Suedehead2

Lewis Capaldi – Grace James Bay – Let It Go Sigala & Paloma Faith – Lullaby Avicii – The Nights Tom Walker – Leave a Light On

The House of Commons library now has several spreadsheets. Unlike the Electoral Calculus one, this has the revised result for Putney. For reasons yet unknown, thousands of votes were missing from the declared result.

The commentary is now available from the front age or the latest news box.

This week's commentary will be late (again). We had our end-of-term staff picnic today. Unfortunately, due to a terrible administrative error, the person ordering the refreshments filled in the boxes beside "Bottles of wine" rather than "Cartons of orange juice". There will be a commentary tomorrow.

It’s even worse than that. I work with students who have been denied an EHCP for reasons that are impossible to understand. It has been reported that the outsourced companies who make the decisions are now expected to do all they can to turn down an application for an EHCP. The system is deliberately failing large numbers of children/

Wrong. The additional revenue will be more than the cost of some children moving into state schools. Even if the extra revenue os marginal, surely the principle is right. As I said above, why ahold private school fees be free of tax when all adults have to pay VAT on their clothes?

Absolutely right. I also work in a state school and it’s heartbreaking to see the things we can’t do because we don’t have the money. The post-GCSE period is when we get to support students who have been unsupported for most of the year because the money isn’t there. Some of those students make huge progress, but we know that they will lose that support again in September. Some of those students were hugely grateful for the support they got at the end of Yr7 last year. Working with them again this year, at the end of Yr8, shows how much worse their attitude to learning has become after a lack of support. If a students is assesses as needing one-to-one support, the school only gets about one-third of the cost of providing that support. The rest of the money has to come from elsewhere.

Estimates of the number of children who will leave private schools start at 40,000. If the figure is that low, that is an average of two children per state school. Even the highest estimates work out at fewer than ten children per state school. Schools will cope. Adyklts have to pay VAST on clothing (unless they are small enough to be able to wear children’s clothes. Why should clothes be taxed more heavily tan private education? It makes no sense.

Trump has named JD Vance as his running mate. What is his real name? Is it something embarrassing like Jiggly Dangly?

Not so much about the election itself, more the aftermath - every Labour PM has appointed a member of the (Wedgwood) Benn family to his Cabinet.

Countless sides (Italy several times) have won tournaments by muddling through the early stages before upping their game in the latter stages. That’s how tournaments often work.

Paloma Faith – Only Love Can Hurt Like This Amy Winehouse – Back to Black Rizzle Kicks – Down with the Trumpets Vance Joy - Riptide Arctic Monkeys – Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?

Electoral Calculus now has the raw data for whacking into a spreadsheet. Happy number crunching. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/electdata_2024.txt

Five members of Gordon Brown’s last Cabinet in 2010 are in the current House of Commons. Just three of Johnson’s last Cabinet in 2022 are there.

This week's ramblings can be found from the latest news box or the front page.

Sam Carling, new Labour MP for NWCambridgeshire, is the first MP to have been born in the 21st century. Eek!

What a surprise, it’s brilliant :yahoo: Having just missed out on a number one with Bright Magic, I’m surprised they have chosen to release their latest album on the same day as Coldplay.

The new album is called The Last Flight and is about Amelia Earhart’s round-the-world flight in 1937. Out on 4 October.

Before the election, a train travelling from Bristol to London would spend 55 minutes in Tory constituencies. Now, it will spend just two in one Tory constituency, Beaconsfield.

Inverness, Skye and Ross-shire confirmed as a Lib Dem gain, bringing the total up to 72.

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They did, ruthlessly. It’s the first time in my lifetime (and for many years before that) that the Lib Dem (or Liberal) share of the seats has come anywhere near matching their share of the vote.

It is available now from the front page or latest news box.

Not sure if that is the exact date, but it was definitely late January.

Some interesting appointments among the junior posts, including giving jobs (and a seat in the Lords) to experts in their field. I’m not a huge fan of the principle (particularly as they retain that seat for life), but at least these are more about getting the right person for the job than for rewarding cronies. I am particularly encouraged by the appointment of James Timpson as Prisons Minister. He has been chair of the Prison Reform Trust and, until now, CEO of his family from Timpsons. That company employs prisoners, rewarding them with a job on release if they work hard enough. They offer free dry-cleaning to unemployed people with a job interview. They even pay their taxes properly. Another member of the Timpson family was a Tory MP from 2008-15 and was easily one of the saner ones.