Layer 384 . . . Finding A Voice, Teaching Writing, Education, Traditions, Enlightenment, Zen Socialism, Ed Miliband and the Labour Party

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Personal Voice

So why are some of us keen to write, whilst others run a mile from the idea? The esteem we have for 'proper' writers is both a magnet and a deterrent. We grow up thinking and believing that novelists, playwrights, biographers, journalists, columnists and writers of learned tomes are all special people. Some people have large enough egos to see themselves  as potential and future members of the writers club. Others just think they have no voice worth listening to.

Teachers and educators like Harold Rosen pioneered the idea that every single one of us has stories to tell, thoughts worth sharing and a voice worth listening to. What's more, children should discover their personal voice as soon as they are able to talk, and write.

Such radical ideas were starting to gain some traction in schools in England in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, and then along came the New Labour national literacy strategy with its glib prescriptions, and which, in its stupidity, turned the clock back decades - thereby pretty much eliminating all ideas about young people finding a personal voice, writing for their own purposes, writing for audiences and writing for 'publication' - and enjoying writing as a thing that had personal meaning and utility.

We now have a generation of young people who have rarely completed an entire piece of writing which they chose to write as an expression of their own thoughts, memories, feelings and ideas. Or indeed any piece of writing. We have thousands of young people who know how to construct long sentences full of 'connectives', adverbial phrases and "wow words", but they can't actually write well, and on the whole they choose not to. Lacking motivation to write, they don't do it unless they have to.

Wow words? Don't even ask.

I probably feel more angry about the way the  teaching of writing has been perverted by the NLS (New Labour Shitheads) than about anything else in the crazy world of schools and education. The harm that's been caused is immeasurable.

And why did this happen? Because schools were pressurised into doing it - in order to improve test scores and achieve government targets. Because school managers were desperate to improve test results - tests that awarded marks to pupils  for . . . guess what? Scatterings of connectives. Fistfuls of adjectival and adverbial phrases. Shitloads of wow words.

Oops - non-standard English. Short sentences. Must try harder.

After all, this is what proper writers do - innit? Write in long sentences, fill them with subordinate clauses, and use lots of flowery language. Brilliant.

What a stupid culture. What a mean, ridiculous, hopeless society. What a pathetic, ignorant, uncaring system.

Pity the poor kids who now have to unlearn all that bullshit about what good writing consists of. Poor bloody kids who've been bored to tears by meaningless coaching for pointless tests. Poor kids who've never enjoyed writing a single word in their entire lives, let alone enjoyed sharing their thoughts, their ideas and their imagination, in written form.

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How do we expect kids to articulate their thoughts competently when they rarely, if ever, have either opportunity or encouragement to do so? Let alone individual coaching and mentoring in how to express themselves in their personal voice.  All of which takes time, and empathy, with proper attention being paid to what the child is trying to say - not 'all eyes on the teacher and on the whiteboard' methodology, and exhortations to write in longer sentences and use more flowery language. Because that's what adults do, n'est-ce pas?

In order to say something, there ought to be something worth saying. Most of the writing assignments handed out in schools have no meaning whatsoever for the kids who are forced to carry them out. And the pupils aren't fools either - they know that the writing tasks are not genuine or useful, except in terms of preparation for tests. They're well aware they're just pawns in adults' political and professional games. And they're right to feel bloody resentful about that, even as they beaver away at their exercises and worksheets.

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Keeping Up Traditions

"You need to conserve your traditions in this country", said David Ginola, a decent and thoughtful man, and a sometimes brilliant former footballer, speaking on TV this week.

Is that really so? I can think of quite a few traditions we could happily lose. Too many to mention, really.

But what David was talking about was 'foreign' ownership of football clubs, and 'foreign' managers.

Since football's now just a business, and a branch of the entertainment industry, I guess we could say the same about any other business. Maybe we should be hankering after the distinctively British type of management that brought our major industries to their knees, and for that matter collapsed the banking and finance system. What a triumph for Anglo-Saxon ownership, leadership and management that turned out to be.

If you're a European by birth, is someone from another part of Europe a 'foreigner'? When will people learn that it's not the nationality of people and businesses that matter - it's the degree of enlightenment, creativity and imagination that's important. Worldwide we can all learn from one another in order to make a better planet.

The amusing thing at the end of the Ginola discussion was seeing the people who were taking part in it realise that Ginola is, well, foreign. And the gimp who presents the programme is Irish.

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Right now, the Labour party needs Ed Miliband's Zen socialism

Labour's leader should not listen to the goading of the coalition and media. He needs thinking time to plan the fightback

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/22/labour-ed-miliband-zen-socialism

by Jackie Ashley

What is the Labour party for?

That's the question being flung at Ed Miliband by almost every newspaper and by many of his own MPs.

Look around at the political reporting of Labour just now. It's as if a spew of lava has buried the landscape – a molten river of anger, burning lakes of score-settling and an ash-cloud of bitterness under which everything else has vanished.

Miliband's first job is to make sure that the angry, self-destructive mood of the moment does not wreck his leadership too. He attempted to put a line under the past, to give New Labour a decent burial and proclaim a new generation.

Miliband, I can report, is almost surreally relaxed, displaying the sang-froid that has so struck people in the Commons. He simply won't engage. He won't take sides, align himself with old quarrels or even listen to passionate explanations of what when wrong before.

They need to return to the party in the country, and the many who deserted Labour – and really listen to them.

They need to get inside the banking system and try to understand it from within.

They need to discover how to get more good people into local government, and how to strike a better balance between targets and bureaucracy.

They need to go back, rather humbly, to Labour councillors and party workers who felt snubbed and ignored during the years of New Labour, and discover how hard it became to mobilise and enthuse people. And then they need to rebuild policies from the bottom up, not simply watch what the coalition does, and say the opposite.

I hope Miliband holds his nerve. I suspect he will – some kind of Zen socialism we haven't come across before.

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Ed Miliband sets out 'profound' changes to Labour party

Exclusive: Labour leader reveals plans to review organisation and policies in first full interview since winning leadership contest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/21/ed-miliband-profound-changes-labour

Ed Miliband today launches his party on "the hard road back to power", saying it has to move beyond New Labour and commit to changes in policy and organisation as profound as those introduced by Tony Blair in 1994.

He also appears to clash with the shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, by saying a 50p tax rate for those earning more than £150,000 should be permanent, as a way of creating greater equality in Britain. Making the country more equal, he says, is one of the issues that gets him out of bed in the morning.

He warns his party not to expect a quiet life, saying: "I am talking about change as profound as the change New Labour brought because the world itself has changed massively, and we did not really change fundamentally as a party, or come to terms with the changes, and have not done so since 1994."

Miliband dismisses suggestions he has been too low-profile since becoming party leader, saying: "It's about digging in, and it's not about short-term fixes, nor shortcuts to success. There is a long, hard road for us to travel." He does not accept that the deficit is the product of over-spending by Labour, but says British politics has not come to terms with the 2008 banking crisis and the economy's over- exposure to financial services.

He appears to disagree with Johnson, who has described the 50p top rate as only "right for now". Asked if the 50p rate was simply necessary to cut the deficit, Miliband says: "No, it's about statement about values and fairness and about the kind of society you believe in and it's important to me."

He sticks with Labour's plan to halve, as oppose to eradicate, the deficit by the end of the parliament, insisting he will not concede that the Labour government overspent before the 2010 election.

"I don't agree with what the Tories say about us overspending. They are on a mission and we know what their mission is and we have got to take them on. Their mission is to say 'This deficit is not the result of an international banking crisis, it is the result of a crisis in government'."

He also rejects suggestions he has been shifting to the centre since becoming leader in September, arguing: "I said during the election I was the person who would take us beyond New Labour. That's the way I ran as a candidate and that is the way I am going to run the party. We've got to recognise that in terms of who we stand up for – we as New Labour lost touch of people's hopes and aspirations."

The overarching task, he says, is to examine "how you can create greater social justice in the economy without having to rely only on redistribution and the welfare state.

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The Labour party can count itself itself extremely fortunate to have elected a leader who has some of his father's socialism in his soul, and is prepared to speak out for the founding principles of the Labour party. This is in contrast to brother David who sold his soul to New Labour and its scheming, triangulating, mealy-mouthed creatures of the night, most of whom were 'intensely relaxed' about the filthy rich getting even richer. Talking of which, there's a documentary on Mandelson being screened on TV this week - The Real PM. I do hope it focuses on his desire to become as filthy rich as his already filthy rich friends.

All power to Brother Ed, therefore, and his principled efforts to create a credible progressive party whose main aim is to transform society into a proper social democracy - a party that cares about social justice and creating greater equality, and isn't merely hungry for power for power's sake. For Britain to become more like Denmark, for example, would be extremely beneficial.

I'm beginning to think that Ed decided to try for the leadership of the party when he realised that it would otherwise fall into the hands of his NuLab brother, and hated to think what keeping on the New Labour path would do to Britain and to British politics.

He can take a lot of comfort from the fact that under his leadership Labour is already ahead in the polls . . . and things can only get better.
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Layer 331 . . . New Labour, Psychopaths, the Prince of Darkness and Gimme Shelter

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Leading on from yesterday's comments on the mature behaviour of the Coalition's leadership, there was lots of talk on the radio this morning about the childish antics of the New Labour leadership and their disfunctional relationships during the Blair and Brown (and Mandelson) years. Obviously Mandelson has a new book to promote, and he's been advertising the Times' serialisation by playing up to his image as the Prince of Darkness.

The lack of emotional, social and spiritual intelligence shown by Blair and Brown and their ilk certainly ought to be documented. A tale of anger, jealousy, resentment, bullying, plotting, revenge and pettiness. Unprofessional conduct. The opposite of statesmanship and enlightened behaviour.

You can call it childish, or you can see it as extended adolescence, since those people behaved like gang members, playground cliques and sullen, frustrated, egomaniacal, status-seeking, power-crazed prats.

In any organisation the tone is set by the leader - in this instance, Tone - who was clearly psychopathic in his manipulations, his lust for power, his belief in his righteousness & invincibility and his belief that he was doing God's will. All of which is the opposite of a leader who can justify every decision by reference to clearly articulated and agreed ethical and moral aims and goals.

It's been pointed out that New Labour, under both its leaders, was nothing more than a mob that was bent on the aquisition and retention of power, and all its trappings. Hardly better than a mafia, in reality.

In contrast to that we now have a government that has already clearly articulated its negotiated programme for government, and has documented its aims and priorities after a process of internal bargaining and discussion. (See Guardian supplement of 15th May, for instance.) Also a government that has returned to decision-making through respectful cabinet discussion and negotiation, reaching compromises and agreed majority positions. The opposite to a presidential style of government through prime ministerial dictat. The opposite to kitchen cabinet Thatcheresque or Blairesque government. The opposite of scheming and bullying.

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Yet again Mandelson brings up the idea that he and Blair, and New Labour, made the Labour party 'electable'. This is the most detestable bullshit. It was the electorate itself that ejected the Tories, in the hope and expectation that after nearly 20 years of Thatcherism we'd return to a decent form of liberal/social democracy - NOT even MORE neo-conservatism.

After nearly 2 decades of Major and Thatcher the country was desperate to be rid of the Tories, and certainly didn't want a government whose leadership was determined to maintain the economic and financial status quo, arse-licking the City and the power structures of our vastly unequal society - determined to do nothing serious to address inequality - very relaxed about the seriously rich getting even richer.

The country not only wanted better public services - it wanted greater social justice, greater equality, affordable housing, proper living wages, etc. From New Labour it got NONE of those things. It didn't even get better public services, if what you mean by better is the deprofessionalisation of education, social services and health, and staff demoralised by the targets and league tables culture. It got bloated, vindictive and self-serving bureaucracies and children deprived of proper education. It also got war in Iraq and Afghanistan, loss of civil liberties and an insane housing bubble, making even small flats in some areas unaffordable to people on average wages.

How DARE Mandelson boast about making New Labour 'electable'? How come he can't face up to the fact that he helped hi-jack a party that was supposed to be socialist, and in favour of greater equality, and then turn it into Continuity Conservatives - friends of the City and George Bush? The man is completely despicable, and shameless. Not psychopathic - just completely devious, nasty and unprincipled. New Labour personified.

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But talking of psychopaths - the more common or garden varieties - there was a really interesting woman on Desert Island Discs this week - forensic psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00syzlf#segments

A consultant at Broadmoor Hospital, it is her job to try to understand the behaviour of some of the most vilified people in our society. The Victorian institution in Berkshire is home to more than two hundred men; all people who have been convicted or accused of the most dangerous violent behaviour.

Her life outside work seems impossibly normal - bringing up her children, singing in a choir and gardening fill her spare time. Of her work, she says: "Other people's minds are so fascinating I can't think of anything more interesting and I can't understand why everyone isn't a psychiatrist."

Obviously I'd never heard of her, and didn't expect anything other than the usual dreary collection of classical crap. Terrible stereotyping, I know, but then so many of these people they have on the programme - even the more colourful ones - have no time for music in their lives, and no feeling for it either.

Not a bit of it. First track - Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter. Brilliant.

Second Track -   Pablo Casals playing the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major. Superb.

Third Track -  Ian Dury  — Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. Magic.

Fourth track - The Weather Girls   — It’s Raining Men. Excellent.

Her favourite track turned out to be James Taylor's "Shower The People". I've never really paid much attention to this particular singer/songwriter, but this track is interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjKnHAKtYFA

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/james+taylor/shower+the+people_20069201.html

Great programme. What an amazing job, and a very special individual.

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A Final Word on Psychopaths

It seems there's a Facebook tribute page, whatever that is, called "RIP Raoul Moat: You Legend."

In other words, thousands of fucking nutters have signed on to show their admiration for a fucked-up multiple killer. Much love from people who hate the police, all of them, and feel happy to see policemen shot, injured and killed in the course of doing their duty. To say nothing of their support for crims who kill their ex-girlfriends, etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/14/david-cameron-raoul-moat
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Layer 179 Blears, Vandalism, Same Old Bullshit, Mandelson and Equality

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Enduring image of the week: Hazel (I want to spend more time with my constituency) Blears talking on her mobile phone whilst sitting in the back seat of her car, which was immobilised with four flat tyres and a smashed windscreen. "New Labour in its death throes, wrecked and useless" seems a suitable title for that particular snapshot. The tyres and the windscreen were vandalised whilst the Red Dwarf was out and about in Salford, leafletting her people. A spokesperson for HB denied that the damage was caused by someone with a grievance or a grudge, or that the incident had anything to do with a general perception that HB is a greedy, money-grubbing, expenses-fiddling little shit. Really? Yes, really. The Mighty Mouse believes it was done by bored individuals, on a warm summer's day, who had nothing better to do with themselves. They're suggesting it was a random piece of vandalism on a vehicle that no-one would have known was hers.

Well, let's just say it's quite possible that a few locals had nothing better to do with their time than smash up Hazel's car, which is seemingly, according to clips on TV news, as well known in Salford as Simon Hughes' big yellow taxi is in Bermondsey. Such a bleak "explanation" is in itself quite a comment on New Labour's 11 years in power and Blear's efficacy as an MP.

Some might say that such direct action is quite a reasonable way to prioritise your time if you're powerless and voiceless and you'd like to make a political point, leaving aside the small issue of its illegality and questionable morality. But then HB probably believes, like her NL chums, that the undeserving poor and the underclass will always be with us, not least because they're congenitally idle, shiftless and incapable of working hard to better their lot.

We can infer this is their way of thinking, since meritocracy seems to be their buzzword, and equality seems to be a word that's been deleted from the NL political dictionary of useful words and phrases. "Morality" and "ethics" seem pretty redundant as well, leaving aside Gordy's well-known 'moral compass'. People like Blears who advocated the illegal smashing up of Iraq and Afghanistan for their own political ends can hardly complain if someone decides to use similar direct action to further their own ends. There's also the wrecking of the economy, and the financial system, and people's livelihoods to consider.

Whilst remaining open-minded to the possible validity of both these explanations, I'd like to suggest a Third Way. I think it's quite possible that the damage was caused by someone, or some people, who, whilst knowing or caring very little about Blears' expenses fiddling, happen to loathe and despise her simply on the basis that she's a revoltingly smug and alarmingly mad little basket case with an ego the size of the boat she was supposedly rocking, or helping to sink.

It seems to me entirely possible that there are people in Salford who have always hated her attitude, her relentlessly fixed grin, her careerism, her Brown nosing, her uncritical and unreformed Blairism, and the part she's played in hijacking and destroying the values of a once-proud party. This is only a theory, mind you. From this distance it's difficult to say just how many Salfordians agree with those who were interviewed for TV news and stated quite clearly they despised their MP, who of course is being fully supported by her fellow New Labour activists for re-election next time around. Well they would do, wouldn't they?

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On the subject of equality, by the way, I think it's time to reconsider the whole idea. The first thing we need to do, in order to create a more equal society, is to reassure the wealthy that nobody wants to take away any of their wealth. It needs to be made clear that the ideology of egalitarianism has nothing to do with class envy. What they have, they should be able to hold on to. If they have a nice house or two, and a nice car or two, and a fat income, then good luck to them. It's not their fault. They may even deserve it.

So the first point that needs to be made is that there's no need to be scared that socialists want to take away people's money. Except, maybe, from the incredibly, disgustingly rich. They know who they are. And they can't really complain if, after decades of being allowed to add even more unbelievable wealth to what they already own, it's time to pay more taxes. Especially to support such a transparently good cause.

As for the merely well-off and wealthy, it's important to give an assurance that New Socialism does not seek to reduce their wealth by a single penny. What needs to be clearly established is that the pursuit of greater equality, and a happier, more coherent society, is about reducing the huge gap between the wealthy and the poor in this country, and for that to happen the minimum wage needs to be raised, the poor must be enabled to live in better houses and flats, and the children of the poor must be offered a better education. And so on. That's not so threatening, is it? Especially if the already rich are guaranteed to be able to keep their existing wealth.

But not entitled to get even richer, mind. The whole point here is that in capitalist societies the rich demand the right to get even richer, whilst the poor stay poor, usually through no fault of their own, or get even poorer. We're talking now about RELATIVE and ABSOLUTE levels of wealth. And so taxation policies will need to be adopted that maintain the rich at their current levels of wealth but don't enable them to get even richer, or only with reason, whatever we agree that should be.

What's not to vote for there, especially if you're poor and working class? Surely this is something even the wealthy should want to support, so long as they stay wealthy. Strangely enough, it's what the Labour Party used to advocate when it was first established. It's the opposite of 'Lord' Mandleson being intensely relaxed about the filthy rich getting even richer.

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And now a few words about the good Lord. What a bastard. How the fuck is he now in charge of the country whilst Gordy's on holiday? What kind of fucking democracy are we that allows someone who's not only unelected but universally despised to be in charge? Or even second in command? The cynics are currently having a field day, and a right good laugh, suggesting that when Gordo quits then Mandy will slip into the top job. But of course, given the Labour Party's current constitution, and its current command and control structure, this could easily happen. Does anyone seriously doubt that Mandy still craves the PM's job, and that he's capable of drumming up the necessary support within the ranks? That's how bad New Labour really is.
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Layer 170 Will Scott, Jan Bell, Fred McDowell, the Joy of Live Music, and the Horror of Mandy, the Dark Lord.

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It's after midnight and there's a group of baseball caps and some girls in high heels on the pavement under the big willow tree next to the pond. They're not bothering anybody, and the green canopy shelters them from the light summer rain. The 'village' store is still busy: plenty of people with the midnight munchies and a need for alcohol.

The street seems even busier than it was in the humid heat of the afternoon: streams of cars in both directions; girls on bikes going who knows where; paramedics in screeching mini-ambulances; night buses roaring and rumbling to distant termini.

The Turkish supermarkets and kebab shops never close: 24 hour living somehow just happened along this strip. Since the local night club/murder club closed a couple of years ago – licence revoked – the street has been reclaimed by the local people. I stroll home after an evening of fine music at Biddle Bros.

“This song's about feeling guilty, and contrition . . . ” You feel right away that Will Scott is not a run-of-the-mill performer. Catch him performing Stain Lifter at http://willscottmusic.com/music-4.html . He tells me this is his first time out of North America. He's performed in Mexico and Canada, as well as his native USA, but has never been to Europe. Tonight's his very first gig this side of the pond.

Will's a really nice guy, and a very good blues singer - “ a voice as thick as blood”. Excellent guitar player too – he even plays bottleneck really well.

I tell him I think his website is very good, and ask him when he first got into the blues. “It just happened.” He's from a musical family – people who didn't do anything real well, except play music. Who was his biggest musical influence? Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House, Junior Kimbrough.

Fred plays bottleneck at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54GNI2K3-ec
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_McDowell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TyzAAwJnIw
http://www.themusicarchive.com/drboom/fame/mcdowell.htm

Spotify have a load of stuff by Fred McD.

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

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

Will's girlfriend, Jan Bell, who's originally from Barnsley, tells me she left this country in disgust after the defeat of the miners in the '80's, and settled in Brooklyn. Quite right too. She says New York's OK, though far too expensive for most people to move there these days. Jan's organised this tour for Will. She also does booking in the States, and has used her contacts to set up dates in some pretty funky places over here – The 12 Bar in Denmark Street (tonight), Broadstairs, Saffron Walden, Cambridge, Gillingham, Brixton, Hastings, Glastonbury, etc. Jan's also a singer: performing at Glasto this year as well as touring with Will.

http://www.janbellmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/janbell

Will performs with a very good drummer, who lives just round the corner from Biddle Bros, whom he met for the first time yesterday, to do a 3-hour rehearsal. Drummer says he was pretty nervous about performing, and made some mistakes. I tell him to take it easy – 95% good is OK. Really. We all need to keep that in our heads.

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I'm so damned happy about finding a neighbourhood bar where you can go to listen to live music, especially blues, most nights of the week, that stays open till midnight (last orders – nudge nudge, wink wink), and where there's no entry charge so you can just drop in and drop out if you don't appreciate the performers - words can't describe my joy.

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Piers Morgan, on Desert Island Discs last week, chose "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life". I think I'd have to take that as well. Cheers, Piers.

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Andrew Rawnsley had this piece in today's Observer.

The triumph and tragedy of the Overlord of New Labour.
Peter Mandelson has finally satisfied his ambition to be the undisputed, indispensable right-hand man to the prime minister.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/14/andrew-rawnsley-peter-mandelson-ambition

Oxzen posted this comment:

@ fastrob
Thanks for your subtle satire in 'praise' of Mandy and his ilk. Very funny indeed. "A national treasure and a political and historical giant." Fabulous.

As for "Peter Mandelson . . . is the father of New Labour and masterminded the transformation of an utterly failed political party into an unbeatable election winning machine" - New Labour didn't win a thing, only cashed in on a landslide of votes from people who were desperate to get rid of the Tories, and to keep them out of power for as long as possible. Of course we've now reached a point where even the dopiest of voters recognise there's hardly a jot of difference between New Labour and the New Tories, and it wouldn't surprise anyone if Cameron, if he gets a majority, were to invite Mandy into his cabinet. Neither would it shock us if Mandy accepted the invitation.

As for Mr Rawnsley's statement that "the more remote Labour's chances of winning the next election, the greater the internal pressure to lurch leftwards" - like most commentators he still doesn't get it. This is no longer a matter of left and right in politics. It's now clear that many Tories - dare I say progressive Conservatives - have also woken up to the fact that there needs to be proper regulation of the City, proper reform of the Lords, proper reform of our voting system, an end to the culture of target setting in the public services, an end to privatisations, an end to PFIs, and plenty of other policies that, prior to the financial and political meltdown we're still experiencing, were regarded as the province of the Left. Does anyone doubt that Brown/Mandleson will continue to resist radical reform of our broken politics?

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STOP PRESS - Education

On the midday news there's just been an announcement by Michael Gove that the Tories will scrap KS2 Sats and encourage Primary schools to offer Year 6 pupils the same broad, balanced and stimulating curriculum they should be getting throughout the rest of their time at school. They will bring in tests at the start of Year 7 to give a summative assessment of what children can do independently, and of what they know. Those tests will be marked internally. So far so good.

The idiot then goes on to say these new tests will enable "us" to work out "which Primary schools are doing brilliantly and which are doing less well." Doh! As if! How will those results say anything about how well the primary schools are working at Foundation Stage and KS1? How will they even say anything about KS2, when cohorts of children are so different from year to year, and teacher turnover means schools can change from year to year?

We all know the difference it can make to a school to lose or to gain a brilliant experienced Year 6 teacher, or to gain any good teacher for that matter. Sorry Mr Gove. Must do better. Needs to try harder and research more thoroughly. Needs to stop jumping to unjustified and superficial conclusions. 5/10.

It's going to be very interesting now to see whether Gove and his chums support the NAHT/NUT boycott of KS2 Sats next year.
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Layer 166 Shitbags and Trolls, and a Working Class Hero.

So the results from the local government elections were just as horrendous as we thought they'd be, and New Labour is in very bad shape. Good. Someone on Radio 4 was just saying that if it hadn't been for 'Lord' Mandelson fighting hard for Gordon's survival then the Prime Minister would have been ditched by his Parliamentary 'colleagues'.

Well that's one way of seeing it. Another way would have been to assume that the likes of Straw, Darling and Miliband managed to reach the only sane conclusion for themselves – that given the state of our politics Brown's resignation would have made a general election inevitable and a Labour wipeout a certainty, and what kind of idiot turkeys actually vote for an early Christmas?

Then again, maybe Mandy did indeed have to talk sense into a bunch of idiot turkeys. And in any case it's not unlikely that some of those people, at least, might just fancy a quiet life on the backbenches right now, or possibly dropping out of the fucked up world of politics altogether - a world in which there are three circles of power: Parliament, the government, and Gordon Brown and his cabal of personal appointees to the House of Lords.

The thing that's truly appalling is that Mandelson, an unelected and unelectable bastard of the first order, is now not only deemed to have such massive power, but Brown has given him a huge promotion – to First Secretary of something or other – and he's now said to be effectively the deputy prime minister. I wonder what Harriet Harman, a far more decent individual, says about that. I seem to remember writing about this a few weeks ago when someone else suggested that Lord Pete is really the deputy PM.

I was appalled to hear today that 'Lord' Adonis, another complete shitbag, has been promoted to Transport Secretary. How can that happen? What's more, 'Sir' Alan Sugar has been given a peerage and will become some sort of business overlord. Brown must be out of his fucking mind, especially if he thinks the vast majority of people will be pleased with Sugar's elevation. What next? Simon Cowell as Minister for Culture? Piers Morgan as Minister for Adminstrative Affairs?

These are the kind of people running the country, very influential in our national life, and supposedly representing us – we, the people. Like fuck they do.

Or then again, maybe they do have a mindset that pretty much corresponds with that of the poor brainwashed citizens of this unenlightened country, where the likes of Thatch, Major, Blair and now Brown have ruled the roost for so long. Think of that little lot, think of Barack Obama, and weep.

Think also of Hazel Blears, lest we forget. As Sue Perkins said on The News Quiz, if a Titian troll walks out on the party, how come that's supposed to be a bad day for our country? Everybody else on the programme jumped in and gave her a good kicking as well. Wonderful.

It's really not so funny though. There were these two excellent letters in yesterday's Guardian:

Having let my Labour membership lapse, I thought I was over any residual tribal feelings, but that hasn't protected me from my shock at the minister for local government's treachery on the eve of council elections. If the Salford party don't deselect the money-grubbing troll, there really is no hope forLabour.
Rob Raeburn

So Hazel Blears wants to get back to grassroots politics. Some party members like myself never left the grassroots and are struggling to win or retain county council seats. In the last three weeks on the doorsteps I have had to face more questions about the antics of Hazel Blears than all other local issues combined.
Brian Moss

Why wait to deselect her? Why not just kick her out of the party immediately for treachery ('Rocking The Boat'!), bringing the party into disrepute, and attempted avoidance of capital gains tax? Simple – because Brown, the idiot, continued to support her and say what a terrific asset she was, right up to the day of her resignation.

That was the day I first saw her on TV wearing her leather motor bike outfit, looking for all the world like some new species of cave-dwelling leathery dwarf. She can't even walk with any style or grace. (Sorry about the personal abuse – but if you put yourself up for attention, public recognition and admiration . . .)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/05/letters-hazel-blears

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A Real Working Class Hero

Blears tries hard to trade on her Salford origins and constituency - to give herself some sort of woman-of-the-people credibility - but she's as bourgeois as they come. She's an embarrassment to the working classes, if that's really where she came from.

Bobby Moore, on the other hand, was the real deal. Waiting for the big match to come on this afternoon (Khasakstan 0 England 4) I watched a documentary (by Tony Palmer) on our Bobby - hero of 1966 and all that.

He went to school in Leyton, near where I worked after leaving college. He spoke with an Estuary accent, unlike his boss Alf Ramsey, who tried to distance himself from his humble roots by going to elecution classes and learning to speak "properly". Bobby was bright, dedicated, humble and decent. He worked hard at his trade, and was a natural leader. As the film said - he led by example, not by being authoritarian and egotistic.

There was an incredible number of ex-players and journalists, plus friends and family, who spoke about him, and about his shockingly early death from cancer, and not one of them had a single bad thing to say about him. People around the world loved the man, just as they loved that other giant of the game, Pele.

Pele also loved Bobby. It was really moving to hear people like Pele, Jack Charlton, George Best and Alan Ball talking about what a great player he was, and what a wonderful human being. They all said how much they missed him. Especially his son and his daughter. And his wife.

He was calm, quiet and thoughtful, and did everything properly and thoroughly, as a player and as a private individual. He obviously excelled in emotional, social and spiritual intelligence. He played the game for the love of it.

As a young player he earned £8 per week - which was less than his girlfriend earned from her job. Of course the bosses and the owners made a fortune from the sweat of players like Bobby. It just didn't occur to them that they should pay higher wages to the very people who brought in the spectators through the turnstiles.

That's how the class system worked - one set of expectations for the bosses and a different set for everyone else. To be working class meant that you did the work and someone else raked in the profits from your labour. It seems incredible now to think that in those days there was a fixed maximum wage that footballers could earn, and no fixed contracts. If a club signed you, then you belonged to them till they decided to get rid of you.

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Apparently Blears has said, "I passed my 11+. My brother didn't. He drives a bus. I'm in the Cabinet!"

This is the kind of elitist, snobbish attitude that drives New Labour education policies. Manual work bad; non-manual good. No work at all even better, providing you have plenty of money. In their minds there are hierarchies of jobs and hierarchies of people. With the rulers, the government, at the top, of course. They just wish they were better paid. Which is why so many of them were eventually caught filching money from the public purse. All within the rules, of course.

Ẁikipedia has quite a lot of stuff on Blears, including her voting record:

* Voted for introducing government registers on everyone in Britain backed up by ID cards.
* Voted for introducing foundation hospitals.
* Voted for introducing student top-up fees.
* Voted for the Iraq War
* Voted against investigating the Iraq war.
* Voted for replacing Trident.

Nothing there that any self-respecting Tory wouldn't vote for.
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Layer 134 Education, Brown and Harman: Back to the Grindstone.

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“Since the recession began, applications to train for teaching have shot up.”
BBC News Radio 4.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7933690.stm

So this is now a clear case of potential teacher supply outstripping demand. And what does a stupid government do in this situation? Well, a truly stupid government, as represented by Jim Knight, creates an incentive for supply to go up even higher by saying it’s going to compress PGCE training courses from an already ludicrous 12 months to - wait for it - 6 months. That’s SIX months to learn about and become skilled in the arts and sciences of being a teacher.

What the government should be doing, of course, is fast-tracking redundant bankers with their fat kiss-offs into work experience as Teaching Assistants, to give them a substantial first-hand insight into why the majority of them SHOULD NOT, and CANNOT, become teachers.

That would serve two purposes. First, to disabuse them of what it’s actually like to be a teacher, and save them the time and expense of training to be a teacher. Secondly, to rid them of the idea that they have the intellectual, emotional and spiritual resources to be a teacher.

The very few who survived this sort of apprenticeship to a practicing classroom teacher for at least 6 months, before even embarking on training, would then

* be absolutely certain that they have the qualities of sensitivity, empathy, intuition, intellect, instinct, humility, emotional intelligence and resilience that you need to be a good teacher.
* be clear that they can function effectively in a professional setting as a member of a team of professionals, which of course you don’t necessarily need to do as a self-serving banker.
* be clear about the sort of self-discipline and self-sacrifice it takes to be a good teacher.

Having had such a workplace experience, any sensible applicant for teacher training would then demand that basic training should be effective and thorough, and conducted by highly skilled and experienced practitioners in both the college and their placement schools for a minimum of two years.

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There’s talk about the government introducing a Masters degree in Teaching & Learning. The incredible thing is that we apparently don’t already have them. How can that be?

Could it be anything to do with the idiotic world of academia where subject specialisation is all, and “Teaching & Learning” is a bit . . . . . generalist? A bit like Primary teachers - regarded as the poor relations, generalists, etc. When what they are in terms of their professionalism is actually a specialist in child development and pedagogy.

No-one can actually teach a young child who has limited language and literacy without understanding what makes a child tick and how to motivate them to want to learn. Or at least that’s what Primary teachers used to be able to do before NuLabour got its hands on education and turned teachers into operatives in results factories, “delivering national strategies” and teaching to tests.

In Finland, the world’s best educational system has not only an all-graduate profession, it has an all-post graduate profession, with every teacher being trained to Masters level in pedagogy within 5 years of starting teaching.

As a teachers’ Union spokesman said on the radio - it’s completely mad to let semi-trained people loose on teaching children when they haven’t even begun to properly understand the basics of child development and pedagogy, let alone know how to organise up to 30 children within a small space so that each and every one of them has his and her specific educational and personal needs met, all day every day.

Let alone be able to offer them a daily experience of school that fosters a love of learning for its own sake, and allows every child to develop high levels of intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual intelligence.

Even experienced teachers find it difficult to do that - principally because these days they’re no longer trained in such skills. They’re fast-tracked into “delivering” literacy and numeracy strategies and “the curriculum”. In other words, preparing the children for tests and exams.

But of course this is what people like Jim Knight imagine teachers should be doing. Any old banker can surely be trained to stand in front of a class and fill children with imperial gallons of facts. Within six months. Can’t they?

That’s right, Jim lad. Hammer them with grammar, “wow words”, “connectives”(?), number facts, bits of science, history and the rest, plus some training on test techniques, and Gordon’s your uncle.

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Here’s an excellent article, published on the Guardian website yesterday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/09/anthony-seldon-examinations

I can’t imagine Anthony Seldon wanting any semi-trained ex-bankers working in his school. Can’t imagine the fee-paying parents wanting them either. Maybe they’ll be fine for the inner-city schools. Eh, Jim?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2009/mar/09/anthony-seldon-primary-tests

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Returning to Oxzen’s recent comments on Brown and Harriet Harman, I notice Jackie Ashley wrote some very important comments in yesterday’s paper, under the strapline,

Harman and Darling are the PM's most constant allies. He should let them speak out, rather than slap them down.

This is another sad indictment on Brown, who’s still failing to realise it’s time to admit what the rest of us already know about NuLabour’s complicity with the City and ‘globalisation’ this past decade, and understand that he’s now operating in a totally new epoch that requires totally different approaches to politics and economics.

(Harriet Harman) seems to be fighting her cause in cabinet, taking a more anti-City line than some other ministers, and refusing to have her equalities legislation nudged aside by Mandelson . . . Under great personal attack, she's got her head down and is plugging on regardless. You don't have to regard her as some kind of political titan to think this is cause for mild praise rather than contempt.

Personally I think it’s cause for enormous praise - both what Harriet said about the bankers not being allowed to keep their booty, and the fact that she’s still fighting for her equalities legislation, especially if Mandelson is against it - which he would be, wouldn’t he?

Unless people feel politicians, like the rest of the world, have been shocked into rethinking their assumptions, how can they feel confidence in future decisions? This is not about weakness. You can't base a new politics on denial.

The Tories, with all their hedge-fund chums and banking backers, are still far too smug in their finger pointing, but even their language is now altering. Labour, take note.

If (Brown) was able to admit that he had been too credulous about the banks but had learned some painful lessons, he would actually now be in a stronger position, far better able to get a hearing.

If he was able to see Harman and Darling as loyal people with minds of their own, rather than as potential renegades who need to be slapped down, then he would also be in a better place, and his administration would seem more coherent. Why pick fights with friends?

The mood of the country has changed, anyway. People want something different in truly dangerous, recessionary times. They want politicians to be less tribal, franker and more open about what went wrong. It's a time for rallying round, not for finding new divisions.

It's not quite true that everyone failed to see the expanding golden bubble for what it was. A few did. But millions were mesmerised and the consequences are going to be horrible. At this hard moment, there is no place for false pride. We are in it together. The prime minister must be less proud. He has, frankly, less to be proud about.

There were a couple of good comments on CIF after this:

From guardianreeda (on Mandelson, and someone‘s suggestion that he could take over as PM if Brown resigned)

For a completely unelected, completely unelectable multiply disgraced multi-million pound trousering liar to end up running the country courtesy of Labour is indeed a fitting way to draw this desperately disappointing period in our history to a close.

From ardennespate (on someone’s comment that Brown’s successor should fire Mandelson immediately)

... from a large cannon, off the highest turret of the Tower of London, in the general direction of Elephant and Castle. Without a crash helmet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/09/gordon-brown-harman-darling

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Meanwhile, Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is getting involved. Quite right too. This whole economic and financial crisis is, in the end, about spiritual intelligence, ethics and morality, equality and purpose.

Archbishop delivers attack on impact of globalisation.
Time for everyone to look at own lifestyles, he says.

Blaming the greed of individual bankers for the financial crisis was too easy and people should instead be asking profound questions about how poorly regulated economies obsessed with ever-growing consumer choice have skewed the judgments of entire countries, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

Focusing on the greed of bankers had made people lose sight of the fact that "governments committed to deregulation and to the encouragement of speculation and high personal borrowing were elected repeatedly in Britain and the United States for a crucial couple of decades", he said. "Add to that the fact of warnings of some of the risks of poor (or no) regulation, and we are left with the question of what it was that skewed the judgment of a whole society as well as of financial professionals."

The archbishop . . . attacked "opportunistic" offshoring and outsourcing by large international companies. "The present situation favours economic agreements that give little or no leverage to workers and that have minimal reference to social, environmental or even local legal concerns.

"Learning how to use governmental antitrust legislation to break up the virtually monopolistic powers of large multinationals that have become cuckoos in the nest of a national economy would also be an essential part of a strategy designed to stop the slide from opportunistic outsourcing towards protectionism and monitoring or policing the chaotic flow of capital across boundaries," he said.

Plenty of good sense and things to chew on there. Excellent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/09/deregulation-spending-banking

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/09/rowan-williams-lecture-full-text
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