In my previous header, I referred to teacher shortages, and noted they are about to get much worse. This is an explanation of that remark and why I think it’s Phillipson’s fault. At this moment, the National Curriculum is an optional thing for academy schools and trusts. This is actually good news. The reason I say that is because the last review of the curriculum was so content-heavy that it was literally impossible to deliver it properly, as I noted…
This poll hasn’t altered my view that laying Kamala Harris for both the Dem nomination and the presidency in 2028 is the way to profit. I think the ratings for the likes of Newsom, Shapiro, and Whitmer will improve the further we get into the primary contests, they make for great trading bets at the moment. TSE
So we move into the New Year with a blazing row about some fool of a Cabinet Minister shooting her mouth off over an educational policy they don’t understand and are dogmatically devoted to. I can’t help but feel I could have written that at any time over the last 80 years and I wouldn’t have been wrong except for sometimes having to change the pronoun. This year it is the turn of Bridget Phillipson and Rachel Reeves, who have…
From a political betting perspective 2024 was an epic year, a UK general election, a US presidential election with the incumbent quitting the race in July, a Tory leadership contest, a French legislative election, and the betting on the date of the UK general election which has gotten some people in real trouble. Regretfully 2025 is going to be a fallow year for election betting as the only major bettable* elections are in Germany, Canada, Ireland, and Australia, the latter…
Best Prime Minister polling is something that has a strong incumbency bias and it is only worth noting when the leader of the opposition starts winning this metric consistently as it usually heralds a change of government What is truly intriguing about this polling is that Nigel Farage leads Kemi Badenoch on this metric which will help Farage as he is trying to set up the next general election as a straight fight between Labour and Reform which would see…
The Taliban has issued its latest pronouncement on women. Women must not be visible from house windows. If they’re in a kitchen with a window, they must stay away from it. On no account must they be seen from the outside. Not content with depriving them of all political and civic rights, imprisoning them from head to toe in cloth, preventing them from being outside at all, other than with a male relative, forbidding their voices from being heard –…
Since becoming Chancellor, Reeves has gone out of her way to emphasise the need for growth and how important it is that the City plays its part. Not just those working there but the regulators. The FCA has certainly got the message. In July 2024, it proposed relaxing the current rules so that directors of listed companies who make misleading profit projections in prospectuses will not be liable if they have only been negligent rather than reckless or deliberately dishonest….
…so said Niels Bohr. Or Karl Kristian Steincke, or a Danish proverb – take your pick. In any event, PB posters found it rather tough to make accurate predictions this year. In January 2024 we launched a PB Prediction Competition with 10 questions and a scoring scheme that generally allocated 20 points for a correct answer and 10 points for a near-miss. We had 82 entrants. Here are the questions with their answers and some commentary where appropriate: 1….