who's happy with the current political situation?

bazinga

Spoil your ballot paper if nothing else. If enough people did that (5%-10%) then that would further highlight our democratic deficit and (hopefully) trigger some sort of constitutional change.

Less than 1% of votes in the 2010 GE were spoilt. If that rose to 5-10% that's a fairly blatant sign of dissatisfaction, bearing in mind the electoral system is the same. 

Much better form of protest than not voting at all. It would be far more beneficial for Russell Brand to champion a 'none of the above' ballot spoiling movement.

Funkstain wrote:

As an NHS worker, which party's manifesto scares you? Do the Greens tend to (as Elm says about Defence) over simplify their policy approach to the NHS, do they have any experts in the field?

I know this was aimed at Grem, but I'll give a quick version of my views on this.  

The very quick version is: - they all worry me.

The quick version is that if you think the NHS is a major factor in who you vote for then:
Definitely don't vote for: UKIP
Probably don't for: Conservatives
Probably vote for, but with lots of caveats: Labour, Lib Dem
Definitely vote for if you're voting on ideology alone:  Greens, NHA Party

The long winded, slightly more nuanced but still wildly insufficient version: 

Anyone still here?  OK then...  With the Conservatives the argument's fairly straight forward - they've been (in my opinion) a bit of a train wreck with respect to the NHS, steam rolling in a whole shed load of changes which were, at best, ill-conceived.  The latest shift, which has gone weirdly un-reported on, is a move to "co-commissioning" which allows CCGs to jointly commission general practice alongside NHS England.  This essentially means GPs (who are, after all, essentially private providers) will now be commissioning, erm, GPs.  I've over simplified slightly, but it's a massive conflict of interests, particularly as GPs are simultaneously being encouraged to form large "alliance" organisations.  Health outcomes haven't been terribly impressive during their tenure either, and if they quote cancer survival rates once more I may have to throw something.  (Cancer outcomes are measured by 5 year survival rates - so the fact that these have improved tells you the previous Government got something right, and nothing about this one.) 

As such, you'd think I'd be trumpeting my support for Labour right now, but it's more difficult to do that than I would have liked.  The standard Tory attack on Labour doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny - they say Labour have cut NHS spending in Wales, which is true.  What they don't say is that that's because they balanced NHS spending against social care spending (which they cut by less than England).  this means people are better supported in their homes, more able to get out of hospital etc.  Thus Wales had no hospitals at all declaring a crisis situation in A&E over Winter, whereas the vast majority in England ran into trouble.

So what's my problem?  Well, to some degree it's the joining up of health and social care that I spent half the last paragraph congratulating them on.  This is a policy for both Labour and the Lib Dems, though both are a little woolly on some of the specifics.  I'm generally an advocate of joining health and social care, but there are some big problems.  Firstly both parties have implied to varying degrees that they would beef up the role of "Health and Wellbeing Boards".  These basically join health commissioners, with social care commissioners/councils.  Having seen them in action the thought of increasing their role makes me nervous.  If nothing else it puts elected officials much more closely into the process of deciding healthcare. I'd gently suggest that healthcare isn't always best governed by the guy looking for votes.  

Another issue with merging the two, is that it inherently threatens free care at the point of access, because social care is means tested. (And it's worth pointing out that at the moment, the vast majority of councils won't offer you much care for free, unless you're at a "crisis" level.)  Finally, merging health and social care means yet more reorganisation of the NHS, and many don't have the energy or the stomach to do it again.  (I know a few people within NHS management who hate what's been done over the last 5 years, but are still hoping for a Conservative Government because they can't face re-organisation, and don't want to deal with politicians.)

As I say, both Lib-Dems and Labour seem to be saying much the same thing around the NHS, with most of the differences seemingly in the small print.  (Though I'd say the Lib-Dems are perhaps slightly more convincing in their desire to address mental health inequality.)  All 3 parties have made various comments about how much they'd spend in order to address the predicted shortfall in NHS funding - none of them have convincingly explained how they'll do this.  It's also worth pointing out that protecting NHS funding means nothing if social care continues to get screwed over, as they're inherently linked.  (And some of the supposedly "ring fenced" NHS money now has to be shared with social care anyway.  A cut that the Government largely managed to sell to the electorate as new money...)

What about the smaller parties?  Last time I checked UKIP were the only party actively saying they weren't planning to protect NHS funding, and whilst the official party line is broadly pro-NHS they have a leader who's been very clear in the past that we should ditch it.  So if you're pro NHS, I really wouldn't advise voting UKIP.  (Nor would I anyway, but that's another issue.)

The Greens on the other hand do better.  Their manifesto entry is an interesting muddle as it's very out of date in places (it talks about PCTs for instance) and is presumably about to have a refresh, but its overall plan for the NHS seems to echo much of what has been recently advised in the NHS 5 Year Plan - lots of community health centres, more emphasis on informed self care etc etc.  I don't know how they realistically plan to fund any of it, but it's kind of nice to see a clear statement of principles, rather than long arguments about accounting.  So yeah- free prescriptions, get rid of market forces and privatisation - the stuff you'd expect, but very much pro-NHS.  The reason I'm taking time out to commend them above the others though (and it's not just to be nice to Dante) is the commitment to free social care for the over-65s - the only party in England to be offering it as far as I'm aware.  This largely solves the biggest problem with merging health and social care, namely the risk of introducing means testing to health.

edit - Grem's beaten me to it, and with more style.  Also apologies for limiting only to English parties, but they're the only ones I can vote for, so they're the only ones I've really looked at.  Broadly SNP looks like a good bet NHS wise, as long as independence ain't an issue, and Scotland already has quite a few things - a degree of free social care over 65 for instance - that I'd be looking for here.

That's the good shit. Thanks gents.

Now to get Stoph and Tiger to do the same for state education.

I don't have periods so I don't care.

n0face wrote:

UKIP abolishing the tampon tax.

What a bloody liberty.

Funkstain wrote:

That's the good shit. Thanks gents. Now to get Stoph and Tiger to do the same for state education.

You may regret asking for this. You may want to crack open a bottle. 

Before any analysis of their current policy ideas, it's important to state how awful it has been working under the Cons in the education system. A few key reasons - 1) Schools were effectively blackmailed into becoming academies. Budget cuts would be alleviated somewhat by accepting to become an academy and receiving an additional sum as a result. 2) When our place became an academy, the fucknuts at the Education dept only told our Head what it budget for the year would be, 2 days before the academic year started. 3) Gove. I can't even begin to describe what a divisive, backwards-thinking, poisonous cunt he is. He wanted a return to Victorian teaching, learning by rote and was so out of touch with the majority of schools it was laughable. 4) The huge increase of non-qualified staff teaching in schools. 5) The 1% pay rise we've had in the last 5 years (although I do have some sympathy with this one) 6) The drop-out rate from teaching is reaching disastrous levels. 7) Furthermore, the application numbers for the various teacher training avenues has plummeted. To add to this, the standard of those applying has decreased significantly. 

I don't think the Unions have been effective at all throughout this period; I think they've enflamed the situation at times, called strikes at the wrong times (there was talk of a week long strike one June, instead they went on strike just before key exams. Don't impact on the students' potential success)

Anyway, enough ranting. Can only comment reasonably knowledgeably on secondary education, but know a bit about Primary and Higher. I got all the Education policies from the Vote for Policies website; bear in mind that we have yet to see the full manifesto pledges from some parties so some policies may be further fleshed out in time. 

The Greens - Policies 6/10, Reality of being able to adopt the policies 2/10 
- Introduce smaller class sizes – no more than 20 students per class (no idea how on earth they'd pay for this. Pretty monumental cost, for my school alone that would add £1m to the wage bill)
-Bring Academies and Free Schools into the Local Authority system. (Would prefer this as the current system lacks enough rigorous monitoring amongst a host of other reasons)
-Scrap university tuition fees. (again, no idea how they'd pay for that. Sounds great, but.)
-Abolish SATS, League Tables and Ofsted and replace them with the evaluation of schools by parents, teachers and the locally community. (Absolutely bonkers. How can you expect untrained parents to judge schools? Wouldn't trust teachers to evaluate competently enough, plus it would be open to huge manipulation.)
-Extend free nutritious lunches to all children. (Sounds lovely, how are they going to pay for it?)
-Restore the Educational Maintenance Allowance for 16 and 17 year olds. (Great idea, but Pupil Premium has fulfilled some of its role)

   
Labour - Policies 8/10 - Reality 6/10
-We will put teaching standards first, ensuring that all teachers in all state schools become qualified and continue to build their skills, with more opportunities for high quality professional development and new career pathways. (Targeting the issue of untrained staff teaching lessons which is essential. Some of the initiatives they introduced when they were in power before to help teachers 'build their skills' were pretty useless, so not that hopeful)
-We will introduce robust local oversight of all schools through new Directors of School Standards in every local area, responsible for intervening in underperforming schools so that standards are raised, and commissioning new schools transparently and fairly so that there is proper planning for new school places where they are needed. (Broadly in agreement that this is also essential; the commissioning new schools transparently may well help to abolish some of the open nepotism that is going on towards some academy chains.)
-We will transform vocational education in our schools and colleges, with a new gold standard Technical Baccalaureate for 16 to 19-year-olds, with rigorous vocational qualifications, accredited by employers, a high quality work placement and English and maths to 18. (Sounds good, but there are huge cost implications to introducing more vocational courses. Hairdressing courses need specialist rooms and staff, so do digital skills courses, motor mechanics, etc. )
- We will build a new post-18 apprenticeship and vocational education system to drive up the number of quality apprenticeships. To help achieve this, we will require every firm that wants to get a major government contract to offer apprenticeships, and give businesses more control over the funding and design of apprenticeships in exchange for increases in the quantity and quality of training. (Again sounds pretty good. With the requirement for children to stay in some form of education until 18, apprenticeships are becoming highly sought after)
- We will end the flawed Free Schools programme and instead prioritise new schools in areas where there are shortages of school places (wholly in favour of this, but there will be lots of folks who think Free Schools are great. I just think they're hugely divisive for a cohesive and co-operative education system)
- We will extend free childcare from 15 to 25 hours for working parents of three and four year olds, paid for with an increase in the bank levy. (if they can pay for it, then would be a decent idea)
- We will introduce a legal guarantee that parents of primary-age children can access childcare from 8am to 6pm through their local school. (Utter bollocks. Cost implications would be vast. Is this free childcare? Subsidised? Paid-for?)
- We will introduce compulsory, age-appropriate sex and relationship education in all schools, and stamp out homophobic bullying in schools by ensuring all new teachers are trained to tackle it. (All teachers at secondary are trained to tackle it, Stonewall have produced some great resources about it. As for SRE, the closure of health care centres has meant that specialists aren't available to teach students these topics. Unless the school has Health & Social staff or clued-up teachers, then these topics can be really poorly delivered.)

Conservatives - Policies 4/10, Reality 7/10
- A good primary school place for every child with zero tolerance for failure. (Soundbite-friendly, rather non-descriptive pledge. Have very little faith in this one, primarily because the Cons put pay to Building Schools for the Future capital development projects when they entered office and blocked a huge amount of needed school expansions.)
- Turn every failing and coasting secondary school into an academy, and deliver Free Schools for parents and communities that want them. (Again, I take huge issue with this. My school is a Grade 3 school - 'requires improvement'. Why? Because of the under-achievement of around 8 white boys at GCSE English 2 years ago. OFSTED came into the school and openly admitted they had a grade settled on before they'd seen the day-to-day goings on. Apparently, we'd failed to allow these 8 boys to reach their potential. Nothing we could have done during their visit would have changed the grade, despite are impressive results in almost every category. My other problem with this is that a lot of academies are run like meat markets, destroying teachers' health and mental stability. I know of one of the biggest academy chains in London receiving considerable warning before their OFSTED visit. The same chain also ship in outstanding teachers from their other schools to teach in inspection schools. They also have a special trip that can be run at any day of the year, which take the naughtiest kids out of school. The amount of fraud in the academy system is disgusting.)
- Support teachers to make Britain the best country in the world for developing maths, science and computing skills. (Great idea. But perhaps they may want to give professionals in these areas a bit of notice when they change their curriculum - ICT were given around 6 months notice that their entire curriculum as changing and that they'd need to teach totally different skills.)
-Create three million new apprenticeships and make sure there is no cap on university places, so we have aspiration for all. (Agree with the first part, not sure what the point is in the second pledge)
-Guarantee a place on National Citizen Service for every teenager who wants it. (Another Big Society success. There are far better voluntary schemes available elsewhere)

UKIP - Policies 3/10, Reality 4/10
- Introduce an option for students to take an Apprenticeship Qualification instead of four non-core GCSEs which can be continued at A-Level (as mentioned previously, offering apprenticeships/vocational qualifications has huge cost implications. Some benefit in doing this though)
- Students can take up apprenticeships in jobs with certified professionals qualified to grade the progress of the student (An element of this already exists, not sure how useful this really is)
- Subject to academic performance, we will remove tuition fees for students taking approved degrees in science, medicine, technology, engineering, maths on the condition that they live, work and pay tax in the UK for five years after the completion of their degrees (Really small-minded. Why should a gifted technology student working in Croydon High Street Dixons be valued more than a gifted student working in some amazing Silicon Valley start-up? Bit mealy-mouthed, but you get my gist hopefully)
- Scrap the target of 50% of school leavers going to university (Agree with this one. Why have a target in the first place?)
- Students from the EU will pay the same student fee rates as International students. (Small-minded garbage. Don't we want Europe's brightest and best studying here and potentially settling down to work here and benefit our economy?)
- Support the principle of Free Schools that are open to the whole community and uphold British values (Whilst I'm not a fan of Free Schools, the wording of this strikes me as a touch poisonous.)
- Existing schools will be allowed to apply to become grammar schools and select according to ability and aptitude. Selection ages will be flexible and determined by the school in consultation with the local authority. (Could write loads about this, but I could see sink schools developing in some areas of the country if this happened. )
- Schools will be investigated by OFSTED on the presentation of a petition to the Department for Education signed by 25% of parents or governors. (Massive issues with this. What if the Governors are the issue, which they can be? What if a set of parents of a certain view/belief take umbrage with the school's approach to a topic?)

Lib Dems - Policies 7/10, Reality 5/10
- Invest every penny we can in education from cradle to college – nursery, school, apprenticeships and college – so all our children get the chance to live out their full potential. (What about Uni,  Clegg? You know, the place with the fees that you got in a pickle about. Sorry about that. This policy is so caking in detail, it's meaningless. Plus, are people going to be able to trust the Lib Dems on education matters ever again?)
- Aim to make 20 hours of free childcare a week available for all parents with children aged from 2 to 4, and all working parents from the end of paid maternity leave (9 months) to 2 years by 2020. (Sounds good, but that's a fairly monumental cost you've got to cover)
- Introduce a Parent Guarantee that all teachers in state funded schools will be fully qualified or working towards Qualified Teacher Status and a minimum curriculum entitlement with a slimmed-down core national curriculum, which will be taught in all state-funded schools. This will include a ‘curriculum for life’ including financial literacy, citizenship and age-appropriate sex and relationship education. (Love this one, but largely down to the 'Curriculum for Life' stuff as that's the main part of my teaching. Apart from that selfish reason, it's probably the best individual policy across the parties.)
Rule out profit-making schools, and only fund new mainstream schools in areas where school places are needed. (Again, broadly in agreement with this. Some of the expenses I know schools have paid for in recent years are utterly appalling.)
- Extend free school meals to all children in primary education, as resources allow and after a full evaluation of free meals for infants, while ensuring that school food standards apply to all schools, including academies. (Sounds great, but costly. Not sure how much of a priority most parents see this as. If the parents are struggling economically, then the children will receive free school meals anyway.)
- A two thirds discount bus pass for under 16-21 so they can afford to get to college and work - (Good idea, lots of my students moan about the cost of travel when they get to old for their free Oyster. But subsidised bus and train fees would be obviously more beneficial.).
- Develop the skilled workforce needed to support growth with major expansions of high-quality and advanced apprenticeships, offering vocational education on par with academic qualification backed up with new sector-led National Colleges. (Sounds good, but still not convinced by National Colleges)
- Expect all universities to support the national goal of widening participation across the sector. This will include running summer schools and setting up mentoring programmes between students/alumni and schools pupils. (Lots of universities already do this, so it's nothing new. Also, Summer Schools attract driven and motivated students so more of these places aren't necessarily impact on those you would want them to. Would need to be well planned and avoid the 25 page application form that one of my class had to fill in just to be under consideration.)

If you've got this far, well done. 

If I was basing my vote on education policies alone, then I'd choose the Lib Dems (despite having scored the Labour policies higher, was trying to be a bit objective). But that would only be on the basis of being told how they go about funding their policies and temporarily forgetting about their previous education pledges. Labour's policies seem well-considered and some of the costs have been accounted for. I was never going to be a fan of the Tories' policy ideas as they focus so heavily on academies and free schools, plus Gove is a massive Pob-faced cunt. UKIP's bigoted and insular approach to education is somewhat at odds with their wish to uphold British values, which to me include tolerance, acceptance and integration. And the Greens. If we lived on Planet Noxy, where money had become an outdated concept and governments could introduce any policy they wanted as long as it was pretty nice and wholesome and the Chancellor of the Exchequer was Tenderheart Bear, well then they'd be onto something. But, unless they've agreed to fracking all over the Surrey Downs, I just can't see how they would finance their ideas. Almost seems as if they know they have no chance of winning, have adopted some truly idealistic policies and hoped that puts pressure on the other parties to possibly adopt one of them. 

Having said all that (and it's taken ages to write up) I'm not sure that the policies in Education are actually divisive enough to the majority of the public. Not in the same way as with Tin's analysis. Ultimately I can do my job with little funding thrown at me, with minimal resources and still get excellent results. My knowledge, delivery, enthusiasm and teaching skills can overcome a lack of an interactive whiteboard, a decrease in photocopying budget, cancellation of relevant and required school trips or a shite OFSTED grading. But you can't deliver effective healthcare on the cheap or by cutting/limiting key services. Until a few whistleblowers expose the fraud within the education system or the decrease in teacher application numbers is really picked upon and understood I think Education will continue to be seen as a second wave policy area behind the likes of the NHS, the Welfare System, the Economy and Immigration. 

p.s. I'm sure there's loads of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes etc. so whilst it's my job to be a pedant to younglings, you lot don't matter. That's pedant btw.

Dropping the knowledge bomb, Stoph, as ever. Lovely to see. 20 kids in a class would be nice, huh.... A real game changer. Never going to happen, sadly.

That Greens video is so shit. What a waste of time and money. Tell 'em to sort it out Dante.

Agreed, good reading Stoph.

Attention to detail I would like to think would be an important trait for someone wanting to hold public office.

Also wanted to say huge thanks to Stoph and Grem and Tin for their perspectives on things. It shows how much our public employees actually care about the money that is spent on them and their services and I really appreciate that. It is literally affecting the way I'm thinking of voting.

What I would ask is: for those policies that seem insane to them, can you think of any justifications (beyond the usual tribal political ones)? I mean I like to think there are ideological differences rather than shadowy people actively trying to ruin public health and education, but perhaps I'm naive.

If each of those bullet points that he bothered to actually write are supposed to be about 15 words as well, then he's been cutting corners. One of them is only 6 words long. It's this sort of slapdash work ethic that paralysed Britain in the 70s when the unions ran this country and this shows us Labour hasn't changed at all.

Funkstain wrote:

In short he's a lazy arsehole although this is not a big enough deal for me to put off voting for him (if he were in my constituency).

Agreed, it just baffles me how people can be so incompetent.

I'd also echo your thanks for the great posts from stoph, grey and tin.

Funkstain wrote:

I mean I like to think there are ideological differences rather than shadowy people actively trying to ruin public health and education, but perhaps I'm naive.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it was discovered that the Tories had deliberately and surreptitiously undermined/degraded/hamstrung the NHS and education in order to push their ideological goals of privatisation and free markets.