Odd Rob

Former Maths teacher, lots of chasing Frisbees and some bass guitar. Likes to skim stones. he/him

[Adam Kay @amateuradam]

Oh, I didn’t realise it worked like this! @grantshapps can I invoice you for the extra cost of my mortgage, energy bills and food which your party incontrovertibly caused?

[Victoria Coren Mitchell @VictoriaCoren]

This is such high quality tennis. If I was playing either of these guys, I don’t think I’d win more than a single game.

[Colin Hegarty @hegartymaths]

Excited to share that we're working on a new @SparxMaths student interface for Sept...
✅ Refreshed + clean look and feel
✅ Simplified bookwork checks
✅ Improved + quicker question navigation
We'll then work tirelessly make things even better for students based on feedback on what's going well and what we could improve on. Hope sounds exciting!

[Alexander Louis Sallons @sallonsax]

*LOST CAT #Brighton #Hove*

Goose has slipped his harness around the Pier area in central Brighton.

If you see him please contact me or @Ria__Patel immediately.

Please share as much as possible.

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

@RussInCheshire Selfishly, I will be very sad not to see your content anymore but totally get it. All the best for everything, and thanks for fighting the good fight!

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

Here's how the future is going to play out...

(Long - please expand the tweet.)

1. The Tories will keep on wrecking things faster and faster as the GE approaches. They'll act like irresponsible teenagers who know they don't have to clean up in the morning after a wild drunken binge.

Why?
A) It's their last chance to firehose cash at their friends and cronies.
B) It's an opportunity to further feather their own nests before they're out of office.
C) It stuffs Labour even more - we'll return to this soon enough.
D) The more chaos they cause and the more scandals they trigger, the less chance there is of any one case of wrongdoing being investigated.

From a Tory POV, the best stuff to break is anything that's unfixable. For instance, the closure of all train ticket offices. Once those have been turned into coffee concessions and the staff fired or moved elsewhere, both the facilities and the expertise will be gone for good.

2. Regardless of actual policies, Labour will win the GE on a desperate tide of people wanting to Get The Tories out. However (and this will prove vital later) their future freedom to manoevre will be severely limited by the bright red lines they've been laying down on stuff like Brexit.

Related aside: Remember, the losing party has a blank slate. The electorate thumbed their noses at the manifesto, so they have total freedom to bin it. ("Nobody liked what we had to offer, so we need to do something different.") But this isn't true of the winning party. Even though pledges do get broken and manifesto commitments forgotten, they are still constrained by what they promised to win office.

3. Labour will start trying to fix the stuff the Tories broke. It will prove very expensive. Mending stuff is always more expensive than breaking it. It will be slow going too. And Labour will be trapped by the need to be "fiscally responsible" in a way the Tories never would, because our mainly RW media is waiting to tear them a new one if they spend as much as a single brass penny without accounting for where it came from.

Related aside 2: Is the political playing field level when it comes to British media? Absolutely not. It's totally unfair. But this is a known known, so Labour have to find ways to win - and win repeatedly - despite being hobbled by the press.

4. Labour will try to Make Brexit Work. The RW tabloids will tear bigger strips off them than usual, painting even minor concessions as a Great Betrayal. (If you're not paying attention, you need to realise that the tabloids pillory Labour every. single. day. So this will be a ramping up rather than a different attitude.)

Related aside 3: Since anything Labour does to "undo Brexit" will be portrayed as a betrayal, no matter how insignificant, they might as well take huge lumbering steps rather than teeny tiny ones. It won't make the tabloids more rabid than they're inevitably going to be.

5. Make Brexit Work won't. Work, that is. You might as well try and put the toothpaste back in the tube after you brushed your teeth with it. Brexit is inherently unworkable by its very nature. The small improvements won't be nearly enough for Rejoiners, will infuriate still-Leavers, and will barely move the dial on Britain's Brexit problems.

Related aside 4: Young voters who came of voting age since the referendum already break 86/14 in favour of Rejoin. By the time we get through a first Labour term, anyone under 32 will be overwhelmingly keen to re-enter the EU.

6. Meanwhile, Labour will also have to spend more and more and more to keep stuff from literally falling apart. Think sewers, water pipes, collapsing schools, crumbling hospitals. The legacy of Tory underinvestment has played havoc with already fragile infrastructure. Again, stern questions will be asked about where the money is coming from.

7. The rump of the Tory party, whatever's left after the GE wipeout, will sit on the sidelines laughing and jeering. "Typical Labour. Always spending money they don't have." They will point to every single broken thing, claiming they're all Labour's fault - and the RW media will amplify the message.

8. If they're very lucky, Labour will go into the GE-after-next with the overall situation in Britain slightly better than when they took office. We'll only be knee-deep in metaphoric (and maybe literal) sewage, rather than thigh-deep.

9. The Tories and RW press will continue their tag-teaming attacks. ("Same old Labour. Can't be trusted with the economy. Can't get anything working. Can't even fix Brexit, despite all their lofty promises.)

10. GE2: Electric Boogaloo.
Labour are stuck. The taunts about their flagship Make Brexit Work policy hit home - because they're true. And that lubricates the way for all the other lies the Tories and the RW media are spinning about them to slip down like honey.

If Labour pivot towards SM/CU/Rejoin to try to win GE2, they might as well tattoo "we wasted the last 5 years and prolonged the damage because we didn't know what the hell we were doing" on their foreheads. They may pivot anyway, because the alternative is even worse. This is where those bright red lines (remember them?) will come back to bite them in the fundament so hard, they won't be able to sit down for a month. The press will scream "U-turn" and again it will be absolutely true: a U-turn so big, it's visible from the Moon.

Related aside 5: There's no Get the Tories Out vote in GE2. Why? Because they're already out. The impetus to keep them out won't win over disgruntled voters who already lent their votes to Labour once with gritted teeth, despite Labour not doing what they wanted on things like Brexit and PR.

11. Labour lose GE2. A one-term wonder, and they're done. The Tories do what they do best: they blame all Britain's ills on Labour, and start wrecking the country afresh with a clean slate. Heck, they're still bleating about the "No money left" letter today, so we know exactly how this stuff plays out.

Related aside 6: From the standpoint of history, being PM is perhaps 100x more important than being Leader of the Opposition. A place in posterity for eternity is the grand prize that even very rich people can't buy (though their wealth can certainly help towards attaining it). So Keir Starmer won't be nearly as disappointed as you might imagine. If he makes it a full term, that's already longer than May, Johnson, Truss (!) and Sunak managed. His standing is assured. Put another way: his incentives are not our incentives.

12. Another ruinous decade or so of Tory rule. (We know how hard it is for Labour to win. They need the Tories to mess up so badly that a tide of outrage carries them over the finish line. That tide is unlikely to rise again over a term dominated by constant reminders of "Labour's failings" playing out 24/7 in the RW press and on RW TV and radio.)

Deep breath. Have a coffee and a biscuit. You've earned them. We've seen the problem. Now it's time to tackle the solution.

Scroll back up through the scenario above. Notice how Brexit runs through it, like a vein pumping poison.

That's why Labour need to change their fundamental attitude towards Brexit, and they need to do it now - not just before the GE.

Stop ruling things out. Not saying you won't do something isn't the same as saying you will do it. Read the previous sentence a few times - it does make sense. Think along the lines of "Labour will do whatever it takes to mitigate the damage Brexit is causing Britain". The actual message can be polished by the pros. It's the intent that matters. Without the red lines on SM/CU/Rejoin, anything becomes possible.

By making the change now, it blunts the moaning in the media. Why? Because it dilutes the impact of the u-turn over a year or more, rather than concentrating it into the last month of intense scrutiny just before the GE.

The other vital ingredient is PR.

Simply put, PR is the only hope we have of achieving any sort of long-term stability.

Why? Because many of the problems Britain faces will take 2, 3, 4+ election cycles to fix. And they need fixing. But the only conceivable way of unlocking the time to fix them is to form long-term partnerships in the national interest. In other words, PR.

PR rids us of the short-termism mindset that has dragged Britain down for decades. Though the exact balance in Parliament will change from GE to GE, even under PR, a coalition will almost certain be possible without involving the Tories or other RW parties. It is better to have a share of power forever than absolute power for a few years before the other lot come in and undo everything you worked towards.

Related aside 7: Don't think of GEs in terms of a 5-year cycle. When the party in power changes, their first year is spent trying to pick through the mess and understand what's going on. And the final year of every 5-year cycle is focused on the next GE. So there are really only ever 4 (and more often 3) years of actual governing possible under FPTP in every 5-year election cycle.

Summary: Labour needs to adopt a completely different attitude to Brexit (stop ruling stuff out, and make the change now) and move to introduce PR.

Phew, we're very nearly done. Congratulations on making it this far.

In parting: You may disagree with what you just read. You probably will. But please take a big step back and evaluate whether your disagreement is because it's just too horrible to think about the real world in the stark terms I painted above. Also, please consider whether your support for a particular party is blinding you to the reality of what they can hope to achieve in a short 5-year (really 3) period in office.

Thanks for your interest, and have a great day.

(P.S. If you found the above interesting, please RT to share this with others.)

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

So much exciting maths!

[Kit Yates @Kit_Yates_Maths]

Wimbledon begins today.

But do you know where the scoring system for Tennis comes from.

Here's a thread so you know your 'loves' from 'lets', your 'deuces' from your 'doubles' and your sets form your 'sexagesimal system'! 😂
1/25

[Duchess Gemma (MTE) aka Ms Tonks🐟 🇪🇺🇬🇧🕷 @gemmagould]

Dear @Ofcom in light of a GB NEWS presenter winning the TRIC award for NEWS presenter of the year could you please explain exactly why GB NEWS isn't a NEWS channel despite it having NEWS in its name also how did said presenter win an award for NEWS if its not in fact NEWS

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

"Reducing asylum application backlog would make it harder for Rwanda policy to be cost effective, official analysis suggests"

This is a statistic so perverse it should be banned for indecency.

Deep breath, and let's dive in...

Basically the longer an asylum seeker is trapped in rubbish accommodation unable to work or live anything even approximating a normal life, the more it costs the state.

And the more it costs the state, the more it's "worth" to deter one additional migrant from coming here.

So if the Tories could make asylum seekers cost £1 million each, they could then claim that each additional asylum seeker deterred from coming here "saves" the UK £1 million, because that money won't have to be spent on them.

£10 million each, and the notional saving from deterrence would be £10 million. And so on.

In other words, the ROI of Rwanda as a deterrent only starts to look reasonable if you manage to make each asylum seeker very VERY expensive.

How do you do that? By slowing and slowing and slowing the processing of their application, so that they have to spend years and years and years trapped in a tiny room with a stranger, waiting.

In other words, the less efficient you are, the more your theoretical saving is, because the deterrent effect is worth more.

It's the sickest and most disgusting misuse of statistics I've ever seen, because it "legitimises" the very conscious and deliberate Tory policy to slow application processing down so that the visible backlog of asylum seekers grows and grows and there's an enemy for the RW tabloids to point at and other.

Beyond belief. And yet they are genuinely trying to pass this off as a genius strategy, rather than as a travesty that should see every one of the people responsible for formulating the plan in prison on human rights grounds.
https://t.co/o9WuMpcB28

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

@Michael1979 I am still waiting for the organisers of Glastonbury to put out their parallel statement. Until such time I will hold out hope!

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

@NotInventedHere Hard agree. Just hope the newly planted sunflowers can survive the battering 😬

[Josh Pugh @JoshPughComic]

If Shakespeare Came Back Today

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

@mrbrownsays @OliverRMills Pleased to hear that one made it your way, too!

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

@OliverRMills Oh goodness, a cross breed of some sort, if memory serves part Labrador and I can’t remember the other type!

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

@CarolineLucas You’ll be so missed Caroline. I’ve been proud to say that my local MP is you. But totally understand the decision you’ve taken

[Odd Rob @oddrobmaths]

@robotmaths @SMART_Tech (Have recently left teaching)
I actively moved from Smart to OneNote

[Dave McPartlin @dave_mcpartlin]

Places where kids eat free (or for £1) during May half-term. Worth a share.

[Hannah @missradders]

In a slight "closing of transfer window" panic.
If anyone knows of someone looking for a 0.6FTE Maths position in a brilliant North Yorkshire LEA Secondary please DM me!

RTs super appreciated

[Dave McPartlin @dave_mcpartlin]

OFSTED IS NOT A FAIR PLAYING FIELD
(A FOOTBALL ANALOGY)
A school receiving an Outstanding Judgement in an affluent area is a very different prospect and achievement to a school with very high deprivation (statistically 4x less likely).
Just like, if Man City wins the FA Cup, few people are surprised but, if my beloved Hartlepool Utd win it, the world goes crazy, we have the biggest party of our lives and Netflix probably does a documentary about it.
So, it got me thinking about various teams winning the FA Cup.....
What about the part-timers (the small school club) where the manager is also the kit man, the water boy and drives the team coach?
What about the disadvantaged club, whose players have disproportionately higher mental health issues, have lived in poverty from birth & their health is (statistically) much worse than their more affluent peers?
What about the inadequate club who nobody wants to play for, whose coaching staff are broken, who struggle with retention issues and whose morale has been zapped by a poor judgment?
What about the insolvent club (deficit budgets due to lack of funding) who can't afford to employ the back-office staff or the equipment essential to keep the club running?
What about the inclusive club who let anyone and everyone play, a broad and welcoming church, who work day and night to make sure that their players enjoy school, are well-looked after and thrive?
What about the team that gets knocked out in the semi-finals because of a bad refereeing decision that the whole world could see but VAR wasn't allowed because the referee is always right (no independent complaints process).
What about the primary team taking on the secondary team (same framework for both - different game)?
What about the team full of players who need the game adapting or additional support (no PRU or special school places) so they keep playing, risking their own mental health and development?
What about the low attendance team who, no matter what they try, can't get their players to turn up for training or who check in late to games?
What about the fact that you've trained for months and years, you've made it to the final, but you don't know when it will be and then you only get 24 hours notice before kick off?
Amazing things are happening in football, from the grassroots through to the Premier League. Just like amazing things are happening in every school, despite their own unique challenges.
It wouldn't be fair to judge all clubs by the same criteria, so why use crude, nuance-lacking, high-stakes judgements for our schools?