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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 44m

This is a fine speech.

Sets out, clearly, what the Conservatives stand for that Reform don't - particularly on the economy.

Calls out previous failures.

And lays out specific policies that aren't just tinkering, but represent a genuine change.

www.conservatives.com/news/kemi-ba...

Kemi Badenoch announces Stamp Duty Abolition Policy

In her remarks closing Conference Kemi made one more major announcement

www.conservatives.com

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 1h

Or to choose a less dramatic example, the absolute numbers of children who don't speak English is what impacts schools (and other kids' learning).

It doesn't matter whether that number is a lower proportion of that ethnic group.

Hence low rates of immigration with time to integrate.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 1h

I don't see a contradiction between your stat (which I agree is true) and this.

It is the absolute numbers that matter in terms of impact on society.

For example, I care much less what proportion of Muslims are radical Islamists than about the absolute number of radical Islamists in the country.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 1h

That is a great point.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 2h

Stamp Duty is one of the most harmful, economically distorting taxes we have.

Great call by Kemi Badenoch to prioritise it for scrapping.

Free up our broken housing market and give more people a chance to own their own homes, relocate for work and downsize.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 2h

Link to full piece here:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/immi...

Immigration isn’t working

The Manchester synagogue attack requires us to ask three questions: where are we, how did we get there, and where now? Where we are is British Jews attacked on Yom Kippur, two dead, more injured, coun...

www.spectator.co.uk

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 2h

Outstanding piece by Stephen Daisley.

Ethnicity is no barrier to Britishness - it's culture and integration.

That means 'smaller cohorts and aggressive integration policies' - and tackling the institutions that 'have amplified grievance narratives and radical anti-Western ideologies'.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 1d

Remember: just because the average graduate is better off, doesn't mean the marginal graduate will be.

We are now well past the point where sending more people to university is beneficial - and is instead causing serious economic self-harm.

www.edrith.co.uk/p/the-fallac...

The Fallacy of the 'Average'

It doesn't matter to most policy debates what the return is on the 'average' graduate or immigrant. What matters is the marginal return.

www.edrith.co.uk

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 1d

I assume he means the Willetts reforms (forgetting HE was in BIS at this time, not under Gove) which removed number controls and turned it into a demand led system.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 2d

At the age of 13, having heard she wrote 'racy' novels, I secretly read the only Jilly Cooper book in my parents' house.

Sadly for teenage me, this happened to be Class - a very funny social satire, but one that contained disappointingly little bonking.

This may explain a lot.

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Reposted by Iain Mansfield

dag @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 2d

"the Bad Faith Threshold" is a great coinage.

The first wave of comments on a post, from those who do actually follow you, is usually interesting or fun or both.

But the later waves are of scolds, humourless reply-guys, "sorry to be pedantics", "whatabouts", and "why are you insulting".

Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 2d

Ah, I see this post has crossed the Bad Faith Threshold: that indefinable moment on social media when people stop behaving as if you’re a normal human person who, say, loves your child and is making a mildly humorous observation, and start responding with wild criticisms and imagined slights.

Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 3d

Yesterday my eleven-year-old daughter claimed that Taylor Swift had embraced a range of genres which included punk. The retribution was swift and included considerable mockery and a lesson on punk which probably took longer than she would have liked.

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Reposted by Iain Mansfield

Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

Our eldest's new school uses a library tool that claims to give 'consistent, reliable and objective' measures of book difficulty.

We've discovered it is hideously, hilariously inaccurate.

It believes:
- First Prize for the Worst Witch (6.2) is harder than Dune (5.7).

...

🧵

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

I think that's right, but also that it doesn't matter because left wing parties (and, for that matter, the Conservatives) are seen as enabling or not stopping them.

'It wasn't us, it was the courts/an independent quango/the universities' isn't a defence that holds up if people don't like something.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

"The ATOS readability formula is applied to all the text that appears in a book and looks at three things: average sentence length, average word length, and word difficulty level. ATOS book levels are consistent, reliable and objective measures of text complexity."

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

It even gets children/YA books and adult books by *the same author* totally wrong, claiming that:

- The Hobbit (6.6) is harder than The Fellowship of the Ring (6.1).

- The Shepherd's Crown (6.4) is harder than Guards! Guards! (5.4).

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

- How to Train Your Dragon (6.6) is harder than Watership Down (6.2).

- Harry and the Dinosaurs: A Monster Surprise (5.0) is harder than Soul Music (4.7).

- Oliver Moon and the Broomstick Battle (4.7) is harder than Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (5.0).

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

Our eldest's new school uses a library tool that claims to give 'consistent, reliable and objective' measures of book difficulty.

We've discovered it is hideously, hilariously inaccurate.

It believes:
- First Prize for the Worst Witch (6.2) is harder than Dune (5.7).

...

🧵

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

I appreciate they seem unimportant to you, but to others they can feel consistent and pervasive.

The sense of 'two-tierism' if every job advert you read says they prefer applications from people who aren't you - plus the occasional explicitly discriminatory scheme.

Migration is the big one though.

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Reposted by Iain Mansfield

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 3d

Important point - announcements about "crackdowns" and "bans" are a way to try and convince people the state has power when it increasingly fails at basic tasks.

Robert Wright @reporterrwright.ft.com · 3d

And the state is growing less and less effective at the same time. One relatively trivial example is fly-tipping. There are steep fines for it and rewards for those who turn in offenders. But the problem grows worse and worse in many places.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

'Decolonisation' of university and school curriculums is widespread, reparations for slavery more prominent.

Taking down statues / renaming stuff.

'Cultural appropriation', 'micro-aggressions'.

'Anti-racism' as race-aware positive discrimination rather than race-blind equal treatment.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

Right now returning to more of a pre-Cameron era - wanting to reverse the Blair era changes and in some ways go further (as would argue 'the harms of them have now been shown' - clearly the left would disagree).

Some elements e.g. same sex marriage though highly likely to remain.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

The right opposed the HRA etc back in 1998.

In the Cameron era, it moved to embrace Blairism+ on social issues, from LGBT+ to Blair's 'fair access' regime in universities to Equality Act - but always some unhappy.

Great Awokening + mass migration/small boats broke the fragile equilibrium.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 3d

The change in the left @gilesyb.bsky.social describes on tax, nuclear, privatisation is real, but happened in the '90s.

The more recent change in the left that people use that diagram to talk about is associated with the 'Great Awokening' and is on issues such as race, gender, migration.

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 4d

1. Democratic governments should be able to do things they win support for - even if I don't like them. Cf. VAT on private schools.

2. The idea the ECHR has protected things the right cares about - such as free speech, parental rights - is laughable. Maybe if it had, there'd be more support for it.

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Simon Parker @simonparker.bsky.social · 5d

I saw a neat four box model recently that did left v right and maintenance of status quo v disruption. Reform and the Greens now very much on the side of disruption but the former gets a lot more attention. Fair I think to say Labour is status quo. I don't think we really know about Tories.

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