Note that there are two sorts of Oyster Card - the ones where they know to whom it belongs, and the anonymous ones not connected to any particular individual (unless you've been using a credit card to top it up). And also that kids in London have been swapping their cards on a regular basis.

Given the scarily open holes in London's REAL security, as opposed to even something as unpleasant as the tube-bombers, we should be thankful the islamofascists ARE stupid and arrogant.

Watching Oyster go completely tits-up, because someone has hacked it - COULD be funny. Dpends on whether they decide to empty people's credit for every trip, or do it the other way around, so every time you go through a gate, the system credits YOU ... ( Doesn't bother me, I'm just over 60, and have free one ) LOTS of possibilities, though.

Never mind supposed "dirty bombs", placing about 20 lorry-bombs at exactly the right places of a morning rush-hour, timed to go off within a minute of each other could stuff London, as a working city, for many moths - think cross-over/intersection of major road/rail routes. Then there's the disused tube stations, and/or fake (very--carefully-painted to look "real") buses and central London bus-stations ......

Mind you, about 5 years back, I encountered a loonie on the tube with an OIL DRUM - and nobody wanted to know, even AFTER I'd pulled the alarm handle - the only people who took any notice were City Plod, and that because I e-mailed everyone who I thought would listen, afterwards. I suppose, people NOW, would over-react in the opposite direction. It's a bit like the H&SAW Act - real safety and fake "safety".

Rolls eyes

I'm not convinced we're in real danger from terrorists. Not to belittle the tragic abomination of 7/7 or similar events, but we lose more people to road traffic accidents in a month than we lose to terrorism in a decade. So why don't we see a War On Bad Driving, given that it could undoubtedly deliver a significant reduction in deaths and injuries at a fraction the cost?

Rational cost/benefit trade-offs have nothing to do with the War on Turr. Barely-suppressed racism and xenophobia coupled with a domestic cover-up for a distastrous foreign adventure and a total lack of democratic accountability ...? That's closer to the target.

Minor piece of Sex Pistols trivia: Sid Vicious wasn't in the band when 'God Save the Queen' was written (though I discovered, when trying to find the writing credits online, that, according to a site called songfacts, it was one of two songs on the album that he played on); and he didn't write anything anyway.

You darn exploding kids! Get off my lawn!

I'm wondering when will wrapping my RFID-emitting cards in tinfoil become illegal?

Well spoken (okay, sure, a little rambling, but like I can talk), and great points, Charlie. As usual. And yeah...I keep TELLING people to read your damn books just to get a handle on next week, let alone 2017! My copy of Halting State is in fact out on loan right now for purposes of Future Grok. I think I'll foward this post along to the borrower.

The problem I see in almost every counter-terrorist security system idea is that with that rare exception of common-sense that should have been used for decades, there seems to be an underlying assumption that the McTerrorists will not be sneaky and will blatantly follow along with the elaborate and intrinsic screening procedures which go a little something like this:

"Excuse me sir, but are you a terrorist? Because you have to tell me if you are."

(at least until the next general election) because our current government largely consists of scientifically illiterate managerialists who believe that all problems can be solved by a technical fix

Seriously, do you think that's likely to change after the next general election, regardless of who wins?

Mili @9: nope. Next ironic question, please?

It could be worse. In Parliament over here, 70% of the MPs are either lawyers or company directors/management by previous occupation. In the USA, Congress is something like 90% lawyers. Now, one may argue that an understanding of law is important to a legislator, but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing -- in this case, not knowing shit about anything else. Make me world dictator for a day, or give me three wishes and a remit to fix what's wrong with politics, one of the things I'd want would be to pass a universal qualification law for would-be elected officials at any level above city government -- that they must have worked for at least five years in some area other than academia, law, politics, lobbying, or management before being eligible to stand. (And, oh yes, that would include politics at any level, student politics included -- yes I'm pointing at you, Jack Straw.)

Sigh. Back to the real world ...

The US has one lawyer per every 266 Americans, though the UK isn't much better (401). The trouble with legal training is that it engrains a win/lose way of looking at things, while convincing its trainees that the most convincing argument to the layman, must be the right argument. Lawyers have their uses, but you really don't want them running anything.

On the MI5/Oyster thing. There's a really good reason for being wary, and that's that if you go data mining you will find all kinds of anomalous patterns, peculiar behaviour and false positives. Scientifically, statitsically, whatever - its no more credible than looking through tea leaves - but an awful lot of people will face harrassment as a result of statistical quirks.

The sensible thing to do is make the public transit systems free, and do security in other ways, but I'm a damned radical.

Firstly: Fuck.

Secondly, recently I've seen Children of Men, Brazil, and V For Vendetta (which I kinda liked, though I read the comic and saw the holes in the film). At first Iw as thinking England is looking worse and worse as this roll along towards their totalitarian end but then again i am an American. So I took a look at my own country and promptly threw up on my shoes. Damn.

I mean, it's scary how unfunny Brazil is now and how real it seems. Yikes.

Cian -- and that's even assuming that terrorist oystercard behaviour is anomalous in the first place.

A terrorist would presumably try a bunch of different routes at different times to scout out likely targets, then take the same route regularly for a long time to get some closer notion of the target chosen. I expect that this is exactly the same pattern that any new arrival in London would have -- a lot of trips here and there (finding a job, seeing the sights, catching up with friends, etc.) followed by settling down to a regular commuter schedule.

It's not like there's a "Terrorist Bomb Factory Station" and they can flag everyone who gets off there.

The problem I see in almost every counter-terrorist security system idea is that [...] there seems to be an underlying assumption that the McTerrorists will not be sneaky and will blatantly follow along with the elaborate and intrinsic screening procedures

Head-in-sand is most likely for Oyster since there's a limit to how much 'money' can be charged on to them; if people start cloning season tickets on a wide-enough scale to actually show up above the noise of barrier-jumpers and free bus riders, then they may do something about it. It'll be expensive, but also fairly localised compared to Chip&Pin as only TfL need to upgrade their systems, and the cards themselves only cost ~30p -- the biggest cost would probably be on the logistics of the changeover (unless they get completely scalped on the reader hardware...)

I'm not sure there's anything I can meaningfully add on the subject of database-trawling; I've expressed my views on it repeatedly before. Some people might not be aware of the way accuracy statistics ("99% accurate!") conflate false-positive and false-negative rates and how they fare atrociously when you're testing for something particularly rare. Such as terrorism. There's an intro to it by Bruce Schneier that's quite informative.

BUT "Oyster" ISN'T "just" travelcards. Elsewhere (Singapoer? Hong Kong?) it is used AS MONEY, and it WILL be used as "money" here - so the potential for fraud and scams and rip-offs will be immense. As with bank-cards then chip-&-pin it will take "the authorities" years to catch up, and, of course, at first they will try to pin (oops) all the blame on the unfortunate victims of these frauds, then try to shoot the messengers, and only THEN might they get around to doing anything about the real problem.

Don't discount the ilsamofascists, BTW - they are (long-term) a real menace, if only because of their truly medieval outlook for societies .....

G. Tingey, you know how big the average islamicist cell grows in the UK? 10 members. Not because they're enforcing need-to-know and deliberately keeping their cells small, but because that's how big they grow before one of their recruits shops them to the police in disgust.

Yes, they're a menace, but they're a minor menace as long as they lack a head and a nervous system. They can cause local casualties but they're not in a position to join up and wage an insurgency like the pIRA, unless we (meaning: you, me, the police, the government, everyone else) so alienate the ordinary non-radical muslims of the UK that they stop ratting out the head-cases.

In the long term, they're doomed, anyway. It's very much rarer for the child of mainstream atheists to turn into a god-bothering fundy than it is for a god-bothering fundy's children to turn into assimilated atheists. As long as we provide a society that encourages social mobility and mixing and keeps religion (all religion) way the hell outside the public sphere, the pressure will stay on them. This, incidentally, is a good reason for opposing faith schools, bishops in the House of Lords, and that idiocy about citizenship and oaths of alliegance: anything that raises a barrier to them identifying with the rest of us is perilous in the long term (and that citizenship oath thing? Makes me want to spit -- and I'm a third-generation child of immigrants who served in the military in both world wars).

Why terrorists are stupid? It's terribly [sorry] simple: evolution.

The IRA tried to SURVIVE their acts.

But you can't evolve your terrorism schemes if the successful people end up blowing themselves to pieces so they can have sex AFTERWARDS.

-towo

Then there's the disused tube stations, and/or fake (very--carefully-painted to look "real") buses and central London bus-stations .....

Not sure I understand this, but it sounds like a great terrorist plot. How does it work - do you leave fake tube stations/buses around London, and anyone who goes into one by mistake IS NEVER SEEN AGAIN? Very Twilight Zone. "So, madam, where did you last see your husband?" "Well, it was just this morning; I was going shopping and he needed to go back to our hotel, so we separated outside Fleet Street tube station -" "But - there is no Fleet Street tube station! My God, it's happened again!"

I'm a third-generation child of immigrants who served in the military in both world wars).

Gosh, Charlie, you're looking very spry for a man of your age.

Charlie @3: Rational cost/benefit trade-offs have nothing to do with the War on Turr.

I absolutely agree. The first thought I had on reading your post was that it sounds very much like torture. Torture has been proven not to work, but the security Nazis love that poisoned well as much as the digital ones.

Ajay, punctuation aside, my dad's 83; we breed at >40 year intervals. My great-granddad met his wife in Poland in the 1870s.

Stephen, torture does work. It's not an interrogation technique designed to elicit information; rather, it's a tool of intimidation. ("If you don't keep your nose clean we might disappear you and do ... things to you. With electrodes. Be good and you've got nothing to worry about.")

Don't discount the ilsamofascists,

Bad term, that. The original fascists were authoritarian, but they were also modernisers, if not always coherent ones. You can find a few parallels with the Falangists, but they hardly constituted the world-spanning threat those who are enamoured of "Islamofascism" as Something The West Needs To Gird Its Loins Against would like to evoke.

Feorag @ #1:

There's "Oyster travelcard" and "Oyster pre-pay". Both can be had unregistered, though I suppose getting a more-than-weekly travelcard would take a bit of effort (they normally ask to see the other half of the travel card, with a photo and what-have-you), but weeklies can definitely be bought cash without presenting any sort of paperwork, I did so myself, first week of March (Stratford station, the tills on the Jubilee Line concourse, they can't do apper tickets, so must flog you paper tickets and since teh other half isn't necessary for a weekly...)

These loony-anti-terror stories seem to all come along at once, like buses.

Apart from the sifting of the Oyster records (a masterstroke, assuming that the terrorists never quite managed to learn to ride a bike) there was the thing about identifying potentially troublesome children aged 5 and taking their DNA, so they can be locked up more quickly when they're 14. Not strictly about terrorism, but from the same barking mad school of law enforcement.

So MI5 will shortly advertise for people whose job will involve spending all day and night staring at monitors displaying the movement of people through London's transport system (as numerical strings) like the guys on the hovership in The Matrix?

Or will they discover the movements of the terrorists several weeks after they've detonated the bombs in the Tube?

Luckily the current generation of terrorists don't seem to be terribly smart; in fact they're mostly good for keeping the police and security services in donut money and toys, generating tabloid headlines, and setting themselves on fire

The current generation of terrorists who get noticed - the term "self-selected sample" springs to mind.

They've hacked Charlie Cards? Great.

Just think, my brother called me paranoid for buying the faraday cage wallet at thinkgeek...

Ari @28:

Unfortunately, you have to remove the card from the Faraday cage to use it.

"You approach the turnstile at the T station and take your Charlie Card out, which automatically casts Detect RFID Reader Signal.

"There is an RFID reader signal in the area.

"The strongest RFID reader signal in the area is /not/ the one on the turnstile.

"The school of the strongest RFID reader signal is necromantic.

"Congratulations, you're now $17.70 poorer."

Two things.

Thanks Mr Stross for the info on islamic cells and their small numbers - let's hope it stays that way. (My wife was quite close enough to the "aldgate" bomb to be shaken up a lot - it the train it was on had been held in-platform a few seconds longer (at Liverpool St) it would have been even nastier .... Just the same, I must partially diasgrre - we need to SHUT DOWN ALL of this "faith" nonsesne, since, at present (to quote Prof D. Colquohun) the Endarkment seems to be winning.

Seconly: A lot of people obviously don't realise that there are quite a lot of disused tube stations in Loindon - but, if you know how, you can get into them. You can even catch a train from one - if you know how (I'm NOT going to tell you how here) - but a terrorist could halt a train in one, and then do what he/they liked with the passengers, and wreck the train.

The one that REALLY bothers me is "City Road".

G. Tingey - when I was resident in Birmingham not so long ago, it seemed like there was an arrest of an islamist militant every other week. That would suggest to me that the Muslim community is full of what would be known in Northern Ireland as 'touts'.

For a Muslim PIRA to emerge would take (among other things) some really stupid decisions by government, decisions which would bepartly or entirely illegal. One factor in sparking the Northern Ireland conflict was legal discrimination in employment. it was quite common to see job advertisements reading 'no catholics need apply' (this is now illegal, and the fair employment commission has a reputation for strict oversight - unfortunately this change didn't come in time to avert the conflict). Put up a job ad saying 'no muslims need apply' and see what sort of answer you get.

As for shutting down 'this faith nonsense' . . . well, even if that were legal (I'm assuming that by 'shut down' you mean some sort of repressive state policy) it's likely to be counter-productive. Lenin tried it, after all, and came to the conclusion that 'religion is like a nail in a piece of wood - the harder you hit it, the further you drive it in'.

Finally - glad to hear your mrs was only shaken. My sister was in Belfast in the bad old days, and while she came to no harm, it could have been otherwise.

I'm not sure if this came up the last time we were bitching about lawyer-type politicians, but this was interesting: "Why the French Like Nuclear Energy" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

Part of the answer - many French politicians go into office from civil service, where their jobs are held for them. A main route into civil service is from the prestigious École Polytechnic, which is an engineering university and former military academy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique

Engineers and scientists are more highly respected s over there, compared to the US. American politicians tend to disproportionately be lawyers (and doctors and real estate agents) in part because at the state level, such professions are easier to put on hold while one is off at the capital for a few months, starting up again when the legislature is no longer in session. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/01/why-are-so-many.html

Dunno how it works out in the UK.

As long as we provide a society that encourages social mobility and mixing and keeps religion (all religion) way the hell outside the public sphere, the pressure will stay on them ... anything that raises a barrier to them identifying with the rest of us is perilous in the long term

Two points. The European-style system of welfare benefits and corporatism discourages social mobility and mixing, by reserving effective political participation to a mandarinate of professionals with credentials, and teaching large blocs of residents that they're entitled to food and shelter for nothing. And I can't think of a higher barrier to theists' identifying with the public weal than a public policy of hostility, not just to religion, but to anything that smacks of it; you don't lose just the "god-botherers", you also lose the tolerant theists who wouldn't dream of persecuting anybody.

Hmmm. Well. One of my students in Birmingham happened to be Jewish, and he told me that he was doing volunteer work at a Jewish primary school in 'Brum' as they call the city over there.

He additionally told me that 40% of the pupils in that school were Muslim, and that there was no trouble between them and their Jewish co-pupils, and that the things you'd think would be an issue were not an issue.

Sounds like a pretty good example of social mixing, in spite of the presence of putatively will-sapping 'welfare benefits' (and Europe, btw, is by no means the continent of lotus-eating welfare queens you appear to think it is).

If you sent the immigrants home you could cut off welfare and force all the lazy people to get the service jobs the immigrants used to hold. But then you'd have lousy service by people you couldn't fire because there weren't any cheap, hardworking, immigrants to replace them with. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, mind...

On the internet, no one can hear you scream as you feel the very will to live being sucked out of you.

I reckon there's a lot more low-level racism in the UK than we think, The problem is that making something illegal changes how people express their thoughts. It doesn't change what they think.

Not directly, at least, and not quickly. But people still believe the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and think that imposing some politically correct Newspeak will change the world for the better.

Incidentally, lawyers, especially lawyers wuith courtroom experience, are likely inclined by experience to overemphasise the significance of languege. They confuse rhetoric and reality.

How much is actually spent by the public on London Transport a year? Scaling and scoping utopia components...

Dave @37: yes, there is a lot of low-level racism in the UK. And some not-so-low. All you need to do is pick up a copy of the Daily Mail. (Daily rag of the I'm-not-racist-but-there-are-too-many-wogs crowd. Clue: I'm not a fan.)

Even Basil Brush is in trouble for it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/northamptonshire/7300167.stm

Re: #10, 11

It is germane to the main point, because most lawyers fail to understand the laws that matter most, such as those of Math, Physics, and Computer Science, to agree as follows.

"In the USA, Congress is something like 90% lawyers."

I tend to startle the high school and middle school classes that I teach when I ask them "Who makes the laws?"

Of course, many give silly answers (i.e. "The President"; on 2nd thought, that's more scary than it used to be).

I then explain that, both the U.S. Congress, for Federal laws, and the State Legislatures, are mostly composed of middle-aged, white, male, millionaire lawyers.

This is very good for you if you also happen to be middle-aged, white, male, millionaire lawyers. But not so good if you happen to be young, a person of color, female, a non-lawer, poor, or middle class.

I suggest that they become rich, so that the laws benefit them. Which leads to them asking "how do I get rich?"

I usually tell them that I've only made a million dollars, and thus am merely upper middle class. I refer them to the annual issue of Forbes which details the 400 richest Americans. I ask some questions based on that list: who's the richest American, who's the richest writer (then hint "Harry Potter") and the like.

I then list the 4 ways to get in the Forbes 400:

(1) Be born with it; (2) Marry it; (3) I skip this and circle back later; (4) Compensation = salary + bonus + stock + perks + option.

Before I describe (3), I suggest that they marry rich. I married for love, true. But California is a Community property state. Marry rich, and if it doesn't work out, you get half. THEN look for the pretty, funny, kind spouse for the 2nd try.

By the way, speaking of both rich artists and marriages gone bad, see the recent Court's decisions on Sir Paul McCartney's victories in his divorce trial.

The European-style system of welfare benefits and corporatism discourages social mobility and mixing, by reserving effective political participation to a mandarinate of professionals with credentials, and teaching large blocs of residents that they're entitled to food and shelter for nothing

Er... no. http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf Actually, that study found that five European countries (including extremely generous welfare states like Sweden) and Canada had better mobility than the US; the only less mobile country than the US was the UK.

Kevin @29...genius for the 3E players among us.

Tingey @ around 30ish. You do realise that you're suggesting the actions of a religious facist yourself, right? I hope the irony isn't lost on you. Just because you disagree with someones belief, doesn't mean that you can tell them they can't believe it (as they'll believe irrespective of what you tell them to do).

There are a few ways to 'rid' ourselves of religion - but do bear in mind that many religions are quite a useful way of preventing a lot of people spiralling into dispair and depression when they think about "What comes afterward". (hint: Some folk don't like the you're an inert hunk of meat answer).

See also:

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' An election-season essay by David Mamet March 11th, 2008 12:00 AM http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,why-i-am-no-longer-a-brain-dead-liberal,374064,1.html/full

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" ...

For low level racism in England I think you can pick up any paper. The Guardian Comment section recently had a food critic complaining about how Birmingham (of all places!) had been picked to represent food culture (culture? Birmingham?) in Britain. The writer stressed carefully (later, anyway) that she wasn't attacking Birmingham but just felt (with no research) that Brum couldn't possibly be right and, surely, there must be somewhere, Luton, say, with a proper culture...

In a similar way, the floods in the North of England last year were over and done with in one news cycle and yet when the South was hit, for weeks after Sky News was still doing daily human interest stories on how someone's little, local business had been washed away.

Posted by: Dave Bell

"I reckon there's a lot more low-level racism in the UK than we think, The problem is that making something illegal changes how people express their thoughts. It doesn't change what they think."

Did you notice D.J.P. O'Kane's comment #31?

Posted by: Dave Bell

In the last week, I've scrolled through pages of bad economic libertarian boilerplate about Social Security, the idea that the Fed isn't bailing out Wall Street firms, etc. If I wanted to get somebody to confuse rhetoric with reality, I'd head straight for a netlibertarian, everyday.

One of the recent movements in my area of the US is organizations to kick illegal immigrants out, but they're aiming at Hispanics. One of the leaders in Maryland is a black woman. Now, in the US, blacks were sold here, but even after being freed, took many years to get civil rights and are still frequently discriminated against. Doesn't she get that being against Hispanics is repudiating the movement of her ancestors? And most of the illegal immigrants aren't Hispanic -- they're Europeans and Africans who have overstayed their visas. Why rage against the Hispanics? Because they're "different." Bah.

It's mildly amusing that everyone who replied to my post fastened on the "underclass" bit, skipping the "overclass" bit entirely -- in my view the mandarinate is the less egalitarian, and more dangerous, aspect of European politics.

ajay: I'm not convinced that the cross-country comparisons in that study are valid, and even if they are I'd want to see the figures for France and Italy as well. But the interesting finding in that study is that income mobility in the UK is significantly worse for younger cohorts (~35 years) than it was for their elders (~50 years).

Marilee: can you explain the logical connection between full citizens gaining rights of which they were unjustly deprived, and illegal immigrants being forgiven their crime out of mercy? Are you perhaps under the impression that US citizenship is a universal human right, and that denying it to anyone is an outrage?

Michael: the decreasing mobility for young Brits I would put down to two factors: the introduction of fees (and removal of state subsidies) for undergraduate degrees (deterring working class kids from entering higher education), and the skyrocketing price of housing (I bought my first one-bedroom apartment in 1987 for £30,000; today a similar dwelling would cost on the order of £150,000, but the wages of 22-23 year olds have barely doubled, if that).

As for the dangers of the mandarinate, just what other label would you apply to the MBA managerialist culture coming out of Yale and Harvard these days?

Actually, I ought to specify that I do think that in the US immigration (illegal or otherwise) is ultimately always a matter of race and ethnicity, as it is in the rest of the world.

Charlie Stross @ 50 As for the dangers of the mandarinate, just what other label would you apply to the MBA managerialist culture coming out of Yale and Harvard these days?

Institutionalized malfeasance and incompetence. And that's the polite label.

Religious fascism (& other sorts)

Actually, I encourage a programme of systematic ridicule and denigration of religion, and especially religious beliefs that are known to be contra the REAL laws (physics, biology etc).

But, a lot of the time, you're not even allowed to do that, because of this ridiculous "respect" (as in the Mafia) nonsesnse. If you accurately describe islam (using verses from the koran as source, but not quoting them) as "misogynistic, intolerant, and cruel" you WILL be branded racist, and banned from public debate. The "Grauniad" has done this to me, and branded me a racist, and refuses to discuss the matter. Even though I have pointed out that islam is a RELIGION, and has brainwashed devotees from practically every "race" in humanity - which is an "African" species anyway ..... I also have to put up with two fundie-xtian chapels within a block of my home, annoying all the local residents.

I really DON'T CARE what religious consenting adults do in private, but I do wish they would NOT bring it onto the street and frighten the horses!

Breifly back to islam. The links between the old Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the actual Nazi party, the muslim brotherhood, and both Hizbollah & Hamas are scaryu, as is their programme of "khalifah" - which is straight out of the pages of "My struggle". Ugh.

Social mobility in the UK is decling because of the complete failure of the educations system. It is broken beyond all hope. What is needed is a return to the 1944 education Act - but properly funded this time, and with one extra provision. That being that academic selection at 11 i NOT a one-off. Every year, the bottom few in each tier should drop down, and the top few should go up. In the old days, even if you were the eldesr son of a single mother, whose father had died of after-effects of factory conditions, you COULD beat the system, leave a Grammar School, get a grant, go to University (proper U, not the imitation polys we have now) and when you retired at 65, be a Fellow of the Chemical Soc. This is what my father did. Now, you don't stand a chance. Yoiu are sent to the local comprehensive, where there is no pressure for academic excellence, and often (STILL) with mixed-ability classes (!). Even if you survive that, when U time comes around, you are faced with a STUDENT LOAN. Forget it.

Education is one of the 4 subjects that successive UK guvmints have screwed completely in the past 40 years since I left school. The others are Transport, Defence, and Food. Incidentally, Scotland (since devolution) seems to be reversing the failure of the transport one, at least.

But then Tingey, by your own admission you'd have to keep your opinion to yourself too. Seeing as you are expressing a religious view (that religion is wrong), I think we should ensure you don't cause upset by "scaring the horses" with the froth and hellfire.

And if you took time to study most religions, out of interest, you'd know why they were knocking at your door. And whilst a minor inconvenience, I spend more time per day clearing Spam out of my inbox that I do ignoring/politely refusing religious gaff in a year.

However I do agree on the issue of eductaion - the gov't have spent rather large amounts on IT in education, but haven't provided any sesnsible steering. The technology and know-how is in place to enable individualised learning and improvement.

Most of the problem is that your average teacher/Head of Dept is a backwater luddite who only wants these 'computers' to print out worksheets or prepare 50 page PowerPoint lesssons.

There's also something about the generational obsession with targets and performance metrics -- which, while useful in setting overall policy, comes at the expense of teaching time.

But I'm in total agreement with Tingey on how they've hosed the prospects for bright working class kids in the British education system, especially by effectively imposing a tax on higher education.

There is some solid evidence that A-levels, as a measure of academic ability, are as good as they have ever been. Teachers have got better at getting kids past the exams, and that it one of the things which makes a school look good.

But consider the example of the medical profession. Even thirty years ago, you needed straight As at A-level, but if they didn't like you at the interview, you didn't even get such a conditional offer. There are things about medicine which have nothing to do with how well you can pass an exam.

And the old Oxford/Cambridge entrance exam was much more about how you tackled a problem than about what you knew.

There's a place for all the assessment, and knowing how well a school is working. That knowledge isn't being well-used. And maybe the easy-to-count things such as A-level grades have overwhelmed the important stuff.

I hear a re-run of The Prisoner is starting on one of ITV's digital channels. All together now: "I am not a number!"

It's mildly amusing that everyone who replied to my post fastened on the "underclass" bit, skipping the "overclass" bit entirely -- in my view the mandarinate is the less egalitarian, and more dangerous, aspect of European politics.

The mandarinate. Right. Because US politics certainly isn't dominated by Ivy Leaguers and lawyers. Find me a definition of "mandarinate" and I'll show you how it applies, in roughly the same degree, to the US. Dominance of lawyers? Political dynasties? Dominance of top university graduates? Existence of a career civil service? Because, you know, over here in Europe we love to hear about how the US government is so egalitarian and accountable. It keeps us chuckling in the long winter evenings.

ajay: I'm not convinced that the cross-country comparisons in that study are valid, and even if they are I'd want to see the figures for France and Italy as well. But the interesting finding in that study is that income mobility in the UK is significantly worse for younger cohorts (~35 years) than it was for their elders (~50 years).

Ignore the evidence and change the subject. Nice one.

One big problem with the 11 plus was it was a norm referenced rather than a criterion referenced exam, the number of passes was determined by the provision of grammar school places rather than the number of grammar school places being determined by the number of passes. So you could easily discriminate against the working class by providing them with very few grammar schools and effectively preventing pupils in secondary modern schools from getting above a C (the GCE "O" grade equivalent to a CSE pass). This is in fact exactly what happened. The overall performance of a comprehensive system is slightly better than the split system.

The current system of university financing shouldn't actually prevent anyone from attending university, the loans are available on extremely easy terms and if not repaid are written off after 25 years (35 years for Scots). The actual social origins of students is broader than it was in the 1970s partly due to a massive expansion in student numbers.

If there hadn't been a change in the financing then the expansion provision could not have been afforded. The loan system seems to be the least worst option. The alternative proposals involved paying out of general taxation or a graduate tax, one is a cash transfer to an already better off than average section of the population, the other has the same disincentive problems as a loan system, while being rather less flexible on things like early repayment and weakening the relationship between a courses popularity and its funding. DFES paper on graduate tax.

I've seen it argued, and the arguments don't seem to contradict my own experience, that current systems are disadvantaging older people. Whole industries have vanished in my working lifetime, yet today the options for retraining for those over 25 are thin on the ground.

You have to guess right when you're 15 or 16 years old, with the advice of your schoolteachers, about what to do for the rest of your life.

The politicians tell us they want a more flexible labour force, but if your current skills aren't of value, how are you going to afford the costs of changing?

Charlie: "If you're American, it's equivalent to your government dropping thirty big ones on something. You'd probably notice it if they said 'oops, it's broken'."

Goodness, your naiveté is charming today.

Brett@59: Actually, there are a vaste swathe of students who can't go to university in the UK at all (until they're 25 and have saved heavily for it).

Who? The people whose parents have just enough cash to not be dirt-poor. Younger people who don't recieve parental support in general tend to be hosed as well.

The entire concept of expanding the university system has created a system where a degree is expected for the vast majority of well-paying jobs, but has excluded a lot of individuals who would previously have attended university.

(I don't support the way they've expanded the system, incidentally)

Lack of modern social mobility is down to a number of reasons. Education is definitely one. I think the attack on professionalism doesn't help, and then when they destroyed British industry in the 80's without proper programs they destroyed the communities, effectively removing the paths of improvement for large chunks of society, as well as the actual living exemplars of said improvement.

In the US most immigrant groups have historically run into conflict with the African American demographic. It's thought that this may be due to competition for the same resources, though I've also heard that one of the ways that immigrants become accepted as "white" is by positioning themselves socially above blacks.

The only group that didn't have any issues was the native americans, and it's worth noting they were treated even worse than blacks.

I'm a big fan of the US system of higher education. Our primary and secondary schools may suck, but higher education serves it's purpose very well. Probably the high degree of competition from private institutions, as well as the high level of autonomy given to state schools.

The means test is fairly generous and only applies to about 25% of the loan anyway. I had a full loan despite a household income significantly above not-quite-dirt-poor, I was able to live on it. I don't drink or smoke and was at a university with fairly cheap accommodation which kept by spending very low. It seems to be one of those areas where the perceived difficulty rather exceeds the actual difficulty. Students who spend excessively can get into serious debt problems, but if you are careful about where you study and what you spend you should be OK.

Serrafin @ 55 I HAVE read most of the major religious texts - I was brought up xtian, I know the bible, I've rerad the kpran (ugh) and the book of moron, and the Bahagavad gita, and some of the teachings of the Guatama, and plato/socrates.

Yes, they want to spread the "good news" - well - they're fucking liars, and their news is blackmail. And, they accost you IN THE STREET - though the local two have learnt NOT to do that any more, finally.

Brett @ 59 No quarrel with what you arte saying. I know the 1944-act system was not perfect, and it was underfunded. But it was a LOT better than what we have now. With the money NOW being spent on "education" we could have a decent system, but we don't.

Dave Bell @ 60 Tell me about it! I'm 62, got an M.Sc. in Engineering at age 48 (hard work, poverty-stricken, but fun) ... Never, ever, been able to use it. Employers ARE NOT INTERESTED. If you hear/see a politiciam or business leader claiming that "We can't get the trained (NOT "educated" notice) staff". THEY ARE LYING.

Andrew Crystall @ 62. Spot on. If we had FEWER students, of higher academic ability, we could afford (nationally) grants for these people, who really deserve a good education.

I note with interest, that no-one is arguing against academic selection, which suprises me, since the whole thrust of "policy" (especially under Labour party rule) is that academic selection is EVIL, and automatically gives an advantage to the (shock horror) middle classes. Or is it that you can all see the evolutionary reasons why this so-called socialist argument is a load of foetid dingoes kidneys?

Brett - Do remember that the money avaliable is not cost-of-living adjusted, both more expensive areas to live price people out, as does the basis the loans are adjusted on being well below the actual average cost of living.

Things like Oxford university's refusal to allow people to hold part-time jobs during term-time is a killer for many to going there. Most universities also don't have halls for all their students beyond the first year...

I had virtually no parental support during my degree and I did part-time work, and still needed to claim hardship funds and ended up with a considerable credit card debt that I ended up paying off only after a year of working. (And I was only able to pay off my student account overdraft thanks to a member of the family).

And that was before a lot of the recent, more expensive measures and price rises. (And no I don't smoke or drink either...)

Wow, I used to think the UK had a good higher education system, but after reading these comments....

Tingey @ 67.

I didn't say if you'd read the texts, I said if you read the books. But again - I get accosted more by leaflet hand outers, Oxfam (charity) 'sellers' and homeless/beggars than religious extremists.

Do I enjoy what they're preaching? No. Do I believe it. Hell no.

Do I, however, believe if freedom of speech, thought and expression. Yes, yes I do.

The separation of religion from state, education and policy is all that is required. If that can be made a full true law, permanently, then all is well.

But like rats - the more you try and supress things like religion, the stronger they get. Remember how the Christian religion spread in the first place.

Quietly and beneath the noses of those that repressed them.

Besides which - if you'd really ever studied religion you'd know that the minute you 'outlaw' religion, you prove about 5 separate sects right. And the smug buggers will really go to work then.

Andrew @ 69: The education system as some pros and some severe cons. The biggest problem we seem to have at the moment is those in charge aren't sure what they want our kids to learn. (Apprenticeships are now all in vogue again, which would have given so many a job if they'd not more or less abolished them years ago).

Of course the muppets that we have in power have just made it more expensive for someone with a qualification to start a course in a 'lower grade' qualification. Or, in simple terms, re-train.

Andrew @ 69 We do have a pretty good system, a lot of people like to moan about it.

G Tingay @ 67 Actually IIUC the split system has, if anything, slightly worse overall results than comprehensive systems in comparable areas. The effect of the split system was to make it harder for a working class pupil to get an education sufficient to attend university. The number of grammar school places varied widely and it was next to impossible to go to university if you were forced to go to secondary modern and provision of grammar schools in working class areas was far lower than in middle class areas. Overall results seem to be best in systems with internal streaming (separating pupils into groups by ability for all classes) within a comprehensive. The results on that are a bit better than setting (separating pupils by ability on a per-class basis) and significantly better than mixed-ability (not separating by ability). Streaming and setting allow for an easier reassignment of a pupil to a different ability group while the split system if far more rigid.

G Tingay @ 54 Actually the 1944 education act had a provision for transfer at 13 of pupils between secondary modern and grammar schools, somehow this didn't happen. As you can imagine the parents of those pupils who would have been transferred from grammar schools to secondary modern schools tended to bitterly oppose the transfer taking place. There weren't any free places at the grammar schools as the number of 11-plus passes was matched to the available grammar school places. So as the existing parents were generally able to lobby successfully for their child not to be transferred from a good school, where they were settled, to a bad school, there were no places available for able pupils in bad schools. So once branded a failure at 11 there was no realistic way of getting out of the school for failures unless your parents could afford to opt out of the state system..

I agree with Brett @ 72.

I was suggesting a REFORMED version of the 1944 system, since it is clear that the present one is fucked.

Middle calls - well ... More intelligent parents TEND (over large numbers) to have more intelligent children AND More intelligent people TEND (as before) to get better-paid jobs. bingo! - most people passing the tests tended to be - you guessed it. The failing is/was that thick children of well-paid parents usedjust to fail, whereas bright kids from poor/ill-educated parents passed, and escaped to better things. Which does not happen now. I am, of course assuming there are an adequate number of "Grammar" places, and also the institution of Technical High Schools, which was mandated in 1944, and the money hardly ever turned up, so there were NEVER enough of these.

Serrafin @ 70 The US has separation-of-church-and-state, and you've got religious insanity much worse than we have, so your argument does not follow.

I may simply have been hit by the rhetoric at the time, I'll admit, however when the HE Bill was being pushed through parliament I happened to be working (admin, nothing important) for the UUK (once the Council for Vice Chancellors and Principals) in their 'External Relations' team. The major thrust of the argument from the Universities side was simply that the money was running out!

We were educating too many people on too small a pot!

At the time, the then CEO of UUK, Baroness Warwick, was heavily lobbying parliament on this basis and using such tactics as taking politicians round university sites the country over and showing them the depreciation occurring in the building stock & Facilities. In addition the drastic increase in class/lecture sizes.

What can I say, I was convinced! I had just completed a 3 year BSc in physics at UCL (truncated from an MSc) where I saw lecture sizes of 50 to 100! Where our tutorial time was limited to 1 hour once every other week in our second and third years.

I read enough about it at the time (sorry I wish I could quote sources) that I was convinced that what we were doing at the time was necessary. Unpleasent, but necessary!

Has time shown this to be false? I'll admit I've lost track of the current HE scene, but what would have happened if the HE Bill had not passed? I can understand people decrying the lack of 'free' higher education, I had access to it myself, but is it better we limit access to a smaller number in order to maintain that freedom, or should we expect those who benefit most directly from it to pay towards it, when they are able to?

Tingey - Two things, minor though they are. There's no F in my tag. For a very good reason.

And I'm from the UK not the US, keep track buddy. :)

I didn't suggest that such separation would get rid of the whack jobs, or 'all of them'. I implied that this was all that was needed - generally.

Yes the religious types on the street annoy you. Geeks on the streets annoy some people, and i hear that some folks have problems with people of different ethnicity. But the religious don't have a say on law (except in the same way as 'the rest of us'), and this makes us safe.

I can tell that your obviously not a left wing whack job like me, and I can appreciate that. As you see under my benevolent dictatorship, I'd let you speak your opinion and feelings.

Though I feel I'd not get the same under yours.

Actually the current system works pretty well, better than the split system did.

The biggest problem with the split system was that bright working class children would fail as there might be only 5% of secondary school places provided at grammar schools in working class areas while a middle class child who actually did worse in the 11 plus would pass as in a middle class area 20% of secondary school places might be at grammar schools. That was one of the major problems with the split system. Streaming internally within a comprehensive school actually has better results.

Branding someone a failure with a norm-referenced exam in evil. As that is a fundamental part of the grammar school system I consider it to be utterly unacceptable.

Grammar Schools existed before the 1944 Education Act.

The problems that are being blamed on Grammar Schools are at least as much to do with post 1944 failures as the essentially market-driven placing of Grammer Schools before 1944.

Grammar Schools existed before the 1944 Education Act.

The problems that are being blamed on Grammar Schools are at least as much to do with post 1944 failures as the essentially market-driven placing of Grammer Schools before 1944.

On this topic, see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-711.pdf about how to defeat PIN entry devices, which are very widely used in the UK by retailers for debit card authorization. Those of you in the UK may have seen the BBC Newsnight story about it.

G. Tingey @ 73 The US has separation-of-church-and-state, and you've got religious insanity much worse than we have, so your argument does not follow.

The US has separation in theory, and very much not in practice*, the UK seems to be the opposite. The problem with giving the government any say in religion, other than "Play nice, guys", is that some religion or other will usually get its hands on the levers and start using those powers to oppress everyone else.

*Did you hear about the uproar last year when a new Congressman didn't want to swear his oath to the Constitution on the Christian Bible, but on some heathen document instead?

G. Tingey@67: As long as academic selection is based on ability, then there's only a middle-class bias as far as they tend to have things like parents more interested in academic work - and that's a matter of broader social policy and not academic selection directly.

Serraphin@70: The "seperation" in America just prevents the rational discussion of certain belief structures in modern society and also lets religious policies be implimented without being able to discuss their basis.

AndrewC@74: The problem is that many jobs now require a degree to enter, and those jobs are not much higher paid than jobs which don't require degrees - it can take decades for the degree-holder to catch up (and something I'm in like games? I'll NEVER catch up).