Andy Kingdon 🔶️

Also Lincs. still has grammar schools

My Dad (ex-teacher, then examiner and architect of GCSE) favourite gramme school fact was 1 Welsh county had 8% 11+ pass rate but next door county had 25% pass rate. They each had 1 grammar school but 1 county had a population 3x the size. It was a lottery.

Is she the new lineup of the Village People?

The current system is working improving educational achievement for most kids. Grammar schools are about people reliving the 1950s not education. A worthless throw back.
(Full disclosure: eldest child did A level at Academy now at uni, youngest at LEA secondary doing GCSEs).

I appreciate you are rattling cages but a few grammar schools are not going to make significant changes to UK educational attainment. there is no research at all that 11 years is an age where you can separate kids attainment, some will knuckle down, some fall back. Its utter nonsense.

G&D showed Reform's easily beatable, Farage is their only good campaigner. When he was out of the way (Maldives) then focus goes onto candidates, either non-entities or like Goodwin they are a liability that repels voters.

Lamentable Lammoth?

Britney, of all people, knows that it's toxic

Nigel, how about you invest all of your money in a palm on the Clacton coast and we'll see how long it lasts in North Sea storms or who will use a 360 deg infinity pool fares looking down on the Thames Estuary in January.

No Matt Goodwin because when people heard you, they realised you were an obnoxious misogynist and voted instead for a person who came over as a normal, decent human being. If you shout vile opinions then you reap what you sow.

They really are a death cult.

Given the way Badenoch talks about people from other Nigerian communities, she is explicitly racist. Everything else you say I 100% agree with

This. Low bar, and he should have disengaged with Trump from the outset, but he's right. Very few want UK troops involved in this. A policy of defending assets and citizens but not engaging is the only practical response while USA get embroiled in a war with no clear way out.

Presumably "Brave" as synonym for "immensely stupid" ?

In a world of near universal smart phone ownership, mapping apps and (in many cases) bus stop display screens are timetables relevant anymore?

Agree. It's perfectly possible to believe that revolutionary Iran is an awful regime but nothing Trump is doing will do anything other than make things worse. Keeping UK forces out of the direct conflict has overwhelming support in the UK.

Farage and Badenoch are utterly out of their depth.

But its bizarre that people who shout his name loudest are the ones like Farage that would have locked up with his guru Mosely as traitors or would have been outright Nazis like Trump. 2/2

Churchill earns respect for the leadership he showed from Dunkirk to D-Day, especially in 40-41 when others would have folded. Outside those dates his judgement was often poor, often woeful (Gallipoli, Gold Standard, General Strike), even in WW2 he made awful decisions (Norway, Dieppe) 1/2

It will achieve nothing, Ask any Lib Dem. BBC like the clicks that have racists on their shows generate

They are using Trump's culture war, anti-abortion, anti-women tropes from MAGA but without the evangelical Christian community to support it. Now supporting Trump's war that very few in UK want. Given they are hated by left, l repelling supporters is a really thick choice.

In other news: Speed limits slow cars down, shock!

In other news: water is wet.

I want to a conference in Dubai about 10 years ago when my kids were little. Someone had asked if I'd be interested in a job there so I thought I'd take a look. It'd be a horrible place to take your kids. Las Vegas is considerably less fake than Dubai.

I got a mail last week asking (actually closer to demanding) that I review 10 papers(!) for a special volume on Mediterranean geology. My exact number of papers on this topic is 0.
I only review and submit to independent society and open access journals

Which is an argument for more restriction on diesel cars not for changing speed limits. If he cars aren't suitable for the speeds needed for safe roads then those cars should be taken off the road.

That this starts with the Tories I'd completely agree.
But Labour has had a chance to change policy not continue it. But they pulled back from NetZero actions and investment under Treasury pressure and housebuilder lobbying not hitting the ground running.

Tudor mansion Wollaton Hall Nottingham aka Wayne Manor in "The Dark Night Rises"

I might as well admit I'm the superhero alter ego of Bruce Wayne. Finally been rumbled. Didn't claiming to live down the road from Wollaton Hall not give the game away?

Labour not confronting the UK housebuilding industry to insist on solar and heat pumps on new builds is an absolute policy fail. The closest major 450 home new development to my home is at ground works stage and they are installing new gas mains onto the site for new builds. Absolute stupidity.

I really couldn't care if Oakenshott gets left in a war zone but if she's repatriated then let's bill her for all her back tax.

Want to Venice last October with my family and prices were not nearly as bad as we expected. Admittedly we avoided Piazza San Marco but a few streets away prosseco by a canal was €10. Pizza similar prices. Not cheap but not obscene. Someone must have seen them coming.