whether there is any truth in it, so Corbyn may be right on this one. I'll have to do a bit of research to see if this is indeed the case.

A lot of our rail system is already state owned. It's just that it's the German and Dutch states that own it.

We ran the East Coast Mainline as a state run operation for a time, so surely if it was against EU law, the EU would have come for us or we would have only run it for a very short period while a new franchisee was put in place. That ended up being years before a franchise thing was even run. So I'm not convinced by this argument.

 

It must be possible. The German Länder run their own regional rail services and it's all tendered (inter-Länder is run by a monopoly of DB) and DB has no issues successfully bidding for those franchises and indeed do run many of them. Notably, only NRW is the state where the majority of such tenders aren't in DB hands.

It is almost impossible for a local council to bring services such as rubbish collection back in-house after that have been outsourced under UK law. Is that a reason for people to lobby for their local authority to leave the UK?

Well, a group of 32 of them did try in 2014!