Sometimes, for about a nano-second, a tiny bit of me feels sorry for the Literal Dimwits. I mean, they sort of go back to Gladstone, they are sort of a part of history. That's also their problem, though, now. Since Clegg bet the house on vingt et un bleu, and it came up, they don't stand for anything any more.
And at the next election, unless they are VERY stupid (always a possibility) Labour are going to be shouting from the rooftops, VOTE CLEGG, GET CAMERON! and even those not taken in my that must, perforce, wonder what exactly they would get if they ever voted Lib Dem again. I'll give you a clue, it's wearing a poke, it's covered in mud, and it likes haycorns. Voting Liberal Democrat is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Either Clegg hasn't realised that he's been so comprehensively shafted by Cameron (who is still wandering around with the slightly glazed air of someone who can't quite believe it ISN'T all a dream and he ISN'T going to wake up any moment in the shower with Sue-Ellen) or he has realised and, slut that he is, with his political knickers metaphorically round his ankles, he just doesn't care. Because 20 seconds of power is so worth sacrificing 150 years of principles for.
He's seriously underestimated this Forgemasters thing though. Not only is it a PR disaster akin to crapping on your own doorstep then treading in it, in Sheffield, but people in the Lib Dims at large are starting to ask, "hang on, if our glorious leader couldn't stop the Evil Tories cancelling a LOAN (not even a subsidy or a grant, a LOAN) to innovate manufacturing technology in a city for which he is one of the MPs, what exactly, apart from being the convenient whipping boys and patsies for announcing the Tory cuts, are we GETTING from this coalition?"
The rot, as far as the Tories/Mini-Tories are concerned, starts there. That is the only good news, as I confidently expect that by this time next year, dynamiting hospitals will be on the agenda and we will all be queueing in the street to catch loaves of bread thrown off army lorries. We just have to hope the rubber wheels fall off quickly, before they can do too much damage to the recovery, to British industry, and to jobs.
Seventy years ago, if you had a policy of blowing up Britain's infrastructure and deliberately wrecking its economy, you would have been tried as a traitor, stood up against a wall, and shot. How (sadly) times have changed.
The run-up to this budget has deployed the classic black propaganda technique of making people think it was going to be worse than it actually is. Although it is worse than it seems, when you look at it in more detail, the real damage to the economy will come as some of its key measures start to kick in, in the autumn, and in the new year, assuming the coalition lasts that long.
Before the election, the Liberal Dimwits opposed any increase in VAT, calling it a Tory tax bombshell. Osborne “failed to rule out” a rise in VAT, which told us all we needed to know really. And now the Liberals have helped the Tories achieve it, because of course there are some things which are so much more important than having principles.
So, in the autumn spending review, and in the departmental budget cuts of 25%, there is going to be a steep rise in the unemployment figures. The more so, when you factor in the effect of local government redundancies as well, as councils, unable to raise council tax, shed jobs instead, to cut costs. All of these people thrown out of work in the public sector will end up on the dole, drawing benefits, instead of earning money, paying taxes and putting spending power into the economy to drive the private sector revival. That revival is now in peril, as a result.
This budget is a victory for the small-minded, short-termist bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” in the public sector; arrogant, ignorant people who talk as if mixing cement was in some way more worthwhile than balancing the overtime budget of a busy social work department, or emptying bins, or educating children. People who think the amount of income tax you pay should dictate your say in society. These people still just don’t get it, they think that it’s possible to separate the public and the private sectors, that somehow they aren’t both part of the same economy. That you can somehow decimate one, without damaging the other.
But let’s just assume for a moment that this wacky idea has validity. Are ALL of these suddenly unemployed public sector workers going to get jobs in the private sector then? Where are these jobs? Where ARE they? And by putting VAT up to 20% in the new year, adding to inflation, transport costs, and depressing retail sales, how is any of THAT going to create or sustain a private sector revival?
Housing benefit is to be capped, so anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work will now be squeezed in that area as well. The medical test qualifications for disability benefit are going to be extended and accelerated, again as a sop to those in the Tory camp who believe the concepts of “the sturdy beggar” and “the undeserving poor”, the sort of people David Cameron now refers to as benefit scroungers (now that he is showing his true colours). As if rotting on benefits, because of a complete lack of hope, prospects and opportunity, to the point where it becomes inured in your culture, is some kind of career decision! I also find myself wondering, has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis on whether the COST of all this additional medical testing will outweigh any savings to be made? Because this government has a habit of talking tough, but being equally profligate and stupid in its own way as Labour was. After announcing the bonfire of the Quangos, we’ve now got a new Quango for budgetary responsibility, and a couple of Quangos to monitor international aid, and now presumably there’s going to have to be a body of some description to organise this medical testing, unless it’s going to be outsourced, and who knows what expense? And of course we can always find taxpayer money to give to whirly-eyed fundamentalists or yummy mummies who want to set up their own school because they think they can do it better than the teachers.
The DWP’s figure for fraudulent DLA claims is about 0.05%, whereas the government are expecting something like a 20% reduction in claims as a result. That disparity can only mean that a lot of people currently eligible for, and deserving of, DLA, will no longer get it. And the net result might be to make it impossible for them to continue to work, and to pay taxes.
And of course, the Tories and their stooges think that all these people can be got off benefits and into jobs in the private sector. Again, where ARE these jobs going to be created? Where are these jobs? Quite how “bipping” people off benefits and not giving them any alternative employment counts as “protecting the vulnerable” is lost on me.
The Tories seem to think that cutting corporation tax will make rapacious international capitalists and entrepreneurs re-invest the savings, in employing more people in the UK, especially with the prospect of not having to pay NI. They won’t, they will just pocket it with a self-satisfied “kerching”, into a nice little offshore account in Belize. Just like, when the housing boom was in full swing, all those Tory politicians protested so loudly at the time that the housing bubble was unsustainable and all their chums in the city were getting usustainably rich and filling their unsustainable boots.
Fact is, if there was political will, there is the resource and the necessary plan to provide affordable housing for all in this country and to wipe out homelessness and reduce the pressure on the existing social housing stock.
Trouble is, we are NOW stuck with an unelected government which thinks it has a mandate to dynamite disused public buildings instead of converting them into social housing, because George Osborne got the idea from some redneck seal-clubber over a beer and a whaleburger in Tokyo.
It is, of course, the same old same old from the Tories, and no doubt those who have had their compassion bypassed at birth will be chortling about it and engaging in the usual triumphalism. I am surprised, though, that the Liberals haven’t had sleepless nights and considered suicide. Usually people who rat and re-rat that much suffer dreadfully from remorse and guilt. At least if they retain a spark of humanity. They have immense mental problems and guilt, because the gulf between their own innate compassion and the contradiction of their actions drives them over the edge. I can only observe that in the case of Clegg, Alexander and Cable, it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more deserving, bunch of people. The disused lift shaft awaits.
The standard Tory line is that there was no alternative, and that the finances inherited from Labour were a shambles. Labour had many faults, but nevertheless, there was another way. There still is another way. One which continues to attempt to grow the economy, while protecting the services which we all use and the benefits on which so many depend. And if the markets and the ratings agencies don’t like it, well, they can bloody well invade. They weren’t that good at picking winners when the bankers (who have got off far too lightly in this budget, but again that is only what you would expect from the Tories) were buying imaginary derivatives with non-existent money.
But the only way we will get this quickly, is if the coalition implodes. The only glimmer of light at the moment is that there are some Liberal Dimwits who are waking up to exactly how far Clegg has sold them down the river. Let’s hope they start rowing back upstream, and soon. Let’s hope they rediscover that they used to have a conscience, and that when they said they went into politics to make a difference, it wasn’t by dynamiting hospitals.
Back in the days of Thatcher, I used to have a foam rubber stress "brick" that I could throw at the television (in place of a real one, which would have been rather expensive in televisions)
Watching Osborne on telly just now, I think I may need to go and find it up in the attic.
"You shouldn't have to go off to work in the morning and see your neighbour's blinds drawn down as they spend their life on unemployment benefit"
Apart from the fact that you probably wouldn't have to do it for long, because this budget will soon result in BOTH houses with the blinds drawn down and the occupants on the dole, let's just unpick the thinking behind that statement.
How nasty, small-minded and divisive. Words calculated to appeal like a dog-whistle to those who harbour inbuilt prejudice towards the unemployed. What a gross over-simplification of the many and complex reasons for lack of opportunity, poverty and deprivation.
How *deliberately* calculated to appeal to the "there's too many of them over here with their benefits and their plasma TVs" brigade. People who have never known, or have forgotten, what economic deprivation is and who caused it (in South Yorkshire, it was the Tories)
And without offering any solution, either. So they are going to stop the benefit of the guy with his blinds down all day. What's he going to do? Get a job in the blind factory? I don't think they are hiring, right now.
Anyone who has the sheer gall and effrontery to utter such an evil, twisted, divisive message and then in the next breath to claim that we are all in this together really DOES deserve to be struck by lightning, and soon.
To those who say if we don’t do this, we will be punished by the markets,
I am sorry to say I disagree. Disregarding the fact that I think these people have no moral authority to dictate how we run our country anyway, and very little skill and judgement in financial rating anyway, at least from the evidence of their past performance, would the down-grading of the UK's rating, assuming it happened, lead to an immediate closure of any "money tap" - I don't believe it would. I believe it would make it more difficult, but not impossible, to get out of this mess.
Again, I think this is a matter of perspective. It's not surprising that having weathered the international banking crisis of 2008 when the whole of the financial sector was teetering on the brink of sliding off Canary Wharf and into the river, the nation's finances are in poor shape. But we've always had a National Debt, since the days of Walpole. And look what a mess we were in after the second World War, when basically we were in hock to the US up to our eyeballs. The difference then is that we had politicians of skill courage and vision, who in the teeth of that, established the Welfare State.
I am also becoming very skeptical about this analogy with Greece. It's trotted out regularly to explain the Damascene conversion of Clegg and Cable to the Tory hard line - the story being that, somehow, over the weekend of the coalition cabal, they also carved out the time to receive a detailed briefing on Greek economic matters and realised how bad it was. If you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy? Greece doesn't have control over its own economy, because it made the misguided decision to join the Euro, and now it's in the same position we were in on Black Wednesday, of having to take medicine that is not appropriate for it, because when it comes to the Euro, one size fits all, for good or ill. We are not, thank God, stuck with the Euro and all its problems and we do have control over our own interest rates, should that be necessary.
I have said enough on here before now about how stupid Labour were, wasting money on things like illegal wars and ID cards, and I have seen at first hand on a smaller scale how profligate government was. I also contend that at the end of the day, this lot are probably wasting just as much money in their own way, they are just wasting it on different things (unecessary new Quangos, re branding the DCSF, etc)
I have no objection to the principle of adjustment in the abstract, but I do, strongly and bitterly, resent the idea that the poorest and weakest must adjust the most, that this needs to be done with unseemly haste just to placate "the markets" - which even if this were true, then begs the question "Who Governs Britain" and once again I question this assumption that the recovery will still happen despite mass unemployment approaching three million, job losses, bankruptcies, reposessions, people being forced off benefits on the premise of non existent private sector jobs, VAT increases and the risk of high inflation.
If there were five jobs for every applicant, instead of the other way round, then George Osborne might have a point. He would still be a smarmy little squit whose face I would never tire of punching, but he might have a point. But it IS five applicants to every job, and it's going to get worse.
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?????
I often hear the phrase, when benefits are being discussed
“Those who choose not to work”
It’s an interesting concept. We're back to sturdy beggars and the undeserving poor here again. I contend that, given the chance and the opportunity, anyone and everyone wants to work, but that generations of people have been beaten down by lack of motivation, lack of opportunity, and lack of any idea how to go about it. Usually in areas of former heavy industry, where there is very little "choice" involved because there ARE NO JOBS.
I take issue with the word "choosing". But I do agree that those unfortunate enough not to be able to find work should be financially supported by a state benefit system, yes: I believe it's what sets us apart as a civilised society. Or one of the things anyway. Housing Benefit has been fuelled by the housing boom which was created by unsustainable offers of credit from irresponsible banks to people who didn't know what they were getting into, encouraged by lax regulation all around and - let us not forget - not one Tory voice was ever raised to object to this because their pals in the City were all busy filling their boots, thank you very much.
I am a little bit unclear about what people are supposed to do though, if there's no point in them applying for jobs and they "choose" not to work, and they don't get any benefits, I guess it comes down to .... oooh, a couple of days on their grouse moor for those with private incomes, and the rest ... er ... begging, I guess.
People who advocate this sort of thing do, however, make a point about the Labour market which is generally overlooked, which is the need to re-think what we have got along the lines of socially useful companies run at a profit by and for the public good. It is called Social Enterprise. This is a viable "third way" that would solve many of the problems and get people away from this "public versus private sector" class war which Osborne seems hell-bent on encouraging. I doubt, however, that he has ever heard of it.
And finally, today, we have had the most breathtaking example of doublespeak of this whole government so far, when they talk of "Revitalising Retirement"* by making old people work even longer! I feel really revitalised!
*In the same way as you could revitalise child care by sending them up chimneys (Oh, hang on, that's in NEXT year's budget)
How long, I ask, can these charlatans, this unelected government with no mandate to wreck our economy, be allowed to continue causing this damage without being challenged?
The only sane response to this budget, I think, is that of Quellcrist Falconer in the Harlan’s World novels by Richard. K. Morgan. I couldn’t put it any better. George Orwell couldn’t put it any better.
J B Priestley and S P B Mais couldn’t put it any better. So here it is.
So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous makes the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal
Thursday 24 June 2010
Sunday 6 June 2010
Don't badger the badger
From an animal welfare perspective, one of the most depressing things about the Tory/Torylite Junta is its insistence on restoring fox hunting, and on carrying out a badger cull in England under the pretext of dealing with Bovine TB.
The arguments over fox hunting have been well-rehearsed, of course. Anyone who wants a summary of the case against, just send me a stamped addressed envelope. It is to be expected of the Tories, of course, as the party which is propped up by the landed gentry, that they would try and reverse the hunting ban. Not that the hunting ban was ever properly enforced in the first place, anyway. It’s amazing, isn’t it? We always seem to be able to magic lots of extra policemen out of thin air when there is a miners’ strike, or when a fascist dictator wants his goon squad to be able to run through central London alongside the olympic flag, but when it comes to the law of the land, we are seemingly more selective. Anyway, I digress. If fox hunting had been a working-class sport, it would have been abolished 150 years ago.
Bovine TB has, it is true, been a proverbial thorn in the side of British dairy farmers, who have, it is equally true, been quick to blame the badgers. And yes, badgers do have a reservoir of bovine TB in the wild. So far, so true. But badgers are not unique in this. Other wild animals, including deer, also incubate the m. bovis strain. This is my first problem with just culling the badger, as a strategy. It ignores the existence of other potential sources of the disease in the wild. Quite deliberately, else otherwise the proponents of culling would have to admit that the only effective cull strategy would be to cull everything. Turn the countryside into a nuclear wasteland, and concrete over the green fields of England, right up to the farm gate. Farmers don’t like admitting that this is the logical conclusion of that line of logic, because it clashes with their self-assumed mantle as guardians of the countryside. Yet it is true, nevertheless.
Even assuming culling badgers alone was the answer, that in itself is still fraught with illogicalities and inconsistencies. Badgers have no idea of human boundaries. So supposing you decide to set your cull area to a particular boundary – parish, area, council, it doesn’t matter – two things will happen: surviving badgers in the area will decide to move on to safer climes and wander off elsewhere, taking any infection which may be present with them, while new badgers from outside the area will move in, when they realise there is less competition for food in an area of fewer competitors.
So, in fact, far from making the bovine TB situation better, a cull may actually make it worse. Don’t take my word for it, though.
A report in Nature (Donnelly et al, Nature 439, 843, Feb 2006) based on a large scale and randomised field experiment recently provided strong and significant evidence that culling badgers actually exacerbated the problem by raising the incidence of TB in cattle living nearby.
The Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on Cattle TB concluded (16/6/2007) that culling the wild animals would not halt the spread of the disease by any meaningful extent and "may make matters worse." This report is the summation of 10 years of scientific research, costing 50 million pounds, which saw the killing of 11,000 badgers in the Randomised Badger Culling Trial.
Instead, the ISG advised that substantial reductions in TB can be achieved by improving cattle-based control methods, including electric fencing around farm buildings, better controls on cattle movement through zoning or herd attestation, strategic use of gamma-interferon blood tests in both routine and pre-movement testing, quarantine of purchased cattle, and shorter testing intervals, to name but a few.
The problem is that the NFU didn't like the conclusion, because country folk always know better than they there townie scientists. It came as no surprise that this independent scientists' report was immediately and forcefully attacked by the farmers and NFU which claimed, with no basis, that the ISG's suggestions would be worthless if the cycle of re-infection from badgers was not broken.
Given the Tories' penchant for jumping on bandwagons, and given their disregard for animal welfare generally (see also under Fox Hunting above) they obviously saw this issue as an easy way to hoover up votes in rural constituencies, which is how we come to be here today. It's nothing to do with a burning desire to eradicate bovine TB or make intensive farming more humane on the part of David Cameron.
What a shame badgers don’t get to vote
The arguments over fox hunting have been well-rehearsed, of course. Anyone who wants a summary of the case against, just send me a stamped addressed envelope. It is to be expected of the Tories, of course, as the party which is propped up by the landed gentry, that they would try and reverse the hunting ban. Not that the hunting ban was ever properly enforced in the first place, anyway. It’s amazing, isn’t it? We always seem to be able to magic lots of extra policemen out of thin air when there is a miners’ strike, or when a fascist dictator wants his goon squad to be able to run through central London alongside the olympic flag, but when it comes to the law of the land, we are seemingly more selective. Anyway, I digress. If fox hunting had been a working-class sport, it would have been abolished 150 years ago.
Bovine TB has, it is true, been a proverbial thorn in the side of British dairy farmers, who have, it is equally true, been quick to blame the badgers. And yes, badgers do have a reservoir of bovine TB in the wild. So far, so true. But badgers are not unique in this. Other wild animals, including deer, also incubate the m. bovis strain. This is my first problem with just culling the badger, as a strategy. It ignores the existence of other potential sources of the disease in the wild. Quite deliberately, else otherwise the proponents of culling would have to admit that the only effective cull strategy would be to cull everything. Turn the countryside into a nuclear wasteland, and concrete over the green fields of England, right up to the farm gate. Farmers don’t like admitting that this is the logical conclusion of that line of logic, because it clashes with their self-assumed mantle as guardians of the countryside. Yet it is true, nevertheless.
Even assuming culling badgers alone was the answer, that in itself is still fraught with illogicalities and inconsistencies. Badgers have no idea of human boundaries. So supposing you decide to set your cull area to a particular boundary – parish, area, council, it doesn’t matter – two things will happen: surviving badgers in the area will decide to move on to safer climes and wander off elsewhere, taking any infection which may be present with them, while new badgers from outside the area will move in, when they realise there is less competition for food in an area of fewer competitors.
So, in fact, far from making the bovine TB situation better, a cull may actually make it worse. Don’t take my word for it, though.
A report in Nature (Donnelly et al, Nature 439, 843, Feb 2006) based on a large scale and randomised field experiment recently provided strong and significant evidence that culling badgers actually exacerbated the problem by raising the incidence of TB in cattle living nearby.
The Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on Cattle TB concluded (16/6/2007) that culling the wild animals would not halt the spread of the disease by any meaningful extent and "may make matters worse." This report is the summation of 10 years of scientific research, costing 50 million pounds, which saw the killing of 11,000 badgers in the Randomised Badger Culling Trial.
Instead, the ISG advised that substantial reductions in TB can be achieved by improving cattle-based control methods, including electric fencing around farm buildings, better controls on cattle movement through zoning or herd attestation, strategic use of gamma-interferon blood tests in both routine and pre-movement testing, quarantine of purchased cattle, and shorter testing intervals, to name but a few.
The problem is that the NFU didn't like the conclusion, because country folk always know better than they there townie scientists. It came as no surprise that this independent scientists' report was immediately and forcefully attacked by the farmers and NFU which claimed, with no basis, that the ISG's suggestions would be worthless if the cycle of re-infection from badgers was not broken.
Given the Tories' penchant for jumping on bandwagons, and given their disregard for animal welfare generally (see also under Fox Hunting above) they obviously saw this issue as an easy way to hoover up votes in rural constituencies, which is how we come to be here today. It's nothing to do with a burning desire to eradicate bovine TB or make intensive farming more humane on the part of David Cameron.
What a shame badgers don’t get to vote
Saturday 5 June 2010
One Laws For Them
The State Opening of Parliament is one of those traditional events, full of pomp and ceremony, flummery, ancient language, Heralds in tabards walking backwards, and men in tights, that we British do oh, so well. The majesty of the Lords and Commons, all gathered together, under the Lion and the Unicorn. It is all too easy to poke fun at it, as many have done in the past, and will no doubt continue to do so.
But behind all the pomp and circumstance, behind the processing and Black Rod banging on doors, we shouldn’t forget that Parliament does stand for something. It stands for the Law of the Land, it stands, ultimately, for Freedom. It stands for the unwritten, fudged, but nevertheless durable covenant of compromise between the Sovereign and the State, the people, and those whom we elect to govern us. So much so, that these days, of course, Mr Speaker is only ceremonially dragged to his throne, a distant reminder of those far-off days when his reluctance to end up potentially in either the Tower of London, and/or with his head and his body in two different geographic locations, was all too genuine!
It stands, in short, for Liberty. And this year, this first Queen’s Speech of the new Parliament, was, for once, strong on libertarian ideals. Presumably this is as a result of the brave new world of Liberalism, a package of concessions wrung out of David Cameron by the Literal Dimwits in their gaderene rush for power, which he was quite happy to grant them as part of the greater process, which they don’t seem to have realised yet, towards becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Cameron-Ashcroft empire.
We were promised a veritable Great Reform Bill, no less. Sweeping away many of the anti-libertarian measures, post-9/11. ID cards would go (well, actually, to their miserable credit, even Labour had eventually got it through their ignorant skulls that ID cards were a bad idea, and had already decided to rein them in, but hey, who’s counting) less CCTV coverage, - again a good idea in principle. Though it is sometimes a provider of useful evidence after the fact, CCTV does not prevent crime, it just exports it to other, usually less fortunate, areas, where there is no CCTV.
Things such as control orders and the “thought crime” offences of “acts preparatory to terrorism” still remain, of course. But one of the measures proposed was a restoration of the right to protest, which can only be good news. All good stuff, and surely even a curmudgeonly old commie like me should welcome it?
Except that nobody seems to have told Boris Johnson about the last bit. With masterful comic timing, coinciding with the Queen’s Speech and the announcement of all these measures, Boris Johnson and Westminster Council sent in the plod to arrest Brian Haw for obstruction, and disband the democracy peace camp which has sprung up alongside his one man anti Iraq war protest in Parliament Square. Haw, who has maintained a lone, and famous, vigil in the square in protest about the Iraq war, was charged with obstruction. Quite what, or whom, he is supposed to have obstructed is unclear, especially as you have to take your life in your hands and cross four lanes of traffic to even get near him.
The latest I hear is that he may be charged with trespass. I thought that Parliament Square was a public place, so presumably if Mr Haw is guilty of trespassing on it, we all are. Similarly, they can’t – as I understand it – just do one person for trespass. Anyway, other, finer legal brains than mine will no doubt look into it.
Westminster Council are also complaining about Mr Haw’s rag tag followers, who had put up some tents, brought in a chemical toilet, protested against homelessness, amongst other things, and planted an oak sapling. (How very dare they, how dare they plant our national tree on an otherwise neglected and unused patch of grass in the middle of a roundabout a stone’s throw away from our national Parliament. The cads and bounders!)
This is the same Westminster Council, lest we forget, that demonstrated its own concern for the homeless one recent Christmas, by cancelling the Christmas soup run, so that rich bastards living in Westminster wouldn’t have to look at homeless people on Christmas day. So kind.
So there you have it. It remains to be seen how many of those lofty ideals actually make it into law. I get the impression that Cameron may already be regretting letting Nick Clegg stay up beyond his normal bedtime and have one too many hobnobs and a glass of tartrazine. We shall see. But hey, they are going to restore the right to protest, and if you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy?
At more or less the same time, Laws of a different sort have been dominating the news. David Laws, to be precise, who stands accused of taking 41 large ones out of the public purse and giving them to his partner in the form of rent, from 2001 to 2009. Leaving aside the obvious comment about “rent boys” - I do have some standards, you know – I have to say there is something distinctly homo-erotic about the cast of this coalition overall. Watching the Knave and Dick show, when they did their joint love-in in the rose garden at Number 10, I found myself thinking that all over the country, owners of Christian B & Bs would be pursing their lips, narrowing their eyes, and slowly shaking their heads as they watched it on TV.
Personally, I don’t care if David Laws’ partner is gay, straight, or a one legged Hottentot transsexual on a unicycle. What I do care about is “what part of don’t rip us off” are these muppets struggling with, precisely? In this case, as well, it’s not as if Mr Laws couldn’t have funded his own place in London from his not inconsiderable personal wealth. Maybe even build a hotel on Mayfair.
The schadenfreude, the glorious irony of it all, is not lost on me. Far from it. Resisting the temptation to punch the air and shout “Yes!” I refrained from such vulgar triumphalism and just contented myself with humming “Oh Happy Day” under my breath as I went about my daily round. The Tory lickspittle, the cats-paw, the patsy who they had got lined up to deliver the death of 1000 cuts, policies that mean already that people on marginal incomes are worrying about whether or not they can afford to keep a cat, for God’s sake, has, himself, allegedly, had a hand in the till. Even if it turns out that his “interpretation” of the rules about partners is right, did it never occur to him to check it out at any time? What a staggering combination of hubris and stupidity.
Further proof, if proof were needed, that this sort of thing, which all the main party leaders threatened to stamp out, is still rampant. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
As with the right to protest, so with the issue of expenses. One “Laws” for them, and one law for the rest of us.
But behind all the pomp and circumstance, behind the processing and Black Rod banging on doors, we shouldn’t forget that Parliament does stand for something. It stands for the Law of the Land, it stands, ultimately, for Freedom. It stands for the unwritten, fudged, but nevertheless durable covenant of compromise between the Sovereign and the State, the people, and those whom we elect to govern us. So much so, that these days, of course, Mr Speaker is only ceremonially dragged to his throne, a distant reminder of those far-off days when his reluctance to end up potentially in either the Tower of London, and/or with his head and his body in two different geographic locations, was all too genuine!
It stands, in short, for Liberty. And this year, this first Queen’s Speech of the new Parliament, was, for once, strong on libertarian ideals. Presumably this is as a result of the brave new world of Liberalism, a package of concessions wrung out of David Cameron by the Literal Dimwits in their gaderene rush for power, which he was quite happy to grant them as part of the greater process, which they don’t seem to have realised yet, towards becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Cameron-Ashcroft empire.
We were promised a veritable Great Reform Bill, no less. Sweeping away many of the anti-libertarian measures, post-9/11. ID cards would go (well, actually, to their miserable credit, even Labour had eventually got it through their ignorant skulls that ID cards were a bad idea, and had already decided to rein them in, but hey, who’s counting) less CCTV coverage, - again a good idea in principle. Though it is sometimes a provider of useful evidence after the fact, CCTV does not prevent crime, it just exports it to other, usually less fortunate, areas, where there is no CCTV.
Things such as control orders and the “thought crime” offences of “acts preparatory to terrorism” still remain, of course. But one of the measures proposed was a restoration of the right to protest, which can only be good news. All good stuff, and surely even a curmudgeonly old commie like me should welcome it?
Except that nobody seems to have told Boris Johnson about the last bit. With masterful comic timing, coinciding with the Queen’s Speech and the announcement of all these measures, Boris Johnson and Westminster Council sent in the plod to arrest Brian Haw for obstruction, and disband the democracy peace camp which has sprung up alongside his one man anti Iraq war protest in Parliament Square. Haw, who has maintained a lone, and famous, vigil in the square in protest about the Iraq war, was charged with obstruction. Quite what, or whom, he is supposed to have obstructed is unclear, especially as you have to take your life in your hands and cross four lanes of traffic to even get near him.
The latest I hear is that he may be charged with trespass. I thought that Parliament Square was a public place, so presumably if Mr Haw is guilty of trespassing on it, we all are. Similarly, they can’t – as I understand it – just do one person for trespass. Anyway, other, finer legal brains than mine will no doubt look into it.
Westminster Council are also complaining about Mr Haw’s rag tag followers, who had put up some tents, brought in a chemical toilet, protested against homelessness, amongst other things, and planted an oak sapling. (How very dare they, how dare they plant our national tree on an otherwise neglected and unused patch of grass in the middle of a roundabout a stone’s throw away from our national Parliament. The cads and bounders!)
This is the same Westminster Council, lest we forget, that demonstrated its own concern for the homeless one recent Christmas, by cancelling the Christmas soup run, so that rich bastards living in Westminster wouldn’t have to look at homeless people on Christmas day. So kind.
So there you have it. It remains to be seen how many of those lofty ideals actually make it into law. I get the impression that Cameron may already be regretting letting Nick Clegg stay up beyond his normal bedtime and have one too many hobnobs and a glass of tartrazine. We shall see. But hey, they are going to restore the right to protest, and if you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy?
At more or less the same time, Laws of a different sort have been dominating the news. David Laws, to be precise, who stands accused of taking 41 large ones out of the public purse and giving them to his partner in the form of rent, from 2001 to 2009. Leaving aside the obvious comment about “rent boys” - I do have some standards, you know – I have to say there is something distinctly homo-erotic about the cast of this coalition overall. Watching the Knave and Dick show, when they did their joint love-in in the rose garden at Number 10, I found myself thinking that all over the country, owners of Christian B & Bs would be pursing their lips, narrowing their eyes, and slowly shaking their heads as they watched it on TV.
Personally, I don’t care if David Laws’ partner is gay, straight, or a one legged Hottentot transsexual on a unicycle. What I do care about is “what part of don’t rip us off” are these muppets struggling with, precisely? In this case, as well, it’s not as if Mr Laws couldn’t have funded his own place in London from his not inconsiderable personal wealth. Maybe even build a hotel on Mayfair.
The schadenfreude, the glorious irony of it all, is not lost on me. Far from it. Resisting the temptation to punch the air and shout “Yes!” I refrained from such vulgar triumphalism and just contented myself with humming “Oh Happy Day” under my breath as I went about my daily round. The Tory lickspittle, the cats-paw, the patsy who they had got lined up to deliver the death of 1000 cuts, policies that mean already that people on marginal incomes are worrying about whether or not they can afford to keep a cat, for God’s sake, has, himself, allegedly, had a hand in the till. Even if it turns out that his “interpretation” of the rules about partners is right, did it never occur to him to check it out at any time? What a staggering combination of hubris and stupidity.
Further proof, if proof were needed, that this sort of thing, which all the main party leaders threatened to stamp out, is still rampant. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
As with the right to protest, so with the issue of expenses. One “Laws” for them, and one law for the rest of us.
Thursday 3 June 2010
There is Nothing Like A Dame (School)
Amongst the many preposterous things about this misbegotten coalition (if you can call the Literal Dimwits becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Tory Party a “coalition” in any meaningful sense of the word) surely the most preposterous is that Michael Gove is now the Secretary of State for Education. Almost his first act was to ordain a (presumably expensive and completely unnecessary) re-branding of the DCSF back to the Department for Education.
At a time when the rest of us are being asked to tighten our belts, and given that it would have been perfectly feasible to have had a different policy, but kept the name the same, this is a waste of public money. How much public money, remains to be seen. I have written to my MP to ask, and if I get a reply, I will post it on this blog.
His capacity to cause havoc to the educational system, however, extends far beyond his choice of logo, colour swatches, web site and stationery. Because the Queen’s speech has shown us that the Tories are determined to press ahead with their policy of “Free Schools” and also they have demonstrated their intention to increase the number of Academies.
The “Free School” idea is the misbegotten spawn of that most nebulous and amorphous of Tory policies, “The Big Society”. What it means is that the government, in effect, is abdicating responsibility for large swathes of what it used to do, ie “governing”. And abdicating funding, as well.
So, from now on, if your local park is full of dog poo, instead of the government funding your local authority to clean it up, you are expected to round up a like minded citizen possee of pooper scoopers, to clean up this durn town! If Granny Smith can’t get out to do her shopping, you’re supposed to alert the social services or the WVS. The Social Workers can’t do it, because, fed up with cuts; low pay and hiring freezes, they are all now stacking shelves at Tescos for more money and less chance of getting crucified by the Daily Mail and the Conrad Blackshirts if they make a mistake.
So much for the Big Society. In education terms, specifically, what it means is, if you don’t like the school your state provides for your kids, then go and start your own school, and stop bothering us, we’re too busy filling in our expenses to run the country as well, you know!
There are, of course, already lots of schools that already are schools that were started in this manner. They are private schools, misleadingly called “public” schools, although Joe Public has about as much chance of going to one as I do of flying to the moon. But these public schools are not publicly funded. They are education’s private sector. What Gove proposes, however, is not only to allow people to form their own schools, for whatever reason, but to be allowed to use public money doing it.
In practice, I can think of only three categories of people who are going to be even faintly interested in the idea. The vast proportion of parents, it has been demonstrated time and time again, just want a good local school to teach their kids. Some of them, of course, also extend their definition of “teaching” to include parenting, baby sitting, moral guidance and discipline as well, because they are too lazy or inept to do it themselves.
But the categories of people who are going to be most interested in this proposal are Religious Nutters, Big Business, and Yummy Mummies in West London, who don’t want Tarquin and Jocasta mixing with the common children at a comprehensive. The Religious Nutters element worries me the most, to be honest, since it will inevitably mean schools run as Madrassars, and schools run by whirly-eyed fundamentalists who think that Darwin faked the fossil record. Using public money, let us not forget.
There is already too much interference in schools from Religion. Faith schools get a massively disproportionate amount of resource pumped into them (see also under Academies) and, to be honest, prolong the existence of religious differences and divides. I would much rather see all faith schools, and all schools for that matter, forced to abandon their faith status and instead to teach comparative religion as a compulsory subject. That would do much to dispel fear, distrust, and xenophobia in society at large.
Big Business, of course, is only interested in producing cannon-fodder for the factories, the fast food outlets, and call centres. When questioned, in a radio interview on the Today programme about what he would do to ensure that the Free Schools idea was not hijacked by those with their own agenda, Gove replied that they would have to demonstrate they had a “robust business plan” and that anyone who had what he called a “dark agenda”, would be prevented from going ahead. Leaving aside the fact that this answer showed that he is more interested, seemingly, in their business plan than in their proposed curriculum, I am intrigued by the idea of a “dark agenda”.
Who decides what is a “dark agenda”? How dark is dark? Obviously, anyone wanting to set up a “Free School Taleban Training Camp and Islamic College” is going to be seen to have a “dark agenda”. But supposing I decided to set up a school to teach children a curriculum based on, oooh, let’s say Socialist principles, relative morality, ethics and animal welfare. Given its pro-hunting stance, I would imagine the government would regard that as a dark agenda. But if McDonalds, whose slash and burn antics have been widely discussed in ecological circles, wanted to set up the Ronald McDonald Free School and Burger Flipping Academy, would that be dark? Because it bloody well should be! And how would the darkness vary if they promised to employ all of the alumni of such an establishment?
None of this would matter, of course, or it wouldn’t matter so much, if it wasn’t public money. People have a right to their own opinions, however dopey or bizarre, and they are perfectly at liberty to start schools, using their OWN money, which would then stand or fall by their own merits, ability and reputation, depending how many gullible parents they can find to pay the fees. But this Quixotic enterprise, where every whirly-eyed demagogue can cause further fragmentation and unnecessary waste and duplication in public education, is going to be funded by us. At a time when, if money is that tight, economies of scale should be the way to go, surely.
Which brings me to Academies. There seems to be an ongoing recent idea in education, which survives with a dogged and insidious persistence, akin to that of Japanese knotweed, that elitism in education for its own sake is a good thing. Inequality of opportunity is something to be striven for, apparently. Every time this idea is shown up to be bogus rubbish, it springs up again in another form, like the many-headed Hydra.
Its latest manifestation is the philosophy behind Academies. I would still mind, though I wouldn’t mind so much, if they just admitted that the prime driver behind Academies is once more to shift some cost off the public sector and on to the private sector’s balance sheet. But it’s always dressed up in the claptrap of Academies good, failing Comps bad. The latest philosophy is that each Academy, as it speeds unerringly upwards in its ceaseless progress through the concentric spheres of academic excellence, should “take a failing school with it”. I suspect that this , in practice, will devolve down to letting the oiks use the Academy’s playing fields once a week.
To those who believe that Academies have some sort of intrinsic superiority over all other forms of school, I lay down this simple challenge. Take the average, bog standard, failing inner city comp, and lavish upon that school for three years all of the advantages and the resources of an Academy. Then, at the end of that process, we will be able to see, once and for all, whether it is the format, or the funding, that makes the difference.
In the nineteenth century, well-meaning old women started schools to keep the children of those who could afford it, occupied, while the parents earned a living, combining in effect babysitting with a rudimentary study of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Every time I think of Mr Gove, which is as infrequently as possible, and his proposals, I am inextricably drawn back to this: Mr Gove may not himself be a dame, but his educational policies are almost certainly a pantomime, and a pretty Widow Twanky one at that, as the late, great, Dr Spooner might have observed, had he been there to observe it.
At a time when the rest of us are being asked to tighten our belts, and given that it would have been perfectly feasible to have had a different policy, but kept the name the same, this is a waste of public money. How much public money, remains to be seen. I have written to my MP to ask, and if I get a reply, I will post it on this blog.
His capacity to cause havoc to the educational system, however, extends far beyond his choice of logo, colour swatches, web site and stationery. Because the Queen’s speech has shown us that the Tories are determined to press ahead with their policy of “Free Schools” and also they have demonstrated their intention to increase the number of Academies.
The “Free School” idea is the misbegotten spawn of that most nebulous and amorphous of Tory policies, “The Big Society”. What it means is that the government, in effect, is abdicating responsibility for large swathes of what it used to do, ie “governing”. And abdicating funding, as well.
So, from now on, if your local park is full of dog poo, instead of the government funding your local authority to clean it up, you are expected to round up a like minded citizen possee of pooper scoopers, to clean up this durn town! If Granny Smith can’t get out to do her shopping, you’re supposed to alert the social services or the WVS. The Social Workers can’t do it, because, fed up with cuts; low pay and hiring freezes, they are all now stacking shelves at Tescos for more money and less chance of getting crucified by the Daily Mail and the Conrad Blackshirts if they make a mistake.
So much for the Big Society. In education terms, specifically, what it means is, if you don’t like the school your state provides for your kids, then go and start your own school, and stop bothering us, we’re too busy filling in our expenses to run the country as well, you know!
There are, of course, already lots of schools that already are schools that were started in this manner. They are private schools, misleadingly called “public” schools, although Joe Public has about as much chance of going to one as I do of flying to the moon. But these public schools are not publicly funded. They are education’s private sector. What Gove proposes, however, is not only to allow people to form their own schools, for whatever reason, but to be allowed to use public money doing it.
In practice, I can think of only three categories of people who are going to be even faintly interested in the idea. The vast proportion of parents, it has been demonstrated time and time again, just want a good local school to teach their kids. Some of them, of course, also extend their definition of “teaching” to include parenting, baby sitting, moral guidance and discipline as well, because they are too lazy or inept to do it themselves.
But the categories of people who are going to be most interested in this proposal are Religious Nutters, Big Business, and Yummy Mummies in West London, who don’t want Tarquin and Jocasta mixing with the common children at a comprehensive. The Religious Nutters element worries me the most, to be honest, since it will inevitably mean schools run as Madrassars, and schools run by whirly-eyed fundamentalists who think that Darwin faked the fossil record. Using public money, let us not forget.
There is already too much interference in schools from Religion. Faith schools get a massively disproportionate amount of resource pumped into them (see also under Academies) and, to be honest, prolong the existence of religious differences and divides. I would much rather see all faith schools, and all schools for that matter, forced to abandon their faith status and instead to teach comparative religion as a compulsory subject. That would do much to dispel fear, distrust, and xenophobia in society at large.
Big Business, of course, is only interested in producing cannon-fodder for the factories, the fast food outlets, and call centres. When questioned, in a radio interview on the Today programme about what he would do to ensure that the Free Schools idea was not hijacked by those with their own agenda, Gove replied that they would have to demonstrate they had a “robust business plan” and that anyone who had what he called a “dark agenda”, would be prevented from going ahead. Leaving aside the fact that this answer showed that he is more interested, seemingly, in their business plan than in their proposed curriculum, I am intrigued by the idea of a “dark agenda”.
Who decides what is a “dark agenda”? How dark is dark? Obviously, anyone wanting to set up a “Free School Taleban Training Camp and Islamic College” is going to be seen to have a “dark agenda”. But supposing I decided to set up a school to teach children a curriculum based on, oooh, let’s say Socialist principles, relative morality, ethics and animal welfare. Given its pro-hunting stance, I would imagine the government would regard that as a dark agenda. But if McDonalds, whose slash and burn antics have been widely discussed in ecological circles, wanted to set up the Ronald McDonald Free School and Burger Flipping Academy, would that be dark? Because it bloody well should be! And how would the darkness vary if they promised to employ all of the alumni of such an establishment?
None of this would matter, of course, or it wouldn’t matter so much, if it wasn’t public money. People have a right to their own opinions, however dopey or bizarre, and they are perfectly at liberty to start schools, using their OWN money, which would then stand or fall by their own merits, ability and reputation, depending how many gullible parents they can find to pay the fees. But this Quixotic enterprise, where every whirly-eyed demagogue can cause further fragmentation and unnecessary waste and duplication in public education, is going to be funded by us. At a time when, if money is that tight, economies of scale should be the way to go, surely.
Which brings me to Academies. There seems to be an ongoing recent idea in education, which survives with a dogged and insidious persistence, akin to that of Japanese knotweed, that elitism in education for its own sake is a good thing. Inequality of opportunity is something to be striven for, apparently. Every time this idea is shown up to be bogus rubbish, it springs up again in another form, like the many-headed Hydra.
Its latest manifestation is the philosophy behind Academies. I would still mind, though I wouldn’t mind so much, if they just admitted that the prime driver behind Academies is once more to shift some cost off the public sector and on to the private sector’s balance sheet. But it’s always dressed up in the claptrap of Academies good, failing Comps bad. The latest philosophy is that each Academy, as it speeds unerringly upwards in its ceaseless progress through the concentric spheres of academic excellence, should “take a failing school with it”. I suspect that this , in practice, will devolve down to letting the oiks use the Academy’s playing fields once a week.
To those who believe that Academies have some sort of intrinsic superiority over all other forms of school, I lay down this simple challenge. Take the average, bog standard, failing inner city comp, and lavish upon that school for three years all of the advantages and the resources of an Academy. Then, at the end of that process, we will be able to see, once and for all, whether it is the format, or the funding, that makes the difference.
In the nineteenth century, well-meaning old women started schools to keep the children of those who could afford it, occupied, while the parents earned a living, combining in effect babysitting with a rudimentary study of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Every time I think of Mr Gove, which is as infrequently as possible, and his proposals, I am inextricably drawn back to this: Mr Gove may not himself be a dame, but his educational policies are almost certainly a pantomime, and a pretty Widow Twanky one at that, as the late, great, Dr Spooner might have observed, had he been there to observe it.
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