[Tubby Isaacs]

Aspiring Tory candidate in "approves of government policy" shock.

If you're talking exclusively about "towns" the by definition you're no talking about places that "need it most". I'm sure it's just a weird coincidence that lots of the poor in towns are whiter than the poor in cities.

[Tubby Isaacs]

They really are this stupid.

[Watchman]

Boo hoo, Tories can’t get elected as mayors and it’s not fair.

I assume that chancer Houchen, and the bloke in Birmingham don’t count

[Andy McDandy]

You know, we could always put the train on the back of a low loader and drive it down the M40....

[Boiler]

Apart from a bank (they've all gone), my tiny little town has all of those within 15 minutes

And good Lord, Fabric Cunt really is dim. Next he'll be advocating reopening the Great Central..

[Tubby Isaacs]

They actually revel in the lying, publicly.

[Boiler]

Is he on the Portillo List...?

[mattomac]

Big announcement on the Mail ahead of conference.

We are going ban mobile phones in school.

[Crabcakes]

Big announcement on the Mail ahead of conference.

We are going ban mobile phones in school.

Phones are already banned in classes, so this is either a non-law as it’s already happened and is just being floated to appeal to tutting retired colonels and their awful spouses who assume kids just sit in lessons openly on Snapchat all day, or they’re going to do something stupid and ban them from school premises entirely - which will be catastrophically unworkable in terms of kids staying safe, arranging pick-up, letting parents know they’ll be late and so on.

It’s barely more plausible/better thought out than saying they’re going to ban being naughty.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Define 'ban'.

It's just another wedge issue which, on a moment's thought, proves to be unwise or unworkable or both.

As Crabz said, already forbidden in classes, but useful in other ways.
Some teachers have used them in IT/history lessons - every kid with a little computer in their pocket.
Parents want to be able to contact/track their kids (I'm ambiguous about that) and can be quite vociferous - they were back when I was teaching.
Smartphones are ubiquitous. Most schools have learned to live with them. Trying to ban them is very problematic - searching kids? Forcibly removing them? Providing a lovely cache of high-value items for a thief?

I wonder if any Tory politicians will take on the job of coming into school and taking 25+ phones off of 25+ 16-year olds before double Maths?

Thought not...

[Andy McDandy]

Was what I was thinking - as you've said a few times Malcolm, a good teacher doesn't want to waste half the lesson time arguing with students over handing their phones in. Any teacher who then throws the entire class in detention is just going to have nobody turn up after the last bell, and they'll be a laughing stock around the school. That is, if "wind up teacher, ten points if they cry" is still the popular pastime it was in my schooldays.

It's just soundbite policy. They may as well have a big poster saying "Kids, eh? Ungrateful little brats. And you know what, they'll be even worse under Labour." Mainly because what I suspect they really want to announce ("Corporal punishment to be reintroduced for other people's children") is a bit much even for their own audience.

[Youngian]

Would the Tories be in favour of teaching children how to use the net on their phones? Like identifying misinformation and spotting fake news over legitimate sources, probably not.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

@Andy McDandy
It's more than a nuisance, Andy. Searching kids for phones might be seen as illegal, and possibly an assault.
If those safeguards are taken away we are in very dodgy territory.

Birbalsingh will love it...

[Andy McDandy]

These are the guys who dropped civics from the NC because they claimed it would lead to "left wing indoctrination" by teachers. Likewise the founding of the NHS and welfare state from the history curriculum.

Apparently one of the reasons for this was WW2, in a roundabout way. During the war, junior officers were expected to run ad-hoc education sessions - basically keep the troops engaged during quieter moments. The combination of politically engaged idealistic officers from the middle classes, and working class grunts who remembered all too well the 1930s was probably a big factor in the Attlee landslide.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Also the experience of middle-class families in the shires who took in evacuee children, many of whom came from the poorest parts of the cities and shocked them with their habits and physical condition, and voted to improve things.

And the fact that in WW2 'gentlemen' from the middle classes were not automatically made officers as they were in WW1, and so shared conditions with their working class brothers in arms, and learned a great del from the experience.

[Crabcakes]

I suspect the real intended appeal is not even to parents or teachers, but to the same hairshirts for all dullards like P. Hitchens. The sort who want imperial measures back precisely because they’re gibberish, and who say exams are easier every year and were much harder back in their day - oblivious to the fact kids these days are expected to be able to produce slick, well researched and fully animated and subtitled video presentations about the large hadron collider submitted via an online learning portal, when all they had to do is run 25 volts through a stick insect and then handwrite a paragraph on a sheet of A4 and these days can barely work a basic mobile telephone to ring up these same children to ask them to pop round and ‘reset their Google for them’.

[Youngian]

Muted and even an absence of applause for Grant Shapp’s defence of UK’s commitment to Ukraine. A party of Putin appeasing Kippers?
Or just as likely Shapps’s mediocrity as Cleverly is getting even less applause.

And this is just the opening of John Crace’s even more scathing than usual reviews

Not so much a party conference. Not even an end of the pier show. More of a funeral wake. At which most of the participants appear to have already died. Four years ago the Tories won an 80-seat majority and looked set to remain in power for another decade. Now they act like the walking dead.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... are_btn_tw

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I suspect the real intended appeal is not even to parents or teachers, but to the same hairshirts for all dullards like P. Hitchens. The sort who want imperial measures back precisely because they’re gibberish, and who say exams are easier every year and were much harder back in their day - oblivious to the fact kids these days are expected to be able to produce slick, well researched and fully animated and subtitled video presentations about the large hadron collider submitted via an online learning portal, when all they had to do is run 25 volts through a stick insect and then handwrite a paragraph on a sheet of A4 and these days can barely work a basic mobile telephone to ring up these same children to ask them to pop round and ‘reset their Google for them’.

It's another 'wedge' issue.

Tories say ban phones. Primitives say 'yeah'. Labour says 'Hang on, that won't work', Tories say 'Labour weak on school discipline." Right wing media obliges...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Danny Kruger on lizardmen.

The again George Monbiot was doing this bollocks on HS2 the other day, so why should we expect the Right to be any better?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Scott Benton, nicknamed Mr Evidence, is on the case.