Unimpressed is what I am

So anyway, there I was outside Parliament when I realized that I could not either walk up Whitehall or get a bus because of another demo. A noisy demo but reasonably well organized and very well policed, followed immediately by City of Westminster street cleaning teams. A wise precaution several of us, spectators, agreed.

What was it about? Well, it was about there not being "free" education for university students, which is, according to the demonstrators, their absolute right. One of my co-spectators suggested that we should march for free shoes and I offered to join her. As it happens, I do need some shoes rather desperately and preferably before it gets any colder but, alas, I am expected to pay for them. How unfair is that?

The slogan that was being shouted in unison (more or less) was "We Deserve A Future, Too". That alone makes me think that these are not people who should go to university unless it is to do media studies. Anyone who thinks that a future is something optional that people either deserve or not deserve is clearly not capable of any kind of clear thinking, even allowing for the fact that most (not all) of them were in their late teens.

They were carrying various posters, which had been handed out to them by some well organized and well funded group, probably not a million miles from the Socialist Workers' Party. There were hardly any hand-written posters of banners, which meant that they were at least correctly spelled.

What made the whole set-up slightly curious was the fact that among the various demands for "Grants Not Fees", "Free Education" and "Tax The Rich" there were a number of large banners demanding "Free Borders". How did that get there, we wondered. More to the point, do these children understand that if we open the borders to all comers there will most definitely not be any money for what they choose to call "free" education?

Some more about that discussion of 16 and 17 year-olds

As I pointed out earlier there seemed to be a good deal of discussion going on in the House of Commons about the somewhat peripheral question of 16 and 17 year-olds voting in the forthcoming referendum. Somebody (I shall have to check that out tomorrow) compared the arguments against people who are treated as children in most ways and increasingly so to those used by Lord Curzon and others against women's suffrage. Or, in other words, according to this particular Labour MP (sitting next to Harriet Harman, she of the pink van) considers that there is no difference between women of any age and experience and teenagers of, necessarily, limited knowledge and experience. What, I cannot help wondering, would those tough Labour ladies of yore have made of this drivel.

Meanwhile, I thought I would check out something and that is the proposals to raise the age of compulsory education. We haven't quite got to that but it is in the pipeline and once it is introduced, the law will maintain that 16 and 17 year-olds will not be old enough to choose whether they want to study or work but, apparently, old enough to make decisions about this country's membership of the European Union.

In the meantime, I have found an interesting paper on the subject, which tells me that

The Education and Skills Act 2008 increased the minimum age at which young people in England can leave learning. This requires them to continue in education or training to the age of 17 from 2013 and to 18 from 2015. Young people will be able to choose whether to stay in full-time education, undertake work-based learning such as an Apprenticeship, or part-time education or training if they are employed, self-employed or volunteering for more than 20 hours per week.

Or, in other words, the spectrum of choices for 16 and 17 year-olds is being narrowed by law and they are increasingly reduced to the status of children. Could it be that the people who want them to vote in the referendum actually believe that and think that, being children, they will be easier to influence?

News from the House of Lords

On July 22 both Houses heard a Statement about the so-called Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham, a story that has been covered more or less adequately in the media and, therefore, needs no repetition from me. It is worth reading the Statement, though, because it sets out some of the facts in order and with cogency as well as giving some idea of what the government and the local authorities (these are schools that are or have been for most of their existence, part of the state education structure, inadequate in many ways but rarely so scandalous) intend to do.

I think we can discard the usual bleating about better training of governors, here produced in the first place by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch. Does she really think that it is lack of training that caused people to institute a system whereby any head teacher who opposed a noxious ideology was eased out of position? Was it lack of training that turned Birmingham councillors into pusillanimous collaborators? I think not.

The following contributions are of some interest, too, and probably worth reading but they do not convey anything of great value, except for Lord Rooker's perfectly sensible suggestion that Birmingham should really be turned into three local boroughs instead of one, though how that would have solved the twin problem of the determined promoters of an intolerant ideology and of pusillanimous collaborators is not clear.

We then get to Baroness Hussein-Ece, a new name to me, possibly explained by the fact, that she is one of the enormous cohort of peers nominated by this government that has been even better at packing the Upper House with people who are unlikely to stray off  message than the previous one. Her career in the purely administrative and minority rights related parts of the public sector, does not inspire one with great confidence. And, indeed, her comments are exactly what one would expect:

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for the Statement. It is a relief that this applies to a very small number of schools, however important it is, and to note that there are serious problems of governance. It is important to underline that there is no evidence, as we saw in the lurid headlines, of a “plot” or of violent extremism.

We know that there is a difference between religious conservatism and extremism. That has not really come out in a lot of the narrative from these schools. It has been quite damaging. Can the Minister comment on that? Does he agree with me that when we talk about values, we need a shared level of standards, values and accountability for all schools, be they faith schools, free schools, academies or private schools? Would he also agree that we need to refrain from the generalisation that we have seen that stigmatises whole communities and faiths. This has been very damaging and will make it more difficult for moderate people in Muslim and other communities who want to get engaged in public life to become school governors and councillors, and to play a full role in British civic society.

Naturally, one has to agree that whole communities and faiths should not be stigmatized and that Muslim moderates should engage in public life and to make their moderate ideas very clear, indeed. Some, undoubtedly, do though the noble Lady seems to have been less than active on that score. But it is time for more members of that community to engage and to make their voices heard. Historically, the silent majority achieved very little against a vocal and ill-intentioned minority. We then come to Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a great favourite of this blog, as readers will have realized and he has tried to widen the question:

My Lords, do the Government agree that this scandal, like Muslim segregation and Islamist violence more generally, is a problem that arises from within Islam and can be cured only from within Islam? Given all that is happening in Africa as well, why do the Government go on intoning that Islam is a religion of peace?

There are two issues here: one is the obvious one, raised above that it is the "silent majority" of Muslims that needs to speak out "from within Islam"; the other is the ridiculous insistence on that moniker, "religion of peace". No other religion is described consistently as such, in the teeth of all evidence. As we look round the world, we have to say that while the vast majority of Muslims are not violent and are not terrorists, most (though not all) of the violence and terrorism comes from people who use their adherence to Islam as the reason for it. Indeed, the few Muslims who do speak out against that trend say so, themselves.

Sadly, the Minister, Lord Nash, (and here) found it impossible to depart from the script that his minions had prepared for him:

I think that what has happened in Birmingham is unacceptable to all the communities there, including most of the Muslim parents and teachers. I do not recognise the noble Lord’s analysis of the religion of Islam, which I see as a religion of peace. I do think that there are issues in relation to developing counter-narratives to extremism, but I do not think that there is time to go into that here.

What is missing from this account is the unseemly row that broke out in the House when Lord Pearson put his question. (Well, what do you expect will happen when even the Upper House, the last bastion of this country's constitutional edifice that is more or less standing, is packed to the extent it has been?) There were demands that the Minister should simply ignore the comment as it was so seditious and more than sotto voce suggestions that the noble Lord was obviously mad. So, in a way, it is to Lord Nash's credit that he preferred to give a measured though unilluminating response and did not, unlike the councillors of the good city of Birmingham, succumb to the hysteria.

Of the subsequent discussion [I am afraid people have to scroll down to read all contributions but it is not a long debate] Lord Bew's comment and question about the teachers, criticized in Peter Clarke's report is the most interesting one.

Press Association picked up the story on the same day and cobbled together a reasonable article, which was published by the Daily Mail on line. The Guardian, as so often, managed to muddy the issue in this piece.

A few words about the reshuffle

There is no intention here of writing about the reshuffle, the last big one, we assume, before next year's General Election, at length. At least, not at this stage since a good many of those promoted remain unknown quantities as I said in my interview with the BBC Russian Service yesterday.

As it happens, I have no objections to women politicians being promoted and find it a little surprising that a number of people who firmly assert that people should be promoted entirely on merit then equally firmly dismiss the idea of any woman being so promoted. Suddenly their thinking is all about gender and the fact that no woman could possibly deserve a higher position. This train of thought is very prevalent among eurosceptics; they call it being anti political correctness and I call it being stupid, stubborn and scared.

Some of this misogyny by whatever name you care to call it was caused by the inept way in which the PR was handled. A reshuffle was coming and there were the usual discussions as to who might fall victim to it and who might benefit by it. Some of the speculations turned out to be correct, some not so much. But in addition to the usual speculations there were many stories, inspired, we must assume, by the whizz-kids around the PM, that women will be promoted and the Cabinet will now be full of women. A good many women were, indeed, promoted though not all the predicted ones and some men. The Cabinet now has some women members but the majority remains male and very few of either sex has so far shown that much ability. What a weapon was handed to the misogynists who now assert at length that those who were promoted were so because of their sexual organs not because of their ability. I note, however, that they do not mention any male politicians who have been unfairly kept on the back benches.

Moving on to individuals, I have to admit to an unsurprising to readers of this blog lack of interest in William Hague's fate. From the day he was appointed Shadow Foreign Secretary I thought he was inadequate to the role and the stories circulating about him treating one of the great offices of state as a part-time job did not endear him to me. His statements tended to be rather foolish and superficial, showing no understanding of Britain's position in the world or of the EU and its impositions. Come to think of it, I recall that he showed a complete lack of understanding about the differences between the relationship Britain might have with China and with India. To him they were two developing countries we have to be close to, in order to balance out our "unhealthy" dependence on the US.

Not only is Hague retiring from front-line politics, he intends to leave Parliament altogether next year, preferring to concentrate on his career as, possibly, writer and, definitely, speaker. So much for the great predictions, the first of which was by Margaret Thatcher who, famously, mused about the 16-year old William Hague that he might be the new William Pitt.

His successor, Philip Hammond, hitherto Secretary for Defence is known as a man who once said that he would vote for Britain's exit from the EU if powers were not brought back to Westminster but has also expressed the hope that we should still be there in five years' time. Still, he is known as the most senior eurosceptic in the government now and his successor Michael Fallon is also making noises about this being a eurosceptic government.

So obsessed is our media about the newly promoted female contingent that they do not seem to be able to dig particularly deeply into this nonsensical myth that is being promoted. The Boss, of course, is there, tearing Fallon and the media apart. Matthew Elliott, on the other hand, thinks that the reshuffled Cabinet is good news for eurosceptics (I asked him for his definition but have not had a reply) and shows Cameron responding to the lessons of the European election. So far as I can see there was only one lesson: the majority of this country has no interest in voting for MEPs and does not care who get their snouts into the trough.

I have few opinions about some of the other discarded Ministers and join all those who think Ken Clarke's departure was long overdue. Sadly, I do not think he will disappear from our ken (pun intended) but will be seen and heard frequently on the BBC and other media outlets, proffering his opinions and judgements.

There are two departures (one only partial) that I do have views on and those are of Michael Gove and Owen Paterson, both, incidentally, stronger eurosceptics than any of the present incumbents. Gove has moved on to becoming Chief Whip, which can be described as "a brave decision Prime Minister". I am looking forward to his handling of the various colleagues who had briefed against him as he battled the teachers' unions and the educational establishment.

Paterson, who is one of the few leading politicians (make that very few) who actually understands the European Union and our membership of it, is now on the backbenches. That might not be a bad thing as it will give him the opportunity to speak out more openly than he could even as a rebellious member of the Cabinet.

So much for the silver lining. Now for the clouds: both the Ministers were shunted off in response to a determined campaign by the teachers' unions in one case and the Greenies in the other. This does not reflect well on the Prime Minister and his preparedness to stand by his colleagues if they try to implement policies that are slightly more radical and less acceptable to the soft left establishment than usual. (To be fair, he left Iain Duncan Smith in his place but that might be simply because he does not think Duncan Smith is ever going to implement anything.)

Indeed, there is much rejoicing in Greenie and educational establishment circles. Some of the attacks on Gove and the rejoicing at his departure were so illiterate that I was almost tempted to ask whether the writers were teachers. (This, incidentally, is worth reading on what Nicky Morgan, Michael Gove's successor, should grapple with.)

I noticed on another thread that Elizabeth Truss, the new Secretary for the Environment, whose credentials on this particular subject are not strong enough to feel that she can fight DEFRA and the EU (but then who can? even Owen Paterson found it almost impossible), is already being lambasted by the Greenies for having worked for Shell. Either there is more to the lady than I realized or the Greenies have tasted blood (if I am allowed to use that expression) and are determined to destroy every successive Secretary of State.

Nicky Morgan, too, has fallen foul of the luvvies. Michael Rosen, who has figured on this blog as a figure of fun before, is said to have tweeted his disgust with her because she voted against same sex marriage in Parliament. Whether I agree with Ms Morgan or not, that news and Mr Rosen's disgust made me feel a little better about her: she clearly has some opinions and has not been too afraid to make them clear.

Readers may have noticed that I am producing a carefully argued posting here and not a rant. That is because I do not think this is the worst reshuffle in 25 years or a particularly good one either. It does not, pace Matthew Elliott, do anything much for the eurosceptic wing of the party or the eurosceptic part of the electorate.

My friend, John O'Sullivan, thinks most of it is bad though he quite likes Michael Fallon taking over defence and will benefit UKIP. He may well be right on most points but not that. John keeps hoping UKIP will benefit from something and show its mettle at last - a vain hope in my opinion.

So that leaves the man who is going to Brussels: Lord Hill of Oareford. There had been many suggestions of various MPs who would be "definitely" sent to Brussels but I do not see anything wrong with a member of the House of Lords becoming a Commissioner. No, he is not an elected politician but how does that affect his suitability for the job of a Commissioner? On the whole, his career in the couloirs of politics might give him a better understanding of how to manipulate that of Brussels. Why would a failed though formerly elected politician do any better or be of greater benefit to this country? Was Neil Kinnock better or Leon Brittan?

Had I paid more attention to ConHome I would have realized a couple of weeks ago which way the wind was blowing. On June 26, Lord Hill denied that he would ever be Commissioner, or that his name was even being considered. Now Mark Wallace sums up the pros and cons of the appointment, complains a little about the fact that Lord Hill is not known outside his own circle and, generally, treats the position as if it were an ordinary ministerial one.

I have seen other complaints about Lord Hill being unknown. Was the very well known Neil Kinnock a better choice, I asked, getting no reply. If it is true that he did not want the job then that is something in his favour but what, if anything, he can achieve remains a matter of dispute. After all, if the negotiations for Brexit should begin they will not be conducted by the Commissioner but by the government.

Intriguingly, Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, and a man who is often the unconscious source of hilarity, has announced that MEPs might vote against Lord Hill's appointment because of his "radical anti-European views". Where do these people get their information?

As Steven Swinford says:

His comments surprised Westminster, where Lord Hill is not renowned for his outspoken views but instead praised as a discreet, diplomatic behind-the-scenes fixer.

In fact, completely appropriate to the organization he is being sent to. Plus he looks like somebody out of a Le Carré novel. That'll show them.

Let's finish off what the French Revolution started

That seems to be President Hollande's motto and not in a good way either. He seems to be so determined to introduce égalité that, as so often the case, liberté and even fraternité are left out of his calculations. Perhaps that is because égalité is the easiest of the three to control from the centre and to impose by force.

Thanks to Instapundit we get the story of the latest proposal for educational reform in France where schooling has been on a very high standard until now, despite much of it being run by the state. There is a link to an article on the subject in the Wall Street Journal: "France to Ban Homework. Really".

François Hollande has a bold new plan to tackle social injustice and inequality in France: ban homework. Introducing his proposals for education reform last week at the Sorbonne, the French president declared that work "must be done in the [school] facility rather than in the home if we want to support the children and re-establish equality."

Banning out-of-school assignments would put France on the cutting edge of pedagogical fashion, though it wouldn't be entirely unprecedented. An elementary school in Maryland recently replaced homework with a standing order for 30 minutes a day of after-school reading. A German high school is also test-running a new homework ban, after an earlier reform lengthened the school day and crowded out time for extra-curriculars such as sports or music.

Actually, banning homework is far from cutting edge. That was tried in Britain, certainly for younger children for many years, the argument being exactly the one the French President is using: it is not fair as some children might get help from parents and some might not. The result, as we know, was that generations of children grew up with large sections of them being barely literate or numerate, let alone capable of learning anything more complicated than the three Rs.

Furthermore, it became obvious that with no homework required by the school inequality became even more pronounced as it was now only those children whose parents could and would devote time and energy to educating their offspring who prospered. To some extent, I am glad to say, this practice is now being abandoned across the country but school requirements remain lamentably low.

The article is right in pointing out that substituting more activity at school for homework is not the same as deciding not to have any of either. But then, M. Hollande looks to other matters: school, he pronounced at the Sorbonne, is where the child becomes a citizen of the future. What he would really like, I suppose, is to take the children away from their parents completely and to have them brought up entirely by the state.

This, one can argue, is excellent news for Britain. At least, our undereducated children will no longer have to compete with the French. But, I suspect, the rejoicing (if there is any) will be short-lived. French parents care far more about these matters than, I am sad to say, most British ones do. They will be out in force, demonstrating against government proposals to destroy the French school system.

Lasting Legacy - part 2,368

One of the stupidest parts of the pro-Olympics propaganda was that it would create a "lasting legacy" of greater sporting activity in the country. I should have thought one look at many (though not all) of the spectators would suggest that maybe people who watch sport are not always the ones who do sport. As for the ones who care only about a medal count ... just don't get me onto that subject.

I am completely in favour of children and teenagers doing sport, preferably in some sort of organized fashion. Of course, many of the sports clubs for them had to close because they had been funded by the government and the money was diverted towards the Olympics. Still, there are schools or there used to be schools. Sadly they no longer do much organized sport in the state sector because teachers do not like to stay beyond their allotted "teaching hours", because teachers are afraid of being sued over possible injuries or hurt feelings when somebody's little darling fails to win something or other and because the bureaucracy around sporting activity is nightmarish.

The Cleggeron Coalition, specifically the Minister in charge, one Jeremy Hunt, last seen laughing his head off at the woes expressed by London's business community, have decided to deal with the problem. No, they are not going to ease the burden on the heads with regards to bureaucracy. Goodness me, no. That would mean shutting whole departments of civil servants down and maybe even the odd quango. Can't have that. What they have done is to say that heads, teachers and parents can now decide not to do any organized sport at school if they cannot be bothered with the bureaucracy and whatever else. That should sort it.

They are still at it

Mona Charen has an article on National Review Online about her 16 year old son's AP World History textbook, which she has finally looked at in some detail. I feel her pain.

In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union — with all of the copious records that have been exhumed from the Soviet archives and other sources — one might have thought that the sheer human catastrophe caused by Communism ought no longer to be in question among serious people, far less eminent historians. (Actually, there has been no doubt since the 1930s, but the evidence has become even more voluminous since 1989.) Yet throughout this 900-plus-page tome, the brutal body count of Communism’s victims is given only glancing notice. Like Soviet apologists during the Cold War era, the authors provide generous interpretations of Communist dictators’ motives, along with dry, forgettable descriptions of their atrocities.

World Civilizations tells some of our most advanced tenth-graders that Josef Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture “had serious flaws.” That’s one way of describing a deliberate policy of starving the peasantry into submission. In Harvest of Sorrow, Robert Conquest estimated that the “terror famine” of 1932–33 caused the deaths of at least 5 million Ukrainians, and that Stalin’s agriculture collectivization, which included the war on “kulaks” (slightly more prosperous peasants), took the lives of 14.5 million people in all.

You won’t find those deaths mentioned in World Civilizations. No, the text instructs students that “after the messy transition period” had ended, “the collective farms did . . . allow normally adequate if minimal food supplies . . . and they did free excess workers to be channeled into the ranks of urban labor.”

Later, World Civilizations mentions that Stalin’s totalitarian regime resulted in one of the “great bloodbaths of the 20th century.” But the very next sentence misleads the reader completely. “During the great purge of party leaders that culminated in 1937–38, hundreds of people were intimidated into confessing imaginary crimes against the state and most of them were put to death. Many thousands more were sent to Siberian labor camps.”

They are STILL doing it: brainwashing children by lying about the full horror of Communism. She has other examples. It is not a pretty story.

How long do we go on wasting money

A new charity has been set up to deal with the lack of numeracy among the British population, especially its children.

Poor numeracy is blighting Britain's economic performance and ruining lives, says a new charity launched to champion better maths skills. The group, National Numeracy, says millions of people struggle to understand a payslip or a train timetable, or pay a household bill. Government figures show almost half the working population of England have only primary school maths skills.

A government spokeswoman said poor numeracy was a national scandal.

The new organisation quotes from research suggesting weak maths skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness.

Poor numeracy is, indeed, a problem at that very basic and other levels. Our engineering firms are struggling to find a sufficient number of British employees not because every foreign worker will take lower wages or work 20 hours a day but because our schools do not teach basic numeric skills without which it is impossible to study engineering.

Poor numeracy means that basic economic factors remain a closed book to most people.

Poor numeracy means that any old rubbish produced by the Warmists, the Europhiliacs or the plain old statist banker-bashers is accepted without the slightest question by a hefty proportion of the population with politicians and the media cheerfully playing to the gallery.

In fact, this blog has already noted that City AM was starting a campaign to improve teaching of basic economics and suggested that Mr Gove's call at the time for maths teaching up to the age of 18 was misguided until the standards of teaching are improved.

I have also written about the campaign started by the Evening Standard to "get London reading", which called for volunteers to go into schools to teach children, for most of whom English is the first language, to read. Similar campaigns are being waged in other cities.

So there we are: in a country where many billions of pounds are spent on a national education system, where children start attending school earlier than in any other country and stay in compulsory, free at the point of delivery education for longer than in any other country, we are desperate for volunteers to teach basic literacy and numeracy because teachers apparently cannot be expected to do so. Is it not time we drew the obvious conclusion about our education system and about a large number of teachers who work in it?

While we are on the subject of London's schools I need to appeal to any reader who lives in London. Do NOT vote for Siobhan Benita, the former civil servant who happens to be female and rather photogenic, thus getting a good deal of media time and who has, therefore, been described as a radical. Actually, she is an old-fashioned left-wing statist who cannot envisage any system in which individuals or orgganizations of any kind are allowed to take any decisions for themselves. She is also remarkably ignorant about the role of the Mayor, preferring to run on the well-used ticket of "being against the white, male, middle class establishment". (I wonder how Ken Livingstone and Jenny Jones, the Green candidate, feel about that.) Oh yes, let me not forget that she is also a mother and used to work for Sir Gus O'Donnell.

If all the above had not disqualified her from being allowed anywhere near even a whelk stall, never mind a fishmonger, here is the clincher:

She is at her most passionate on education, and even if it is technically beyond the remit of Mayor of London, she says she is committed to reform in London. She is no fan of academies and "unfair" choices.

She says that grammar schools do not lift up the less well-off: "At the moment we have a system where if you can pay to tutor your kids - which is what most people do - and move into an area where the schools are good, then you're fine.

And if not, you're left behind. I say choice doesn't work. I don't think you should stop as Mayor until you're saying that every school in London needs to be excellent."

It strikes me from those and some other paragraphs that even the Evening Standard is beginning to tire of her performance. Let us hope she is soundly trounced.

And now for a rant

There are times when the state of this country is in exasperate even me and I tend to think that things have been much worse fairly frequently in the past.

Item 1: today's public sector strike. Without going into all the details, it is sufficient to say that the public sector was the growth industry in this country throughout the Labour years with unemployment being kept low by the public rather than the private sector hiring and money going on various projects that kept young people especially off the unemployment register. As for pensions, let us not forget the repeated raids on the private pension funds in order to raise money for the public sector.

We can no longer afford this and the screws are slowly, far too slowly, being tightened. So we get strikes about pensions that are above what most people in the private sector can afford. The rest of us have to work and manage as best we can.

Yet the moment this is said one gets people (not many but some) who shriek about the public sector workers saving lives and being poor. Nurses and dinner ladies are favourite examples. Just how many in the public sector save lives? And how many of them get paid as badly as dinner ladies? How many, on the other hand, have very nice, safe (less so these days but still safer than in the private sector) well paid jobs which consist of creating ever more forms to fill in and making life difficult for the rest of us? Oh, and let's not forget those nice safe pensions at the end.

Then there are the teachers and class assistants. Apparently I have to feel for them because they work so hard for so little money. Are these the same people who while pocketing a not inconsiderable salary fail to teach our children to read and write, as well as other subjects?

Item 2: the strange hysteria surrounding some unpleasant and probably unwell woman who produced a truly disgusting racist rant on the Croydon tram. These things do happen: rants and rows are not uncommon on public transport and the woman should have been asked to get off as she was a nuisance. Instead, we got what Brendan O'Neill has called a twenty-first century Twitch Hunt, started by some self-righteous little ... oh never mind ... who decided to film the event and put it on YouTube. The rest can be read here.

Rather than showing that ‘racism in Britain is as rife as ever’, as one person tweeted, the #MyTramExperience Twitch Hunt actually reveals the rise of a different backward trend: the tendency for herds of intolerant Twitterers to act like coppers’ narks, to make a massive deal out of their own shallow moralistic indignation, and to be utterly contemptuous of the idea that the public is more than capable of dealing with isolated incidents of racist abuse when they arise. The hounding of this woman was not a great act of anti-racist activism – it was the virtual equivalent of children chasing the local crazy lady through the streets and shouting ‘Nutter!’ or ‘Cow!’.

Of course, one could argue that this is the curse of the social media, which has many good aspects as well. People seem to lose all sense of proportion in their comments and reactions because it is done from a computer or some other electronic application.

ADDENDUM: The Taxpayers' Alliance has published a helpful guide to public sector pay and pensions. Read it if you have time.

Don't dare to diss me

An interesting article on Spiked by Neil Davenport who, apart from blogging and writing is a politics teacher based in London (though he does not tell us where exactly in London). His point:

New Labour kids’ have been more flattered, mollycoddled and freed of responsibilities than any generation before them. These days, as young people progress through the education system, they learn that there is a whole raft of medical reasons why they can’t write neatly or behave properly in class. They also know that if their exam grades are slightly disappointing, they can always blame the teachers. And New Labour’s social-inclusion charter also means that schools cannot automatically throw kids out, even in the sixth form, for not working hard enough or for their poor behaviour. Local education authorities can fight to ensure that a suspended child is reinstated and then attack the school for failing to provide ‘adequate support’ to address the pupil’s ‘psychological issues’.

Historically, one of the functions of schools has been to teach children the importance of personal responsibility. Punctuality, enforcing homework deadlines and reining in disruptive behaviour are all important mechanisms for socialising young people. School is not about teaching kids to be blindly obedient to authority, of course, but it should guide them towards becoming morally autonomous individuals with a sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. However, New Labour’s therapeutic framework, which has infected a great deal of England’s education system, has effectively destroyed these civilising values. As any teacher will tell you, teenagers are now strikingly adept at screeching from the therapeutic hymn sheet. The ‘how dare you?!’ line they indignantly trot out effectively says: ‘How dare you pass judgement on or criticise me? It will damage my self-esteem.’

Read the whole piece. Well worth it.

My first reaction was a groan

Really, I thought, as I looked at the front page of City AM, this is not what I expect from a more or less reasonable newspaper. The Evening Standard has long given up any pretence of being one and its purpose seems to be to run endless campaigns to help or save somebody who is having a bad time. Furthermore, as I have pointed out before, people seem to support all these campaigns with great vigour without ever asking themselves whether the previous similar one had achieved anything worth writing home about. But City AM?

It has proudly announced that Michael Gove is backing their campaign "to improve financial literacy by boosting the number of students who study further maths at A-Level". In fact, this campaign makes some sense in that the drive is to ensure that there are more teachers teaching Further Maths to A level, thus ensuring that more people study Maths or related subjects at the better universities whose Maths departments are filled with foreign rather than British students.

Moving on from there, says Allister Heath, editor of said publication (and a friend), we must eliminate or, at least, greatly diminish the innumeracy and fiscal illiteracy that is "rife in this country". At least, unlike the Evening Standard, City AM does not scruple to lay the blame where it belongs: the educational system, the schools and the teachers.

As outlined by Mr Heath the campaign is targeted and focused as well as hard-hitting. One can support it with ease and I hope businesses do. I am a little less impressed by what, according to the BBC, Mr Gove actually said. It seems that, instead of concentrating on the quality of maths teaching and the need for better school and university qualifications in the subject, regardless of the pupils' background, Mr Gove once again waffled about making Maths compulsory up to the age of 18 and lamented, as he frequently does, the low level of maths teaching in this country as compared with that in East Asian countries.

The problem is, Mr Gove, that if the standard of maths teaching is low up to the age of 16 and not very high at A level, making something that is not good enough compulsor for more pupils is not the answer.

Another campaign

Oddly enough, this is not about yet another campaign for an In/Out referendum. So far there are, to my knowledge, only two though we don't hear much from one of them. My views on that subject are fairly well known though I don't seem to have lost any friends over that. One person has taken to ignoring my presence, clearly because of my lack of enthusiasm for the enterprise but I can live with that.

The Standard newspaper is running yet another one of its huge and, apparently, hugely successful campaigns, this time to get London reading. Yes, indeed, this is the outcome of that report (mentioned here) that told us about one third of London's children leaving primary schools without being literate (or numerate). They cannot read, write or count.

The campaign appears to be highly popular (though, of course, one cannot trust newspapers) which has made me realize that there is nothing people in this country love more than a campaign. The outcome is of lesser import and that is, undoubtedly, what the various charities, NGOs and the whole aid industry rely on. As, indeed, do those two campaigns for an In/Out referendum.

Over the last few days we have been told that the campaign is backed by the Duchess of Cornwall, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, assorted writers and journalists and the usual job lot of celebrities, including someone who is a judge on the X-factor (no, not her). People are giving money and volunteering to be hear children in primary schools read. Google has given money. Hizonner the Mayor has gone one better and has started a fund for literacy and numeracy.

My immediate question was "what about those infamous CRB checks that prevent people from volunteering to work with children and disabled people?" but that was not mentioned till today in a letter. Well, what about them? Will the urgency of the crisis make HMG decide that not everyone who wants to work with children is a paedophile or will all these volunteers be turned away?

The last time the Standard ran a campaign it was to help the "dispossessed" of London. They collected something like £1 and a half million, had Prince William for a Patron, lined up lots of celebs and politicians and produced a number of poorly explained hard-luck stories. Since then they periodically mention some success stories of people who have been helped by the big fund and are now sorting their lives out. Obviously, one is glad about that but I would like to know what happened to the bulk of the money and how many people who were helped did, in fact, sort their lives out.

Now we are back with stories of children who are poor, have English as a second language, have no books (though lots of electronic gadgets) in their homes, and so on. We are all at fault, it is a problem for all of us, we must all help.

What all these lengthy articles, calls for help, satisfied comments about the wonderful generosity of Londoners (which is true) try not to deal with is that little problem called primary schools and an even bigger problem called primary school teachers.

In the first article two schools in West London were compared: they had not dissimilar social and linguistic complement of pupils, yet one had children reading novels and poetry by the age of 10, the other turned out a very large number of complete illiterates. The difference: the first school used traditional methods and allowed no excuses, while the second one relied on endless electronic gadgets, iPods to take home and spent a good deal of time whining. Are we to draw any conclusions? Goodness me, no. Hastily, everybody agreed that what works for one school may not work for another.

Since then only the Bishop of London, while re-enforcing the view that we should all get together to beat this scourge, also firmly added that church schools had a very high level of literacy. Yet, church schools take pupils with all social and linguistic levels.

I am all in favour of people not thinking that the state will solve all problems and trying to solve some themselves either through volunteering or giving charitable donations. But we cannot get round the fact that we do have a highly expensive national education system. Many millions of pounds are spent every year on our primary sector. (Just how many millions is very hard to find out without a great many questions, which I might persuade a member of the House of Lords to put down.) Yet, we seem to accept that only children who have books at home and whose parents read to them can learn to do so themselves. What enables them to learn to count is even less clear. Dare one ask what the point of all those primary schools and their teachers is?

So here is a deal: not only I but a number of my friends and allies (though not in those referendum campaigns) will volunteer to read in primary schools but on the following conditions: that clear budgets are published for the primary sector, that those budgets are cut back according to the amount of core work that is outsourced to volunteers and that teachers whose pupils consistently fail to learn the three 'R's get fired with immediate effect. Deal? Oh yes, and get rid of those stupid CRB checks.

Hmm, let me think

We find from the news that the government has made another step towards abolishing the Royal Navy and opt out of the global fight against piracy and drug smuggling.

Then we have Georgie-Porgie announcing "an £800m increase to the government’s bank levy" purely because he thinks his Shadow, Ed Balls might accuse him of not being tough enough on bankers and because he thinks banks should not have big profits (nobody should have profits according to the Cleggeron socialists), while still hoping to negotiate some deal whereby those same banks will be forced to lend money to small and medium-sized businesses whether they are a good risk or not. (Are we allowed to whisper sub-prime mortgages?) As the British Bankers' Association pointed out, chopping and changing is not exactly the right way to ensure that Britain remains business-friendly. (Though, it is, as they don't say, just the ticket if all you are looking for is another headline.)

Then there is news that HMG will be demanding that universities should widen the social base of their intake if they want to be allowed to have top-up fees. They must limit the numbers they take from independent schools and lower admission criteria for pupils from what might be termed disadvantaged backgrounds. Of course, the obvious way of restoring the sort of social mobility this country had in the fifties and sixties is to restore the sort of schooling that was provided at the time. That, alas, does not appeal to our government of privately educated nit-wits. (This is being pointed out by the Daily Mail and its blogger Harry Phibbs but screaming abuse at universities and demanding that their standards should drop even more is a much easier option for politicians.)

All I can say is that I am very glad that we no longer have an interfering, big-state, socialist government that surrenders our armed forces to the EU. And that would be quite funny if it wer not so tragic for the country and its people.

Makes perfect sense

Sorry, stoodents again. But this time I am just linking to Melanie Phillips's article in the Spectator. There are many times I disagree with Ms Phillips but on education none can better her. I am glad she quotes Professor Clive Bloom who says quite firmly that the rot set in when first-class polytechnics, which many of them were, became tenth rate universities. I like to remind various ToryBoys of that little fact. And who was Prime Minister then? Step forward John Major. Mind you, things went from bad to worse after that.

More peaceful riots in London

Happy to report that those spoilt kids who wanted to show that they are definitely part of the intellectual elite of this country and should, therefore, be subsidized by the rest of us, were out today in force and carrying posters provided by the Socialist Worker, who very kindly signed them all. Therefore, nobody can dispute the fact that the students and assorted school children were just too stupid to understand who was using them and for what purpose.

Here you can see the wonderfully peaceful behaviour by the protesters in attacking the police, burning down various objects in Parliament Square and attacking the limousine that was taking the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, who seemed to behave with suitable stiff-upper-lip decorum, on their way to an official engagement at the London Palladium. (Scroll down to see the genius standing on the bench as it burns under him. A real intellectual, I've no doubt.

The Guardian is questioning police tactics though even they seem to be going through the motions. The NUS, I believe, has expressed itself to be disappointed with the way the third peaceful demo developed. Of course, normally, people who organize demonstrations are responsible for the participants' behaviour but the word "responsible" is not one the NUS understands. Perhaps, they cannot spell it.

Meanwhile, as expected, the government won by 323 votes to 302 (narrow but not as narrow as some of the votes on various European treaties were) with Chris Huhne remaining in Cancun with Nick Clegg's blessing. Better than the embarrassment of a Cabinet Minister abstaining on a government policy vote?

ConHome has a live blog (though, obviously, this is now an archival live blog) of the debate with a list of those who abstained or voted against. Tim Montgomerie agrees with the "liar Clegg" meme and rather gleefully assumes that the man is finished. I wouldn't go as far as that - as long as Cameron insists on that coalition, Clegg will be there - but one cannot help being amused by the problems the Lib-Dims are facing because, quite unjustifiably, they are in the government now.

Of course, none of this will solve the big problems we face in our higher education. Nothing but a removal of the state's control, something that politicians dare not contemplate, can do that.

No it is not April 1

My first reaction to this story in the Evening Standard was that somehow I and everyone else (including whoever is in charge of the weather, which is hot and sticky) have misread the calendar. Today is not July 7, anniversary of the London transport bombs but April 1. How else can one explain that a 14 year-old was arrested, kept in a police cell, had her fingerprints taken and generally treated as a criminal for saying that she did not want to work in a group with five pupils, four of whom spoke no English at all.

Codie was attending a GCSE science class at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, when the incident happened.

The teenager had not been in school the day before due to a hospital appointment and had missed the start of a project, so the teacher allocated her a group to sit with.
"She said I had to sit there with five Asian pupils," said Codie yesterday.

"Only one could speak English, so she had to tell that one what to do so she could explain in their language. Then she sat me with them and said 'Discuss'."

According to Codie, the five - four boys and a girl - then began talking in a language she didn't understand, thought to be Urdu, so she went to speak to the teacher.

"I said 'I'm not being funny, but can I change groups because I can't understand them?' But she started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police'."

Codie said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.

A complaint was made to a police officer based full-time at the school, and more than a week after the incident on September 26 she was taken to Swinton police station and placed under arrest.

"They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewellery, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken," said Codie. "It was awful."

After questioning on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offence, her mother Nicola says she was placed in a bare cell for three-and-a-half hours then released without charge.

I am not sure what I find more offensive: the teachers who seem unable to cope with the slightest problem without calling in the police, the school in general, which does not understand that putting children who speak next to no English together in one group so they never learn is a good idea or the police who clearly have no crimes to deal with in that area as they can waste their time and the taxpayers' money on this sort of thing. Of course, this is

the same local education authority where a ten-year-old boy was prosecuted earlier this year for calling a schoolfriend racist names in the playground, a move branded by a judge "political correctness gone mad."

Perhaps, Mr Gove would like to have a look at that educational authority.

By a curious coincidence I am half-way through a new book by Richard Gaunt about Sir Robert Peel, the man credited with reforming the legal system in the first half of the nineteenth century. One outcome of his reforms was that children were no longer abused in the name of the law or what was interpreted as law. It would appear that Sir Robert's work is being reversed by our educationalists and police.

UPDATE: A reader has pointed out to me that the story is a tad old and, indeed, I should have checked the date. Mea culpa. It will not happen again. As there are comments on it, I shall leave the story up and promise to blog a little more carefully in future. My excuse? A new kitten has joined the household.

Not given much attention

What with all the kerfuffle about President Obama's Teleprompter's first State of the Union Address (which seems to have gone down not at all well with anybody except the hard core of the faithful) and the fuss about .... errm ... nothing very much in British and European politics, one story was not given very much attention., except, for understandably reasons, in Germany.
(Though, to be fair, the Guardian has reported it.)

Der Spiegel reported that an Evangelical Christian family who wanted to home-school their children were granted an asylum in the United States. Though one might think it was the religion that was the problem from the headline, it was actually the home-schooling, which is illegal in Germany.

Judge Lawrence Burman in Memphis, Tennessee stated that the Romeike family were entitled to asylum because their basic human rights were encroached on.

HSLDA [Home School Legal Defense Association] attorney Mike Donnelly called the decision "embarrassing for Germany." According to Donnelly, the Memphis court issued a final ruling "that homeschoolers are a social group that is being
persecuted in Germany." A "Western nation should uphold basic human rights, which include allowing parents to raise and educate their own children," Donnelly said. "This is simply about the German state trying to coerce ideological uniformity in a way that is frighteningly reminiscent of past history."

There is no need, in my opinion, to remind people about Nazism as modern Germany is not a bit like Hitler's Germany. Furthermore, home schooling is a sore point in many countries. Indeed, there have been attempts to control it in the United States. Mostly they have failed.

Deutsche Welle takes out the religion and concentrates on the home-schooling.

While religious homeschoolers are often covered in the media, they don't represent all German homeschooling families, said Dagmar Neubronner, a publisher and therapist in Bremen who moved her children from Germany to France to homeschool them.

Neubronner told Deutsche Welle when her children were in public schools they often complained of not having enough academic freedom and of noise and disruptions from classmates.

"Our children didn't thrive in school," she said.

After attempting to get permission from German courts to homeschool her children, she says she was threatened with fines and jail time. It was then that she and her husband decided to move their children to France where they could legally homeschool them.

When asked whether homeschooled children have difficulty integrating into society, Neubronner said those claims were "not proven by reality."

"Just look around to all those countries where homeschooling is permitted," she said. "You don't find a group of ex-homeschoolers who fail in life."

Eugene Volokh, himself a successful past asylum speaker, raises the question of whether not having the right to home schooling does give one the right to asylum in the United States. Without saying so, he seems to be doubtful. The discussion, as usual, is very interesting and well worth reading in full.

There are many aspects to this case that will reverberate in other countries, not least Britain. The situation here as regards home-schooling is rather confused. Legally it is perfectly acceptable. It is not schooling that is compulsory but education, though LEAs (local education authorities), Ofsted ( Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) and other suchlike organizations would prefer it if people did not know about this distinction.

Officials spend a good deal of time harassing home-schoolers and demanding proof that the education thus provided is "adequate", proof of which they do not seem to demand from schools. As the term "adequate" is defined by these officials with no reference to anything outside themselves and their ideas, proof of it becomes hard to impossible to provide.

Most recently, educational and "child welfare" officials have found another way in which they can harass home-schoolers. The latter would now have to prove that they are not paedophiles (after all, what other reason can one have for wanting to give one's child a real education?) and some of the children have been put on the at-risk lists. One wonders how many of them are now contemplating the notion of asking for asylum in the United States.