John Blake
@johndavidblake
Director, The Post 18 Project // Professor of Social Innovation and Public Policy at University of Salford // musical theatre obsessive
Surely this needs a capital letter or it just suggests he’s doing some Ikea upcycling?
Labour Party members ought to think of themselves as a tiebreaker when the PLP cannot agree rather than as always being entitled to choice. And given the bloody stupid decisions they’ve come to in the past, they’re frankly lucky to get that.
Obviously, Burnham’s Manchesterism is bigger than just skills & knowledge, but those areas currently least well-served by Whitehall policy and delivery. Building a bigger mega-dept for all his plans might be tempting, but I don’t think either of the other suggested plans in the papers will work:
Any serious plan for govt-enabled growth must deal with persistent under-funding of FE, financial crisis in universities, and the utter randomness of older life training. Devolving those in their current form will mean responsibility without power or adequate funding. My proposal:
Burnham wants devolution, but rebuilding a hyper-centralised (yet also weirdly intervention-averse) state needs champions and implementers. And doing it for post-school education—FE, HE, and adult skills—needs coherent governance. Instead, England splits post-18 across 3 govt depts:
Discovered in this, a book I have been waiting 20 years to read and which absolutely does not disappoint.
How the hell do you ship something this obviously broken to the entire internet? Did no one at Google try *using* their AI search project before letting everyone else do so?
“We think the solution to a PM who will definitely lose Labour the next general election is two of the last three people to also do so.” “Well, there’s always the option of someone who’s already lost two leadership elections?”
Amazing work from Labour to provide competing visions of the future, both of which are: “Labour leaders from over a decade ago”.
This is kind of emoji based feedback I can get behind. @jonathansimons.bsky.social @aveek18.bsky.social @tom-richmond.com
Bold choice from Haringey Council to sell billboard space on the side of their administrative building to a movie about a sex offender.
I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else - Locke
I have joined The Post 18 Project as our first Director: my first intervention is to pour out my thoughts about why our student loan system is doomed, no matter how good policy works think it is. post18.co.uk/a-review-of-...
That David Frost article is even more absurd than the headline makes it sound. It contains, for example, the following paragraph, which I think beggars belief from someone whose peerage stems from Brexit advocacy.
This is the most tragic and nonsensical thing a US President has ever produced in public and given how many of them were drunk for almost all their time on office, that’s quite the achievement.
The 25 Amendment has provision for these circumstances (I get it’s not a *great* provision [and also contains the only typo specifically voted into the US Constitution] but these are not the words of a well man…
The key paragraph in an shambolic grab bag of justifications. The sheer absurdity of it is perhaps the point—each aspect of it is debunkable but it takes time and effort, and then there’s some more bullshit beneath it.
Trump is profoundly ignorant of American history, so he’s presumably unaware of a load of piratical 19th Century filibusters are cheering in Hell at this.
No one this stupid should be allowed to vote, let alone be a member of the US Senate.