lower benefits for Northerners and longer school days

Locky said:
increasing the school day by three hours is not a good idea. It has been proved that the brain can only concentrate at it's fullest extent for a limited length of time - anything beyond that is an absolute waste of time.
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It's not about teaching pupils. It's about containing them. It's a combination of daycare and juvenile prison (since it's mandatory) in order to move costs from businesses to the state. Unless, of course, the next step is to use the pupils directly for the benefit of the businesses. That would make sense as a cost-cutting exercise.

They'd be better off binning the pretence of education entirely and have 1500-1800 as a mandatory youth club sort of thing. Not that youth groups that everyone is forced to join are likely to turn out well.
 
I think High School hours should mirror the working day. When I left school and went into work I certainly got a culture shock and realised that school was the best (or rather easiest) days of your life.

When I went to upper school (late 90s) my day went something like this...

9am - 11am = Lessons
11am = Half an hour break
11:30am - 1pm = Lessons
1pm - 2pm = Lunch Break
2pm - 3:30pm = Lessons
3:30pm = 'Home Time'

I was never expected to 'work' for any longer than 2 hours at the most. Compare that to work where you can be expected to work 4-5 hours without a break.
 
geekman said:
Food and fuel are not, I've experienced it first hand. As for the price of a night out, of course it techinically shouldn't be taken into account, but as much as we'd like to think otherwise, people on benefits aren't a different species and they do go out and spend money on luxuries. I'd say around 90% of the people I meet during work are receiving some kind of benefits and the majority have considerably more "luxuries" than I do. I don't want to open the whole "fat people claiming benefits sitting on their arse watching sky HD" can of worms but it's short-sighted not to think about the price of non-essentials when comparing living costs because like it or not, people do not live their lives on the bare essentials.
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Nor can they, not for a lifetime. It's not a new issue - the most famous example of it is "bread and circuses" from ancient Rome.

If you have a large underclass of people with no purpose and no hope of anything better, your two choices are killing them or giving them enough to make their lives tolerable, which includes entertainment as well as essentials - bread and circuses. It's TV and games consoles today rather than the chariot racing of ancient Roman circuses, but it's the same thing - essentials and entertainment.
 
Angilion said:
If you have a large underclass of people with no purpose and no hope of anything better, your two choices are killing them or giving them enough to make their lives tolerable
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Well that's a false dichotomy if ever I saw one.

So the ONLY two choices for the poor is government imposed death or free Playstations?
 
estebanrey said:
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I was never expected to 'work' for any longer than 2 hours at the most. Compare that to work where you can be expected to work 4-5 hours without a break.
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Only 4-5 hours?

There's no legal requirement for a break if you work less than 6 hours continuously and the law is not necessarily obeyed anyway.

The new rota system my employer uses is very clearly programmed to assign people 5 to 5.75 hour shifts so that employees are not entitled to breaks. That reduces staff costs, which appears to be the main objective of almost every employer. We're just a cost, like a gas bill. The only reason they employ staff at all is that we're cheaper and more flexible than machines. Bear in mind that I work for a relatively good employer - there are plenty that are much worse.

What's going to happen when unemployment is the norm? It will be at some point because and increasing number of jobs can be done more cheaply by machines and that trend will continue as technology improves. How can we run a society with 20% unemployment? 50%? 80%?
 
estebanrey said:
Well that's a false dichotomy if ever I saw one.

So the ONLY two choices for the poor is government imposed death or free Playstations?
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Government imposed death or government-provided essentials and entertainment. Not necessarily Playstations, obviously.

What other choices are there? Don't give me some political soundbite bumf with nothing behind it but dogma (e.g. abolishing the minimum wage will automagically make everyone's life wonderful). That's not an answer.
 
We're always going to be tax/benefit shafted at either end of the scale at any side of the country.

To me, the biggest crime here is the 3 hour extension on the school day. It just boggles my mind.
 
I presume lengthening the school day is a haphazard solution to the cost of child care, but also allowing parents to work for longer? As if teachers don't complain enough.
 
Out of all the crap a longer school day is an interesting proposal.

Some schools already offer breakfast clubs so kids can be dropped off earlier.

Why not have a school dinner party or something like that ?

Teach kids the values of good food and kitchen skills. It will take 10 years to see results filter into the system but i think it could make sense.
 
The only people creating a North/South divide are the ones getting bent out of shape because the government want to make benefits proportional to the cost of living. Too many people have it easy and their perception of poverty is not being able to afford Sky and an iPhone.
 
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