You keep hearing this waffle from the left about being 'branded a failure' at 11.

Who's exactly going around telling eleven year olds they are failures? Parents? Teachers? It certainly isn't most 11 year olds telling themselves that....most of them couldn't care less.

Instead it's just the usual nonsense you hear repeated because that's always the argument used....the fact that he has little to do with reality just fits in with most of their other core concepts.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

No body had to tell you, you were a failure at 11!

You either passed or you failed the 11+. If you failed you knew. Everyone knew. It was the accepted perception. Children were divided into two groups. The grammar school successes and the secondary school failures. One group were expected to become lawyers and airline pilots. The other labourers, bin men or clerks.

It had nothing whatsoever about being left or right. There were some kids at my school who held views that today would be categorised as very far right.

Those who think they know better about this, who think they know better about everything, have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Those that experienced it do.

I was fortunate. I am tenacious and I fight. Not with my hands but with my brain. What I might have achieved if I had had a better day when I sat the 11+, or been prepared better at primary school, and got a pass, rather than a fail, who knows?

It wasn’t a good system and anyone who defends it hasn’t experienced the downside.

That’s not to suggest that you abandon the style of teaching and expectations available in grammar schools. Only that how that is made available wasn’t fit for purpose.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

A complete pile of absolute twaddle.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

I am fully aware that many of the comprehensives were simply renamed secondary moderns and an abuse of the principles that lay behind them.

Which is why I referred to well structured and managed comprehensives in my first post. If you do this then it has to be done properly and that means taking the best from the way grammar schools function and applying it to a comprehensive structure.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

"He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him." [Orwell]

With all the cases involving Trump that are now in the news we tend to forget the previous scams he perpetrated on people, but managed to avoid being punished for by delay and/or declaring bankruptcy, or otherwise closing the business.

Trump University was a case in point. Quietly closed down and settlements agreed with some who he had scammed , early in his first year as POTUS. As he was attracting so much controversy at the time hardly anyone noticed. Perhaps this is the intention this time. Ride it out, delay, appeal and complain until he can either close the cases down, pardon himself or quietly pay people off when everyone is more concerned with bigger stupidity by him.

[Link]

Of course this is all just a witch-hunt. Everything he does is perfect.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.