Scottish Referendum / Independence - Vol 8
Discussion
Not seen this posted thus far - it seems the transfer of Ferguson's to the taxpayer has been completed - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-po... - going by the report, most of the original £97m cost of the 2 non-functioning ferries has been paid, £50m of loans has been written off and the taxpayer has been paying to run the yard for months. Derek Mackay says more staff are being recruited to work at the yard as well. How much are these ferries actually going to cost, assuming they ever enter service? Last time I was through Port Glasgow, the Glen Sannox was looking distinctly sorry for itself - is there actually any work going on to finish them off?
Evercross said:
Latest OECD rankings for Education are out, and while the UK has risen overall and Scotland has recovered somewhat from its plummet from three years ago in Literacy from first (and way above the OECD average) to third (below the OECD average) back to second (still behind England), Scotland has fallen further behind in Maths and Science.
Scotland used to consistently lead the UK in all areas but the fall coincided with the introduction of outcome-based education in Scottish secondary schools - the so called 'Curriculum for Excellence' that the SNP's now Constitution Minister Mike Russell was responsible for.
The problem Scottish education has in recovering its position are three-fold
1. Changing a flawed education system is like turning around a super-tanker. Outcome-based education was tried and discredited in three other territories but Scotland ploughed ahead with it.
2. The SNP used CfE as an excuse to effectively disband the curricular development unit Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). They claim that they 'merged' it with the inspectorate body HMIE but this is disingenuous as the merged organisation Education Scotland has produced no curricular material (bar lists of weblinks and regurgitation of SQA Course Specs) since the merger. LTS used to second teachers to create and edit materials which could be used in all schools, but this development has stopped and it has now become effectively unpaid work that every teacher is doing individually or informally as groups which is exceptionally inefficient and one of the reasons teachers have rightly complained about skyrocketing workload levels, and means that there are no agreed standards.
3. The assessment body SQA used CfE as an excuse to do away with a raft of exams, turning courses into internally assessable ones. Again this leads to inconsistency and difficulty in measuring and maintaining standards. The problem though is that the SQA still burn through the same budget but with less infrastructure and staff (the head honchos rewarded themselves with bigger salaries for a job well done) and the cost of trying to get the organisation back to where it was would be significant.
All under the SNP's watch!
the teachers themselves call it the curriculum for mediocrity.Scotland used to consistently lead the UK in all areas but the fall coincided with the introduction of outcome-based education in Scottish secondary schools - the so called 'Curriculum for Excellence' that the SNP's now Constitution Minister Mike Russell was responsible for.
The problem Scottish education has in recovering its position are three-fold
1. Changing a flawed education system is like turning around a super-tanker. Outcome-based education was tried and discredited in three other territories but Scotland ploughed ahead with it.
2. The SNP used CfE as an excuse to effectively disband the curricular development unit Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). They claim that they 'merged' it with the inspectorate body HMIE but this is disingenuous as the merged organisation Education Scotland has produced no curricular material (bar lists of weblinks and regurgitation of SQA Course Specs) since the merger. LTS used to second teachers to create and edit materials which could be used in all schools, but this development has stopped and it has now become effectively unpaid work that every teacher is doing individually or informally as groups which is exceptionally inefficient and one of the reasons teachers have rightly complained about skyrocketing workload levels, and means that there are no agreed standards.
3. The assessment body SQA used CfE as an excuse to do away with a raft of exams, turning courses into internally assessable ones. Again this leads to inconsistency and difficulty in measuring and maintaining standards. The problem though is that the SQA still burn through the same budget but with less infrastructure and staff (the head honchos rewarded themselves with bigger salaries for a job well done) and the cost of trying to get the organisation back to where it was would be significant.
All under the SNP's watch!
Edited by Evercross on Tuesday 3rd December 10:42
i see it as similar to chinas system for reeducation,snp good,everything else bad
another few years and look at the amount of voters they have reprogrammed
glazbagun said:
Big Robbo said:
glazbagun said:
jakesmith said:
Why do ‘no thanks’ voters not just vote Tory
It’s been made certain that Sturgeon will treat an SNP majority as a green light for indyref
Can’t folk just be pragmatic and vote for least bad? Are they incapable of putting aside their preferences and morals to avoid something far far worse
I voted remain both times and am confident that another indyref would return the same result. I don't fear a referendum, I just think it's ridiculous and a (deliberate) distraction from running the country.It’s been made certain that Sturgeon will treat an SNP majority as a green light for indyref
Can’t folk just be pragmatic and vote for least bad? Are they incapable of putting aside their preferences and morals to avoid something far far worse
I could have voted Tory until around the time Boris sacked his own MP's for voting against the government, Ruth left and CCHQ started pulling stunts like changing their twitter handle to Fact Check UK and Boris dodging brillo. They're unworthy of my vote and failures of the other guys aren't enough to make me vote for them.
500swk said:
The teachers themselves call it the Curriculum for Mediocrity.
Curriculum for Excrement (I actually know the person who first coined that phrase).500swk said:
I see it as similar to China's system for re-education - SNP good, everything else bad. Another few years and look at the amount of voters they have reprogrammed.
I don't believe it is anything so sinister, but they have inadvertently produced a generation that is measurably less well educated that its predecessor.No doubt someone will be along shortly to point out that end-of-school passes in Scotland are up year-on-year, but the exam system was revised wholesale over the last 5 years to bring the assessment procedures in-line with outcome based education so a comparison is totally invalid, plus bear in mind what I said before about many of the qualifications moving from external exams to internal assessments - for anyone familiar with the old systems everything that was previously Standard Grade General Level down, O-Grade level C down or Intermediate 1 down is no longer assessed by examination.
Evercross said:
I don't believe it is anything so sinister, but they have inadvertently produced a generation that is measurably less well educated that its predecessor.
No doubt someone will be along shortly to point out that end-of-school passes in Scotland are up year-on-year, but the exam system was revised wholesale over the last 5 years to bring the assessment procedures in-line with outcome based education so a comparison is totally invalid, plus bear in mind what I said before about many of the qualifications moving from external exams to internal assessments - for anyone familiar with the old systems everything that was previously Standard Grade General Level down, O-Grade level C down or Intermediate 1 down is no longer assessed by examination.
we can only be thankfull that there is still private education in scotland,at least some kids will be educated to a reasonable standardNo doubt someone will be along shortly to point out that end-of-school passes in Scotland are up year-on-year, but the exam system was revised wholesale over the last 5 years to bring the assessment procedures in-line with outcome based education so a comparison is totally invalid, plus bear in mind what I said before about many of the qualifications moving from external exams to internal assessments - for anyone familiar with the old systems everything that was previously Standard Grade General Level down, O-Grade level C down or Intermediate 1 down is no longer assessed by examination.
500swk said:
we can only be thankfull that there is still private education in scotland,at least some kids will be educated to a reasonable standard
They ain't gonna last long if separation occurs, the lefties will make sure of that, yet strangely Faith Schools will remain, the catholic community being big supporters of separation.News today that nationalising Fergusons is complete, but apparently despite the administrator being in control of the yard since August they still do not know how long it will take to finish those bloody ferries nor what it will cost, despite that allegedly being the primary reason for the nationalisation. A hospital that has to routinely blast patients with antibiotics because they still cannot be sure the plumbing or the HVAC won't give them a deadly infection. Is there anything this government touches that doesn't turn to s
t?
t?Evercross said:
NoddyonNitrous said:
Scotsman, not Herald
Fixed! Ta.Parsnip said:
We do need more of people pushing the SNP on their record in office - whatever you think of their policies, independence, brexit or whatever, they have an abysmal record of running a country.
Latest OECD rankings for Education are out, and while the UK has risen overall and Scotland has recovered somewhat from its plummet from three years ago in Literacy from first (and way above the OECD average) to third (below the OECD average) back to second (still behind England), Scotland has fallen further behind in Maths and Science.Scotland used to consistently lead the UK in all areas but the fall coincided with the introduction of outcome-based education in Scottish secondary schools - the so called 'Curriculum for Excellence' that the SNP's now Constitution Minister Mike Russell was responsible for.
The problem Scottish education has in recovering its position are three-fold
1. Changing a flawed education system is like turning around a super-tanker. Outcome-based education was tried and discredited in three other territories but Scotland ploughed ahead with it.
2. The SNP used CfE as an excuse to effectively disband the curricular development unit Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). They claim that they 'merged' it with the inspectorate body HMIE but this is disingenuous as the merged organisation Education Scotland has produced no curricular material (bar lists of weblinks and regurgitation of SQA Course Specs) since the merger. LTS used to second teachers to create and edit materials which could be used in all schools, but this development has stopped and it has now become effectively unpaid work that every teacher is doing individually or informally as groups which is exceptionally inefficient and one of the reasons teachers have rightly complained about skyrocketing workload levels, and means that there are no agreed standards.
3. The assessment body SQA used CfE as an excuse to do away with a raft of exams, turning courses into internally assessable ones. Again this leads to inconsistency and difficulty in measuring and maintaining standards. The problem though is that the SQA still burn through the same budget but with less infrastructure and staff (the head honchos rewarded themselves with bigger salaries for a job well done) and the cost of trying to get the organisation back to where it was would be significant.
All under the SNP's watch!
Edited by Evercross on Tuesday 3rd December 10:42
hidetheelephants said:
News today that nationalising Fergusons is complete, but apparently despite the administrator being in control of the yard since August they still do not know how long it will take to finish those bloody ferries nor what it will cost, despite that allegedly being the primary reason for the nationalisation. A hospital that has to routinely blast patients with antibiotics because they still cannot be sure the plumbing or the HVAC won't give them a deadly infection. Is there anything this government touches that doesn't turn to st?
Well, I heard this week that the brand new hospital in Kirkwall has water pissing through its roof. And that the new (delayed opening) new paediatric and neurosciences building has a couple of other problems: the helipad for the whole campus is on the roof, and they can't run the MRI scanner when a helicopter is operating - it takes 15 mins to power it down... And when the chopper does land, it is blowing all the bird st?t and stuff off the roof into the airconditioning intakes.
Big Robbo said:
Point is....everybody who has commented on this thread from north of the border seems to agree that the SNP are actually not very good at what they are supposed to be doing, that is , supplying good health care services, good schools etc to the people of Scotland HOWEVER when an election arrives people will still vote for them because they are the best of a bad bunch. Some Scots NOT ALL, will not vote on matters that concern the whole of the UK of which Scotland voted to remain part of because they can't see past the end of their nationalistic noses. That's all
Not sure that's true - I have a more balanced view. The SNP do some good things and they do some things well, and they do some bad things and they do some things poorly.This thread was set-up all those years ago to discuss and debate the merits of Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. It has morphed into just SNP-bashing and anything-that-happens-in-Scotland-bashing.
In this thread, you have to wade through droves of crap written about Scotland and about Scottish people, society and culture to find any decent info or debate. Many posters have left or been banned and what is here today is a sad reflection.
Back to your point, who do you vote for next week? The SNP are not all bad. They have done a lot of good for Scotland. Who would do a better job? Really?!
This generation is being let down by the current crop of politicians and the UK is sinking fast,
Edinburger said:
The SNP do some good things and they do some things well, and they do some bad things and they do some things poorly.
A broad brush statement, but any in-depth analysis shows that the SNP's successes are largely superficial and amount to 'giving stuff away' which doesn't require much management or thought. The things they have done badly (health,education, infrastructure investment) are the things that underpin Scottish society and can have repercussions for decades to come. It isn't a nil-sum game as you are trying to suggest.Edinburger said:
This generation is being let down by the current crop of politicians and the UK is sinking fast,
Hyperbolic rubbish, and yet another soundbite straight out of the Nationalist social media dictionary of buzzphrases (but if you want to wade into that cess-pit go and join one of the Brexit threads).Edinburger said:
This thread was set-up all those years ago to discuss and debate the merits of Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. It has morphed into just SNP-bashing and anything-that-happens-in-Scotland-bashing.
Hmm, who to blame? Ever since that decisive referendum result the SNP have sought to ignore, revisit, and rerun the entire debate, campaign and decision, instead of just getting on with the fking job of running Scotland.Maybe if they had just stfu and kept their heads down this thread would have withered and died long ago...
Edinburger said:
Not sure that's true - I have a more balanced view. The SNP do some good things and they do some things well, and they do some bad things and they do some things poorly.
This thread was set-up all those years ago to discuss and debate the merits of Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. It has morphed into just SNP-bashing and anything-that-happens-in-Scotland-bashing.
In this thread, you have to wade through droves of crap written about Scotland and about Scottish people, society and culture to find any decent info or debate. Many posters have left or been banned and what is here today is a sad reflection.
Back to your point, who do you vote for next week? The SNP are not all bad. They have done a lot of good for Scotland. Who would do a better job? Really?!
This generation is being let down by the current crop of politicians and the UK is sinking fast,
One man's SNP-bashing is another man's carefully considered analysis of the merits of the devolved Scottish government.This thread was set-up all those years ago to discuss and debate the merits of Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. It has morphed into just SNP-bashing and anything-that-happens-in-Scotland-bashing.
In this thread, you have to wade through droves of crap written about Scotland and about Scottish people, society and culture to find any decent info or debate. Many posters have left or been banned and what is here today is a sad reflection.
Back to your point, who do you vote for next week? The SNP are not all bad. They have done a lot of good for Scotland. Who would do a better job? Really?!
This generation is being let down by the current crop of politicians and the UK is sinking fast,
PRTVR said:
Brilliant. And for a bit of balance how about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVy7faNKEtM
Evercross said:
Edinburger said:
The SNP do some good things and they do some things well, and they do some bad things and they do some things poorly.
A broad brush statement, but any in-depth analysis shows that the SNP's successes are largely superficial and amount to 'giving stuff away' which doesn't require much management or thought. The things they have done badly (health,education, infrastructure investment) are the things that underpin Scottish society and can have repercussions for decades to come. It isn't a nil-sum game as you are trying to suggest.Edinburger said:
This generation is being let down by the current crop of politicians and the UK is sinking fast,
Hyperbolic rubbish, and yet another soundbite straight out of the Nationalist social media dictionary of buzzphrases (but if you want to wade into that cess-pit go and join one of the Brexit threads).Remember that virtually anything bad that happens in Scotland is brought up in this thread and attributed (often wrongly) to the SNP.
Let me contest your "hyperbolic rubbish" point:
Real wage growth is down.
Productivity is down.
Employment rates are down.
Investment is down (company and personal).
FTSE 250 is down since the EU referendum.
Sterling's fall and heightened economic uncertainty have left our economy with the lowest annual growth in the G7.
I know we are better than forecast but it's not pretty.
Anyway, we digress. The fact is that this thread is now mainly about SNP / Scotland-bashing than any meaningful discussion about the prospect of Scottish independence.
technodup said:
mm, who to blame? Ever since that decisive referendum result the SNP have sought to ignore, revisit, and rerun the entire debate, campaign and decision, instead of just getting on with the fking job of running Scotland.
Maybe if they had just stfu and kept their heads down this thread would have withered and died long ago...
Second to partially-quote. king job of running Scotland.Maybe if they had just stfu and kept their heads down this thread would have withered and died long ago...
I note you also didn't contest my points.
hutchst said:
Edinburger said:
Not sure that's true - I have a more balanced view. The SNP do some good things and they do some things well, and they do some bad things and they do some things poorly.
This thread was set-up all those years ago to discuss and debate the merits of Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. It has morphed into just SNP-bashing and anything-that-happens-in-Scotland-bashing.
In this thread, you have to wade through droves of crap written about Scotland and about Scottish people, society and culture to find any decent info or debate. Many posters have left or been banned and what is here today is a sad reflection.
Back to your point, who do you vote for next week? The SNP are not all bad. They have done a lot of good for Scotland. Who would do a better job? Really?!
This generation is being let down by the current crop of politicians and the UK is sinking fast,
One man's SNP-bashing is another man's carefully considered analysis of the merits of the devolved Scottish government.This thread was set-up all those years ago to discuss and debate the merits of Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. It has morphed into just SNP-bashing and anything-that-happens-in-Scotland-bashing.
In this thread, you have to wade through droves of crap written about Scotland and about Scottish people, society and culture to find any decent info or debate. Many posters have left or been banned and what is here today is a sad reflection.
Back to your point, who do you vote for next week? The SNP are not all bad. They have done a lot of good for Scotland. Who would do a better job? Really?!
This generation is being let down by the current crop of politicians and the UK is sinking fast,
CambsBill said:
PRTVR said:
Brilliant. And for a bit of balance how about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVy7faNKEtM
Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff