Mailwatch(ed) Forum

South Korea and Taiwan are the most nature connected.

Languishing below Britain are the Netherlands, English-speaking Canada, Germany, Israel, Japan and Spain, which is the least nature-connected of the 61 nations surveyed.

Who knew English-speaking Canada was a nation? Yet strangely, Spanish-speaking Spain isn't.

It's to differentiate from Quebec. Sometimes happens with cultural matters.

Yes - culturally quite distinct, I believe.

As, in the case of Spain, you might distinguish between Spanish and Basque speaking regions.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... dal-labour

Rachel Reeves’s housing scandal was a small administrative error, but a big political mistake
Oliver Eagleton
At a time of austerity, and with Labour’s housing policies needing years to take effect, the public doesn’t want to hear about ministers with multiple homes

Small administrative error but still a "scandal". I can't be arsed to read, but sounds very much like "optics" stuff. I thought Eagleton was one of those "issues" types. Why should she have sold her family home, when she could be forced from No.11 at any time? As a few people had a good go at.

Eagleton recycles the Reeves "accused of being extravagant with expenses at HBOS". The article linked to contains nothing worse than Reeves buying presents for the boss with company money, like this stuff isn't routinely paid for from petty cash.

I'm lost now. Wasn't she something incredibly junior at HBOS that she puffed up like an Apprentice contestant, in order to sound important? Hence all the "Rachel from Complaints" shit? Yet she had an expense account?

Ha ha, indeed.

Would you have cut Tory ministers slack for equivalent small beer during the last administration? Who knows as there was no time or space to get around to such minor matters buried under their mountain of shit. But yeh, 'they're all corrupt.'

I think we'd have barely heard about it. The BBC would have checked it out and written it off as politically motivated.

I'd have probably got stuck in though.

Surprisingly sensible by Simon Jenkins on the new curriculum. Except this bit.

Sadly, the report pays obedience to the maths cult, which retains its lock on school progress. It is like Latin in smart schools in the old days. Beyond arithmetic, maths has become a badge of pedagogic irrelevance. I am told the GCSE maths requirement for most technical courses is now a serious barrier to skilled labour training. It is a social segregator. A teacher tells me that, with calculators, all the maths 99% of school leavers need can be taught to them in a day.

"School leavers"? What's this, I Love 1981? I love that he says "calculators" rather than computers. But it would still be nonsense that you could do all the rest in one day.

Most journalists have shit STEM skills and therefore disparage maths.

While it's true that most people don't sit down and write out sums every day, maths is more about training your brain to figure things out subconsciously. Every time you drive on a motorway, you're doing calculus. Judging distances? Trigonometry. You're doing it without even knowing it.

Also, the rather wonderful Hannah Fry does maths, so being good at it raises the chances of getting jiggy with her. From a fraction of fuck all, to in your wildest dreams, Andy.

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Sat Nov 08, 2025 6:25 pm Most journalists have shit STEM skills and therefore disparage maths.

True. And they have direct and indirect influence on policy in the most malign manner.

They love talking about other people doing STEM subjects though, whereas they did History and Classics etc. This has been a rhetorical thing on the hard right for 40 odd years, with with Enoch Powell being rarely an honourable exception.

Public school mentality. "Can't do his sums!", etc.

That old Fleet Street favourite. "Why hasn't the Government been more bold?" (ie done exactly what we want very fast).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ge-schools

it is clear that the government has work to do in maintaining a sense of momentum around its plans for education

What does this actually mean? They say themselves that Philipson has done a lot of good stuff. Is anyone in Education thinking "Bloody Government, not making us change everything really fast!"?

But taking a step back, the bigger question is why Labour did not develop more ambitious plans for schools during 14 years in opposition.

This is a very common complaint, from the likes of Stephen Bush. Is it fair? They seemed to hit the ground running with breakfast clubs and early years. But could they have done eg the new curriculum in opposition? Would Becky Francis have even wanted to do it in those circumstances?

I have some sympathy with the argument that A levels are too narrow, but I think they've got plenty to be getting on with.

I would guess that whatever plans were being formed during their first 5 years in opposition would have been totally fucked up during the Corbyn debacle.

Corbyn didn't really have any sense of the public interest being separate to what his political allies in the public sector workforce wanted. If you want a rail policy, you just ask the RMT and ASLEF, with their Lexiter leaders elected on tiny turnouts. Same with the NEU (currently led by one of his Stop The War pals) on Education.

That's not even really producer capture, it's something even more unrepresentative. Governments are supposed to represent wider interests than that, and every previous Labour minister has sought to do that, backing management where appropriate. A rail manager under Corbyn couldn't count on any support.

Education's an odd one. Going by coverage in the media, what people want is good schools and nice universities for their kids, and when it comes to the curriculum, 'not this'.

Vocational courses, apprenticeships, academic rigour, compulsory sport for everyone, must be competitive, not inclusive, traditional material, relevant to the modern world, transferable skills, fronted fucking adverbials, phonics, 3 Rs, SEN for my kids because not all learning issues are obvious, that kid on the other hand is just bone idle and thick.

Lead story. Some people think Wes Streeting is plotting to topple Starmer, others don't. Some people say 50 frontbenchers would resign, Some people say Starmer would fight an election v Streeting. Some people say other people might take over from Starmer, including "even Ed Milliband", which the paper itself clearly doesn't take seriously but chucks in anyway,

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -challenge