flamingos

THE UK Government's Education Secretary has suggested cutting school spending by £500 million and ending universal free meals for infants in England ahead of the Spring Statement.

Bridget Phillipson has also offered to axe funding for free period products in schools as well as dance, music and PE schemes as part of potential savings.

The controversial proposals are part of a package of measures being put forward by Phillipson as the Treasury prepares for Wednesday's spending review, with reports Chancellor Rachel Reeves is set to announce £1.5 billion in cuts to the civil service budget.
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Government sources said Phillipson had suggested making it means-tested instead, as free school meals for older children already are.

Education is devolved in Scotland – all pupils in primary one to five receive free school meals, as well as those in P6 and P7 who receive the Scottish Child Payment.

Other suggestions from Phillipson included ending the provision of free period products to girls and women in schools, stopping the junior ISA for children in care and ending the subsidy that provides some parents with wrap-around childcare.

Bridget Phillipson Insiders told The Times that some of the measures had been presented as potential cuts because they would be too politically difficult to get rid of.

Gal Maid & Villainess: Only Milady's Happy End Will Win!

Rachel Reeves told the BBC [that] savings would be made from back office and administrative roles rather than front-line services.

But unions warned the impact of cuts would still be felt by the public.

It comes ahead of the chancellor's Spring Statement on Wednesday, when she is expected to announce spending cuts for some government departments.

The move is part of an ongoing spending review looking into all areas of government activity.

In the coming week, Whitehall departments will receive a letter from Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden with instructions to make savings amounting to more than £2bn a year by the end of the decade.

Sectors such as human resources, policy advice, communications and office management are expected to be in the firing line.

Reeves told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme the government wanted to use savings to invest in its priorities, such as the NHS.

She said the size of the Civil Service had increased "massively" during Covid and had not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Archive

Transgender children will be banned from getting a new NHS record following an intervention by Wes Streeting.

The health service has been ordered to stop issuing new NHS numbers to under-18s who want to change their gender, following a damning independent review.

Until now, adults or children of any age have been allowed to request a gender change on their medical record at any time.
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Mr Streeting, the Health Secretary, declared that “children’s safety must come first” as he confirmed the changes on Thursday.

He said: “It’s completely wrong that children’s NHS numbers can be changed if they change gender, and I’ve made it clear this must not happen.

“We must deliver safe and holistic care for both adults and children when it comes to gender, and that also means accurately recording biological sex – not just for research and insight, but also for patient safety.

“I have always made it clear that doing so does not stop us from recording, recognising and respecting people’s gender identity where these differ.

“As we reform gender identity services across the board, we’ll take forward the serious research this review highlights.”

Notable dunce Sam Altman has graced us with his new GPT model: a version that, in his telling, can write pretty good short stories. Now, while we might have reasonable grounds to doubt that, considering some of his prior claims, we're lucky enough to find ourselves with actual evidence in this case, in the form of the story.

Reader, it is not good. In fact, I'd argue seriously that My Immortal, the notoriously awful Harry Potter fanfiction, is a better piece of writing than the story Altman's AI tooling produced, and I can back this up.

Skeet

A Reform UK general election candidate who said Hitler was “brilliant” at inspiring people and described Bashar al-Assad as “gentle by nature” is now in charge of the party’s vetting process.

Jack Aaron’s comments about the Nazi leader and Syrian dictator came to light last year when he stood for Reform in the Welwyn Hatfield constituency. He also claimed Vladimir Putin’s use of force in Ukraine was “legitimate”.

Aaron made the comments as part of a pseudoscientific theory of personality types. He is the president of the self-styled World Socionics Society – a group promoting the idea that there are 16 personality types.

However, while he was one of many Reform candidates whose comments caused controversy and led to many being sacked, he is now head of vetting at Reform UK.

The role includes scouring prospective candidates’ social media outputs and advising them on what should be deleted.