DaveR

The danger of predicting that, for example, we will all have to turn vegetarian, is that this always depends in one way or another on a number of assumptions about the future, in particular about the what effect innovation and technological advances may have, when history tells us that people are incredibly resourceful when responding to powerful incentives. In that context, one of the most interesting parts of the story was the link to a separate report suggesting that small, local investment in water pumps etc. couild have a dramatic overall impact on food production capacity (and a significant knock-on effect on the incomes of farmers in developing countries). To be fair to the authors of the main report, there is a chapter in theirs that says much the same thing. I know that saying technological changes and other innovations may present solutions is often seen as complacent, and an excuse to do nothing, but to my mind the reverse is true. Too often the 'green' argument is to try to force people to change their behaviour ("you - put down that bacon sandwich and eat more tofu. And sell your car and get a bike!") which, frankly, is likely to be ineffective, and in practice little changes. The really 'green' approach is to incentivise both the development of new technology and the better use of existing technology to, in this case, maximise both the availability of water for agriculture and the capacity for food production out of the water available. Market forces will do that to a certain extent but there are lots of other things that can be done e.g. targeting aid money more effectively, improving access to information about irrigation techniques and equipment, and trying to tackle local barriers to land improvement (bureaucracy, corruption etc.)

I said I didn't want to get drawn into a debate, but I guess it's unavoidable. I made a simple point: "statistically, the single most reliable predictor of educational attainment by children is educational attainment by the parents" I was not advancing any particular theory of causation, just saying that, even when you control for other factors, this relationship persists. I don't understand anyone to be disagreeing with this. BB100 made what seemed to me to be a much bolder claim, i.e.: "It's what parents 'do' rather than 'who they are' that is a good predicitor of educational achievement." This is pretty black and white - it says that if parents want their kids to fit with the pattern they have to 'do' stuff. That may be right, but there have been many, many studies and none that I know of have come even close to making that claim. BB100 also said 'that's why there are children's centres etc.". But studying interventions in relation to kids who would otherwise have been predicted to do badly, to see what makes them do better, does not answer the question as to why kids who have been predicted to do well, in fact do well. You say I took the quote from the JRF report out of context; it is, in fact, the first of the 'key points' listed in the summary of the reports' findings, and (unsurprisingly) is not undermined by the more detailed findings regarding specific interventions, and in any event this does not answer the above point i.e. what is the explanation for kids who do well without intervention? You are, of course, free to criticise the author of the other study but again, the point that was being made was not that parents 'doing' stuff doesn't have any effect, but that there are serious questions as to whether it is critical. I'm not sure why you want to label me as some kind of genetic determinist when all I have said is that parents should be wary of assuming that the specific involvement that they have in their kids education is likely to make all the difference. I'm not really interested in genetics; what I find interesting are the likely unconscious influences that 'lazy' parents may nevertheless have on their kids. So, in the study of adoptees above, there was a very strong association between parental drinking and smoking and kids taking up the habit(s). I have at various times seen bits of research that suggest lots of other, more positive associations between parents and kids e.g. parents having a wide vocabulary leading to earlier speech development, parents who are able to resolve conflicts verbally leading to fewer behavioural problems, and the 'role model' effect i.e. successful parents/adults who unconsciously embody positive messages about school success and life success. Obviously, I have to declare an interest as a parent who is perhaps less interested in the minutiae of my kids schooling than seems to be the norm at the moment. It would be nice to think that just by being around, I'm exerting my magic. As an aside, when I was a kid the concept of pushy parents was pretty much unknown (to me, at least). The stereotyped Dad barely knew where his kids went to school, and Mums were more concerned with making sure you had you PE kit than anything else*. Yet the data from the 70s (and the 60s and the 50s) suggests just as strong an association then as now between how parents did at school and how their kids did. *And our diet was terrible - fish fingers, spaghetti hoops and Angel Delight.

The report describes the background circumstances in some detail, and consequently the limitations on the conclusions that can be drawn. Ultimately, I don't want to get drawn into an academic debate; I just think that this: "It's what parents 'do' rather than 'who they are' that is a good predicitor of educational achievement" is a far bolder statement than appears in any of the research or commentary that I have seen, and the risk is that parents automatically assume that 'doing' more is better for their kids. In a thread that discusses whether, for example, it's a good idea to move to an area you don't otherwise like because of an Ofsted 'outstanding' school, it seems to me to be a good idea to take a step back and ask how much difference parental choices make to outcomes for their kids (whether judged by exam grades or indeed by how happy they are). http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/17/new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-the-economists-guide-to-parenting/

"I was quoting from academic research. What you read in the Daily Mail isn't really credible Dave ;)" There's lots of research out there, and if you want to rely on it you might want to post a link. Like this one: http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/education-achievement-poverty-summary.pdf which says: "It was not possible to establish a clear causal relationship between AABs (attitudes, aspirations and behaviours) and childrens' educational outcomes" Or this one: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/econ/sempapers/Sacerdote.pdf which I won't try and summarise, but if you read it you may not feel quite so confident in your opinion. (One of the findings is that the natural children of highly educated parents appear to enjoy a fourfold greater benefit to their own attainment than children adopted into those families - an odd outcome if "it's what parents 'do'") By the way, don't bother with the smiley, it doesn't make your post any less patronising.

A basic definition of social capital is that it is an asset that arises by virtue of relationships, whether between individuals or groups. An obvious example is networking - the whole idea behind it is that by establishing relationships with people who may be in a position to help in the future you add to your personal capital i.e. your earning potential. In the context of this debate, social capital means positive relationships between parents, children, communities and teachers/schools that have a positive effect on outcomes, and research has suggested that this may explain why, for example, Catholic schools often perform better than other comparable schools, or why Chinese kids often do better than other kids. The point I was making above is that social capital is unlikely to be he only reason for the very strong correlation between parental educational attainment and childrens educational attainment, and in fact there's plenty of evidence that all sorts of things that parents do (in the belief that they are likely to make significant difference to their kids educational attainment) in fact don't make a big difference, at least when compared with the big picture i.e. how well did the parents do at school, how much do they earn etc.

"It's what parents 'do' rather than 'who they are' that is a good predicitor of educational achievement. That's why schools and Children's Centres invest time and money in boosting parents' social capital in deprived areas." The second part of that sentence doesn't really follow from the first; establishing that something can help kids who would otherwise do badly, to do better, does not explain why (other) kids do well in the first place. And in any event, the evidence supporting the effectiveness of things like Children's Centres is also pretty thin. On the other hand, the straight correlation between parent and child educational attainment is clear is undeniable; the reasons for it are probably many and varied, and some will have little or nothing to do with what parents actively do.

Ofsted reports are like lots of other assessment tools - not a complete answer by any means, but helpful because a school with effective leadership and systems is going to make sure they do reasonably well, even if the values/priorities of the school itself do not chime exactly with those of the inspectors. I would definitely look at schools that are rated 'Good' and any rated 'Satisfactory' that seem to be improving. Personally, I wouldn't move to a neighbourhood I didn't want to live in just to be near an 'Outstanding' school; statistically, the single most reliable predictor of educational attainment by children is educational attainment by the parents, so it is easy to over-estimate the impact of the 'best' schools, particulalrly st primary level.

There were a number of threads where people were asking for recommendations for practitioners of certain 'alternative therapies' that got similarly messy (I plead guilty to having played my part in that*) and since then I had understood that there was a kind of unwritten rule that people genuinely asking for recommendations didn't get swamped with posts saying "why do you want one of those (you idiot)?". If there isn't, there probably should be; if people stop posting or signing up because the perception is that this kind of thing is inevitable, the overall quality of the info on here will decline. Maybe if this thread had started off in the "Wanted" section things might have panned out better. (*If you really think reiki will make things better for you, then, you know, it might just work. Despite being mumbo-jumbo.)

"Heading right back to the Victorian days, of ghettos where the poorest people will be forced to live until that area is gentrified and yet again they forced to move on because they can no longer afford to live where they were brought up in areas like the following. ? Clapham Common ? Battersea ? Brixton ? Kennington ? Oval" Up and down the country there are lots of people who, for various reasons, can't afford to live where they grew up. Should they receive a public subsidy so that they can?

If you want to be really shocked, look up "APNR Data Centre" Someone doesn't need access to your satnav to know where you've been.

"There is no reason to go to Singapore except to change aircraft" ...and to be fair, Singapore Airport is fanatastic. Sports bar, koi carp pool, mini rainforest, kids area, excellent airside hotel, free wifi and free charging points for phones, decent food, lots of shops (if you like that sort of thing) and they do a free city tour if you are transiting for more than a couple of hours (which I haven't done, so could be rubbish, but still). Singapore itself not so interesting, but great food. "Dynamism" an interesting word for HK - I prefer "completely nuts". But also fun.

Crikey - when will it ever end? Next you'll be telling me that my internet service provider knows which websites I've been accessing.

It's worse than you think - my mobile phone has a list of all the calls I've made and received!

"and you can't get a good steak" ironically, a very good steak was one thing I did get in Dubai. In a restaurant near the Armani Hotel - some kind of faked up waterfront development. It cost about ?50 mind, but I wasn't paying the bill.

It's the Vale On Grove Vale

Funnily enough, I hated Dubai with a passion. For every bit of amazing architecture there are fifty sludge-coloured nameless tower blocks, the beaches can't hold a candle to the best in the Med, let alone in SE Asia, the shopping malls are.....well, shopping malls, and the whole place looks like it has been hit by a tidal wave of international mega-brand outlets - for a coffee you can choose between Starbucks, Costa and Paul! Getting anywhere involves a cab ride down a motorway, and tbh, (perhaps irrationally) I didn't feel great about the fact that every single person in a service job is an African or Asian migrant and all the customers are either Western or Arab.

As I understand it, Armstrong is saying that USADA don't have the power to strip him of his titles, which sounds right - presumably it would be the UCI, who regulate international cycling, and they have been supportive of Armstrong in the recent past.

The whole point of the report is that if you exchange housing in expensive areas for cheaper areas you end up with more. Housing is a commodity, like food and water, and the public are best served by having the most efficient system for public housing. To the extent that there is a moral aspect to it, surely that's it?

"London is often cited as a brilliant example of how different social strata live alongside each other and, generally, get along. The dangers of "ghetto-isation" where, essentially, the inner city becomes for the rich only whilst the poor are restricted to a sort of donut-ring outer can be seen clearly across the Channel where Paris has this exact model. It causes social unrest and an "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" tendency. Whilst the need for affordable housing is important I'm not sure it should be at the expense of social cohesion." I understand the principle - the question I pose is what is the actual answer in terms of hard cash? If you are saying that the balance is right now, what's your evidence? Could inner london boroughs sell off, for example all of the properties they currently own that are worth more than 150% of the regional median (so more conservative than the proposal), and reinvest in cheaper alternatives, without sacrificing London's famous social cohesion (much in evidence during last year's riots)? And what about the social division that arises from people thinking (rightly or wrongly) that social housing tenants get an easy life at their expense? The point made by the report is that there is a real, measurable cost to keeping expensive housing in public ownership, which calls for an examination beyond bare assertion of the justification for it.

"We need to be careful here. It is not in the country's best interests to push all social tenants into poorer areas. I'm not saying that we should start building council houses in Bloomsbury or Knightsbridge, but there needs to be a sensible distribution. The creation of very poor enclaves is a much greater danger than all this talk of property supply/demand." This is the nub of it, it seems to me. There already are council houses in comparable areas to Bloomsbury and Knightsbridge (in fact there are council houses specifically in Bloomsbury) and the report sugests that selling them would be beneficial, and has a reasonable stab at quantifying the benefit, both in financial terms and in terms of reducing waiting lists. How do you balance that against the detriment that arises (or may arise) from having enclaves reserved for the rich and others for the rest (not really the poorest, I suspect, if they are simply areas where housing cost is below the median)? What is a 'sensible distribution' of publicly subsidised residents in expensive neighbourhoods in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and is it purely numerical or something else? I can see a strong case for maintaining levels of key worker housing right across London and I suspect that would have public support, but otherwise the argument seems to be that some potential tenants should stay on the waiting list, in shitty B&B accommodation, to ensure that a minimum number of poor people live in some of the best streets in town.

"When you've got some numbers your opinion will demonstrate some value. I look forward to it." Just click on the link. I'll even post it again; http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingresearch/housingstatistics/housingstatisticsby/housingmarket/livetables/ You could start with "Property sales based on Land Registry data, by district, from 1996 (quarterly)" And then look at "Mix-adjusted house prices index and inflation, by new/other dwellings, type of buyer and region, from 1969" And then you will know who is the knob here (if there were really any doubt)

H, if you persist in posting such appalling tosh you can hardly get shirty when someone points that out. Indeed, your latest post includes this gem: "According to the land registry only around 100,000 of the houses sales in the UK each year actually take place against London property. That's disproportionately small, and reflects the strong rental demand and premiums that means people moving away may choose to rent rather than sell. It's that tiny sales figure alone that has driven the London house price boom. It's 'latent' value in a stifled market that makes London property appear to be so valuable." Now, it's well written, I'll give you that. Seductively written even - it's selling itself to me, it wants to be true. Obviously it's not, it's rubbish - London house prices are driven far more by demand than by supply, and the current strong rental demand is the mirror image of weaker demand for purchases (most particularly because of the tightening in availability of mortgage finance). Sale prices and rents in a particular area tend to trend in opposition to each other because the underlying goods are essentially the same. How do we know that London prices are demand driven? Anecdotally, we might examine the plausibility of these scenarios: A Russian oligarch decides to drop ?20 million on a UK pad, convenient for Harvey Nicks for the wife, Harrow School for the kids, and West end casinos and hookers for the man of the house. Where to buy? It has to be Bradford. A City trader with a nice six figure bonus just has to move (the current place doesn't have enough garage space for the Carrera and the Cayenne) - how about Norwich? A shiny new graduate with a media studies degree and the world as their oyster is determined to shine amongst the bright lights of....Paignton. A somewhat sad 40ish Dad is determined not to get old and boring (like his Dad before him) so resolves to live somewhere just a litle bit funky - Wolverhampton should fit the bill. Maybe a poor attempt at humour, but a reasonable stab, I hope, at characterising some of the demographic pressures that have driven London house prices almost remorselessly up during the last 30 years or so. Then we could try and 'sort out' the figures. If your argument were correct, we would be able to observe an inverse correlation between sales and price, and one that differs when comparing London with other regions. Fortunately, the date to test this is available, here: http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingresearch/housingstatistics/housingstatisticsby/housingmarket/livetables/ and even a cursory glance confirms that your argument is utter pants. Sales largely rise and fall in line with prices, because 'market availability' is driven by price, rather than the other way round. To finish, we might actually look at the basic premise behind the report (which you obviously didn't deign to read before laying your wisdom out for us) i.e. a local authority can sell a large desirable property in a comparatively expensive neighbourhood for more than the cost of acquiring or building the same housing capacity elsewhere. To put it more bluntly, LB Islington can sell a large period house in Islington proper (delis, Guardian readers and media specs) and build sufficient cheap but adequate modern flats in Holloway to increase their overall stock. You increase it even more if you build the flats in Dartford, and if you did that you would be making the provision of social housing at least in some ways similar to the rest of the housing market i.e. lots of people would love to live in Islington but end up living in Dartford. This premise would clearly be true even if prices of top-end London properties were affected by an increase in supply (although demand in this sector appears to be more robust than any other, if you believe all the analysts). BTW, can I say that I am a particular fan of the grandiosity of your nonsense: "What ever the merits of a reduction in housing value, the huge negative equity created would catalyse an instant economic collapse and a guarantee of terminal long term depression that would cripple the nation." If you're going to sell it, sell it big.

So individual properties across a range of London boroughs trickle on to the market as sitting tenants depart and that precipitates economic collapse.....that seems likely. H, you probably wouldn't use the word 'sensible' because the concept is entirely alien to you.

So the arguments against are not of substance, but rather "it won't be done" or "the author is a Tory". I'll take that as an agreement that this is a very sensible proposal.