More Blairite Bollocks
So every secondary school is to become a specialist school.
What's next on Blair's crazed agenda? Will every doctor have to become a specialist? No more bog-standard General Practitioners?
And it's a nonsense to think you can identify a child's specialist subject at the age of eleven. That's why the old 11-plus was so unfair.
I'm not sure that I've yet identified my own special talent five decades later. Unless you count posting opinionated clever-dickery on the internet.
We currently have 'state' schools and 'independent' schools. But now, with a wave of Tony's magic wand, all secondary schools will become 'independent state schools'. How curious that the man who first showed how language could be perverted for political ends, George Orwell, had the real name of Blair.
Local authorities will lose what few remaining powers they have over education and educational provision will be become an unregulated jungle. In all the Blairite prattle about 'choice' it's funny how the traditional democratic choice through the ballot box is being removed at local level.
There's a double page photograph in today's Guardian of Ruth Kelly presenting her education White Paper to the Cabinet. She's standing up to do this although she could equally be giving a rendition of Ole Man River in that fine baritone of hers. Apparently the presentation was accompanied by a slide show.
If the faces weren't so familiar it could be a picture of a group of middle managers being addressed by a woman from Human Resources on how to conduct Staff Appraisals.
Or it could be a team-building awayday at a country house hotel. "No Gordon, the point of the exercise was for you to catch Tony as he fell backwards. Oh dear, is there a First Aid kit anywhere?"
R.I.P. traditional Cabinet Government.
It's a depressing thought that the corporate bullshit so many people have to endure in their working lives is now replicated at the heart of government. The clash of ideas and principles around the Cabinet table is now replaced by a Powerpoint presentation by a pointedly powerless machine politician whose policies come from Tony who got them from a gaggle of unelected policy wonks in Downing Street.
posted by Willie Lupin @ 12:13 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Once more Blair and his poodles are trotting out the concept of "choice" as the solution to all our problems. This is based on two glaringly obvious misapprehensions or fallacies.
The first is that people want choice; they want to be able to determine where they want their children educated, and where they would like their appendixes removed. Wrong. What they want is good education and good healthcare. The provision of choice does not automatically result in improvements in service. There are 6 Indian restaurants in the town where I live: and they're all crap.
The second is that most people have a choice. Perhaps if you live in a big city with a dozen schools within a few miles, and a selection of large hospitals nearby, you might have some choice. But in ordinary towns and in rural areas, there is no choice. What the fuck is the point of designating Little Buggerington Community College as a "specialist science school" when the nearest alternative is forty miles away?
I really do despair sometimes.
- Tony -
Spot on, Tony.
Two points I would have made myself but I was trying not to waffle too long.
I sometimes despair of ever being able to vote Labour again.
Every interview I've heard with Kelly she has trotted out the "that's the challenge we must embrace" argument every time she was asked a question of true substance. There's no choice for a family that can't afford the transport costs of sending their kids to schools on the othe side of town. There's no choice for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds whose parents couldn't give a flying fuck about where and how their offspring are dragged up.
Politics has become sanitised presentation above all else and we'll pay a price for that in the future. I - an ex-member of the Labour Party - can't stand watching the airbrushed twats as they parade their patronising crap on TV and radio. If they've turned me off how the hell do they think non-plitical folk are going to react?
That Ruth kelly, in particular, looks like she was made not born. I suspect a lot of the rest were as well.
O tempora, o mores!
Headline from this morning's Guardian front page:
"Private firms poised to run state schools after reform
"Christian groups in talks to take over from local education authorities"
Gordon effin Bennett.
- Tony -
It's the destruction of a state education system in any meaningful sense.
It truly beggars belief.
Post a Comment
<< Home