I have compared them - there is a range of books published which contain O level exam questions from the 1960s and 70s, I stood and read the Maths one in a Waterstones a couple of years ago (wasn't going to bloody buy one) and couldn't answer one single question, and yet there was a time when I did and I got a reasonable grade (second time of taking), the fact that I then found my own childrens GCSE Maths papers hard to follow without the course work to back up the questions just shows that you have to take exams in context and not just have a sweeping view that its all dumbed down now.

Should be easy enough to teach some skills in replying in a business like way to an email or drafting a formal letter but businesses should also play their part and not moan about deficient skills if they haven't bothered with any input - how many 15 year olds get a valuable experience from their two week work experience schemes, not many I'd guess.

You were given answers.

If you claim you were not, then that's errant nonsense and patently stupid.

Indeed, I'd provided exactly the same answer to the 'question' on the RMT and pensions at least twice. That you don't like, agree with or understand it doesn't make it less an answer.

Especially those businesses who see virtue in avoiding paying UK tax and thereby making absolutely no contribution to the education budget

Well as we head toward the end of 2013 that gets my vote for most naive comment of the year.

Please explain why a company that is currently paying 0% tax in the UK by domiciling in some other country (or by adopting other legal avoidance measures) is suddenly going to domicile here and start paying 21% tax because the government reduced it from 23%?

They could reduce it to 10% and it will still make no difference as no company will start paying tax at 10% when they can avoid it completely.

Where in earth did you get this totally idiotic idea that they would?

You are now changing the subject.

You said "Indeed, I would argue that an austere environment is preferable when it comes to education. Comfort breeds complacency (which in a wider sense has become a national problem)."

I responded to that basically lazy "the good old days" type of argument giving you an example of how a modern and certainly not austere educational environment offers a clear improvement on "the good old days".

Are you going to admit the example I gave you is an improvement or are you going to argue the system I showed you should be scrapped because you think there is a poor standard of literacy and numeracy in school age children?

Didn't Ireland, which Osborne cited as a wonderful example of an economy to follow, go down the route of very low corporate tax?

What happened there, I wonder?

Lower corporation tax is a keystone of coalition fiscal policy, with large company rates being reduced to 20%.

You made a bit of a song and dance earlier in the thread about us all being worse off than 30 years ago. That would have been 4 years into Mrs Thatcher's premiership. So, it seems you must be an admirer of her governmemt's economic policy measures? Maybe if you give Osborne the time to get over the inherited mess then we'll all be better off again in a few years time?

Are you on drugs?

No. (Notice the full and concise answer).

Questiion - are "we" better or worse off than 30 years ago?

Your post appears to be based on a quite ridiculous assumption that no company in the world ever pays any corporation tax.