Other countries are moving in the same direction. The EU has repeatedly tried to push things like on device scanning or banning encryption.
> Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government.
Mostly a failure of democracy - we have two major parties that are hard to tell apart.
They are both cynical and scared, and have for decades believed the future of Britain is managed decline. They also strongly believe the hoi polloi have to be forced to do what is good for them - e.g. the sugar tax and other "nudge politics", or the currently Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which is basically about imposing central policy on how children are brought up and educated.
Is it though? Are other forms of government more successful while remaining respectful of privacy? Or is it more of a reaction to social or societal changes? Why would these social or societal changes be different than previous changes?
As of 2022, the WHO reported on SSB (sugar-sweetened beverages):
> Currently, at least 85 countries implement some type of SBB taxation.
It feels to me like this was a rare step in the opposite direction - recognising that industry is the driving cynical force and pushing back on its over reach where it has failed. Most manufacturers reformulated their drinks immediately to avoid the tax, with what net loss? (The class-targeting comments were a straw man)
https://www.who.int/news/item/13-12-2022-who-calls-on-countr...
>I, for one, am glad that porn is being age-restricted online. It gives young people false ideas. You'll never get a plumber to come around to your house that quickly in real life.
However the way this works out in practice is a reduction in consumer choice, one that I'm reminded of every time I walk into a shop.
> Most manufacturers reformulated their drinks immediately
This is the problem, really. Rather than adding new "low sugar" product lines, in most instances they're modifying existing ones to replace the sugar with artificial sweeteners. The "original recipe" is often no longer available to consumers at any price.
As someone who struggles to consume enough calories to stay healthy, this sucks! (Mostly unrelated to pricing, just as a matter of practicality)
Cigarette smokers for example can still walk into just about any shop and purchase their favourite cigarettes, they just have to pay more for them - this seems fine.
Overall I'm quite on the fence about the whole thing, but on a purely emotional level it feels like an instance of government overreach.
A non insulting way to view that is that central goverments understand incentives, and in the same way there are child incentives for people starting families, having incentives for healthier eating is something a central goverment should use its taxation policy for.
More control over education standards is also a common purview of many good educational systems. Decentralisation is not necesirely better, with teh extreme being homeschooling failing every time its attempted. Centrally dictated standards was the method of the French revolution, believing that a society where everyone roughly understands the world the same way was a society that was more unified. French "equality , fraternity and legality " is a basis for modern liberal democracy almost everywhere, but they didnt get there without authoritarian imposition of their standards, with entire minority cultures getting trampled along the way.
The hyperbole and bad faith explanations of legislation is not a good representation or argument against why britain is more accepting of som legislation many feel intrusive.
A better argument is that this piece of legislation was passed late on the rule of a disastrous administration and the number of problems in day to day society largely are unaffected by it, so it got no time in the spotlight for people to complaint or know it was coming until it was days away from being implemented. Society is also largely technologically illiterate, this is pretty much the case everywhere in the planet, which means the nuances of tech legislation are lost even on the people writting and voting on it.
It is a prime example of class targetting because manufacturers of more expensive drinks still put sugar in them, its the cheap drinks that have switched to sugar substitutes.
However, sugar sweatened energy drinks are much more available.
So I share your frustration in the opposite direction.
The said. Taxation is not for the individual but the society.
Whilr I am sorry to hear that you have issue getting enough calories, that is simply a non concern for the society.
So this seems to be a good use of tax for incentivizing.
Didn't there used to be a explainingthejoke user on here? Whatever happened to them?
Even without the price difference I have a hard time imagining how such an outcome would be necessary, maybe you can clarify?
I don't know where this is coming from; statistically speaking, homeschooled children do better on pretty much every educational outcome. Because the absolute number one factor determining student outcomes is the ratio of students to teachers; the fewer students per teacher, the better.
The most telling stats is that the percentage of homeschooling parents increases, specially in religious communities but the test takers in homeschooled scenarios almost always come from higher educated urban families.
There is a large case of selectin bias, in a public school every kid takes an SAT test. For homeschooled kids, the kid of two doctors who was homeschooled and aces tests for breakfast he takes teh SAT and smokes any underfunded public school near him (although he probably scores average or below prep schools that cost arguably less than his homeschooling, with additional socialisation benefits etc). Meanwhile the hyper religious family wanting their daughter to marry at 16 is not letting that barely literate girl take her SATs.
The two groups in favour of home schooling are hyper capitalistists who think the disruption of public schooling + their advantage will make their kid unstopable, and the niche fringe believes, usually religious who are scared of interacting with mainstream institutions for fear of disrupting their reality. Both are problematic, anti social and harmful groups and their over representation in goverment and media is largely a sympton of the inability of liberal institutions to fight against illiberal threats.
There are many academic studies, across many countries, that confirm the better results. Your evidence is?
> Meanwhile the hyper religious family wanting their daughter to marry at 16 is not letting that barely literate girl take her SATs.
Not really a thing in the UK, or most places. It might have some truth in the US but sounds like a biased view
On the contrary I credit home education with getting my older daughter into a male dominated career (she designed power electronics for EVs).
> The two groups in favour of home schooling are hyper capitalistists who think the disruption of public schooling
Not really a thing in the UK either. Home educators tend to be social liberals and politically left wing
In fact of the many home educators I have come across very few fit your description.
> with additional socialisation benefits
Because meeting the same people of the same age from the same area in the same place every day for many years is a great way to develop social skills and make a variety of friends.
> although he probably scores average or below prep schools
I went to one of the best schools in Britain academically and my kids got a better academic education (as well as in other ways) than I did.
Home educated kids often teach themselves so the student teacher ratio is infinity so terrible!
Both my kids taught themselves some subjects (had tutors for other, had me for some, so lots of one to one too). They did just as well in the subjects they taught themselves (8 and 9 in GCSE Latin, which as they did not have a tutor and I am terrible at languages is very much self taught).
All those studies are either paid for by home schooling groups, or report the same fundamental issue in terms of data collection I have mentioned. Also the ones that break down results by socio economic background all highlight that anywhere from lower middle class to lower class homeschooling results always fall under public education.
> Not really a thing in the UK, or most places. It might have some truth in the US but sounds like a biased view
The UK has had a recent surge in homeschooling, in part because of Covid, also in part because of systemic underfunding of schools. But the religious exception was the most credited answer (some marked it under the philosophical reason) for homeschooling up to 2018. It is also underreported for women in some minority communities like travellers, orthodox jews, and some more extreme versions of islam. those girls are "homeschooled", wanna guess how they would do in their GCSE's?
> On the contrary I credit home education with getting my older daughter into a male dominated career (she designed power electronics for EVs).
This kinda highlights my original assumption of people defending it being because they personally believe in it, but credit to your daughter aside, she probably would go and kick ass regardless of the educational establishment or framework. And while you can't run a double blind study, I am not sure why you would think her being in a regular school she would be denied the chance to go into such a prestigious career?
> Not really a thing in the UK either. Home educators tend to be social liberals and politically left wing
> In fact of the many home educators I have come across very few fit your description.
it is important to point out that the biggest movement for homeschooling is evangelical americans, the same group that managed to get the department of education destroyed under Trump. Their propaganda, think tanks and TV news anchors distribute, enable and control the conversation borderline globally. The UK in comparison has a relatively small home schooling population (despite its recent uptick).
Also home schooling groups tend to be self contained, if you are socially liberal and go find other home schooling parents, you will find your neighbours and people who visit the same in person or online resurces (libraries, websites, forums etc). If you were a hyper religious person who did not believe your daughter should learn to read, you would report that most of the homeschooling parents you have met believe the exact same things you do. It is, by design, not an ideology that promotes everyone being under the same umbrella.
> Because meeting the same people of the same age from the same area in the same place every day for many years is a great way to develop social skills and make a variety of friends.
Almost every study tends to think so, yes. Support networks are important for humans, having people who face the same challenges (puberty, a math test on friday) and that are reliably reachable (same schedule, same place) means kids can learn things like trust, collaboration, loyalty etc organically.
This skills are not impossible to develop elsewhere, in the same way you can learn math elsewhere. But those benefits are not non existant.
> I went to one of the best schools in Britain academically and my kids got a better academic education
Yes, and your grandkids, if you ever have them, will get a better education that your kids regardless of where they study. Because education improves, resources improve, attention to kids increased over the last generation. You and I probably run around all afternoon with our parents not caring were we were, our teachers had not refreshed their knowledge since they got their degrees. Nowadays with things like the internet, Pluto stops being a planet mid school year and the kids get that info asap. Instead of a priest slapping kids like when I was a kid, there is a comprehensive "Religions of the world" curriculum were kids suddenly know tons of greek mythology, buddhisim, islam and plenty of christianity from early sects, to modern catholic, protestant and orthodox divisions. None of that was taught when I was a kid, so of course kids are better off now, as they should be. But that would happen regardless of where your kids learn I think.
The drawbacks of homeschooling for the whole of society I think are too large for any individual benefit. The lowest dregs denying their kids food or basic knowledge, conspiracy theorists denying reality to their children, abusive parents being unchecked, religious fundamentalists not allowing their kids to interact with whats beyond their control... disrupting all that and having kids be together, the same, and learning about different people and following the same curriculum I think is valuable.
I have a very similar career to your daughter, and my first interactin with kids being homeschooled was in an international math olympiad. Some of the kids I met had real hung ups about socialising, and I promise you they would have been just as good as calculus if they had gone to any normal school and just did a lil extra in the afternoon like I did. Growing up and doing some research on think tanks and who was funding what, the people promoting homeschooling had some pretty awful ideas about society and where everyone should fit in it. So while I would never judge any individual parent, there are plenty of good reasons to do it, I am keenly aware that most of the material coming out in support is not always coming from good faith sources.
Germany's gotten more freedom online since the EU DSA forced them to abandon their idiotic strict liability law for online activities [2]. You can't criticize Israel, but you never could - that's not a new thing.
[1] basically "Can we have mass surveillance now, pretty please?" "No and fuck off" "Please please please please please?" "No" "How about now?"
[2] they would trace the activity as far as they could, and whoever they couldn't trace further beyond was automatically fully liable for that activity. Public wifi was effectively illegal, because you'd suffer the full consequences for anything anyone did with the connection, until a few years ago when they carved out an exception, but it still remained generally illegal to share a connection in other circumstances until the DSA.