Archive for Education

British tuition fees push English students into escorting and prostitution

February 9, 2016 Education 2 comments

The British government’s racist tuition fees imposed on English university students have encouraged a quarter of a million students to sign up as escorts and prostitute themselves.

The company behind the Seeking Arrangement service claims to now have almost 250k UK students on its books and is putting it down to the high cost of renting and crippling student debts. Seeking Arrangement is an escort service that introduces young female students to wealthy older men to parade around as trophies and sometimes for sex.

So not only are the British saddling English students with tens of thousands of pounds of debts, they’ve pushed thousands of them into prostitution to pay them off.

Sugar Daddy

The British want to teach Britishness in English schools again

June 12, 2014 Britishness, Education, Propaganda 19 comments

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is StrengthThe British Minister for English Education, Michael Gove, has called for British values to actively promoted in English schools.

Gove says that promoting British values in English schools will stop the illegal indoctrination of children in schools run by Islamists and David Cameron thinks it’s a jolly good idea.

The British values that the British Minister for English Education says English children must be indoctrinated with are:

  • How citizens can influence decision-making through the democratic process
  • An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens
  • An understanding that bodies such as the police and the army can be held to account by the people, through the democratic organs of government
  • An understanding that the freedom to hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law, and an acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour
  • An understanding of the problems of identifying and combating discrimination

Now, let’s just examine these British values a little more closely from the perspective of an Englishman.

How citizens can influence decision-making through the democratic process

It wasn’t all that long ago that we had a British Prime Minister who was elected in Scotland with a cabinet stuffed full of MPs elected in Scotland spending roughly three quarters of their time making laws for England. Nobody in England could influence their decisions making because the British govern England directly from London. It’s also not all that long ago that we had Tony Blair’s former flatmate, the unelected Lord Chancellor England, Lord Charlie Falconer (a Scot, naturally) telling us that we would never be allowed to have an English Parliament. I also recall the murmurs of discontent when the big supermarkets in England went to Alistair Darling (who of course is only accountable to voters in Edinburgh) to ask for Sunday Trading laws to be abolished in England like they are in Scotland but he said no. I don’t think many people who take an interest in politics or the English question will ever forget that we only have university tuition fees and foundation hospitals in England because MPs elected in Scotland overturned the slim majority of MPs elected in England who voted against them. Nobody in England has any influence over those MPs elected in other countries or the unelected lords and bureaucrats that make laws for England. And don’t even get me started on the EU which makes 75% of our laws. Seriously, don’t.

An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens

This is an interesting one this. “If you don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” is the rallying call of fascists and big state activists alike. The fact is, it’s virtually impossible not to break the law nowadays because there are just so many of the damn things and of course problematic people need only commit a minor offence to get them into the system and ruin their lives. The book “Taking Liberties” is getting a bit old now having been written (and turned into a film) during the despotic reign of Prince Tony but most of the oppressive laws and the abuses of our hard won rights and freedoms mentioned in the book are still in force and taking place now but they’ve become so commonplace now, nobody bats an eyelid. Remember the woman who was arrested under anti-terrorism laws for reading out the names of dead soldiers outside Downing Street? How about the man charged with terrorism offences for knowing somebody who was friends with someone suspected of terrorist offences, found innocent by a jury and then put under indefinite house arrest by the Home Secretary because the jury got the “wrong” answer? This is the law that supposedly protects us by essentially stripping us of the automatic right to liberty that we’ve had for centuries.

An understanding that bodies such as the police and the army can be held to account by the people, through the democratic organs of government

Another interesting one. How do we hold the police and army to account? The police force is now heavily politicised with the introduction of elected Police & Crime Commissioners which has put nominal control of most police forces in England into the hands of political parties. Since the Police & Crime Commissioners have been in charge have we seen an increase in accountability? No. Have we been asked what we think the police are doing wrong and what we want them to do better? No. Are people unhappy with them? Yes. There is a campaign to oust the Kent Police & Crime Commissioner, Ann Barnes, to resign after bringing the police force into disrepute in an appearance on a TV documentary, the first youth crime commissioner she appointed resigned for making racist and homophobic comments on Twitter and the second youth crime commissioner she appointed was suspended just 3 months into the job for having an affair with a married police officer. She is refusing the stand down. As for what’s left of the army – how do we exercise any control over them? And more importantly, why should we be able to?

An understanding that the freedom to hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law, and an acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour

This is a good one because I bet the person who went to court arguing that it was religious discrimination for British Airways to allow Sikhs to wear a bangle but forcing her to remove her cross and lost doesn’t think that her religious beliefs are protected. When Muslim street patrols are out in force in Tower Hamlets abusing and threatening women who aren’t covered from head to toe and men who are drinking while the police turn a blind eye, how is that helping to prevent prejudice and discrimination? When the British government pressed ahead with legalising gay marriage in the full and certain knowledge that the EU courts would rule that it was discrimination for the established church to refuse to marry a gay couple despite it being contrary to their beliefs and teachings, how is that helping to protect the freedom of Christians to practice their religion?

An understanding of the problems of identifying and combating discrimination

This is great. Finally, our children are going to be told about the institutional discrimination against England that prevails throughout the British establishment. They’re going to be told about the British government refusing to allow the English a say on how their country is governed whilst allowing the Scots and Welsh devolved government. They’re going to be told how the British are breaking up England – starting with London and its regional assembly, then Cornwall and now a revival of the regional local government reorganisation that they planned with regional assemblies but are now targeting at cities. They’re going to be told that it’s morally wrong and unconstitutional for MPs elected in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to vote on laws that only affect England which are devolved in their own countries. They’re going to be shown the list of attendees of the British-Irish Council so they can see how England has less democratic representation on supranational bodies than the Channel Island, the Isle of Man and Cornwall. They’re going to be told about the laws that only affect England that MPs elected in England voted against but which became law anyway because MPs elected in Scotland voted for them. They’re going to be told about the Barnett Formula and the eye-watering sums of money that are given to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to pay for superior public services. They’re going to be told about the life saving cancer treatments and cures for blindness that are freely available in Scotland thanks to the extra funding the Scottish NHS gets from the English taxpayer that we can’t have in England because there’s no money left to pay for them.

Except they won’t be told any of the above because of the British values they didn’t include in the list:

  • The English are an inferior people
  • There is no cost too great to keep the Scots and Welsh happy as long as the English are paying
  • Englishness must be suppressed at all costs
  • An English life is worth less than a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish life
  • War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, England is Britain

Labour’s hypocritical tuition fees attack on the Lib Dems

May 7, 2014 Education, Labour, Lib Dems 4 comments

Nick Clegg Pledge to oppose university taxThe Labour Party are asking people to share a poster on Facebook attacking the Lib Dems over their broken promise on tuition fees.

The Lib Dem manifesto for the last election promised to vote against any increase in Labour’s university tax and Nick Clegg even posed with a giant pledge card saying he would vote against it and pressure the British government for a fairer alternative. Once elected he voted to increase Labour’s university tax from £3k a year to £9k a year.

That Nick Clegg is a weak, dishonest politician goes without saying but people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and Labour really have scored an own goal with this one. Labour contested the 2001 election saying they wouldn’t introduce the university tax and had legislated to prevent it. Like the legislation Conservative supporters are currently clinging to for dear life that David Cameron has told them “guarantees” an EU referendum in 2017, the legislation preventing the introduction of the university tax was utterly worthless and shortly after they repealed it and introduced tuition fees of up to £3k in England.

The English university tax was imposed on England against the wishes of our democratically elected representatives. Since the introduction of devolved government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the British government only had control of education in England so in any real democracy, only MPs elected in England should have voted on the introduction of the university tax but Labour whipped their Scottish MPs to vote it through and overturned a small majority of MPs elected in England who voted against it.

We wouldn’t have the university tax in England at all if it wasn’t for Labour’s broken promise not to introduce it and Labour’s undemocratic use of their Scottish MPs to impose legislation on England that a majority of MPs elected in England voted against. Using the Lib Dems’ broken promises on the the university tax that Labour broke a promise and broke one of the most fundamental democratic principals to introduce is frankly hypocritical and I hope that it blows up in their faces.

Have the British Department for English Education got any answers yet?

July 9, 2013 Education One comment

The British Department for English Education still doesn’t seem to have a clue how compulsory post-16 education in England is going to work with Scottish and Welsh kids moving here or with English kids moving to Scotland and Wales so I’m having another go at getting some answers …

Hi,

I’m wondering if you’ve made any decisions or solved any of the problems created by introducing mandatory post-16 education in England only that I have asked you about several times but you haven’t had answers for?

The last reference number for my enquiry was 2013/0011665.

I first asked you how this was going to work in 2007:

“Kids currently spend a minimum of 11 years at school, most spend 12. In 6 years time we’re going to see kids spending 14 years of their lives in compulsary education. Will boarding schools be required to provide married quarters for childhood sweathearts who decide to get married at 16 or will the minimum age for getting married be increased to make sure you don’t end up with married couples spending double Science arguing about who’s cooking the dinner when they get home from school and why they have to have the mother-in-law round for Sunday dinner that weekend? What about couples who decide to start a family at 16? It’s perfectly legal – will schools start providing crêche facilities? Who will pay for them? Will 16 year old girls be entitled to maternity leave from school? What about the benefits that will be paid out to these people who have a family at 16 but can’t work because they have to go to school until they’re 18? Ok, so most 16 year old parents would rather laze around on benefits rather than get a job but not all of them do. Upping the age you can get married to 18 won’t work either. You need your parents consent to get married at 16 or 17 in England now but there’s nothing to stop you going to Scotland and getting married at 16 without your parents permission because the law is different there.”

I followed this up in February 2013, naively expecting that you might have figured out how you were going to make it all work in the intervening 6 years:

“Some time ago I wrote to you asking how the change to school leaving ages in England was going work.

In particular I’m interested to know what a Welsh or Scottish person who leaves school at 16 and moves to England is going to do about the fact that they’ve finished their secondary education but would be required to complete a further year or two of secondary education in England because they’re only 16. A Welsh or Scottish person of 16 or 17 years of age will effectively be barred from taking a job in England when the change comes into force.

There is also the reverse situation where a 16 year old moves from England to Wales or Scotland and there is nowhere to complete their secondary education.

The response I got from you didn’t offer any explanation as to how these situations would be handled but merely expressed a hope that Wales and Scotland would follow the British government’s lead and raise the age for mandatory secondary education to match that in England. Clearly this isn’t going to happen otherwise it would have been announced by now so please can you explain how these scenarios will be handled in future?”

Your most recent response (March) basically said you didn’t know how it was going to work and you were clinging to the hope that Scotland and Wales would follow suit and fix your problem for you. They haven’t and they probably aren’t going to so how is the British Department for English Education going to solve the problems caused by enforcing mandatory post-16 education in England?

Stuart

Gove heckled by headteachers

May 19, 2013 Education 3 comments

Michael Gove has been heckled by delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers conference who are mainly opposed to the drive to turn schools into academies, SATS and difficult OFSTED inspections.

It’s right that schools should face tough OFSTED inspections.  We send our kids to school for a decent education – they don’t get a second chance.  The quality of their education determines their prospects in adult life, of course we should demand high standards.  I don’t want my childrens’ teachers burdened with unnecessary targets but I want them to be under constant pressure to achieve because the better they are, the better my childrens’ education will be.

I do agree that SATS are a bad idea though, as are exams as a whole.  Continual assessments are a much better way of assessing ability than performance under stressful exam conditions at a certain point in time.  The worst thing about SATS, though, is that they’re essentially useless – SATS are taken after secondary schools have made decided which kids they’re going to offer places to which negates their only real use which is to stream children into grammar schools.

Academies are a different matter entirely – they are absolutely the right way to go.  Headteachers are better at running schools than local council officers.  It takes years to the right qualifications and experience to be a headteacher, a council officer doesn’t.  It’s no co-incidence that the top performing schools in the country are outside of local authority control.  Headteachers who don’t have the ambition or competence to run a school without administrators at the local council telling them what to do should stand aside for someone who does.

Nobody knows how raising compulsary education age in England will work

March 11, 2013 Education One comment

I wrote to the British Department for English Education last month about the planned change to school leaving ages in England.  In particular I asked what would happen to someone who has already left school in Scotland or Wales moving to England or to someone moving from England to Scotland or Wales at age 16.  Their response basically amounts to “we don’t know, we’re hoping something comes up”.

Dear Mr Parr

Thank you for your email of 16 February, about Raising the Participation Age (RPA).

Education policy and law is a devolved matter, and the Department for Education is unaware of any plans the Scottish and Welsh Governments may have for raising the age of compulsory education in those nations.

With regard to the matter you raise, young people who are resident in England will be required to participate but we must be clear that no young people will be barred from taking a job. The requirements of RPA are that a young person engages with education – whether that be full-time (at a school or college), an Apprenticeship, or if taking a full-time job combines that with part-time study or training. The great majority of 16-17 year-olds who do work, do so part-time alongside full-time education and that will completely be unaffected by the RPA legislation.

In the particular scenarios you outline:

– If a young person at age 16 (or 17 from 2015) move to England from Scotland or Wales, they will be under a duty to participate. We believe that it will be beneficial for all young people to continue in education until they are at least 18, and as mentioned this will in no way bar them from getting a job. Under the Welsh school system, the secondary phase ends at 16, with a further 16-18 phase, in the same way as it does in England. In Scotland, young people may finish their further education when they are 17, and in that instance we are considering making an allowance in the law for them to be discharged from their duty to participate if they attain certain qualifications (e.g. three or more Scottish Highers). However, in any event we do not consider it a harmful outcome for a young person to engage with further education.

– If a young person from England moves to Scotland or Wales, this will be a matter for the respective governments of those countries. However, it is our understanding that it will be very likely that a young person in that situation will be able to continue in education in those countries – and have that funded by those governments.

Once again, thank you for writing and I hope this information is helpful.

So someone moving to England from Scotland or Wales in, say, June at age 17 will be required to go to school or find an apprenticeship for a month whilst someone moving from England to Scotland or Wales having not finished their secondary education is likely, possibly, hopefully to be able to finish their education in Scotland and Wales.

The truth is, this change has been poorly thought out and there are still unanswered questions about how it’s going to work despite the changes taking effect this year.  There is no agreement with the Scottish or Welsh governments for English people to finish their secondary education if they move, just a hope that they will plug the gap and they still haven’t decided what, if any, exemptions will be put in place for Scottish or Welsh people moving to England.

 

How are school leaving age changes in England going to work?

February 16, 2013 Education 2 comments

I’ve just fired off this email to the British Department for English Education.  It follows on from a previous missive I sent to them on the subject back in 2007.

Some time ago I wrote to you asking how the change to school leaving ages in England was going work.

In particular I’m interested to know what a Welsh or Scottish person who leaves school at 16 and moves to England is going to do about the fact that they’ve finished their secondary education but would be required to complete a further year or two of secondary education in England because they’re only 16. A Welsh or Scottish person of 16 or 17 years of age will effectively be barred from taking a job in England when the change comes into force.

There is also the reverse situation where a 16 year old moves from England to Wales or Scotland and there is nowhere to complete their secondary education.

The response I got from you didn’t offer any explanation as to how these situations would be handled but merely expressed a hope that Wales and Scotland would follow the British government’s lead and raise the age for mandatory secondary education to match that in England. Clearly this isn’t going to happen otherwise it would have been announced by now so please can you explain how these scenarios will be handled in future?

University admissions continue to decline in England

January 5, 2013 Apartheid, Education No comments

Last month the SNP reported that university admissions in 2012 were up in Scotland and down in England.

Could you pass the 11+?The reason is obvious: the decline in admissions in England started when the British government’s racist tuition fees were tripled.

I don’t have a problem with less people going to university – in fact, I positively welcome it.  The policy of the last Labour government to have 50% of school leavers in England going to university was absolutely mental and if it was ever achieved, would have made degrees utterly worthless.  Only the academically gifted should go to university.  A degree is a sign of superior academic prowess, it shouldn’t be as commonplace as a NVQ or an A-Level.  If 50% of people had a degree what would you have to do to set yourself apart from the other half of the job seeking population that had the same level of qualification as you?  The A-Level would be the new GCSE, the bachelors degree the new A-Level and the masters degree would be the new bachelors.  School leavers wouldn’t be leaving education and becoming productive members of society until they were at least 26 or 26 and £60k in debt.

That said, the tuition fees system is clearly damaging higher education in England and forcing gifted and talented youngsters to abandon their studies prematurely.  A return not just to nationwide academic selection but proper implementation of the abortive tripartite system started in the 1940’s and a return of free university tuition is the best possible education system we can give English youngsters.  We can pay for this by not subsidising free university education in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for them and anyone else from the EU who decides to study there.

Oxford University offering £22k bribe to Scottish students

June 14, 2012 Apartheid, Education, WTF? No comments

Oxford UniversityThe English have been victims of institutional discrimination at the hands of the British establishment for years – elderly people have to go half blind before they can be treated for ARMD, cancer victims are refused life saving medication because there’s not enough of our money left to pay for it after it’s been “redistributed”, the price of prescriptions goes up in England every year but nobody in Scotland, Wales or NI pay for theirs  – but just once in a while something so blatantly wrong comes along to remind us that discriminating against the English is an integral part of the British psyche.

The British government first imposed university tuition fees on the English in 2003 thanks to the votes of British MPs elected in Scotland despite the tuition fees bill not applying to Scotland.  The British voted again last year to increase tuition fees in England to a maximum of £9k a year.  A university education is free in Scotland, costs a maximum of £6k in Northern Ireland and £3k in Wales.  Students from EU countries have to get the same treatment as residents of the country they’re studying in unless that EU country is England when they’ll have to pay up to £9k a year, just like they would if they studied in England.

This is all old news of course: this particular piece of racial discrimination has been going on for almost a decade now.  What is new is that Oxford University wants to recruit more Scottish students and is offering bungs of up to £22k to encourage Scottish people to come down and study there.  There is no financial incentive for English people to study there, just £9k a year in tuition fees.

How did we end up with a society where discriminating against English people isn’t just tolerated but actively encouraged?

Report says English kids should study maths to 18

August 8, 2011 Education, England, Propaganda 2 comments

A report by Carol Voderman for the British government says that almost half of  English children are leaving school at 16 without managing a C or better in their maths GCSE’s and they should all study maths until they are 18.

The report also says that 300,000 16 year old English students leave school every year without a good enough understanding of maths to function in everyday life.

Firstly, the motivation for commissioning this report: the British government intends to force English children to stay at school until they are 18 by 2013.  The report gives the “evidence” required to justify the requirement to send your children to school for another two years.  There will be more reports like this as 2013 gets closer to show that the British government are doing the “right thing”.

Secondly, the reason why English kids are getting such poor results: inadequate funding and a lack of grammar schools.  The British government spends significantly less on education in England than the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish.  I’ve not heard any mention of problems with numeracy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so presumably the extra funding they get from English taxes has resulted in a better education.

I’ll concentrate more on the lack of a functioning grammar school system as I’ve done the funding thing to death on this blog over the years.  It’s an indisputable fact that some people are thinkers and some people are doers.  Some people’s brains are wired for academic education and some are wired for vocational education.  The two tier education system that we used to have with grammar schools catered for this difference by filtering out the children that were capable of an academic education and sending them to grammar schools and sending those that weren’t capable of a purely (or primarily) academic education to comprehensive schools where they could get a well-rounded education.

There is no shame in the grammar school system – you get the type of education you need, rather than everyone getting the same type of education regardless of suitability.  It’s not surprising that half of all English children are leaving school without a C in their maths GCSE’s, some kids are just never going to get algebra, geometry, statistics, etc.  They need a vocation education with education by practical example rather than pure theory.  When the national grammar school system was in place, it gave opportunities to many academically gifted children from deprived backgrounds who would otherwise have seen their talent wasted.

Now back to the motivation for commissioning this report: building the back story for the increase in the school leaving age in England in two years time.  When this first came up I questioned how it would work and who would pay for it …

Will boarding schools be required to provide married quarters for childhood sweathearts who decide to get married at 16 or will the minimum age for getting married be increased to make sure you don’t end up with married couples spending double Science arguing about who’s cooking the dinner when they get home from school and why they have to have the mother-in-law round for Sunday dinner that weekend?  What about couples who decide to start a family at 16?  It’s perfectly legal – will schools start providing crêche facilities?  Who will pay for them?  Will 16 year old girls be entitled to maternity leave from school?  What about the benefits that will be paid out to these people who have a family at 16 but can’t work because they have to go to school until they’re 18?  Ok, so most 16 year old parents would rather laze around on benefits rather than get a job but not all of them do.  Upping the age you can get married to 18 won’t work either.  You need your parents consent to get married at 16 or 17 in England now but there’s nothing to stop you going to Scotland and getting married at 16 without your parents permission because the law is different there.

Add to that the question of what will happen to families moving between England and Scotland or England and Wales.  Will a Scottish or Welsh 16 year old who has already left school at home moving to England be required to re-enter school?  Will 16 year old English kids be able to move to Scotland or Wales and leave the education system entirely without qualifications and without completing their basic education?  Will English kids be able to go straight from secondary school in England to university in Scotland or Wales, bypassing sixth form/college or will they have to study for another two years (at whose expense?)  before they can go to university?  Will Scottish and Welsh kids be able to go to university in England two years earlier than their English counterparts?

I have tried to put these questions to the British Department of English Education but the contact page on their website is broken. I’ll let you know if I get an answer!

Racist fees result in fewer Scottish university applications from England

July 11, 2011 Apartheid, Education, England, Racism, Scotland 23 comments

SCOTTISH universities have received 5,000 fewer applications from students south of the Border wanting to take their degrees in Scotland amid claims that the recession and uncertainty over fees are causing undergraduates to stay closer to home.

That’s the Scotsman’s theory on why Scottish universities are seeing a drop in the number of English students looking to study in Scottish universities.

Nationality LotteryIt’s not the recession or uncertainty over fees that’s the problem, it’s the racial discrimination and high costs.  I appreciate that this will come as a shock to a lot of Scots and the BBC but English people haven’t been going to Scottish universities because they’re better, they’ve been going because the degrees are easier (4 years instead of 3) and because they’re cheaper.  Or they have been until the Scottish government decided to introduce racial discrimination into the Scottish education system by charging English students up to £9,000 per year for a degree in Scotland while every other “EU citizen” gets free university education largely thanks to EU laws.

If you have the choice of paying £9,000 a year for 3 years for a degree in England (thanks to tuition fees imposed on England by MPs elected in Scotland) or £9,000 a year for 4 years for the same degree with an extra year of expenses and you have to live in a hostile country where half the population hates you because of where you were born, which would you choose?

With a bit of luck Scottish universities will start running out of money soon now they’ve bitten the hand that feeds them because according to the Scottish Education Secretary an influx of Scottish students studying in English universities would bankrupt the country as the Scottish government pays the tuition fees of Scots in English universities as well.

Good luck to the English students challenging this racial discrimination in the courts.

Teachers striking for special treatment

June 22, 2011 Education No comments

Members of the NUT and ATL teachers’ unions are going on strike next week over proposals to make changes to their taxpayer-subsidised gold-plated pensions.

The Hutton Report recommends raising the retirement age, paying less out and requiring more in contributions and it is this suggestion that public sector workers should feel some of the pain as the rest of the population that has driven the unions into a frenzy.

Dear kids we r on strike need more $ sorry teach

Over the last decade, teachers’ pay has increased above inflation, they get three times as many paid holidays as most other professions and have generous public sector pensions for relatively small contributions.  Meanwhile, in the private sector over the past few years we’ve seen unemployment go through the roof, pay frozen or even cut and pensions pillaged by the British Treasury to pay for, amongst other things, public sector pensions.

It’s not just teachers that are being incredibly selfish over public sector cutbacks though, it’s the public sector as a whole.  Lots of public sector unions are proposing strikes to try and protect their privileged taxpayer-funded terms and conditions.  Only this week a UNISON rep was on the radio saying that Shropshire Council workers were going on strike over cutbacks t0 their perks saying “we’re not asking for anything that nobody else has got”.  This was moments after explaining that two of the things they were striking over were guaranteed payrises and being paid a mileage allowance to drive to and from work.  How many people in the private sector get guaranteed payrises just for turning up and not getting sacked or paid by the mile to drive to work in a morning?

Because of the strikes next week, one of my kids won’t be allowed to go to school because his teacher is going on strike (the only one in the school).  That I don’t mind but another one is supposed to be doing his two link days at secondary school next week as he starts secondary school in September.  His link days have been cancelled, not even postponed.  He will go to secondary school in September not knowing his teachers, who is in his class, where his classroom will be or any of the other things they learn on these two days.  And all because some teachers don’t like the idea of having to pay for their own damn pensions.

Cleggy says discrimination against English students is right

April 30, 2011 Apartheid, Education, Lib Dems 6 comments

Nick Clegg has told the Daily Telegraph that it is right English students should have to pay up to £9k per year to go to university while Scottish students should study for free.

He said that under devolution it is right that there should be differences in the two nations and he’s absolutely right – the whole point of devolution is that we have different needs and priorities but the problem is that we don’t have devolution, Scotland does. The master of hypocrisy said:

There’s no point in having devolution if you don’t have devolved and different policy outcomes and that’s precisely what we have in higher education.

You either believe in the Scottish nation, as I do, and that you have Scottish solutions to Scottish issues or you don’t.

We believe that it is quite right, as longstanding supporters of proper devolution and indeed further devolution, that you have different solutions in different parts of the country.

Interesting choice of words from Cleggover – he believes in the Scottish nation and Scottish solutions to Scottish issues but he believes in the break-up of the English nation and British solutions for English issues.

I’ve sent the following email to his office:

In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph you are quoted as saying “You either believe in the Scottish nation, as I do, and that you have Scottish solutions to Scottish issues or you don’t”.

Do you believe in the English nation? Why do you campaign for the break-up of England into regions we don’t want?

Why do you believe that you should have Scottish solutions to Scottish issues but British solutions to English issues? Why do you believe that British MPs elected in Scotland, Wales & NI should vote for increased tuition fees in England but tuition fees in Scotland should be decided by members of the Scottish Parliament?

7 out of 10 people want to either stop MPs not elected in England from meddling in English affairs or a devolved English Parliament. Why do you believe they shouldn’t have what they want but the Scots, Welsh & Northern Irish should have just that? It seems to me the Liberal Democrats should be renamed the Illiberal Hypocrites because you are neither liberal nor democrats.

Click here to contact Cleggy.

Penalising parents for exercising their rights?

September 27, 2010 Education 10 comments

#2 son is due to start secondary school next year and we’ve just put in his application for the same school #1 goes to and his preferences for the LEA-controlled schools.

#1 son goes to an excellent independent school (top performing state secondary in England) and #2 son wants to go there as well but the school is badly over-subscribed – they turn down over 1,000 applicants every year – so the odds are stacked against him getting there.

For his LEA preferences, we haven’t chosen the nearest school to home because it’s rubbish which presents us with a bit of a problem – if he doesn’t get into the same school as #1, how is he going to get there?

I drop #1 son off at school in the morning on my way to work as it’s in vaguely the same direction as the office but the other two schools on #2’s list are in the opposite direction.  What we need is for one of them to be able to go to school by bus but there’s a problem: none of the schools is more than 3 miles from home and a weekly bus pass for a child is £10 – taking off school holidays, that’s about £400 a year!

The 3 mile rule is what the British government says is the maximum distance a child of secondary school age in England can be expected to walk to school.  There are exceptions for children with medical conditions of course and #2 has a heart problem so he fits the criteria for getting a free bus pass … but only if he goes to the local, rubbish school.

You can get a free school bus pass for your children if you meet the usual criteria and it’s this that has annoyed me.  If you’re unemployed your children can have a free school bus pass.  If you’re an asylum seeker your children can have a free school bus pass.  If your household income is below a certain level your children can have a free bus pass.

It may surprise my regular readers to know that it’s not the freebies for the workshy or asylum seekers that irritates me, it’s the latter.  I work, I earn an above average wage but I have 4 children.  Someone on minimum wage with 1 child getting income support, housing benefit, etc., will have as much, if not more, disposable income than me but the household income criteria is an arbitrary threshold, it doesn’t go up if you have more children to pay for.

Ok, so it’s my choice to have 4 children (although I did inherit 2 stepsons) but if the system offers help for parents – which my taxes pay for – then it should do so fairly.  And if the system purports to offer parents the right to choose which school they want (or need) their children to go to, it shouldn’t penalise them for exercising that right.

Say England, Gordon

February 24, 2010 Education 7 comments

The MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath in Scotland standing in front of a British flag talking telling us his latest plan to balls up the English education system.

Brown Excellence In Education

Perverse.

And does No Mandate Brown mention the country he’s talking about once in his 30 minute election address speech? Of course not!  But he does talk about:

  • Teaching in Britain
  • National pride in our education system
  • Our country
  • Some that have concluded that Britain should follow the Swedish system
  • Our national challenge

In every place where you would expect the word “England” he said “this country” or “the country” or, bizarrely, “our country”.  What a wanker.

Parent forces school to cancel trip

January 3, 2010 Education, Scotland, WTF? 2 comments

A primary school in Inverness has cancelled an adventure holiday for its pupils after the mother of a disabled pupil threatened to sue the school for discrimination because her daughter was incapable of taking part.

Rather than tell the idiot mother to crawl back under whatever rock she’d dragged herself out from underneath, Highland Council has cancelled the trip.

The British government’s DirectGov website has these guidelines on obligations for service providers under the Disability Discrimination Act:

Under the DDA, it is against the law for service providers to treat disabled people less favourably than other people for a reason related to their disability. Service providers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the way they deliver their services so that disabled people can use them.

[…]

What is considered a ‘reasonable adjustment’ for a large organisation like a bank may be different to a reasonable adjustment for a small local shop. It is about what is practical in the service provider’s individual situation and what resources the business may have. They will not be required to make changes which are impractical or beyond their means.

Is there any reasonable adjustment that can be made to enable a disabled child whose mother says would be unable to take part in any of the physical activities to take part in an adventure holiday?  No, quite obviously not and Highland Council need a slap for caving in to this idiot.

CEP: British Business Secretary to destroy English universities

December 23, 2009 Education No comments

CEP Header

Peter Mandelson, the unelected British English Business Secretary, has announced over half a billion pounds in budget cuts for English universities and told them to protect quality and access to higher education at the same time.

The Scottish Chancellor announced £600m of cuts for English universities in his pre-budget report a few weeks ago and it is not clear whether this £533m cut to the English universities budget announced by the British Trade Secretary is an additional cut or part of the £600m cuts announced by the Scottish Chancellor.

The introduction of top-up and tuition fees in England, which were rejected by MPs elected in England but passed with the votes of MPs elected in Scotland, priced university education out of reach for most people in England.  The shambolic English student loan system introduced to try and entice more poor people into university has crippled tens of thousands of young English people with tens of thousands of pounds of debts.  A half billion pound cut in the budget will devastate the English university system, a £1.1bn cut would cripple it.

Free £200 school trip (terms & conditions apply)

November 12, 2009 Education, WTF? One comment

#2 came home from school today with a letter offering him a trip to Arthog for a week.

Arthog is an outdoor adventure centre in Snowdonia owned by Telford & Wrekin Council (our local authority) that’s used mainly by schools in Shropshire.

This trip costs £200 for 5 days – not the cheapest school trip but #1 went last year and had a great time.  But what is unbelievable is that the letter says that any kids who are entitled to free school meals are also entitled to a free trip to Arthog, as are those whose parents are on income support.  And how do they subsidise the kids whose parents aren’t paying?  By charging more for the kids whose parents do pay.  This is what they do with every school trip – the last few have come in at £8 and some of them started off lower and then went up when they’d worked out how many parents were prepared to pay.

Of course, with unemployment the way it is, there’s an increase in the number of genuine cases where people have lost their jobs and are on income support but there are a core of parents that don’t work – the ones that are often carrying carrier bags full of beer when they drop them off and pick their kids up – and refuse to pay for trips because the letter says the payment is voluntary (even though it says the trip may be cancelled if not enough pay) and brag about the fact.

The other day one of the kids brought home a letter saying the British government were going to pay for a computer and 12 months of broadband for anyone who is eligible for free school meals.

It’s a great wheeze this free school meals thing, it’s just a shame people who work for a living aren’t entitled to anything.

Manifesto Clubs calls on schools to stop demonising children

November 5, 2009 Education, England, Police State, Political Correctness, WTF? One comment

Three years ago one of my kids was punished for “racism” at school after he called one of his black friends a monkey when we was pulling monkey faces and making monkey noises.

The Manifesto Club has finally noticed that something is seriously amiss when primary and nursery school kids are being accused of racism and called for changes to the law that requires English schools to fill out racist incident forms every time a child says something that could be construed as racist.

Most of the children accused of racism on these forms are between 9 and 11 years of age.

IPPR wants to stop loans for middle-class students

August 29, 2009 Education, Labour 3 comments

Liebour’s pet far-left extremists, the IPPR, have suggested that students from “middle class” families in England should be refused student loans to pay tuition fees to make more money available to students from poor families who are more likely to vote Liebour.

They are also calling for grants and bursaries to be restricted to students from poor families who are more likely to vote Liebour rather than being made available based on ability so clever people judged by a panel of failed communists to be from a “middle class” family can be denied a university education to make way for semi-literate chavs from sink hole housing estates.

The British Department for English Business, Innovation and Skills is conducting a review of student funding for university education in England and is planning to increase the amount English universities are allowed to charge for courses.

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