h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So Captain Black to summarise you argument, Id like it if the world was fair, but it isnt its got too many dodgy, selfish types for that to happen so "cest la vie".

Oh and Cambodia isnt part of the "real world".......

My big problem with that is that doing nothing and not supporting those who want to do things will almost certainly lead to a worsening of society.

The alarm beels go off in the firestation and the fire cheif steps out to quell the scurrying activity of her firefighters.
"Calm down, crew. It's just a fire and yes people might die but heck people are mortal even if we save them they are going to die anyway and as for the building theyre in they might build something nicer after or it might be a crack house where 14 year olds trade sex for drugs. Lets put our feet up and have a

Now Im not proposing we remove the tax burden from the lowest wage earners or even introduce punitive taxes but simply use sensible taxation.

It is a monstorous injustice that presently a single mother will pay more taxes will pay a bigger portion of her income in taxes than wil a city fat cat CEO.

VAT should be apllied not at a blanket rate but as a sliding percentage of the total cost. from say five to fifty percent on goods and services with none on housing, heating fuel and water rates.

Inheretance tax should (for the sake or argument) only kick in on individual bequests of over 50,000 so if you are splitting £1m between a large number of relatives and charities then there'd be nothing to pay with no charge for transfer between surviving spouses.


Being a life long socialist Ive noticed an unpleasant trend.

Some people seem to be making a bigger deal out of the deviuos ways poorer people milk the system or avoid paying their share if you think this amounts to anything more than a drop in the ocean comapred to the sharp practice and tax loopholes the uper rich take adavantage of then you either you are living in cloud cuckoo land or just cant count.

Its unpleasant because the poorest people with the least chance of suceeding (not no chance, but blatanly less chance than those who manage to use the advantages they did nothing to come by) are told on the one hand to do their best to succeed and simutaneously presented with imags in a nedia they have little control over of people getting rich by nefarious means. Kings grabbing land, rich nations exploiting poor nations, capitalists exploiting workers and everything from Geroge Cole's spivs to gangsta raps drug runners getting rich or dieing in the attempt.

The logical conclusion of Marxist socialism base don what Marx and Engles said is this: "from each according to their ability to each according tot heir needs".

Nowhere in that does it say no carribean cruises for anyone it implies that you sort out peoples' needs first so peolpe arent dining on lobster on the QE2 while other people are eating out of bins. It does not imply that skivers dont have to try it implies that we get out of people what they can offer.


One of the things I do is get children who are excluded from school working on their qualifications. It isnt easy they come from backgrounds where there is no self respect engenderd in them and no working ethic is shown them. We can afford in the budget £20 of phone credit each half term. To get this they have to earn points by hitting work targets and observing rules about conduct each day they are here.

If you are British this is what Im doing with you tax money and my own to get people who have an uneven start a little nearer tot he alleged level playing field. It works a little but if you imagine that the moeny we give them makes up for being malnurished, mistreated, lead into a life of petty crime and living on estates where learning is seen as abnormal then you are living in cloud cuckoo land. Tax payers of Britain are paying in crime clean up bills, my wages and the activities budget here to put a sticking plaster solution. (but its better than nothing)

Much better would be a genuine effort for people to put aside their selfisness for a bit and think do their "needs" extend to two foreign holidays a year?

A string of buy to let properties or a second home in the country which force up the house prices for struggling families?

Do you needa car witha bigger engine which uses fuel faster and creates an upward pressure on heating bills?

Do you "need" a tax cut because your family will be in rags, in poor haousing or hungry.

Because all these things mean that someone else and their family are missing out on the basics somewhere on this planet, could be just around the corner.

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"That is the heart of what I'm getting at I think. Inheritance tax is punishing people for succeeding.

We see the same philosophy being instilled in schools. Non-competitive sport, no winners and losers, everybody has value. We didn't have enough kids leaving schools with qualifications so we dumbed down the qualifications. I'm sorry, but life just isn't like that.



(Got to rip this little pile of innacuracies to shreds. I think it truly deserves it.


It's not so much a punishment but a cap on success. A punishment would be taking all of it away or taking away more then someone earnt.

If someone ends up with less (to pass on) than someone who earnt less then yes its a punishment but otherwise your stretching the meaning of the word punishment to support your argument in a misleading way.


We dont see the same philosophy being instilled in schools, now obviously your looking at different schools to the ones I go into every single week, but "we" dont see that at all. You might go into one of the tiny amount of schools where competitive sports are banned but I just dont even though I work in large number of schools Ive never seen one of them.

Do you really want to start labelling children as winners adn losers?

They are kids for the love of Bob. Now when you are being moronic I dont call you a moron. That would be wrong. As wrong as making an issue about success and failure out of sport where everyone who takes part ought to be walking away with a sense of acheivement. Not everything has to be about wiinig and losing. All the kids get something out of my sesions because taking part is a benefit to them and helping the session go well for the rest of the class and themselves as a communal effort is the reward.

I happen to think everyone does have a value even people like you SWL!

So I think its great we instill that for the individual and make sure that the group recognises it too.


"We didn't have enough kids leaving schools with qualifications so we dumbed down the qualifications.

Hmm that old chestnut. Obviuosly what you say just wouldnt work for anyone would it. If someone with your "ablities" has spotted it so has every other college and employer too. So they are all mentally pegging back all the grades that school leavers present them with.

There is no consensus and a debate with informed people rages every August about this and as far as I can see for definite some courses have *changed*. However dumbing down is normally wrongly cited when the course has become more practical and less theoretical, which was the request of employers for a long time.

They said dont send us kids who can do complicated sums, weve got computers and calculators for that send us kids who know how to solve problems. Dont worry about spelling because we want kids who can create a web page we can leave the spellnig to spell checker software.

Academics also urged that end of course exams did not give a true reflection of learning simply of memory and working under pressure in an environment where you cant just think I know who to ask.

As an emplyer do you want someone who goes here's a tough problem I'll do it as best I remeber or who goes I think I know this but i'll double check with the manual or ask my supervisor. Or even leave it till tomorrow and do some research tonight. I think the honest answer is depends on the problem but exams dont asses those skils whereas course work can. Oddly people forget this when tey hear about some parents helping their children or schols spoonfeeding students large portions of essays. While some students do put the work in themselves, its true ive seen it.

Then academics run around talking about dumbing down.

Then people hear it and repeat it.

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Which is why inheritence tax is only on a proportion of what you possess above a certain threshold. Even the wealthy get to pass on most of their wealth.

This is not about helping your children really. My parents inherited (very little) in their 40s. I'm 42 now. By the time I inherit I will probably be approaching retirement age. By that time it seems reasonable that I should have made some provision for what remains of my future. If you want to help your children do what my father did. When his children were born he began saving using life assurance policies that matured when we were 18 and used them to help support us through university. If the government were to give tax breaks for people who did something like that I'd fully approve.

Perhaps it's the inequality of salaries that should be addressed to level the playing field rather than taxes. I think there's too great a difference between minimum wage & e.g. company directors. How youu assess a 'fair' wage for each job - now that's a minefield!

BTW blicky (that is you isn't it?),
My hubby is now a secondary school technology teacher & despairs of the number of his pupils who are unable to perceive & solve problems. They are incapable of discriminating between true/false, reliable/unreliable information obtained via technology. Neither the rigorous exams of the past, nor the current system really provide a well-rounded education tailored to suit each child.

Well just *who* courses and the are designed *for* is a whole different thread, but allegedly the QCA vets them to say they are up to a consistent standard and individual examination bodies create their courses in consultation with educators in schools colleges and universities and people in industry.



PS yes it is me, you've passed

This will look like one of SWL's dumbed down tests when my name goes back to normal.

Dumbed down education?

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The prosecution rests.

Yeah my tyoing teacher really let me down...oh hang on I never had one.

If heresay of the right wing press and typing of a hamfisted rugby player is all the evidence you need regarding dumbing down that you need then I wont trouble your pretty little head with any information.

Is that a promise? Because I'm sure we could easily get by without your garbled, obfuscatory tripe.

In terms of the whole "dumbing down" thingy:-

Right now I accept that the "raw" talent of students is likely to remain constant but asurely the standard of education is variable right?

Therefore it follows that associated rises in grades can be because of dumbing down, but that it could also be because standards of education are improving surely?


Now lets just assume that the standard of education our kids receive really is much worse than it was. Why is that? Well for my it is because of:-

Years of underfunding in educational infrasctructure.
The gradual eroision of the standing of a teaching job. Thirty years ago it was a decent profession for talented graduates.

Now for another (how much is that now?) both of these things happened under the Tories and surely the only way to address these things would involve further tax generation?




P.S. Also the trappings of inherited wealth in part enable some people to opt out of mainstream state education. Movers and shakers having no personal investment in the state school system is a further disincentive for our political elites to do anything constructive about improving mass education.

There was an interesting article in the Times a few weeks ago that pointed out that private schools are not the preserve of the wealthy.

It put forward the idea that kids from wealthy, influential parents are not so reliant upon education as their poorer peers. Let's face it, when Tarquin's daddy is chairman of a city investment bank, he's going to get pretty much any job in the city he wants. Wealth brings advantages.

For less well-connected and poorer kids, their only real chance of success is through education. This is especially exacerbated by racism, where skin colour may add to the hurdles. So if you are immigrant parents of a child, the best thing you can do is to give them the best education possible. Time & again that is shown to be via private schools.

There were links to stats showing the relatively high proportion of Indian students in private schools.

Unfortunately, both main parties are opposed to private and grammar schools.

<<"There was an interesting article in the Times a few weeks ago that pointed out that private schools are not the preserve of the wealthy.">>

I'm sure that depends on how you define wealthy. A few poorer kids get scholarships granted, but private schools aren't cheap and I'm sure its mostly at least suburban types with two cars and a detached house.

Having said that, I don't think being against public schools is sensible, since, while it certainly promotes inequality, it also leaves more money in the pot for state schools, so probably raises standards overall. On the other hand, if the people who currently send their kids to public schools couldn't, then perhaps they'd be pushing for rises in education spending? But that bit's just a wild guess.

The split into grammar schools & secondary schools is another matter entirely. That system seems to work for academic results, but there is an issue now where the 12+/11+ tests are being subverted by some children having external tuition (which is, again, very expensive), whereas others only get a couple of practice papers at school.

But if we're doing schools, shouldn't we have another thread? Then we could stick single/mixed-sex schools and faith schools into the mix.

Not the preserve of the wealthy

How does the fact that a high proportion of Indian/Asian students go to fee paying schools prove this. Lakshmi Mittal is very wealthy and Indian.

"the best thing you can do is to give them the best education possible. Time & again that is shown to be via private schools.

Wrong I can see how if you only look at two indicators what you say looks right but its still wrong.

I happen to provide excellent state funded education.

My results are much better than mainstream schools who are dealing with similar kids. I get better results, acheivements and personal outcomes for these kids than they would ever get in the mainstream but and its a very important but I have the luxury of working with a much smaller group of kids and have by comparison a HUGE budget per child. Does that mean Im a fantastic "teacher" and *I* get the best results or is the money that allows me to do fantastic activities and pay to have the kids transported from place to place playing an important role?

Its the money...and a little bit my winning personality (hootoo is where I bring the bile)

"Right now I accept that the "raw" talent of students is likely to remain constant but asurely the standard of education is variable right?

Therefore it follows that associated rises in grades can be because of dumbing down, but that it could also be because standards of education are improving surely?

BUT and its an important but Ferrettbro, standards in education can mean a lot of things whereas SWL spoke specifically of "qualifications" being dumbed down.

Im not convinced there is much that Thatcher did directly to reduce the social status of teachers. Most professionals and the institutions they work for arent held in such high regard as they used to be. Their status moving in an opposite direction to film stars who tell us how to save the planet and coke addled topless-models/backing-track-mime-alongers/celebrity-mum-of-the-year-winners who tell us where to by cheap frozen food from.

(is that obsfrucation or is it a relevant issue that obscures the truth only for those too dozy to handle more than one peice of information at a time)

Teaching and science both bemoan their lack of high quality recruits but maybe its just down to people with high quality degrees seeing that they can earn mega bucks elsewhere as opposed to a good standard of living in academics.

ONe of the things I send some of our players on as part of their Long Term Athlete Development is a course where they get a free National Gvoerning Body coaching course to attend for free at the end. If they pass they can get paid work as a coach, £15 pounds an hour is decent money when you're 17. However one of the stipulations is that you pay back the governments investment by doing 30 hours of free coaching.

Perhaps rather than saddling graduates with debt which encourages them to either go for the first mega bucks job they see or take low waged jobs so they stay below the loan repayment threshold till they get a decent offer it might be better to offer free tuition on the proviso that you work in a designated job for the first year after graduating.

No debt, no compulsion to do any old high paying job they can get just to wipe out the debt or low paid job to avoid it. The government would get to utilise the sills every graduate not rich enough to pay their own fees and who knows someof them might just like their jobs so much they stay in community development or teaching or whatever...


Anyway qualifications being dumbed down is a claim that is hard to prove because how hard a question or series of questions are is hard, very hard to quantify.

I dont know how to type (could you tell). So in a typing exam Id do really badly, but if if I studied hard would that mean that any exam I passed with flying colours next year had been dumbed down or Id got better at typing?

*You* wouldnt be able to tell because I could a year from now be typing my posts in "word" and having them spell checked before pasting them here.

You wouldnt get a reliable answer from someone who passed the year before me (I know, unlikely, but stick with it) and resat the exam because you could rightfuly expect that any individual's skill they applied to the exam would be affected by the amount of typing they had done in the intervening year. Someone who got an A last year but a B this year becasue they had mostly been working as a mechanic would not be a situation that proves the exam had got a grade harder. Vice verse for someone who got a B worked as a secretary and lo and behold easily got an A the following year.


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By the way bud I am not entirely laying the blame at Maggies feet.

It seems the erosion of the status and standing of a teaching job has been going on for a long time, since the mid 70s really. And it isn't just the money. Often it is the way such jobs are popularly perceived. Truth is if you graduated with a decent degree in 95 or so teaching would probably have been the last thing on your mind.

"Unfortunately, both main parties are opposed to private and grammar schools." ~ Unless of course they're religous schools !

Grammer school education - the two ex-grammer schools in my town charge £3000 a term ~ I'd say that was the preserve of the rich !

Of course not all the pupils who attend private schools are academically brilliant - as said, sometimes all that's needed is money. Doesn't necessarily guarantee a well-paid job, but probably at least one that's more pleasant than Joe or Jane Bloggs with similar qualifications gained via the local comprehensive.

The trouble is that some children are 'lost' even before they start school, because of their home background & family attitudes. With the right approach at school, they make up some of the lost ground, but it's going to be much harder for them to succeed.