| Should politicians resign? 10:26 - Aug 18 with 1832 views | DorsetIan |
When exactly did it change that heads of govt department no longer feel the need to resign when an almighty c0ck up occurs on their watch?
So many of them now just try to style it out and surely this can't be a welcome development.
If someone resigns it shows that the buck does indeed stop with them, that the job is more important than the individual, and that the individual has some decency/principles.
I'm not sure what it means if they cling on - but surely some kind of desperation.
Having become a complete laughing stock (previously Frank Spencer but on the front of the Mail this morning as Stan Laurel) surely Williamson would have salvaged more self respect by falling on his sword. What does he think he is gaining by staying in a job where he is now thought of with such contempt, and where he is surely going to get sacked at the next opportunity anyway? |  |
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| Should politicians resign? on 10:50 - Aug 18 with 1125 views | cocklebreath |
Seems to me the new government policy is do something ridiculous get the nation furious then backtrack and say we are listening |  |
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| Should politicians resign? on 11:16 - Aug 18 with 1103 views | Kennington |
I don’t understand what he did wrong. It seems sensible to me that grades are based on past attainment of schools. It seems now there will be huge grade inflation. When I did my a levels years ago I did feck all until after messing up my mocks and then worked all hours. These kids won’t have had to do anything from March, so why should they get the reward for in effect not going through all those hours of revision? If I had my way I’d give them the algorithm but reduce it by a further 20% which would off set the lack of school work over the last few months. [Post edited 18 Aug 2020 11:20]
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| Should politicians resign? on 12:26 - Aug 18 with 1063 views | Chesham_Saint |
Should they resign? Two words ‘Peter’ and ‘Mandelson’ - he certainly didn’t go easily and then fvcked up again. it’s a dangerous game playing holier than thou when it comes to party politics as they’re all at it. |  |
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| Should politicians resign? on 12:34 - Aug 18 with 1058 views | DorsetIan |
| Should politicians resign? on 12:26 - Aug 18 by Chesham_Saint |
Should they resign? Two words ‘Peter’ and ‘Mandelson’ - he certainly didn’t go easily and then fvcked up again. it’s a dangerous game playing holier than thou when it comes to party politics as they’re all at it. |
I wasn't trying to make a party political point. I was really just trying to remember the last time any of them did the decent thing.
I can remember Lord Carrington resigning over the Falklands and I think Whitelaw offered to resign as Home Secretary when that nutter broke into Buckingham Palace and the Queen's bedroom. But we're going back to the earlier 80s for those.
When was the last time anyone (of any party) who monumentally screwed up (so I'm not talking about people who resigned on points of principle) voluntarily carried the can? | |
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| Should politicians resign? on 16:48 - Aug 18 with 1006 views | Bazza |
| Should politicians resign? on 12:34 - Aug 18 by DorsetIan |
I wasn't trying to make a party political point. I was really just trying to remember the last time any of them did the decent thing.
I can remember Lord Carrington resigning over the Falklands and I think Whitelaw offered to resign as Home Secretary when that nutter broke into Buckingham Palace and the Queen's bedroom. But we're going back to the earlier 80s for those.
When was the last time anyone (of any party) who monumentally screwed up (so I'm not talking about people who resigned on points of principle) voluntarily carried the can? |
Maybe the principal govt. advisors should go also. Certainly major mistakes in companies I've worked for has led promptly to redundancies with pay-offs (unless criminal activity, IT guy downloaded bad stuff). Occasionally people moved departments.
Perhaps the Head of Ofqual Sally Collier ( 'grades will look exactly the same') should be looked at but at 57 and £200k pay + final salary pension she would probably not be too unhappy. Norwich supporter! | | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 16:58 - Aug 18 with 994 views | Gennaro_Contaldo |
| Should politicians resign? on 11:16 - Aug 18 by Kennington |
I don’t understand what he did wrong. It seems sensible to me that grades are based on past attainment of schools. It seems now there will be huge grade inflation. When I did my a levels years ago I did feck all until after messing up my mocks and then worked all hours. These kids won’t have had to do anything from March, so why should they get the reward for in effect not going through all those hours of revision? If I had my way I’d give them the algorithm but reduce it by a further 20% which would off set the lack of school work over the last few months. [Post edited 18 Aug 2020 11:20]
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Agree!
And shock, surprise, aren't the grades significantly higher this year than the YoY growth in previous years? Ridiculous. |  |
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| Should politicians resign? on 17:09 - Aug 18 with 988 views | Bison |
| Should politicians resign? on 16:58 - Aug 18 by Gennaro_Contaldo |
Agree!
And shock, surprise, aren't the grades significantly higher this year than the YoY growth in previous years? Ridiculous. |
They should just give them what they want. Employees/Uni’s will soon realise that this years grades are meaningless but I suppose in a few years time then they will be moaning about discrimination. |  |
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| Should politicians resign? on 17:17 - Aug 18 with 979 views | JaySaint |
you can understand why Govt want to rip up the higher echelons of the civil service.
ministers get sacked for the appalling contributions of face-less entity's that have been un-sackable | |
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| Should politicians resign? on 19:19 - Aug 18 with 938 views | kingslandstand1 |
| Should politicians resign? on 17:09 - Aug 18 by Bison |
They should just give them what they want. Employees/Uni’s will soon realise that this years grades are meaningless but I suppose in a few years time then they will be moaning about discrimination. |
I 3 years time when the 1000's leave Uni they'll be so many of them that there won'y be any jobs for them anyway as there will be too many graduates out there!! That's if they get their degrees having scammed their way in to Uni in the first place |  | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 20:17 - Aug 18 with 918 views | Sadoldgit |
| Should politicians resign? on 19:19 - Aug 18 by kingslandstand1 |
I 3 years time when the 1000's leave Uni they'll be so many of them that there won'y be any jobs for them anyway as there will be too many graduates out there!! That's if they get their degrees having scammed their way in to Uni in the first place |
There are already plenty of graduates filling up shelves and doing menial work as it is now. The days of a degree giving you a leg up in life are rapidly disappearing. |  | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 20:21 - Aug 18 with 917 views | DorsetIan |
They haven't just plucked the grades out of thin air. The teachers knew they were going to be moderated, so you can guess that they were prudent.
But the teachers couldn't know who was going to @rse up the exams. All that's happened is that everyone has been given the best they could have achieved. They will be broadly correct as a measure of that.
What Williamson did wrong was to not see this car crash coming and do something about it in advance. Even without the lessons from Scotland any idiot could have looked at the grades that Ofqual wanted to send out and stopped it in it's tracks.
Having the wit to avoid massive problems before they happen is surely an important skill in anyone in charge of anything? | |
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| Should politicians resign? on 20:31 - Aug 18 with 910 views | Sadoldgit |
When the PM himself displays such a disregard for behaving honourably, we can’t expect any better for those he has put in place. Still, little wonder that they get away with it when you see how little many of those who voted for these people think about ethics. I think most of them think it’s a county to the east of London. | | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 20:52 - Aug 18 with 901 views | Kennington |
| Should politicians resign? on 20:21 - Aug 18 by DorsetIan |
They haven't just plucked the grades out of thin air. The teachers knew they were going to be moderated, so you can guess that they were prudent.
But the teachers couldn't know who was going to @rse up the exams. All that's happened is that everyone has been given the best they could have achieved. They will be broadly correct as a measure of that.
What Williamson did wrong was to not see this car crash coming and do something about it in advance. Even without the lessons from Scotland any idiot could have looked at the grades that Ofqual wanted to send out and stopped it in it's tracks.
Having the wit to avoid massive problems before they happen is surely an important skill in anyone in charge of anything? |
I don’t understand though how you can get the grades that you haven’t actually earnt? They lost a best part of a term of teaching too so they’re getting grades for stuff they might not have even learnt about. The kids should have taken socially distanced exams or some other method. I just don’t get the logic of all of this.
On this topic, I saw a placard held up by a student with “Its Williamsons fault”. I nearly told her that if her A level was English I’d give an automatic fail. Can’t even proofread her own sign. | |
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| Should politicians resign? on 21:05 - Aug 18 with 891 views | Saintsforeverj |
| Should politicians resign? on 20:52 - Aug 18 by Kennington |
I don’t understand though how you can get the grades that you haven’t actually earnt? They lost a best part of a term of teaching too so they’re getting grades for stuff they might not have even learnt about. The kids should have taken socially distanced exams or some other method. I just don’t get the logic of all of this.
On this topic, I saw a placard held up by a student with “Its Williamsons fault”. I nearly told her that if her A level was English I’d give an automatic fail. Can’t even proofread her own sign. |
Yes, it should be "Williamson's fault" with an apostrophe. Hopefully she wasn't studying English language.
I wondered whether they could do some socially distanced exams, but do they include the topics in the exam that the students missed since April? In other words, they get graded for science or whatever, without studying some of the topics? What about the fact that the students were not able to see their teachers for help with revision and advice for 4 months? Is that not also unfair, that they would have faced exams without contact with their teachers? Organising students coming into school / college to take their exams during a lockdown, would also have been difficult / risky. Every option during this virus pandemic is filled with problems. A teacher who knows each student well, is likely to have a good idea what grade they would get. Not perfect, as it's an informed guess, but what can they do! [Post edited 18 Aug 2020 21:10]
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| Should politicians resign? on 21:10 - Aug 18 with 883 views | DorsetIan |
| Should politicians resign? on 20:52 - Aug 18 by Kennington |
I don’t understand though how you can get the grades that you haven’t actually earnt? They lost a best part of a term of teaching too so they’re getting grades for stuff they might not have even learnt about. The kids should have taken socially distanced exams or some other method. I just don’t get the logic of all of this.
On this topic, I saw a placard held up by a student with “Its Williamsons fault”. I nearly told her that if her A level was English I’d give an automatic fail. Can’t even proofread her own sign. |
I agree that - like a lot of other European countries - the UK should have tried harder to enable students to sit exams. And particularly A levels where university places depended upon them.
But the exams were scrapped (another WIlliamson decision) so what were they supposed to do?
Surely they've got to do their best to work out the grades they would have got had they been allowed to complete their courses and sit their exams? Everyone looking at the 2020 grades will know that no exams were sat, so that 'adjustment' is automatically built in. Trusting the teachers to give a honest assessment of the pupils is not perfect, but who else is in a better position to make that call?
The Ofqual system was very obviously flawed but my understanding is that part of the problem was that they were told by Williamson that there could be no grade inflation. And now he is trying to blame them.
Getting it wrong was bad enough, but letting it all roll out and not correcting it until yesterday just shows complete incompetence (and a lack of any common sense). At least he would salvage a bit of self-respect if he now resigned. [Post edited 18 Aug 2020 21:11]
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| Should politicians resign? on 21:39 - Aug 18 with 869 views | kingslandstand1 |
| Should politicians resign? on 20:17 - Aug 18 by Sadoldgit |
There are already plenty of graduates filling up shelves and doing menial work as it is now. The days of a degree giving you a leg up in life are rapidly disappearing. |
So basically, they go to Uni to kill a few years, have a "gap year" in the middle, then back in the real world doing the Saturday job (?) they were doing as spotty 16 year olds!
Oh, and with a helluva loan to pay back! | | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 13:25 - Aug 19 with 827 views | Sadoldgit |
I don’t know if it is true, but I have just read that Williamson offered his resignation but that Johnson (from wherever he is holed up) has not accepted it. There is also a report that there will be no cabinet reshuffle in September as Johnson has full confidence in his cabinet.
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| Should politicians resign? on 13:33 - Aug 19 with 826 views | SalisburySaint |
| Should politicians resign? on 21:39 - Aug 18 by kingslandstand1 |
So basically, they go to Uni to kill a few years, have a "gap year" in the middle, then back in the real world doing the Saturday job (?) they were doing as spotty 16 year olds!
Oh, and with a helluva loan to pay back! |
High opinion of students at university then, I love the generalisations of some on here
I’ve got one daughter studying at the moment planning to join the police force once she’s got her sociology degree, another planning to start next year at Northland College for and will start as a nanny on £27k a year once she’s qualified |  | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 13:41 - Aug 19 with 821 views | grumpy |
| Should politicians resign? on 13:33 - Aug 19 by SalisburySaint |
High opinion of students at university then, I love the generalisations of some on here
I’ve got one daughter studying at the moment planning to join the police force once she’s got her sociology degree, another planning to start next year at Northland College for and will start as a nanny on £27k a year once she’s qualified |
Both my daughters have 2.1 from university,ones a teacher and the other a estate agent manager.I think their degrees helped in their professions. |  | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 14:03 - Aug 19 with 813 views | kernow |
| Should politicians resign? on 13:41 - Aug 19 by grumpy |
Both my daughters have 2.1 from university,ones a teacher and the other a estate agent manager.I think their degrees helped in their professions. |
Without doubt.
Should politicians resign?
No they should be sacked.
Better still, strung up by the ballsack. | | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 15:57 - Aug 19 with 785 views | Ripleys_revenge |
I think the bigger issue is the generally very established practise of rotating ministers between totally distinct ministries. In Williamson's case he came from defence (where he was not exactly a world beater!) to education. Take Grayling endlessly being rotated from failure to failure. It's astonishing that this practise still continues - I'm not sure how many other countries do it?
As the single most important decision maker in the country when it comes to the most critical issues within each sector, is it really any surprise our ministers so often get it wrong? They're not experts by any means. Making the right decision needs deep sectoral knowledge and expertise, which our decision makers totally lack. To society's detriment, their skill is in stalking the halls of parliament not understanding the nuances and complexities of highly important social issues.
And yes, I know the civil service is there to provide the expertise but since it's being slowly eroded under the current cabinet, is it any wonder that ministers keep making these appalling f@ck ups? | | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 16:03 - Aug 19 with 784 views | Bazza |
| Should politicians resign? on 13:41 - Aug 19 by grumpy |
Both my daughters have 2.1 from university,ones a teacher and the other a estate agent manager.I think their degrees helped in their professions. |
Ditto with helping mine to get good jobs. BUT both went to good universities. If 60% go to Unis many will end up with huge debt and poor degrees from poor Unis as a result of this years predicted grades. Surely many would benefit more from vocational and/or less academic courses? | | | |
| Should politicians resign? on 16:36 - Aug 19 with 775 views | Kennington |
| Should politicians resign? on 15:57 - Aug 19 by Ripleys_revenge |
I think the bigger issue is the generally very established practise of rotating ministers between totally distinct ministries. In Williamson's case he came from defence (where he was not exactly a world beater!) to education. Take Grayling endlessly being rotated from failure to failure. It's astonishing that this practise still continues - I'm not sure how many other countries do it?
As the single most important decision maker in the country when it comes to the most critical issues within each sector, is it really any surprise our ministers so often get it wrong? They're not experts by any means. Making the right decision needs deep sectoral knowledge and expertise, which our decision makers totally lack. To society's detriment, their skill is in stalking the halls of parliament not understanding the nuances and complexities of highly important social issues.
And yes, I know the civil service is there to provide the expertise but since it's being slowly eroded under the current cabinet, is it any wonder that ministers keep making these appalling f@ck ups? |
Most ministers don’t really know anything about their departments, and I’m not sure that matters too much. They’re there to lead the political mandate of the government and in doing so they have to listen to their civil servants and subject leaders whether generals or teaching groups and make decisions, based on advice and the political mandate. They’re not there to be experts in health or education. It’s a bit like a chairman of the board who may have no experience of the sector they’re chairing. There’s nothing wrong with that if the minister has a reasonable level of competence and the support of the government. | |
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| Should politicians resign? on 17:32 - Aug 19 with 765 views | arfurdent |
called jobs for the public school leeches |  |
| And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head |
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| Should politicians resign? on 19:04 - Aug 19 with 735 views | JaySaint |
talking of uni's, my younger cousin has signed up for a Business Management degree (Bachelors) at Northumbria uni.
I would chuckle if that falls in the 'waste of time and money' bracket. | |
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