Do you support your real life counterpart's policy to cut £4.5 Billion from the school rebuilding budget, and could you tell me which school rebuilding projects in the West Midlands where I live (or indeed in any area), you think would be best to cancel?
First off, the RL Conservative Party is not the TSR Conservative Party's "real life counterparts" as this implies a link between the two parties where none exists. We share their name for convenience not for ideology.
Anyway, on the point you ask (speaking entirely for myself as will every other TSR Tory member who enters this thread - hence the pointlessness of such threads) I would need more information. For one thing I doubt this proposal stands in complete isolation from any others. Might I suggest you ask your local branch of the Conservative Party for more info?
So why the squiggly tree logo in your sig? And if you're not in some way associated with them, are you aware that you're in breach of their presumed trademark on that logo by using it to sell a similar but unrelated product?
As for the rest of your post, shall I take that as a refusal to condemn the cutting of £4.5bn of the school rebuilding budget?
So why the squiggly tree logo in your sig? And if you're not in some way associated with them, are you aware that you're in breach of their presumed trademark on that logo by using it to sell a similar but unrelated product?
As for the rest of your post, shall I take that as a refusal to condemn the cutting of £4.5bn of the school rebuilding budget?
Since our general outlook is similar to theirs the logo is simply a convenient handle. And no, there's no breach of trademark as far as I know because we're not selling anything. Though, of course, if contacted by the RL Conservatives with a complaint we will have no qualms about removing it.
As for the point of this thread it would obviously be incredibly stupid to condemn something I don't know very much about, wouldn't you agree?
I've been doing some digging on this policy and have had some trouble pinpointing your claim. Would you care to give more details or should I just explain why your question appears to be either based on complete ignorance or is deliberately misleading?
The Conservative Policy Green Paper on School Choice, November 2007:
Money for academies run by...well, whoever, really, will be raised by "re-allocating the money available within the Building Schools for the Future programme."
So you stand by your claim that the RL Conservative Party has a "policy to cut £4.5 Billion from the school rebuilding budget" as an accurate summation of the policy?
Since our general outlook is similar to theirs the logo is simply a convenient handle. And no, there's no breach of trademark as far as I know because we're not selling anything. Though, of course, if contacted by the RL Conservatives with a complaint we will have no qualms about removing it.
As for the point of this thread it would obviously be incredibly stupid to condemn something I don't know very much about, wouldn't you agree?
Oh, please. You take all the electoral perks of being called the Conservative party and having their logo on a middle class forum at a time when the middle classes are running madly towards the RL Tories, but you don't want any of the responsibility of standing up for their ignorant ideas - or vacuous lack of.
Oh, please. You take all the electoral perks of being called the Conservative party and having their logo on a middle class forum at a time when the middle classes are running madly towards the RL Tories, but you don't want any of the responsibility of standing up for their ignorant ideas - or vacuous lack of.
Yes, you're right, we're desperate to cash in on the association with the RL Tories which is why I proposed amendment 19 which insists that TSR Parties identify themselves clearly as TSR Parties throughout any election process.
I'll ask you the sae question I asked Al:
Do you think that to claim that the RL Conservative Party has a "policy to cut £4.5 Billion from the school rebuilding budget" is an accurate summation of the policy? Or do you think that it is either grossly ignorant or deliberately misleading?
Alasdair seems to have chickened out of answering the question which should probably give you cause to consider the question quite carefully. Still, at least you're not forced into the position of either admitting that your first question was very silly or standing by it as it is proven to be
I'll ask you the sae question I asked Al:
Do you think that to claim that the RL Conservative Party has a "policy to cut £4.5 Billion from the school rebuilding budget" is an accurate summation of the policy? Or do you think that it is either grossly ignorant or deliberately misleading?
Under the section entitled Chilling, you find the following words:
Schools minister Lord Adonis said Mr Gove's Swedish experiment would cost billions.
He added: "When the Tories first proposed a few hundred new 'Swedish style' schools they conceded they would have to cut £4.5 billion from our school building programme to pay for the capital costs. " [emphasis mine].
I think that's a case of put up and shut up. Throw your hands up all you like, but once a Tory, always a robber of the poor.
Well, since the Socialist Party collectively seems reluctant to go to the source (who honestly thinks it's a sensible plan to take the "absolute truth" as what the Labour schools minister says the Tory plan is!?) here it is. Please have a quick read.
Spoiler:
2.1.3 Capital funding
The current Government’s plan is to have opened 230 Academies by 2010.37 We believe that displays a poverty of ambition.
We want to maximise the number of new schools and the range of organisations supplying new schools. We would like smaller not-for-profit organisations, as well as universities and wealthy charities, to respond to local need and parental dissatisfaction and be able to establish new schools. Ability to raise substantial sponsorship funds should not be a necessary qualifier.
For those organisations without capital reserves we propose that the capital costs of New Academies, like community schools, should be 100 per cent financed out of government funds.
New Academies would not be required to use government capital funds. They might, as is the case in many Charter Schools in America, form a business plan that requires only the recurrent funding in order to operate successfully. Alternatively, they might look to philanthropic sources for any capital requirements.
But for those who need it, state capital should be available. Currently the Government provides capital funding for academies through the Building Schools for the Future programme. But that money is allocated bureaucratically through the quango Partnership for Schools. Many existing Academy sponsors have found that operating through the BSF bureaucracy has significantly impeded the establishment of good new schools.
We propose that capital funding for New Academies should come through anew fund, established by re-allocating the money available within the Building Schools for the Future programme. Instead of a bureaucratic method of allocating funds, money should be allocated more flexibly in response to need.
Would-be New Academies will be entitled to an allocation of the Fund according to their start-up needs. We will also consult with potential providers of New Academies to ensure that the funding of construction costs is reflective of building in some of the most densely built inner-city areas.
Any Building Schools for the Future funds that are already committed when a Conservative government takes office will be protected. The re-allocation of the Building Schools for the Future programme funds to create a New Academy Fund will operate only in relation to funds within the Building Schools for the Future programme which are not yet committed.
Since Building Schools for the Future programme budgets have not yet been set for the period beyond 2011, it is not possible at this stage to give a definitive view about the level of funding for capital investment in the New Academies. However, current funding levels give an indicative view.
The Building Schools for the Future budget is already set at £9.3 billion for the three years 2008-09 to 2010-11. Redirecting fifteen per cent of this would raise £1.4 billion. Assuming that the funding continues at 2010-11 levels, over nine years this fifteen per cent re-allocation from bureaucratic control to citizen choice would release around £4.5 billion for the building of New Academies.
The current capital spending per pupil to build an Academy is approximately £20,000. On the conservative assumption that this figure will persist (conservative because it ignores, for example, the potential for our proposed changes in planning laws and building regulations – set out on pages 47 and 48 – to reduce costs), this £4.5 billion would fund more than 220,000 places over nine years.
These 220,000–plus new school places mean that there would be at least an additional 9,000 places for students entering primary school in Year 1 and an additional 23,000 places for students entering secondary school in Year 7.39 That is enough to ensure that all of the 32,000 children currently appealing school places in the most deprived areas would have a good place.
These figures are a conservative estimate since they are based upon an assumption of £20,000 per pupil capital cost. However, the current regulations on the kind of buildings that Academies must occupy impose large financial burdens upon them and Academy buildings have therefore typically been very expensive. We will reform these regulations to allow a far wider variety of buildings to be used for schools, and we will reform the planning rules. These changes – outlined on pages 47 and 48 – will in time lead to significant reductions in the capital cost pressures. Furthermore, schools will also be able to establish themselves without capital from the state. The figure of 220,000 school places should therefore be seen as a conservative estimate of the minimum number of school places that the fund will allow. There is no maximum number.
The BSF fund is partly to repair existing schools and partly to build new ones. The proposal is not to cut £4.5 billion pounds from the fund and nothing else. This blatantly misrepresenting the policy. The idea is to take 15% of the money currently being allocated to new schools via Partnership for Schools and to allocate it new schools through a different scheme. No money is being lost from the fund to create new schools, simply directed differently.
I wait expectantly for you all to come and explain how "Assuming that the funding continues at 2010-11 levels, over nine years this fifteen per cent re-allocation from bureaucratic control to citizen choice would release around £4.5 billion for the building of New Academies." amounts to cutting £4.5 billion from the school building programme
Yes, you're right, we're desperate to cash in on the association with the RL Tories which is why I proposed amendment 19 which insists that TSR Parties identify themselves clearly as TSR Parties throughout any election process.
Yes, lovely talk - but, as I expected, just talk. What's stopping you from just changing your name? You don't need to pass a law.
The idea is to take 15% of the money currently being allocated to new schools via Partnership for Schools and to allocate it new schools through a different scheme. No money is being lost from the fund to create new schools, simply directed differently.
That's exactly what we're accusing him off, pal. He's taking money away from the state education system in order to fund high-performing, semi-private schools.
None. That money wasn't set aside for any school rebuilding projects nor would it ever have been used for them. Didn't you read my post before?
So it wasn't going to be used for anything then? Nice of the lovely Tories to liberate it.
The truth is, it's being used to rebuild or re-furnish schools that are still falling apart from 18 years of Tory under-funding.
But what's the Conservative plan? To leave them to rot and instead allow any whackjob with an agenda run his own school with all our money but none of our oversight. Nice.
Sorry, do you guys actually know what the BSF fund is used for? From your posts you seem to think it is used only for rebuilding schools currently in existence when in fact it is used to build new schools, exactly what the RL Conservative Party is planning to do with the money. But whatever, I have posted the policy in full you can read it and research it yourself if you want. It's nothing to do with me...
And Grape - any suggestions as to what we might change our name to? And when you were a member of the TSR Labour Party did you support the war in Iraq?
Sorry, do you guys actually know what the BSF fund is used for? From your posts you seem to think it is used only for rebuilding schools currently in existence when in fact it is used to build new schools, exactly what the RL Conservative Party is planning to do with the money. But whatever, I have posted the policy in full you can read it and research it yourself if you want. It's nothing to do with me...
Yes, but as I just said (I assume the above was directed at Alasdair), our problem is that money which was going to be used to rebuild struggling schools in the public sector is now going to be used to set up private institutions for privilleged kids.
And Grape - any suggestions as to what we might change our name to? And when you were a member of the TSR Labour Party did you support the war in Iraq?
Perhaps some reference to your stance on not having policies? The Shallow Party? I'm not sure.
I honestly don't know where to start with that last one. I didn't; neither, I might add, did large number RL Labour MPs at the time. Nevermind the fact that the Iraq war started four years before I joined the Labour party, in comparisson to Gove's ideas which represent a real and present danger to public education.
And I don't expect you to support Tory ideas, but if you're going to use their brand to market yourself, you should at least make clear which parts of the that package you subscribe to.
Yes, but as I just said (I assume the above was directed at Alasdair), our problem is that money which was going to be used to rebuild struggling schools in the public sector is now going to be used to set up private institutions for privilleged kids.
Did you read the posts?
Again, the money in the BSF fund is not exclusively for rebuilding existing schools. Huge amounts of it go to producing hundreds of new schools. So that makes the first part of your objection completely wrong (the bit where you say "money which was going to be used to rebuild struggling schools in the public sector".
The policy states:
"That is enough to ensure that all of the 32,000 children currently appealing school places in the most deprived areas would have a good place."
Nothing in the policy document (which I assume you read at least after I posted it) mentions or indicates in any way (that I can see at least but then I'm probably blinded by bias that thankfully you don't have) that the money in the proposal will be going only to "privileged kids." So the second part of your objection is wrong, or at least baseless.
Originally Posted by Grape190190
Perhaps some reference to your stance on not having policies? The Shallow Party? I'm not sure.
I honestly don't know where to start with that last one. I didn't; neither, I might add, did large number RL Labour MPs at the time. Nevermind the fact that the Iraq war started four years before I joined the Labour party, in comparisson to Gove's ideas which represent a real and present danger to public education.
And I don't expect you to support Tory ideas, but if you're going to use their brand to market yourself, you should at least make clear which parts of the that package you subscribe to.
Read our manifesto and you will see what our views are.
I eagerly await your attack on TSR Labour and TSR Lib Dems on the same grounds
TSR's model parliament.
Useful Resources:
A question for the TSR Tories
. 
