Mmm… probably better get in there quick before the prices start to rise.

I was nearly baked to a crisp the last couple of times I went to Glastonbury festival 🌞

Awesome 😎

I'm saying that you don't need legal backing to classroom/school rules. Schools already manage this, there are already guidelines.

My concern is that schools will feel obliged to be excessively heavy-handed and inflexible on something that inevitably has grey areas.

This is so cool… ok, there are a few screws in there, but look at all that renewable material 😊

Softwood and straw panels blend an ancient choice of building materials with computer-aided design and MMC… all to create (with a few other materials, to be fair!) a passivhaus standard of home. Amazing.

To the credit of a Labour, they've seemingly resisted this heavy-handed approach, but it's been forced through due to pressure from Tory and Lib Dem peers.

You never know when the Tories are going to be authoritarian and short-sighted, but it's always a little disappointing when the Lib Dems are.

Wow. You really can't imagine a kid doing that and it being something that any reasonable person would forgive?

@eddavey.libdems.org.uk Hi Ed,

I think just for clarity for teachers, we should make it illegal to run in corridors or to play on the field when it's raining.

Also, students should only be allowed to write in blue or black ink and the bell should legally be for the teacher not the class.

Thanks 👍🏻

Because sometimes there's a good reason to break the rules. It's better for the rules to have a bit of give so there's a little space around the edges for real life. We shouldn't legally bind the hands of people dealing with human situations.

Why does the rule need to be stronger? Shouldn't there be some flexibility to account for fringe cases?

If a kid nervously sneaks a glance at a phone due to some situation at home, a teacher should be allowed to turn a blind eye.

There's a big difference between "schools should be allowed to manage restrictions appropriately" and "kids staring at screens all day."

I would suggest that the IQ thing is likely nonsense, or at least not a useful metric.

A lot of parents will love it - the idea of prising the nasty, evil phones that they gave to their children out of their hands is quite popular - but taking this from guidance to law will twist the arm of schools, who may feel obliged to be inappropriately unforgiving in fringe cases.

"Smartphones and social media have ruined my life - I'm not going to let them ruin my childrens'!" I hammer wildly into my Smartphone Free Facebook group, unironically, to the virtual applause of the other technology-despisers who are there as always.

Things are pretty bad if the Controls on Immigration mugs guy is your front runner.

And is Ed still in with the Blue Labour crowd..?

Maybe more than one thing is happening at the same time..?

It would be reasonable to ban intentionally addictive algorithms. It wouldn't be easy, and some sort of fair and practical process would have to be concocted, but it would make more sense than banning entire digital concepts.

Wow, this is really weird

This is an unnecessary overreach - there's already a defacto ban on mobile phones in schools.

The Lib Dems didn't need to be messing around with much more important legislation in a way that will limit schools' options.

This seems to be the illiberal work of the Liberal Democrats.

Schools already have a defacto ban on mobile phones - there's no reason to make it a legal requirement.

This could make it difficult to allow for phone use in fringe situations such as school trips and activity weeks.

I think… they're serious??

They clearly won a lot of the back of GTTO - but i think they'll really only have Reform to beat in most places, as the tactical centre+left will vote for them and the Greens likely won't a big effort to beat them. That should give them more of an anti right focus.

I think Labour are strongly relying upon tactical voting, but there could be a lot of places where it's more "anyone but Reform or Labour." I don't know how that'll work out.

They've surely become the absolute locked-in default choice for anyone who's been persuaded that foreigners are coming over here in huge numbers and taking our jobs/living off benefits/committing crimes. 🙁

I'd like to believe this prediction, but I was wondering through Gloucester at the weekend and Reform had a stand out on the street - and I couldn't help thinking how their vast warchest presumably enables them to do this pretty much everywhere.

Unhappy to report the phishing one is quickly becoming a real problem now. Why go to the trouble of social engineering when people will just give up their ID, financial info, biometrics, etc. to an AV portal? There's no standards so how can you differentiate a fake one from a real one?

The companies that make the most of AI will be making a conscious effort to continue hiring at the junior level, otherwise the supply of seniors will dry up.

They're not just laying the groundwork for Reform, we're at the red carpet stage by this point.

They've got somebody sorting through the M&Ms for the rider and they're still telling us they're the only alternative.

Starmer doesn't surprise me here.

His top table don't surprise me.

I'll admit it, though: in spite of everything, I thought there were more decent people in the Labour party than there clearly are.

What an enormous betrayal.

I wonder how much work you could get someone to do to pass one of those bot test popups?

They already have people training machine learning models - but could you get someone to, say, deliver a parcel?

Right, I'm moving to San Francisco.

I mean he could try to regain Momentum, but that would be a big change of direction.

I want the biggest ever sign that just says "Change", and I won't settle for anything less.