Orchid Mama

🪛Working on something... A reverse salary calculator that answers: "What do I actually need to earn in the UK and what roles should I aim for?". What if you started with your lifestyle and worked backwards? Still building but here's a 👀

I’m reviewing job applications and 90% of the cover letters are AI generated. They use identical phrases and have exactly the same structure and word count. Why do people do it?

Standing in the queue outside a South London grammar school, waiting for my children to finish their 11-plus exam, I noticed something that would surprise anyone who thinks selective education is a middle-class white preserve. I was in the minority. The families around me were overwhelmingly East Asian, South Asian, African. This pattern repeated at nearly every grammar school entrance in London where I found myself over the years of preparing my children for these exams. The queues are enormous. And they tell a story that contradicts the received wisdom that stopped Britain building new grammar schools decades ago. The argument went like this: grammar schools were becoming a way for well-to-do white families to secure elite education for free, since only they could afford the tutoring that gives children an edge. But look at who is actually competing for these places. Most applicant families earn less than their white equivalents. What they possess instead is something harder to measure and impossible to purchase - a cultural orientation toward education as the primary vehicle for a child's future. I watched an East Asian mother in that café, her older child inside taking the exam, her four-year-old beside her watching what I assumed was Peppa Pig. It was maths exercises in Mandarin. Some families begin preparation at age six. This is real, and it is widespread. The willingness to sacrifice runs deep. Immigrant families take fewer holidays, and cheaper ones when they do. Parents deny themselves things that British culture has come to treat as baseline entitlements - the weekend away, the new car, the kitchen renovation - to pay for tutoring. They have children earlier, in less comfortable circumstances, in rental properties in rougher areas, because children are understood as the point of everything else rather than something to be fitted around an established lifestyle. I saw this firsthand working alongside Asian colleagues at major firms in London. Even among those who had reached professional success, the cultural inheritance was identical: children are the future, marriage is an accomplishment, sacrifice for the next generation is simply what adults do. This is uncomfortable for white British parents to hear, myself included. But honesty requires acknowledging that when it comes to parental investment in children's prospects, immigrant communities are often willing to go further. Yet the real scandal is not cultural. It is political. The competition for grammar school places has become so brutal not because demand is unusual but because supply was deliberately strangled. We stopped building grammar schools entirely, driven by ideological commitments that sound generous in seminar rooms but have produced catastrophic results in practice. The theory was that comprehensive education would lift all boats. The reality is that state schools have not improved enough to compensate for eliminating the selective alternative, and now children who would thrive in an academically focused environment are forced through years of intensive preparation simply because there are not enough places to go around. Grammar schools work. When you gather children from families that value education - children who are curious, driven, competitive - and free them from the drag of disruption and the influence of peers whose families couldn't care less, something powerful happens. Teachers can teach. Students can learn. The result is not privilege being hoarded but potential being released. The artificial scarcity we have created serves no one. It forces six-year-olds into tutoring regimes. It turns the 11-plus into a high-stakes lottery that rewards test preparation over genuine ability. It tells capable children from families without the resources or knowledge to navigate the system that this path is not for them. ⏩⏩⏩

The British public has footed the bill for an immigration system that feels out of control and unfair. We’re stopping this. It is only fair that migrants with an income or sizeable assets will have to contribute to the cost of their stay, not the taxpayer.

Joint Statement: Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year. After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google's Al technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users. Apple Intelligence will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple's industry-leading privacy standards.

Christmas is in 10 days and work has not slowed down???

16 years ago today, the first Black Disney princess debuted.