Toby Young is a c0nt

[ymu]

He conveniently forgets to note that private school kids get worse degree results than state school kids with the same A level results. He does know hot-housing isn't education, doesn't he?

 

[Idris2002]

He conveniently forgets to note that private school kids get worse degree results than state school kids with the same A level results. He does know hot-housing isn't education, doesn't he?

There was a big study on that back in the early noughties, wasn't there. I remember it being the lead item on Newsnight one night.

 

[ymu]

There's been loads since then too. The result is solid. It's about a grade's difference on average (eg private AAA is equivalent to state AAB), but the difference between public school kids and 'sink' school kids will be massive. I would love to see that subgroup analysis ... if only enough kids from sink schools got given the chance to make for a decent sample size.

I applied to do a PhD on this in 1992 and they turned me down.

 

[creak]

Undergraduate achievement

• 68% of independent school educated university students obtained a First or Upper Second
class degree (the usual requirements for pursuing a postgraduate course) in 2008 compared
with 64% of state educated students.
• However, comparing like-for-like students (from the same ethnic group, subject of degree,
university, and family background), those educated at independent schools were 4% less
likely to achieve a First or Upper Second class degree than otherwise similar students
educated in state schools.

Link

Haven't read the whole report but I remember finding this statistic a while ago.

 

[nino_savatte]

Helmet Head urges parents to scab. But this passage completely undoes his 'argument'

I’m not such a hardline conservative that I think there are no circumstances in which teachers ought to go on strike. But I don’t think the current dispute between the Government and the teaching unions is one of them. To begin with, the negotiations are ongoing and calling a strike at this delicate point is an act of bad faith. The teaching unions, like the other public sector unions, need to be a little more flexible when it comes to pension reform. The taxpayer simply cannot afford to make such sizeable contributions to the pensions of public sector workers given how much life expectancy has increased by in the last 25 years. As Tony Blair said over the weekend, “I just think the best thing is for them to engage with the process of change.”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...unteer-to-help-keep-schools-open-on-thursday/

 

[Lo Siento.]

of course the government isn't engaging in a "process of change", they're just publicly mandating reforms. But that's fine.

 

[nino_savatte]

"Why I'm a Tory arsewipe" by Toby Young, aged 6 and three quarters

Another name for this political philosophy is “classical liberalism” and as a 14-year-old I would have rejected it as pathetically un-ambitious. It’s based on a bourgeois conception of man as a creature defined by his material interests *– comfortable self-preservation is the aim of life, not the creation of a glittering city on a hill. I didn’t believe the state could foster a brilliant society, but I still thought that was a worthwhile goal. In my fevered imagination, the anarchist utopia I longed for would be something like the Athens of Ancient Greece – sexually licentious, artistically vibrant and alive with the spirit of intellectual inquiry. My lodestar was not Spain during the Civil War, but the makeshift city-state that had sprung up in present-day Copenhagen. Like all good punks, I thought hippies were the scum of the earth, but my political philosophy was shot through with a streak of Sixties idealism. I still believed in human flourishing, I just didn’t think it was possible in a society hidebound by rules and regulations. I valued freedom not as an end in itself but as a necessary condition of mankind realizing its true potential.


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100095002/why-im-a-conservative/

The rest of the blog is pretty stupid. Take this

I agree with Adele that the top rate of tax is too high. Why should a gifted musician and performer, who’s worked hard to get where she is, be forced to hand over half her income to the government on pain of imprisonment? What right does the state have to such a high percentage of her earnings? The fact that the government is going to use some of that money to pay for public services is no defense. The best way to increase tax receipts is to cut the highest tax rate. People work harder and the government ends up raking in more money. Ronald Reagan cut the highest rate of tax from 70% to 31% and tax revenues went up.

Of course it's fine for the low-waged and others to pay their taxes to subsidise the rich. As for Adele, who gives a fuck about her?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Young is being disingenuous again. Revenues went up minimally, and he bumped up taxes on the middle-earners to subsidise the cuts to the richest (and to a much smaller extent, the poorest).

He also expanded the federal deficit MASSIVELY.

 

[nino_savatte]

Young forgets that those who avoid paying tax are subsidised by the low and middle earners, who have no choice but to pay income tax. I'm willing to be that the Honourable Tobes has an accountant who helps him find ways to pay as little tax as possible.

 

[nino_savatte]

Is he really "defending tabloid" journalism or is he, as one commenter points out, writing a begging letter to Murdoch?

I’m disappointed by how few people are willing to defend the News of the World. Not the phone-hacking, obviously, but the paper itself. It’s always the first paper I read on a Sunday morning and has been for at least 35 years. And I say this as someone who’s been turned over by the Screws. In my wayward youth, I was once discovered in the ladies lavatories of the Groucho Club with Christina Hance, the official Lady Di lookalike. It was fairly innocent – we were just snogging – but it was enough for the News of the World who ran a story about it under the headline: “Milord’s son in love flush.” My father was not best pleased.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100095743/in-defence-of-tabloid-journalism/

One thing is for sure, he's one confused fuckwit.

 

[Idris2002]

The nick 'helmet head' always makes me think of this guy:

 

[Gingerman]

Is he really "defending tabloid" journalism or is he, as one commenter points out, writing a begging letter to Murdoch?



One thing is for sure, he's one confused fuckwit.

On the radio this morning defending Murdoch,cunt must want a job at NI

 

[nino_savatte]

On the radio this morning defending Murdoch,cunt must want a job at NI

 

[Idris2002]

Toby Young, yesterday:

 

[nino_savatte]

 

[nino_savatte]

Jesus wept, what does he think this is?

What I hadn’t anticipated is the fact that they’re appearing together makes them, as a pair, more sympathetic. There’s a father-and-son dynamic here – a warmth – that most people will be able to relate to. In particular, James’s eagerness to protect his elderly father, to jump in when the questioning becomes too hectoring, is rather touching. They don’t seem like a pair of villains, but a father-and-son weathering the storm together.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...hs-father-and-son-dynamic-is-rather-touching/

 

[Idris2002]

What does that say about wee Toby's own relationship with his own Da?

 

[nino_savatte]

It's the relationship he always wanted to have with his Pa. Bless him... now where's the sick bucket?

 

[nino_savatte]

Helmet head was forced to make a correction.

Correction: It has been pointed out to me that Morgan’s quote about receiving the voicemail message from Nancy Dell’Olio does not appear in God Bless America, his third volume of diaries, but only in the Daily Mail.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...e-net-closes-around-piers-morgan/#dsq-content

 

[nino_savatte]

Helmet head excels himself this morning with this gem.

The pro-immigration left should stop using Anders Breivik to further its political agenda

According to Thorbjørn Jagland, a senior member of the Norwegian Labour Party and chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, centre right politicians like David Cameron and Angela Merkel should stop questioning multiculturalism in case it inspires another Anders Breivik. In an interview in today’s Observer, the former Norwegian Prime Minister says:
[...]

Anders Breivik’s crimes are completely appalling, but we shouldn’t allow the left to exploit the public outrage they’ve quite naturally given rise to in order to suppress free speech. The fact that Breivik claims to have been “inspired” by the the anti-Islamist opinions of journalists like Melanie Phillips doesn’t mean that Phillips shouldn’t in future be allowed to express those views. You might as well argue that since John Hinckley Jr. was “inspired” to shoot Ronald Reagan by Catcher in the Rye that J D Salinger’s book should be withdrawn from public libraries.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...rs-breivik-to-further-their-political-agenda/

Cheap and tawdry are words that spring to mind. Opportunistic is another.

 

[butchersapron]

He was on one of these bbc pretend debate things earlier arguinf that immigrants should talk english and the way to do that is to cut funding for English language centres/course.

 

[nino_savatte]

I must have been in the kitchen when he made his appearance. I wouldn't expect him to make much sense. Interestingly enough, Tobesworth is rather fond of quoting JS Mill.

 

[equationgirl]

For the sake of balance I keep trying to follow his arguments but my brain keeps calling him a cock. His arguments aren't even logical. Or sane.

 

[nino_savatte]

He only got where he is by being an arse-licker.

 

[nino_savatte]

Another classic from Tobesworth. The title says it all.

The real story of the US debt deal is not the triumph of the Tea Party but the death of the Socialist Left

What the Left hasn’t grasped – and what Obama has – is that for the foreseeable future no political candidate or party will be able to increase public spending and win re-election. Socialist welfare programmes have become politically toxic. A sea change has taken place within the West’s most developed countries and last night’s debt deal is a reflection of that.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...ea-party-but-the-death-of-the-socialist-left/

1. There is only one self-declared socialist in Congress and he is Bernie Sanders.
2. What a load of utter drivel. For someone with a degree in PPE, Young is remarkably clueless about politics.
3. He evidently supports the Tea Party.

 

[nino_savatte]

Helmet Head apologises for Starkey.

To begin with, Starkey wasn’t talking about black culture in general, but, as he was anxious to point out, a “particular form” of black culture, i.e. “the violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture” associated with Jamaican gangs and American rap music. Had he been talking about these qualities as if they were synonymous with African-Caribbean culture per se, or condemning that culture in its totality, then he would have been guilty of racism. But he wasn’t. He was quite specifically condemning a sub-culture associated with a small minority of people of African-Caribbean heritage. (Admittedly, he could have made this clearer.) Rather than being racist, he was merely trotting out the conventional wisdom of the hour, namely, that gang culture is to blame for the riots. The Prime Minister made the same point in the House of Commons on Thursday. (I wrote a blog post on Thursday in which I pointed out the shortcomings of this analysis.)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...starkey-being-racist-on-newsnight-last-night/

 

[nino_savatte]

Helmet Head's free school is set to receive £15m worth of funding. This is money that could be spent on repairing or improving existing state schools
http://hfconwatch.blogspot.com/

More here from the FT where the helmeted one says,

“I believe all children can benefit from studying Latin, from learning about Britain’s history, from reading Shakespeare, and to deny them that opportunity on the grounds that those things are ‘middle class’ is a form of inverted snobbery that does children from low-income families no favours.
“We will never dismantle the class system in this country if poor children are herded into media studies classes and made to study [television programmes], while rich children are introduced to the best that’s been thought and written. That’s not social justice. It’s social apartheid.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cd21ff44-ce7b-11e0-b755-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1WEFfbbMH

The ever wilfully ignorant Young repeats the familiar lie that Media Studies is about "studying television programmes". Media Studies involves a lot more than watching telly programmes. No one is "forced" to study media studies either. Thick, ignorant, mendacious cunt.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Helmet Head's free school is set to receive £15m worth of funding. This is money that could be spent on repairing or improving existing state schools
http://hfconwatch.blogspot.com/

More here from the FT where the helmeted one says,

The ever wilfully ignorant Young repeats the familiar lie that Media Studies is about "studying television programmes". Media Studies involves a lot more than watching telly programmes. No one is "forced" to study media studies either. Thick, ignorant, mendacious cunt.

Interesting from the bloke who helped foist "The Modern Review" on the world, too.

 

[Nylock]

No doubt if his free school doesn't do too well in the exam result league table he will blame "the left's" 'targets culture' for misrepresenting the attainment levels of his pupils....

 

[nino_savatte]

No doubt if his free school doesn't do too well in the exam result league table he will blame "the left's" 'targets culture' for misrepresenting the attainment levels of his pupils....

Of course, with people like Young it's always someone else's fault.