was hearing stories from some of the ones around here that they have to chose carefully what stuff to give out because some folk literally don’t have enough money to pay for the leccy to heat up the food
And it’s totally a political choice. They could easily afford to make sure no-one had to live in these conditions. They just don’t want to. Keeping a pool of people desperate for any scraps of work serves them much better.
I’ve got a book from the 70s, which is basically a guide to living the counter-cultural life in London at the time. I got it out recently, because it has loads of prices and cost of living stuff, and a friend wanted some figures for research about the era. It’s got a page about what you’d get on the dole at the time. What you got for dole + housing benefit easily covered rent, decent groceries, utilities, a travel card and a bit of money for fun. There was also info about what you could earn for temp work, and two nights working in a restaurant would pay your week’s rent in London. And this was just before we had to get bailed out by the IMF.
Don’t forget the nuclear missiles. I mean, we haven’t decided who we’re going to nuke yet, but they’ll come in handy when we do.
Incredible that the NHS was set up at a time when half the cities were a bomb site, food was rationed, and we owed huge amounts of money to the US, huh?
Nissan provides about 7000 manufacturing jobs in a city that’s got bugger all other work available. Bailing out heavy industry doesn’t exactly come easily to tories; the reason they did it is precisely because of the horrendous fallout that would happen if they let them up sticks and move to Germany. So horrendous that even they couldn’t risk it.
I know the context, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be bad for the north east/whole country if Nissan left. It’s a fact though that they’re choosing to line the pockets of vast corporations pulling out over a 10% tax rise (at worst) if we leave the single market - and setting a precedent for doing so with all big business in the country, over investing in the social infrastructure here.
Looked it up, and they had 1000 applicants for 120 places at the free school with classes much smaller than normal, and 75% was the best they could do?
76% doesn’t represent “failed” though, which was the bit I was replying to. You know more than me as to how good that performance in context is though so fair enough!
Yeah, not failed as in terrible school or labasted by Ofsted, more like failed in his grandiose boasting. All he managed to do was spend a lot of money to open a school much the same standard as other ok schools.