The revolution, if it comes, might not be televised but if David Dimbleby, something of a silverback amongst television presenters, is right the only place British children would be likely to learn one had taken place from would be a history programme broadcast on television long after the event.
In an interview with the Radio Times, not perhaps the most cerebral of magazines, he claimed this week that programmes such as his own The Seven Ages of Britain’ (you might think there was a discreet plug in there somewhere I couldn’t possibly comment) are ‘filling in the gaps left by the less than impressive treatment of history in the school curriculum.’
His views are echoed by a survey carried out by the Historical Association in which out of 700 schools questioned 3 out of 10 no longer taught history as a separate subject at Key Stage 3.
Melanie Jones, education manager for the Historical Association, said that although history was in general taught well in British schools ‘far too little curriculum times’ was devoted to the subject.
This isn’t a new complaint, for years parents, education professionals and people believe history matters have been complaining about the problems caused by a narrow curriculum; usually summed up as consisting of Hitler, Henry and the Holocaust, that seems designed for the specific purpose of killing kid’s interest in history off in the quickest possible time. There is also, of course, the perennial problem of a school curriculum that seems to grow ever more packed with requirements thought indispensable under government initiatives that are all too often forgotten about before the bureaucrats have come back from their lunch break.
There is though another problem at work here, namely that we are now governed by people who are, for the most part, historically illiterate. Nothing else could explain how we sleepwalked into the appalling mess that is the war in Afghanistan when an understanding of the horrors visited on British forces there in the nineteenth century would have been wise counsel against making war in that benighted land. The same goes for our approach to the economy, we repeated the mistakes of the 1920’s by allowing the financial markets to run wildly out of control and those of the 1930’s by doing too little to help people who have had their livelihoods destroyed by the crash. If all this leads to us having to relive the horrors of the 1940’s; don’t say the history books didn’t warn you.
The inescapable truth is that one of the most valuable resources any country can have is its history, without a clear understanding of where we’ve been where we’re going to could well turn out to be somewhere we don’t much like.
Source: bbc.co.uk
An ASBO for Rover?
As if they didn’t have enough to keep them busy the government announced plans this week to introduce ‘dog control notices’, ASBO’s for Pit Bull Terriers if you like.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson, a postman before he was a politician and so no stranger to getting bitten by dogs, said ‘The vast majority of dog owners are responsible, but there is no doubt some people breed and keep dogs for the sole purpose of intimidating others.’
He went on to say ‘it is this sort of behaviour that we will not tolerate; it is the sort of behaviour we are determined to stop.’ Cue the patriotic music and thunderous applause for the hero of the hour.
Meanwhile back in the Westminster bubble plans are afoot to launch a public consultation on legislation to make it compulsory for all dog owners to have their pets micro-chipped and to buy third party insurance.
As with so many things the brown government has done since 2007 this is all very well meant and so utterly impractical it is doomed to fail. The irresponsible owners the plans are aimed at are no more likely to buy insurance for their dog than they are for their car; as for giving Fang or Fido, or whatever they call the slavering beast that half drags them around the local sink estate an Anti Social Behaviour order, they’d probably hang it is pride of place on the wall next to their own.
Source: politics.co.uk
And another thing:
All this week BBC 2 has been showing ‘Lambing Live’ as part of its prime time schedules, a programme that does exactly what it says on the tin; meaning that a bunch of cute little lambs get born and nothing much else happens.
I know that budget cuts mean Auntie has had to tighten her belt, but if this is the shape of things to come what can we expect next; coming soon ‘Paint Drying-Live?’
Its all gone wrong, Chris Evans taking over the Radio 2 breakfast slot vacated by Sir Terry Wogan at the start of the year, this week the former enfant terrible of radio was pictured creeping into Broadcasting House looking like a haunted wreck.
The Met Office may have given up making long range forecasts, but I more than willing to predict storm conditions in coffee cups across Middle England; it’s not a hurricane dears so please stop panicking.
Lets face it presenting a breakfast show on radio isn’t exactly rocket science, all you need is a pile of records and a store of breezy chat, whether the latter comes from an elderly stage Irishman or an overgrown ginger schoolboy is neither here nor there.
Give it six months and the TOGS currently getting their comfy underwear in a twist over nasty Chris taking over from lovely Terry will have forgotten what all the fuss was about.
Do I care whether Samantha Cameron, wife of the fragrant David, voted Labour during her wild youth? Not all that much.
Being married to a politician does not mean being married to his or her party too, unless, of course, you happen to be the wife of the honourable member for Stepford that is.
Friday, 12 March 2010
Friday, 26 February 2010
No common sense please; we’re talking about, well you know….
This Tuesday the world as we know it cam to an end, well it did if you are an ‘activist’ on either side of the ugly row over how sex education is delivered in British schools.
The liberals think the sky has come crashing down because the government has caved in to pressure from faith groups and ‘watered down’ plans to teach children about sexual relationships by framing part of what they say with the beliefs of their particular creed; conservatives, meanwhile are still in the most frightful tizzy about the dread word S*E*X even being mentioned in a classroom context. Everybody knows babies are deposited under gooseberry bushes by the stork and anyone who says any different is a danger to the nation’s morals.
I surprised myself this week by simultaneously feeling sympathy for Schools minister Ed Balls and recognising him as speaking, for once with the voice of common sense, when he told the BBC’s Today programme that the amendment to the bill allowed faith schools to say, for example ‘we as a religion believe contraception is wrong’, but not to turn a reasonable statement of a faith based position into a refusal to discuss the subject at all.
This, despite the best efforts of several campaign groups who really should know better to say otherwise, is by no means a charter for unrestrained bigotry, its merely the sort of compromise sensible people make in order to get on with the business of living in harmony.
Unfortunately whenever the subject of sex rears its head all common sense seems to go out of the window. I well remember my own school sex education lessons, or lesson since we only ever had one. We were all herded into the school hall at the age of about twelve and sat down in front of a television programme that began with some bad cartoon images of unidentified body parts and a stentorian voice intoning ‘boys and girls are different’ and didn’t go into much more detail about the subject over the forty minutes that followed. Frankly we’d have probably learnt more about sexual relations from watching an episode of the Benny Hill Show.
There is a serious problem here, the discussion about a vital issue, namely how we teach our young people that there is more than one type of relationship and that it is better to wait until you’ve abandoned childish things once and for all before entering into any of them, has become totally divorced from reality. Both sides have adopted extreme positions from which they refuse to retreat for the sake of their collective ego.
Let’s be honest, ignorance about sex does not automatically lead to chastity, a liberal acceptance that young people by their very nature will want to experiment with relationships has to be backed by a recognition that rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. Worst of all the ugly squabble about sex education allows a very British belief that sex is either smutty fun or a cause of toe curling embarrassment that should have been consigned to the dustbin of history long ago to be endlessly perpetuated.
What young people need is to be given the fact about sexual relations that will allow them to make informed decisions and the moral courage to ignore peer pressure and wait for the right person and circumstances. They will never get that until the debate about how the subject is taught in schools becomes more mature that it is at present.
Ban the bomb and build a better future.
Britain’s former top soldier Sir Richard Dannatt, now a defence advisor to the Conservative Party, has said the government was right to renew the Trident missile system ‘but only on a very narrow points decision.’
He went on to say that none of the three main parties had much enthusiasm for maintaining the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent and things might be different in five years time.
Five years; just who do we think we’re deterring with this relic of the cold war right now?
Our troops are fighting a very hot war in Afghanistan without the equipment they need and facing huge casualties as a result, at home the public purse strings are being tightened to breaking point and even more swinging cuts are promised for after the election, if either Labour or the Tories want to cut the deficit and regain a little public trust after what looks like being the most angry election in British political history they would be wise to scrap this monument to cold war hubris and invest the money saved in building for the future.
And another thing:
After a week of rumours and revelations I’m more or less convinced there is not so much a grain as a whole darned boulder of truth in the stories about Gordon Brown’s volcanic temper.
He was; of course, wrong to take his frustrations out on his aides and hurling mobile phones around like a stroppy toddler does little to add lustre to the office of state once held by Gladstone and Churchill. Spare a thought though for the two Downing Street employees who phoned the National Bullying Helpline only to have their concerns passed, admittedly anonymously, on to the media. Isn’t betraying their trust also a form of bullying?
Full marks to UKIP MEP Nigel Farage who this week scandalised the stuffy European Parliament by describing EU President Herman Von Rumpoy as having the ‘charisma of a wet rag’ and looking like ‘a second rate bank clerk.’
His outburst may have got him cast into outer darkness so far as Brussels is concerned, but Farage, who plans to stand against commons speaker John Bercow at the general election, could cut a real dash at Westminster. If only because he would have the time of his life popping the inflated egos of his fellow parliamentarians like so many cheap balloons.
And finally, Cheryl Cole is to split for her footballer husband Ashley after he was caught playing away yet again.
She’s the nation’s sweetheart and determined to make it big in America; he’s a fading footballer with a charming habit of texting naked pictures of himself to female fans, anyone surprised that their union has ended in the divorce courts is going to be in for a real shock if they ever find out what bears get up to in the woods.
The liberals think the sky has come crashing down because the government has caved in to pressure from faith groups and ‘watered down’ plans to teach children about sexual relationships by framing part of what they say with the beliefs of their particular creed; conservatives, meanwhile are still in the most frightful tizzy about the dread word S*E*X even being mentioned in a classroom context. Everybody knows babies are deposited under gooseberry bushes by the stork and anyone who says any different is a danger to the nation’s morals.
I surprised myself this week by simultaneously feeling sympathy for Schools minister Ed Balls and recognising him as speaking, for once with the voice of common sense, when he told the BBC’s Today programme that the amendment to the bill allowed faith schools to say, for example ‘we as a religion believe contraception is wrong’, but not to turn a reasonable statement of a faith based position into a refusal to discuss the subject at all.
This, despite the best efforts of several campaign groups who really should know better to say otherwise, is by no means a charter for unrestrained bigotry, its merely the sort of compromise sensible people make in order to get on with the business of living in harmony.
Unfortunately whenever the subject of sex rears its head all common sense seems to go out of the window. I well remember my own school sex education lessons, or lesson since we only ever had one. We were all herded into the school hall at the age of about twelve and sat down in front of a television programme that began with some bad cartoon images of unidentified body parts and a stentorian voice intoning ‘boys and girls are different’ and didn’t go into much more detail about the subject over the forty minutes that followed. Frankly we’d have probably learnt more about sexual relations from watching an episode of the Benny Hill Show.
There is a serious problem here, the discussion about a vital issue, namely how we teach our young people that there is more than one type of relationship and that it is better to wait until you’ve abandoned childish things once and for all before entering into any of them, has become totally divorced from reality. Both sides have adopted extreme positions from which they refuse to retreat for the sake of their collective ego.
Let’s be honest, ignorance about sex does not automatically lead to chastity, a liberal acceptance that young people by their very nature will want to experiment with relationships has to be backed by a recognition that rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. Worst of all the ugly squabble about sex education allows a very British belief that sex is either smutty fun or a cause of toe curling embarrassment that should have been consigned to the dustbin of history long ago to be endlessly perpetuated.
What young people need is to be given the fact about sexual relations that will allow them to make informed decisions and the moral courage to ignore peer pressure and wait for the right person and circumstances. They will never get that until the debate about how the subject is taught in schools becomes more mature that it is at present.
Ban the bomb and build a better future.
Britain’s former top soldier Sir Richard Dannatt, now a defence advisor to the Conservative Party, has said the government was right to renew the Trident missile system ‘but only on a very narrow points decision.’
He went on to say that none of the three main parties had much enthusiasm for maintaining the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent and things might be different in five years time.
Five years; just who do we think we’re deterring with this relic of the cold war right now?
Our troops are fighting a very hot war in Afghanistan without the equipment they need and facing huge casualties as a result, at home the public purse strings are being tightened to breaking point and even more swinging cuts are promised for after the election, if either Labour or the Tories want to cut the deficit and regain a little public trust after what looks like being the most angry election in British political history they would be wise to scrap this monument to cold war hubris and invest the money saved in building for the future.
And another thing:
After a week of rumours and revelations I’m more or less convinced there is not so much a grain as a whole darned boulder of truth in the stories about Gordon Brown’s volcanic temper.
He was; of course, wrong to take his frustrations out on his aides and hurling mobile phones around like a stroppy toddler does little to add lustre to the office of state once held by Gladstone and Churchill. Spare a thought though for the two Downing Street employees who phoned the National Bullying Helpline only to have their concerns passed, admittedly anonymously, on to the media. Isn’t betraying their trust also a form of bullying?
Full marks to UKIP MEP Nigel Farage who this week scandalised the stuffy European Parliament by describing EU President Herman Von Rumpoy as having the ‘charisma of a wet rag’ and looking like ‘a second rate bank clerk.’
His outburst may have got him cast into outer darkness so far as Brussels is concerned, but Farage, who plans to stand against commons speaker John Bercow at the general election, could cut a real dash at Westminster. If only because he would have the time of his life popping the inflated egos of his fellow parliamentarians like so many cheap balloons.
And finally, Cheryl Cole is to split for her footballer husband Ashley after he was caught playing away yet again.
She’s the nation’s sweetheart and determined to make it big in America; he’s a fading footballer with a charming habit of texting naked pictures of himself to female fans, anyone surprised that their union has ended in the divorce courts is going to be in for a real shock if they ever find out what bears get up to in the woods.
Friday, 19 February 2010
Is it time to start being beastly to the bankers?
Don’t lets be beastly to the bankers has been a quiet refrain in the sometimes fraught national discussion about the economy since Northern Rock hit the wall in 2007, like dentists and tax collectors they may never be our favourite people but they do have their uses. At least that’s what we thought until recently, now most people are moving to a view of a seemingly out of control financial sector that used to be the province of the Socialist Workers Party; meaning outright hostility.
This is almost entirely the fault of the banks themselves, according to figures released by the Institute of Directors on Tuesday 60% of small businesses are still struggling to get credit from their bank. According to the public accounts committee the banks nationalised in late 2008 are particularly reluctant to hand out loans despite having themselves benefited from the biggest payday loan of them all courtesy of the British taxpayer.
Phillip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told the BBC this ‘made a mockery’ of government claims to be helping small businesses cope during the recession. Remember when it comes to our financial woes, so the received wisdom goes all roads lead back to the government and its relationship with the banks; too cosy during the good times and far too timid once things started to get a little stormy.
‘The nationalised and semi-nationalised banks’ said Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats, still the popular prophet when it comes to all things related to the economy despite his fumbled ‘mansion tax’ proposals during their party conference, ‘owe their existence to us, the taxpayer and they must make good on their commitments to increase lending at reasonable rates.’
That doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon, not in a week when Barclays, who admittedly never took a penny from the government in 2008 but are still slow to lend, announced a rise in profits of 92% to £11.6billion and plans to pay out £1.5billion in bonuses to staff.
It would be wrong to lay all of the blame for our economic woes on the pinstriped shoulders of the bankers, for every irresponsible lender there must be an equally feckless borrower. You would be hard pressed to make a case for allowing personal debt to continue rising at the rate it did before the crash; but lending to small businesses is different.
The financial services sector has proved to be too unstable a platform on which to build an economy, public services cuts will mean the government itself cannot any longer create jobs to rescue areas that have lost their traditional industries from economic decline, only small businesses can save the day and return Britain to prosperity. To do that they need the banks we all rescued back in 2008 to release the funds they need to grow.
Source: politics.co.uk
Nobody has the right not to be offended.
The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has rejected a complaint lodged by the civil partner of the late Boyzone singer Stephen Gatley that an article written about his partner’s death by Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir was offensive.
The article in question attracted 25,000 complaints to the PCC and two made to the Metropolitan Police, it was also the subject of a campaign on the social networking site Twitter.
Giving his ruling Tony Connell of the CPS said that he had considered Article 10 of the Human Rights Act which protect individuals right to freedom of expression saying ‘Though the complainants and many others found the article offensive, but this does not make its publication unlawful.’
The article, in which Moir alleged there was something sleazy about the way Mr Gatley met his untimely death, was indeed offensive, particularly so since it was published only a couple of days after the event. I disagree with every word she wrote, but have to defend her right to write what she did, not least because it is the job of a newspaper columnist to challenge whatever stands for the received wisdom of his or her day.
Freedom of speech and a press free from the shadow of the censor is one of the things that prevents witless prejudice, of which there was no shortage in Ms Moir’s article, from turning into brutal persecution because nobody dares challenge it, for that having to occasionally hear, or in this case read, something we don’t much like is a fair price to pay.
Source: intenews.co.uk
Too many twits make….
Here’s a handy guide for Labour MP’s planning to make use of that new fangled Twitter thingy all the youngsters keep on about to ‘connect’ with the electorate: 1) open a twitter account, 2) then open your, virtual, mouth and 3) swiftly insert both feet into said orifice.
That, anyway, seems to be the advice followed by David Wright who this week got into hot water for describing people who voted Tory as ‘scum sucking pigs.’
Conservative Party Chairman Eric Pickles described this as ‘not the language you expect from a minister of the crown.’
You can, just about, forgive the likes of Ashley Cole and Vernon Kay for being too dim to realise that in cyberspace everybody can hear you twitter, however tedious of dumb what you have to say might be, but politicians should be a little more worldly, or failing that capable of creating insults that rise above the level of the playground.
Source: bbc.co.uk
This is almost entirely the fault of the banks themselves, according to figures released by the Institute of Directors on Tuesday 60% of small businesses are still struggling to get credit from their bank. According to the public accounts committee the banks nationalised in late 2008 are particularly reluctant to hand out loans despite having themselves benefited from the biggest payday loan of them all courtesy of the British taxpayer.
Phillip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told the BBC this ‘made a mockery’ of government claims to be helping small businesses cope during the recession. Remember when it comes to our financial woes, so the received wisdom goes all roads lead back to the government and its relationship with the banks; too cosy during the good times and far too timid once things started to get a little stormy.
‘The nationalised and semi-nationalised banks’ said Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats, still the popular prophet when it comes to all things related to the economy despite his fumbled ‘mansion tax’ proposals during their party conference, ‘owe their existence to us, the taxpayer and they must make good on their commitments to increase lending at reasonable rates.’
That doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon, not in a week when Barclays, who admittedly never took a penny from the government in 2008 but are still slow to lend, announced a rise in profits of 92% to £11.6billion and plans to pay out £1.5billion in bonuses to staff.
It would be wrong to lay all of the blame for our economic woes on the pinstriped shoulders of the bankers, for every irresponsible lender there must be an equally feckless borrower. You would be hard pressed to make a case for allowing personal debt to continue rising at the rate it did before the crash; but lending to small businesses is different.
The financial services sector has proved to be too unstable a platform on which to build an economy, public services cuts will mean the government itself cannot any longer create jobs to rescue areas that have lost their traditional industries from economic decline, only small businesses can save the day and return Britain to prosperity. To do that they need the banks we all rescued back in 2008 to release the funds they need to grow.
Source: politics.co.uk
Nobody has the right not to be offended.
The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has rejected a complaint lodged by the civil partner of the late Boyzone singer Stephen Gatley that an article written about his partner’s death by Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir was offensive.
The article in question attracted 25,000 complaints to the PCC and two made to the Metropolitan Police, it was also the subject of a campaign on the social networking site Twitter.
Giving his ruling Tony Connell of the CPS said that he had considered Article 10 of the Human Rights Act which protect individuals right to freedom of expression saying ‘Though the complainants and many others found the article offensive, but this does not make its publication unlawful.’
The article, in which Moir alleged there was something sleazy about the way Mr Gatley met his untimely death, was indeed offensive, particularly so since it was published only a couple of days after the event. I disagree with every word she wrote, but have to defend her right to write what she did, not least because it is the job of a newspaper columnist to challenge whatever stands for the received wisdom of his or her day.
Freedom of speech and a press free from the shadow of the censor is one of the things that prevents witless prejudice, of which there was no shortage in Ms Moir’s article, from turning into brutal persecution because nobody dares challenge it, for that having to occasionally hear, or in this case read, something we don’t much like is a fair price to pay.
Source: intenews.co.uk
Too many twits make….
Here’s a handy guide for Labour MP’s planning to make use of that new fangled Twitter thingy all the youngsters keep on about to ‘connect’ with the electorate: 1) open a twitter account, 2) then open your, virtual, mouth and 3) swiftly insert both feet into said orifice.
That, anyway, seems to be the advice followed by David Wright who this week got into hot water for describing people who voted Tory as ‘scum sucking pigs.’
Conservative Party Chairman Eric Pickles described this as ‘not the language you expect from a minister of the crown.’
You can, just about, forgive the likes of Ashley Cole and Vernon Kay for being too dim to realise that in cyberspace everybody can hear you twitter, however tedious of dumb what you have to say might be, but politicians should be a little more worldly, or failing that capable of creating insults that rise above the level of the playground.
Source: bbc.co.uk
Friday, 12 February 2010
Could Ethel Austin follow Woollies into retail oblivion?
Ethel Austin, for years a feature of most British high streets, has gone into administration for the second time in two years, all 276 stores are still trading but administrators MCR said that some may have to close. In an ironic sidebar to coverage of the announcement it was noted that Ethel Austin bought twelve sites that belonged to that other now vanished high street stalwart, Woolworths.
Geoff Bouchier of MCR told the BBC that the global economic crisis had hit retailers hard and that as a result many companies have ‘struggled to secure funds which has in turn impacted on their ability to generate sales revenue. The recent cold snap has also hit the retail sector hard with shoppers staying at home in front of the fire.
I’m not really the sort of customer that Ethel Austin ever considered part of its target market, I ‘m more ‘man at C&A, and that didn’t turn out too well did it? but I’d be sorry to see them go. If only because there are more than enough boarded up shops on the nation’s high streets as it is.
You don’t, I think, have to be a retail expert, what we used to call a shopkeeper before everyone who wanted us to think they were someone had to have a title, to see why Woolworths and now Ethel Austin have come a cropper. Put simply they were too cheap to cash in on the obsession with all things chic that has gripped the country for the past fifteen years and not cheap enough to compete with the rise and rise of the pound shops.
‘2010 will be tough,’ said Mark Hudson of Pricewaterhousecoopers, predicting that the performance of the retail sector would be ‘slow but steady until summer, then all bets are off until the first budget after the election.’
If you’re willing to ignore how little the willingness of a respected firm of accountants to abandon simple punctuation in favour of something their marketing people told them was ‘hip’ says about their capacity for common sense, and I am, then Mr Hudson might just have a point. Maybe what we need is a new government willing to tackle the deficit, or just the old government with a new mandate and someone a little calmer at the helm to restore a little confidence amongst Britain’s retailers. It would be a shame if by the time it does poor old Ethel Austin has lost her shirt and cheap hoop earrings on the economic roulette wheel.
Politicians: don’t call us and we won’t call you.
As they limber up for the coming general election the Labour Party has got itself into trouble over cold calling voters. The calls, which featured the voice of former Coronation Street star Liz Dawn, were made to 500,000 people without their consent and the party has been heavily criticised by the Information Commissioner.
The Tories and Liberal Democrats have also faced criticism for subjecting unsuspecting voters to what the Americans call ‘robocalls’ designed to drum up support ahead of an election.
At a time when they need to regain out trust after the expenses scandals of the past year the three main political parties seem to have shot themselves in both feet by resorting to the tactics used by dodgy double glazing firms in a vain attempt to ‘connect’ with the electorate. Even if they do use the voice of a much loved celebrity unsolicited phone calls are a nuisance most voters can well do without.
Death of a fashion maverick.
How sad to hear late yesterday of the death of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, about which some in the media have dropped dark hints concerning possible suicide.
His clothes were unwearable, let alone unaffordable for most mortals, but in their design they embodied a wilful eccentricity that was uniquely British.
Without doubt the fashion world and the London social scene will be a much less colourful place now that he has gone.
Geoff Bouchier of MCR told the BBC that the global economic crisis had hit retailers hard and that as a result many companies have ‘struggled to secure funds which has in turn impacted on their ability to generate sales revenue. The recent cold snap has also hit the retail sector hard with shoppers staying at home in front of the fire.
I’m not really the sort of customer that Ethel Austin ever considered part of its target market, I ‘m more ‘man at C&A, and that didn’t turn out too well did it? but I’d be sorry to see them go. If only because there are more than enough boarded up shops on the nation’s high streets as it is.
You don’t, I think, have to be a retail expert, what we used to call a shopkeeper before everyone who wanted us to think they were someone had to have a title, to see why Woolworths and now Ethel Austin have come a cropper. Put simply they were too cheap to cash in on the obsession with all things chic that has gripped the country for the past fifteen years and not cheap enough to compete with the rise and rise of the pound shops.
‘2010 will be tough,’ said Mark Hudson of Pricewaterhousecoopers, predicting that the performance of the retail sector would be ‘slow but steady until summer, then all bets are off until the first budget after the election.’
If you’re willing to ignore how little the willingness of a respected firm of accountants to abandon simple punctuation in favour of something their marketing people told them was ‘hip’ says about their capacity for common sense, and I am, then Mr Hudson might just have a point. Maybe what we need is a new government willing to tackle the deficit, or just the old government with a new mandate and someone a little calmer at the helm to restore a little confidence amongst Britain’s retailers. It would be a shame if by the time it does poor old Ethel Austin has lost her shirt and cheap hoop earrings on the economic roulette wheel.
Politicians: don’t call us and we won’t call you.
As they limber up for the coming general election the Labour Party has got itself into trouble over cold calling voters. The calls, which featured the voice of former Coronation Street star Liz Dawn, were made to 500,000 people without their consent and the party has been heavily criticised by the Information Commissioner.
The Tories and Liberal Democrats have also faced criticism for subjecting unsuspecting voters to what the Americans call ‘robocalls’ designed to drum up support ahead of an election.
At a time when they need to regain out trust after the expenses scandals of the past year the three main political parties seem to have shot themselves in both feet by resorting to the tactics used by dodgy double glazing firms in a vain attempt to ‘connect’ with the electorate. Even if they do use the voice of a much loved celebrity unsolicited phone calls are a nuisance most voters can well do without.
Death of a fashion maverick.
How sad to hear late yesterday of the death of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, about which some in the media have dropped dark hints concerning possible suicide.
His clothes were unwearable, let alone unaffordable for most mortals, but in their design they embodied a wilful eccentricity that was uniquely British.
Without doubt the fashion world and the London social scene will be a much less colourful place now that he has gone.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Learning the wrong lessons about adult education.
Britain is broken and it is all the fault of the baby boomers, the lucky generation born between the end of the war and the mid sixties. That’s the line most of the media and all three main political parties have taken and run with like a dog chasing sticks in a suburban park for the past couple of years.
I don’t usually give much in the way of credence to rumours of impending national decline, Britain has been going to the dogs since before Julius Cesar landed and things still seem to shake out ok most of the time, this week though a story floated onto my radar that gave me cause to feel a lot less sanguine.
According to the Association of Colleges (AOC) further education colleges across the UK could face cuts to their funding of up to 16% as the current government or the next grapples with spiralling public sector debt. The axe, if it falls, will see courses in construction and GCSE and A Level courses cut and the same blow will be dealt to the provision of courses for adults struggling to reach Level 2 in Maths or English.
AOC Chief Executive Martin Doel told the BBC this week that his members understood the challenge faced by the government as it struggles to balance the books and placate a nervous stock market but said that they feared the loss of ‘high quality courses that are essential to economic recovery.’
Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) took up the case saying ‘the government has rightly identified education as a key driver of social mobility, making cuts to adult learning now would be an outrageous affront to the millions of people it promised not to let down.’
What, you might ask, has all of this got to do with the baby boomers, the generation we love to hate for having every opportunity you can think of handed to them on a plate and wasting the lot? The answer is quite simple, further education colleges, along with the former polytechnics that later turned themselves into universities like so many bookish caterpillars, are the concrete symbol of all the generation that still provides most of our ruling elite stands for.
They are, depending on your political persuasion, the engines of egalitarianism, a means of transforming education into a common good rather than something people who are too rich to ever really need it enjoy amidst dreaming spires; or a hothouse for dangerously ‘progressive’ ideas that have brought about social and economic chaos. The most notable feature, of course, of the baby boomers is their unfailing ability to mistake one extreme position or another for the moral high ground.
Those of us living in a less rarefied, meaning anywhere outside Notting Hill or Islington, know that colleges are something much more prosaic and more important; they’re the difference between success and failure.
Colleges are where kids, many of them boys, the perennial underachievers in the educational steeplechase, who were bored rigid by school get the chance to discover that education can be something other than tedious; it can be useful and even inspiring. Many people don’t make this discovery until they have experienced the daily grind of having a dead end job or having no job at all, which is why adult education is more important now than ever. F Scott Fitzgerald was wrong, life does have a second act and education is the tool we use to write its script.
There is also another argument to be made in favour of adult education, one that many people in and out of politics in this country find troubling because it requires them to believe in something. Education is a force for good not just because it helps to produce an efficient workforce to power the country out of the economic doldrums, but because it has the power to create fully rounded citizens by exposing participants to new ideas and teaching them the value of questioning everything.
This used to be something the ambitious men (and not a few women too) who formed the backbone of British civic life and could be found in the ranks of every political party represented at Westminster understood implicitly. Their descendents, many of whom benefited from a free university education, have forgotten this vital truth, meaning that by failing to value the benefits of education, education, education, they risk creating economic and social problems for which future generations will pay a heavy price.
Source: bbc.co.uk
I don’t usually give much in the way of credence to rumours of impending national decline, Britain has been going to the dogs since before Julius Cesar landed and things still seem to shake out ok most of the time, this week though a story floated onto my radar that gave me cause to feel a lot less sanguine.
According to the Association of Colleges (AOC) further education colleges across the UK could face cuts to their funding of up to 16% as the current government or the next grapples with spiralling public sector debt. The axe, if it falls, will see courses in construction and GCSE and A Level courses cut and the same blow will be dealt to the provision of courses for adults struggling to reach Level 2 in Maths or English.
AOC Chief Executive Martin Doel told the BBC this week that his members understood the challenge faced by the government as it struggles to balance the books and placate a nervous stock market but said that they feared the loss of ‘high quality courses that are essential to economic recovery.’
Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) took up the case saying ‘the government has rightly identified education as a key driver of social mobility, making cuts to adult learning now would be an outrageous affront to the millions of people it promised not to let down.’
What, you might ask, has all of this got to do with the baby boomers, the generation we love to hate for having every opportunity you can think of handed to them on a plate and wasting the lot? The answer is quite simple, further education colleges, along with the former polytechnics that later turned themselves into universities like so many bookish caterpillars, are the concrete symbol of all the generation that still provides most of our ruling elite stands for.
They are, depending on your political persuasion, the engines of egalitarianism, a means of transforming education into a common good rather than something people who are too rich to ever really need it enjoy amidst dreaming spires; or a hothouse for dangerously ‘progressive’ ideas that have brought about social and economic chaos. The most notable feature, of course, of the baby boomers is their unfailing ability to mistake one extreme position or another for the moral high ground.
Those of us living in a less rarefied, meaning anywhere outside Notting Hill or Islington, know that colleges are something much more prosaic and more important; they’re the difference between success and failure.
Colleges are where kids, many of them boys, the perennial underachievers in the educational steeplechase, who were bored rigid by school get the chance to discover that education can be something other than tedious; it can be useful and even inspiring. Many people don’t make this discovery until they have experienced the daily grind of having a dead end job or having no job at all, which is why adult education is more important now than ever. F Scott Fitzgerald was wrong, life does have a second act and education is the tool we use to write its script.
There is also another argument to be made in favour of adult education, one that many people in and out of politics in this country find troubling because it requires them to believe in something. Education is a force for good not just because it helps to produce an efficient workforce to power the country out of the economic doldrums, but because it has the power to create fully rounded citizens by exposing participants to new ideas and teaching them the value of questioning everything.
This used to be something the ambitious men (and not a few women too) who formed the backbone of British civic life and could be found in the ranks of every political party represented at Westminster understood implicitly. Their descendents, many of whom benefited from a free university education, have forgotten this vital truth, meaning that by failing to value the benefits of education, education, education, they risk creating economic and social problems for which future generations will pay a heavy price.
Source: bbc.co.uk
Friday, 29 January 2010
Text speak spells disaster for good English.
January isn’t quite over yet and we’ve already seen the first contender for silly academic suggestion of the year, based as ever on ‘research’, strut into the ring and start flexing its muscles.
It takes the shape of a claim made by researchers at Coventry University that sending text messages helps children to improve their spelling because the process involved requires the same levels of ‘phonological awareness’ needed to choose the correct spelling for words in more conventional English.
All those fusty types who prefer archaic language such as ‘you are’ or even the chummy ‘you’re’ to the ugly UR (which is confusing since it could also mean ‘your ) were wrong. Text messaging and all its associated evils aren’t going to ruin the English language and send us back to the dark ages.
We know this to be true because Clare Wood, a reader in developmental psychology at Coventry University told the world this week, via the BBC, ‘If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it.’ Ms Wood is free to hold whatever opinion she likes, but I don’t plan to start feeling relieved about this issue any time soon.
Lets get one thing clear from the start, I recognise that language and technology change and that that is mostly to the good, I am, after all, writing this on a computer instead of a manual typewriter or scratching away at a bit of parchment with a quill pen. It doesn’t follow that all change is good and the changes text speak is bringing about in the English language are not good at all.
For start the whole contention that text speak requires that same skills as using conventional English is based on the whiskery old premise that in order to break the rules of English you first have to understand them. Fair enough so far as it goes, if where you start your relationship with language is in the cosy confines of a middle class, in the best sense of the term, home surrounded by books and blessed with supportive parents. You will have taken in with your mother’s milk the idea that being creative with the rules of language or anything else is ok so long as it isn’t taken too far.
Things don’t look anything like so rosy if you had the bad luck to be born into a home where books are as rare as unicorns and your parents are usually too busy, maybe they’re texting, to care what you’re doing most of the time. It is the children from backgrounds like this who most need to know that good clear English matters because they will always have to fight hardest to get their voice heard. Peppering application forms or the innumerable letters to one bureaucrat or another that take up so much of modern life with text speak, as so many do with out even knowing what they’ve done, means they are forever pushed to the back of the queue.
There is also the small matter of the way the fashion sanctioned illiteracy of text speak has seeped into everyday language. Not too long ago I came across a leaflet printed by my local council asking for young people to come forward to be youth councillors, splendid, you might think, just what we need more young people taking an active part in civic life. That’s what I thought, or would have done if the fact that in a desperate attempt to be ‘down with the kids’ the designers of the leaflet had deemed it necessary to ask for ‘uth’ councillors hadn’t made me grind my teeth down to the gums. How patronising for the young people they were seeking to recruit and how galling for their English teachers.
The English language has given the world some remarkable gifts from the plays of Shakespeare and the bleakly suburban poetry of Phillip Larkin, to the wisecracking dialogue of Raymond Chandler and the inspired lunacy of the Goon Show, to claim that text speak is anything other than an ugly, if functional, shadow compared to the real thing is enough to provoke the answer; don’t make me lol.
Source: bbc.co.uk
It takes the shape of a claim made by researchers at Coventry University that sending text messages helps children to improve their spelling because the process involved requires the same levels of ‘phonological awareness’ needed to choose the correct spelling for words in more conventional English.
All those fusty types who prefer archaic language such as ‘you are’ or even the chummy ‘you’re’ to the ugly UR (which is confusing since it could also mean ‘your ) were wrong. Text messaging and all its associated evils aren’t going to ruin the English language and send us back to the dark ages.
We know this to be true because Clare Wood, a reader in developmental psychology at Coventry University told the world this week, via the BBC, ‘If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it.’ Ms Wood is free to hold whatever opinion she likes, but I don’t plan to start feeling relieved about this issue any time soon.
Lets get one thing clear from the start, I recognise that language and technology change and that that is mostly to the good, I am, after all, writing this on a computer instead of a manual typewriter or scratching away at a bit of parchment with a quill pen. It doesn’t follow that all change is good and the changes text speak is bringing about in the English language are not good at all.
For start the whole contention that text speak requires that same skills as using conventional English is based on the whiskery old premise that in order to break the rules of English you first have to understand them. Fair enough so far as it goes, if where you start your relationship with language is in the cosy confines of a middle class, in the best sense of the term, home surrounded by books and blessed with supportive parents. You will have taken in with your mother’s milk the idea that being creative with the rules of language or anything else is ok so long as it isn’t taken too far.
Things don’t look anything like so rosy if you had the bad luck to be born into a home where books are as rare as unicorns and your parents are usually too busy, maybe they’re texting, to care what you’re doing most of the time. It is the children from backgrounds like this who most need to know that good clear English matters because they will always have to fight hardest to get their voice heard. Peppering application forms or the innumerable letters to one bureaucrat or another that take up so much of modern life with text speak, as so many do with out even knowing what they’ve done, means they are forever pushed to the back of the queue.
There is also the small matter of the way the fashion sanctioned illiteracy of text speak has seeped into everyday language. Not too long ago I came across a leaflet printed by my local council asking for young people to come forward to be youth councillors, splendid, you might think, just what we need more young people taking an active part in civic life. That’s what I thought, or would have done if the fact that in a desperate attempt to be ‘down with the kids’ the designers of the leaflet had deemed it necessary to ask for ‘uth’ councillors hadn’t made me grind my teeth down to the gums. How patronising for the young people they were seeking to recruit and how galling for their English teachers.
The English language has given the world some remarkable gifts from the plays of Shakespeare and the bleakly suburban poetry of Phillip Larkin, to the wisecracking dialogue of Raymond Chandler and the inspired lunacy of the Goon Show, to claim that text speak is anything other than an ugly, if functional, shadow compared to the real thing is enough to provoke the answer; don’t make me lol.
Source: bbc.co.uk
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Harman’s class act.
This week Harriet Harman, long since identified as the standard bearer for all things out of touch and politically correct in the demonology on modern British politics, did something that requires considerable courage; she broached the subject of social class and its influence on the life chances of individuals.
In a speech made to left leaning think tank Compass last Thursday she said, ahead of a government sponsored report due to be released next week, that while she recognised the continued presence of racial and gender related prejudice there was ‘overarching and interweaving with these a persistent inequality of social class.’
The report is expected to show that children from poorer backgrounds are less well prepared to start school and that the average lifespan in wealthy areas is thirteen years longer than in disadvantaged ones. She went on to say the government had used ‘public policy interventions to halt the rising tide of inequality,’ much of which she said had been created during the years of Conservative rule from 1979 to 1997.
Responding to the speech Ms Harman’s Tory shadow Theresa May said that ‘over the past twelve years social mobility has stalled’ and claimed that faced with this all the Labour Party could do was ‘reach for the old fashioned response of class war.’
A Tory government, she said, would ‘deal with the causes of poverty and inequality, including educational failure, family breakdown and worklessness.’
In a week when the nation recoiled in horror from the details of the brutal attack carried out by two boys, aged respectively ten and eleven, in the former mining town of Edlington the hysterical tone of the debate may come across as distasteful but its subject matter is no less pertinent.
For the past quarter of a century social class, specifically the seemingly unstoppable growth of a feral underclass has been a subject nobody has wanted to talk about. The Tories tried to distract attention from it by claiming to have abolished the class system by allowing people to buy their council housed, the small matter of social housing being needed for a reason and if it disappears the problems it provided for will only become worse doesn’t seem to have registered on their radar. New Labour, as part of its admittedly brilliant marketing strategy under Tony Blair in the mid nineties sold everybody the notion that we’re all middle class now, at least we were so long as their new friends in the city kept coming through with limitless credit. Now that credit has dried up many of the people who maxed out their cards trying to ‘live the dream’ have got a ringside seat as it turns into a nightmare.
Recently class has made it back onto the agenda with David Cameron promising in his speech to the Tory party conference that the Conservatives would be the ‘party of the poor’, to date though his prescription for mending ‘broken Britain’ seems to consist of little more than a lukewarm promise of a tax break for married couples. There are people on the right talking sensibly about tackling inequality such as former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, but, like Labour’s Frank Field in the nineties, he is likely to be relegated to the fringes of the party once it returns to government.
The real burden of tackling social inequality rests with the Labour Party because issues of class are the reason for its existence. They are also what could bring about its destruction since the areas where the greatest hardships have been felt over the past quarter century also happen to be, nominally at least, Labour strongholds.
In her awkward, right-on way Harriet Harman seems to have recognised that Labour has to start talking about class, it’s too late for doing so to save them from losing the coming election, but it might just give the party a foundation upon which to build a new identity, one based on policy rather than the dark arts of spin.
In a speech made to left leaning think tank Compass last Thursday she said, ahead of a government sponsored report due to be released next week, that while she recognised the continued presence of racial and gender related prejudice there was ‘overarching and interweaving with these a persistent inequality of social class.’
The report is expected to show that children from poorer backgrounds are less well prepared to start school and that the average lifespan in wealthy areas is thirteen years longer than in disadvantaged ones. She went on to say the government had used ‘public policy interventions to halt the rising tide of inequality,’ much of which she said had been created during the years of Conservative rule from 1979 to 1997.
Responding to the speech Ms Harman’s Tory shadow Theresa May said that ‘over the past twelve years social mobility has stalled’ and claimed that faced with this all the Labour Party could do was ‘reach for the old fashioned response of class war.’
A Tory government, she said, would ‘deal with the causes of poverty and inequality, including educational failure, family breakdown and worklessness.’
In a week when the nation recoiled in horror from the details of the brutal attack carried out by two boys, aged respectively ten and eleven, in the former mining town of Edlington the hysterical tone of the debate may come across as distasteful but its subject matter is no less pertinent.
For the past quarter of a century social class, specifically the seemingly unstoppable growth of a feral underclass has been a subject nobody has wanted to talk about. The Tories tried to distract attention from it by claiming to have abolished the class system by allowing people to buy their council housed, the small matter of social housing being needed for a reason and if it disappears the problems it provided for will only become worse doesn’t seem to have registered on their radar. New Labour, as part of its admittedly brilliant marketing strategy under Tony Blair in the mid nineties sold everybody the notion that we’re all middle class now, at least we were so long as their new friends in the city kept coming through with limitless credit. Now that credit has dried up many of the people who maxed out their cards trying to ‘live the dream’ have got a ringside seat as it turns into a nightmare.
Recently class has made it back onto the agenda with David Cameron promising in his speech to the Tory party conference that the Conservatives would be the ‘party of the poor’, to date though his prescription for mending ‘broken Britain’ seems to consist of little more than a lukewarm promise of a tax break for married couples. There are people on the right talking sensibly about tackling inequality such as former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, but, like Labour’s Frank Field in the nineties, he is likely to be relegated to the fringes of the party once it returns to government.
The real burden of tackling social inequality rests with the Labour Party because issues of class are the reason for its existence. They are also what could bring about its destruction since the areas where the greatest hardships have been felt over the past quarter century also happen to be, nominally at least, Labour strongholds.
In her awkward, right-on way Harriet Harman seems to have recognised that Labour has to start talking about class, it’s too late for doing so to save them from losing the coming election, but it might just give the party a foundation upon which to build a new identity, one based on policy rather than the dark arts of spin.
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