Layer 427 . . . Coulson, Laughing Policemen, Rotating Politicians and Educational Revolutions

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The thing about the Today programme on Radio 4 is that it's often far more entertaining than the so-called light entertainment programmes. In between the dour and dull bits about politics and current events there are lots of amazing, disturbing and brilliantly funny bits.

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When I was young, my dad's favourite record, and one of the nation's favourite records, was  The Laughing Policeman. This was a ditty about a  policeman who couldn't stop laughing, even when he was arresting people. The vocal bit was basically - Ah - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha . . .  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA!  At least that's the bit we remembered. Brilliant.

In the news this week we've been hearing tales of policemen who can't stop shagging. Policemen who are sent to spy on environmental activists and end up shagging them. Policemen who are supposed to give 'protection' to politicians' wives and end up shagging them. All together now for the Shagging Policeman -

Ah  . . . ah . . . ah . . . ah ah ah ah . . . aah aah aah aah aah aah . . . oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
AAAAH!

Time for an update on the rest of the lyrics?

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/t/thelaughingpoliceman.shtml

He's too ......... for a policeman
He's never known to ......... 
And everybody says
He's the ........iest man in town!.  

He ......... upon .......... duty 
He .......... upon his ...........
He .......... everybody
When he's ............ in the street. 

He never can stop ...........
He says he's never tried.
But once he did .......... a man
And ............ until he cried!  


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Alex Salmond said on Desert Island Discs this week, "Political spouses have got the roughest end of everything." Hmmmmm.

I forgot to mention in my comments about Alex Salmond that he's keen on horseracing and golf, and he's a lifelong fan of Star Trek. These Capricorn guys . . . eh? What are they like?

I've just got round to looking up the definition of the verb 'to haver' - an activity engaged in by The Proclaimers, according to them. It means 'to talk nonsense'. Sounds about right.

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Chinese Revolution

"New models of learning are emerging from countries like China." So said the man from Pearson Education, which has just paid a small fortune to acquire an Indian on-line tutoring  company.

http://www.sify.com/news/Pearson-gets-control-over-TutorVista-for-Rs-577-crore-news-National-lbtaOhaejfg.html

How interesting that he focuses on China - a country that has gone to great trouble and great expense to re-train its entire teaching force on the principles and practice of The New Learning Revolution. A few years ago the Chinese leadership became convinced that it was important to abandon 'traditional' forms of schooling - Gradgrindism, Goveism, cramming 'facts' and 'knowledge' for high-stakes examinations, etc, - and they began to design forms of learning that maximise the benefits of the pupils' own motivation to learn, maximise access to the Internet, promote collaborative peer learning, formative assessment, creativity, and so on.

It strikes me as ironic that someone from the private sector apparently understands far better than our Gove-led coalition government that the Chinese are not only the greatest innovators and world leaders in manufacturing processes - having learnt from the best they could find around the world how to make things more efficiently - they are also set to show the rest of the world how to educate people, using the best educational practices they could find. Education that prepares people for life as well as work. Education for creativity, innovation and imagination. Education that inspires people to become self-directed, self-motivated lifelong learners.

There was a programme on TV last night which showed an interview with a group of Chinese students who were talking about world affairs and the Chinese political system - and a very bright, confident, well-informed and thoughtful group they were. Totally fluent in English, of course.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/12/layer-234-new-learning-revolution-and.htm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Learning-Revolution-education-schooling/dp/185539183X 

http://www.thelearningweb.net/page011.html 

http://www.thelearningweb.net/page011summ.html 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9367000/9367626.stm 

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Keeping Ourselves Informed

Aaron Sorkin - the creator of The West Wing and writer of The Social Network - said on R4 this morning that there's nothing more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate. Which is why the ratings-chasing news channels in the USA are so fucking dumb. Or words to that effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Sorkin 

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New Balls Please
I can't abide Ed Balls as a human being, and he was an appalling Minister of Education, but I suppose putting an economist like Ed B in charge of education was like putting a non-economist like Alan Johnson in charge of the economics brief. It was never going to work out well.

Thanks to The Shagging Policeman our poor Mr Johnson has now resigned and Ed B has finally become the shadow chancellor. One thing you can say about Edward is that he seems to have a proper understanding of Keynesian (ie enlightened) economics, and he also seems to have learned lessons from the demise of the neo-liberal Chicago school of (voodoo) economics.

A Brownite he may be. A New Labourite he may be. But if he gives George Osborne a good kicking every so often, and if he manages to forcefully make the case for a more enlightened approach to running the economy and cutting the deficit,  then I'll be first in line to congratulate him. Sadly for Ed Miliband, Alan Johnson was never going to do either of those things.

They may look and sound pretty callow and uncharismatic right now, but in 4 years time Miliband, Balls and Cooper could have the appearance of a winning team - if they manage to properly gel and really take the fight to the coalition.

That's if the coalition manages to last another 4 years. On Question Time last night a very impressive George Galloway, who made mincemeat of Alastair Campbell, predicted that if the Scottish elections go badly for the LibDems, as predicted, then they will pretty swiftly find a reason to bale out and force a new general election.


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And Finally . . . 

Coulson has resigned. Fucking good riddance. Bad luck on Cameron, who would have liked today's news to stay focused on the Johnson/Balls saga. Serves him right for appointing a scumbag in the first place. Pity he didn't learn from his role model's mistake in appointing the likes of Campbell as his spinmeister.

Stand by for the return of Blair to the Iraq enquiry today . . .


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Layer 424 . . . The Importance of Good Music, Alex Salmond's Discs, and the Coalition's Cuts to Music Education

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I've always had the greatest respect for Alex Salmond as a politician who's both a socialist and an anti-monarchist, but his choice of music to take to a desert island was both horrendous and laughable.

Now, I know I've got my prejudices - towards blues, rock and roots music - but how can anyone bear to listen to Alex's appallingly parochial and downright sentimental selections?

I would ask you to click on this link and read these lyrics:

http://www.lyricsondemand.com/onehitwonders/imgonnabe500mileslyrics.html

And I rest my case - without even asking you to listen to the actual tune, to the voices of the performers - or having you hurt your eyes on these saddos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM0sTNtWDiI&feature=related

Truly horrible nonsense. If anyone does click on this video I'd be interested to know how many seconds it took before you decided you couldn't stand it any more - not even out of appalled fascination. Obviously I don't mean those of you who are family and friends of these guys, and I don't mean Scottish people or maybe even Celts - who might be expected to stand by their fellows out of sheer loyalty, if not pity.

What would anyone need to do to this video and this song in order to turn it into a anti-Scottish satire? Nothing at all.

Am I anti-Scottish? No. Am I anti-Proclaimers? Let's just say I don't know these guys in an way other than by their music - and I barely even know that. They may well be fine human beings. Unfortunately, these one-hit wonders had a hit with an appalling piece of romanticised rubbish, and it's hard to imagine the rest of their stuff could be in any way worth listening to.

Music is incredibly important to billions of human beings, and has many positive functions. All of us should talk about music, share music and debate our musical tastes and preferences all of the time. We need to open our minds, our spirits and our souls to music.

One of my missions in life is to promote and share what I think is great music. Another intention is to challenge the kind of musical elitism which maintains that classical music is the only form of music that can be seen as truly great. To that end I'll continue to say that the vast majority of classical music is boring, repetitious, dreary and not worth listening to.

Here's the full list of Alex the ex-choirboy's painful picks:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xgs41#synopsis

Johnny Cash, apparently, was "a devout but troubled Christian", and a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges." "A Biblical scholar, he penned a Christian novel entitled Man in White, and he made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament." Can't wait to hear that.

Only in America. And maybe Scotland.

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Behind the music: Why music education cuts could be a dumb move

The coalition government clearly sees music lessons as a luxury we can do without. But evidence suggests music can be beneficial to both overall academic performance and wellbeing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/jan/13/behind-music-education-cuts

The first things to go when there are governmental budget cuts are "luxuries" such as arts funding. Education secretary Michael Gove's decision to declare music students ineligible for the new English baccalaureate certificate sends the message that music education is another luxury we can live without. As does cutting the £82.5m a year in funding specifically aimed at providing music education – not to mention the news that one in four councils have already issued redundancies for music teachers.

What these decisions appear to ignore are the overall benefits music lessons provide to children and teenagers. Growing up in Sweden, I went to a music school that provided regular academic education with extra lessons in music and choral singing. The school, called Adolf Fredriks Music Skola, was free of charge, and the students – from age 10 to 19 – were accepted through auditions. At the time, it was the only school of its kind in the country. What's interesting is that the school regularly came top for average grades of all subjects. As there is no proof that musicians are cleverer or more academic than others, there must be another reason for these results.

First of all, there was less truancy: if you cut class you would also lose out on music-making at school. Singing together created a sense of community and connection between students, making school something students looked forward to instead of dreaded. There's also been evidence that learning an instrument can improve numeracy and literacy skills in young people, as well as behaviour.

A friend of mine told me about a London scheme in which he'd taught music programming and recording to teenagers in a studio made available through government funding. The young people had been placed on the scheme after being deemed "problem students" due to their high rates of absenteeism. The change in their behaviour was palpable, according to my friend. It was as if creating music brought out a sense of purpose and self-worth that had previously been absent.

Music lessons shouldn't be seen as an optional extra for students who desire a career in the field (just as sport in school isn't just for children aiming to be professional athletes). The majority of my fellow students at Adolf Fredriks did not become musicians, nor did they desire to.

Judging by the comments on my recent Comment is Free blog, about how listening to great music makes the brain produce dopamine, it's clear that music is a great source of passion, joy and wellbeing (in fact, just reading the comments made me feel good). Part of the point of music education is for children to be exposed to music they wouldn't normally come across.

When cuts to libraries were announced last year, writers such as Philip Pullman, Kate Moss and Will Self publicly fought the decision. Why haven't famous British musicians done the same?

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