Kids need to learn more than just how to compete.

Primary school children in England could be ranked against each other based on test scores at the age of eleven under a government plan put out for public consultation last week. Unions representing head teachers have called the plan ‘disappointing and destructive.’

Russell Hobby of the National Association of Head Teachers told the BBC that the ‘majority of teachers are unhappy with the need to rank students by ability’, there was, he added, a risk of students being ‘pigeonholed’ for the rest of their school career by results achieved at the age of eleven.

Under the government’s plans SATS scores would be used to divide students into ability bands of 10% with a tougher minimum level for achievement in place for schools to meet or risk triggering an Ofstead inspection. For example the current target for maths SATS is 60%, the government considers this to be too broad and lacking in ambition and so intends to raise it to 85%.

The tiny carrot being dangled in front of schools as they face yet more stressful and time consuming tests is an increase in the pupil premium, used to support disadvantaged students from £900 to £1,300 in 2014.

Speaking to the BBC deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg dismissed the concerns of the head teacher’s union as groundless, saying the government wasn’t ‘going to publish a name and shame league table.’ Well not unless there is an outside chance of their getting a positive editorial in the Daily Mail by doing so anyway.

He went on to say he made ‘no apology for having high ambitions for our pupils, but for children to achieve their full potential we need to raise the bar in terms of tests, pass marks and minimum standards. I am confident that primary schools and their pupils will meet the challenge.’ Gosh I hope they do Nick; after all we’re only playing with kid’s futures here, so no pressure then.

If you ever needed one this is a perfect example of why politicians should separated from the education system by an electric fence and maybe a couple of minefields too. Only a politician could come up with such a determinedly cynical plan and be so wilfully blind to its inherent dangers.

This whole sorry farrago plays on the nonsensically nostalgic idea that everything in the educational garden was rosy when we had the 11 plus. Back then everybody knew their place, the sheep and the goats were kept rigidly apart and if talent was often criminally wasted that was a small price to pay for certainty.

Nick Clegg and the other boosters for this dangerously retrograde idea don’t seem to have grasped the effect labelling a child a ‘failure’ at the age of eleven, a sure consequence of placing in one of the lower tiers, can have even if you tie yourself in semantic knots trying not to use the word. It blunts their aspirations, makes school a place they are kept against their will rather than an opportunity to learn and grow.

Incidentally anyone who thinks this proposal will put an end to grade inflation is laughably wrong. If schools feel their future, or, come to that, the government finds the rigour it has clumsily tried to programme into the system has pushed grades down too far in an election year; the foot pump will come out quicker than you can say hypocrisy.

This radical change, which is really nothing of the sort just the same wearisome regime of endless tests that’s been around for the past two decades with a fresh coat of paint, is so unnecessary. It will only produce the same results as before, meaning kids trooping out of school with a pile of GCSE’s only for employers to complain they lack the ‘soft skills’ necessary for work and university academics to grind their teeth over having to spend the first year of a three year degree course teaching their students how to think.

This isn’t a plea for a return to soppy notions of ‘child centred’ education, mastering facts rather than finger painting is the route to success; but when test results are given undue importance everything else tends to get pushed to one side, and that is seldom a good thing.

What gets lost is things like learning to work as part of a team, self confidence and an ability to value skills that can’t be measured by pen and paper tests. These are exactly the skills the UK needs to compete and they’re what we’re throwing away.

If politicians wish to understand being competitive as clawing everyone else out of the way as you climb the ladder to the stars so be it, that’s down to the nature of their profession and the sort of people attracted to it. It is wrong and potentially disastrous though to foist such foolishness on the next generation of working people.

The big three parties are dead- one in five Tories can’t be wrong.

There is a rumbling in the shires, trouble in the Tory heartlands. The Turnip Taliban are lacing up their sensible shoes and getting ready to go on the warpath.

According to a poll of eight hundred grassroots members of the Conservative Party one in five are seriously considering voting for UKIP at the next election and fifty three percent said they did not feel respected by the party leadership. Unsurprisingly a large proportion didn’t care for gay marriage (59%) and even more (67%) were unhappy about the ring fencing of the foreign aid budget.

David Cameron and his chums probably won’t have been all that shocked by those results, if nothing else an Eton and Oxbridge education gives you the ability to work out what bears get up to in the woods. They might though have been a little more discomforted by the fact that forty four percent of the members polled said they spent no time at all on party activity, out of those who were still active thirty nine percent said they were less active than previously.

I could spend the rest of this article having a whale of a time going on about Tory stereotypes sitting in their crumbling country piles harrumphing that there was no youth crime when we still had transportation and that the BBC, apart from Radio 4 obviously, is a communist plot. Thing is though this isn’t really a laughing matter; not one little bit.

It’s inconvenient for David Cameron because if he can’t enthuse his own party members to go out and campaign he has little chance of getting the country to go blue again. For anyone who cares about democracy though it’s as serious as an unexpected shadow on a routine x-ray.

The Tories might be the party in the spotlight but were the same poll to be conducted amongst Labour or Liberal Democrat members the responses would be identical. All three main parties are dead brands trundling along to nowhere on the last of their momentum.

In the past I have likened being active in politics to going to church, an activity carried out by enthusiasts that either bores or bemuses most of the public. That isn’t quite correct, the church, through its links to powerful ideas about birth death and personal growth, will always have an, admittedly much smaller nowadays, steady flow of people who have surprised a desire in themselves to be more serious flowing through its doors.

Politics could have a similar pull, one linked to notions of fairness and striking the right balance between tradition and change, but the three main parties that are its gatekeepers have allowed it to wither. As a result their own membership is in freefall and their sense of purpose is burning away faster than morning mist during a heat wave.

Tame focus groups have taken the place of an engaged if often awkward membership and the dark arts of spin and triangulation have replaced ideas around which people can rally. The result is three parties that look the same and say most of the same things, none of which resonate with a bored and cynical electorate.

The best case scenario if the three main parties are determined to consign themselves to history is that smaller, more communitarian parties like the Greens might fill the resulting void. Trouble is along with them might come less kindly political forces like the BNP and a parade of chancers and charlatans out to grab a piece of the action.

Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum; what fills the space left by the three main parties might be much worse than what went before.


AND ANOTHER THING

It could be curtains for the long summer holiday as the government prepares to give schools the power to set their own term times. The teacher’s unions are not best pleased, making all the usual noises about their members needing to ‘recharge their batteries’, although I doubt they will attract much public support for retaining what most working people will see as a perk. Anyway they have a bigger battle to fight against the unbalanced and unworkable reforms to the national curriculum Michael Gove is determined to push through at all costs.

The normally sensible New Statesman got all excited about Ed Milliband’s plans to reform the relationship between Labour and the unions calling his plans a brave step towards modernisation. I’m not so sure, the system for having union members ‘opt in’ to having part of their membership fee donated to Labour seems overly complicated and could lose the party millions of pounds at a time when it is all but bust. If not so Red Ed emerges from this looking anything other than weak I will be more staggered than the Staggers.

The government is likely to withdraw its plans for forcing cigarettes to be sold in plain packets and a minimum price for alcohol, this is a rare, but welcome, hint of common sense. Putting a minimum price on alcohol won’t deter hardened boozers it’ll just penalise sensible drinkers; plain packets like blood curdling health warnings just make smoking look like a cool and dangerous thing to do to silly people. The best way to promote sensible drinking is through community pubs where the emphasis is on convivial fun rather then soulless ‘vertical drinking’; if you want to make smoking genuinely un-cool with the kids, then treat it like the unpleasant but legal habit it is not like a threat to society.

Taking a big pay rise could cost MPs public trust.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is to recommend that MPs be given a pay rise of up to £20,000 after the next election.

All of a sudden IPSA, an organisation not previously much loved by honourable members because it required the poor dears to file their expenses like ordinary mortals, is the toast of the house. In a YouGov survey carried out earlier this year two thirds of the MPs questioned said they were underpaid, they favoured raising their salary to £86,000; this is unlikely but thanks to the nice people at IPSA a rise to £75,000 looks likely.

Unless, of course something truly unlikely happens to derail the gravy train, like the party formerly known as Labour winning the next election. If that happens Ed Milliband has pledged to call on MPs to accept a rise of just 1%, adding a measly £850 to their salary.

This has hugely annoyed commons Speaker John Bercow who told the Mail on Sunday he didn’t want MPs pay used as a political football. He went on to say that party leaders mustn’t ‘do what they have always done, the generals have always abandoned the troops and engaged in a Dutch auction to appease the public by saying ‘well of course I won’t take a rise, I will tell my colleagues they shouldn’t take a rise.’

The cheek of it; politicians responding to public concerns and not feathering their own nests during a time of economic hardship; anyone would think this was a democracy.

In a rare moment of unity David Cameron and his minion Nick Clegg have both spoken out against a pay rise for MPs. The deputy prime minister told politics.co.uk the public would find such a move ‘impossible to understand’ and that he ‘wouldn’t be able to support a recommendation like that.’

Speaking to the press during a trip to Pakistan David Cameron said the IPSA recommendations were, if correct, ‘unthinkable’; adding that ‘anything would be unthinkable unless the cost of politics was frozen and cut’ and that he had told IPSA that ‘restraint is necessary.’

Unfortunately for the reputation of politics in the UK the final decision about whether or not MPs get a pay rise doesn’t rest with the PM or any other party leader, something Nick Clegg alluded to in a soggy coda to his ringing denunciation of the IPSA proposals by saying it was ‘up to individual MPs to decide.’

This is a far from ideal situation, but also one that provided an opportunity for MPs to show their moral mettle. They could grab for the brass ring, take a rise to £75,000 and sacrifice public trust on the altar of instant gratification; or they could send a powerful message that they understand that politics isn’t about making money, it is about serving people.

As Nick Clegg the decision is down to individual MPs, it might, then, be interesting to require all sitting or prospective members of parliament to declare as a matter of public record how they would vote on the issue of their pay. If nothing else this would give a fascination insight into the moral health of the men and women we are electing to make our laws.



Labour’s death wish strikes again.

What should a party with a healthy lead in the polls and facing a government that is fast running out of time and ideas do?

In the case of the party formerly known as Labour it seems getting embroiled in an unseemly squabble about whether or not UNITE fixed the selection of a candidate to fight to Falkirk by-election is the favoured option. The resulting farrago has made the party look corrupt, its leadership look weak and driven the marriage of inconvenience between Labour and the unions another step closer to the divorce courts; result!

It isn’t unknown for selections to be rigged, in fact the New Labour wing of the party making pious noises in this instance have been known to do so themselves in the past. By referring the matter to the police Ed Milliband has made himself look weak and prone to overreaction, hardly the qualities a country looks for in its leader.

Most worryingly of all at a time when people are being battered by austerity the party that exists to speak up for the downtrodden is consumed with an internal squabble. This is something voters will neither forgive nor forget; mostly because Tory election strategists won’t allow them to.

And another thing

Egypt’s President Morsi has been deposed by the army after less than a year in power with violent upheaval likely to follow. Proof, if any were needed, that maintaining economic stability is more important to good governance than either religious or revolutionary fervour. It certainly suggests that the ‘Arab Spring’ is likely to turn out to be a darker story than we romantic western liberals imagined when it began in 2011.

Poor Laura Robson, the great hope of British women’s tennis was doing so well at Wimbledon; then disaster struck in the shape of a good luck message from David Cameron. Even more so than his predecessor in Downing Street an encouraging word from Citizen Dave seems to be the kiss of death, so much so that I’m told Tory Party election strategy for 2015 rests on our beloved leader sending not so Red Ed a tweet saying ‘hope everything goes well tomorrow’ on the eve of election day.

At least things went well for Andy Murray in the men’s final today. Despite having David ‘Jonah’ Cameron watching him from the Royal Box the scowling Scotsman became the first British player to win the tournament since Fred Perry way back in 1936. It is even rumoured that he was, albeit for a second or so, seen smiling; but it was probably just wind.

Aliens over Stoke- now it all makes sense.

The government has released the last of its ‘X Files’, well the records it kept of people who contacted the MOD to report the presence of aliens at the bottom of their garden anyway.

It turns out several of these sightings occurred in the skies over Stoke-on-Trent; suddenly a lot of things about how my home town has been run in recent years make sense.

You’d have to be from Pluto to think that building an expensive and publicly unpopular new Civic Centre in a Central Business District with no other tenants will drive regeneration. It also explains why the proposed East/West precinct never seems to get any closer to being built, the site of the former Hanley bus station isn’t a festering eyesore; it’s a Close Encounters style beacon to the aliens. If we don’t build it they will come.

Little green me, maybe that should be little blue ones actually, also seem to have had a hand in writing the spending review unveiled by chancellor George Osborne this week. As predicted he announced more cuts to public spending and a cap in welfare, also anyone seeking to claim benefits will have to wait for seven days. On Venus if you lose your job you can almost always get another one within a week, it’s only down here on Earth we have awkward things like recessions.

Then again perhaps we don’t, the boffins over at the Institute for Financial Studies said this week that the double dip one in late 2011 and early 2012 didn’t really happen. You could have fooled me pal, from where I was standing it sure felt like one.

Their reasoning seems to be that is you don’t call it a recession then it isn’t one. Which is a little bit like saying that if you call a compound fracture a ‘boo-boo’ instead it won’t have you writhing in agony.

Never mind there is a little sugar to sweeten the bitter pill of spending cuts. The government is going to unleash a torrent of massive infrastructure projects to kick start the economy.

Hang on though, before anyone strings out the bunting there isn’t any new money to pay for said projects, they’re just warming up ones that have already been announced. This isn’t, alas, the dawn of a ‘New Deal’ for the twenty first century so much as a rehash of one of New Labour’s old tricks.

The government’s one big idea seems to be digitizing the courts system to cut down the number of times cases are cancelled and get rid of the tidal wave of paper in which it drowns. As ideas go this is a good one, the trouble is that past experience shows that all governments are legendarily poor at delivering big IT projects.

As for the party formerly known as Labour, they harrumphed mightily about the cuts, but since a few weeks ago they all but admitted they would stick to Tory spending plans if elected nobody took much notice. Apart, maybe, from observing that yet again Ed Milliband had had the ball of political relevance snatched away Charlie Brown style just as his foot was about to make contact.

If only the sorry state of British politics really were down to the malign influence of aliens from planet Zog. Alas the source of our problems is all too human, inept politicians and an apathetic public; a combination more toxic than the atmosphere on Neptune.

This is what happens when otherwise sensible people decide that politics is either silly or dull; it certainly isn’t something with any relation to their lives anyway.

A great city that played a pivotal role in the Industrial Revolution and still has creativity coded into its DNA risks being bankrupted by a Labour group that operates in an opposition free vacuum. Nationally complacent millionaires lecture families struggling on the minimum wage or less about the need to tighten their belts whilst chomping on ten quid ‘gourmet’ burgers.

If by some chance there are aliens scanning our benighted corner of the universe I doubt they will choose it as a landing site. They’d struggle to detect any signs of intelligent life and if they asked to be taken to our leader they would find the journey not worth the trouble.

Vote early, vote often; just don’t ask what you’re voting for.

New MPs seldom know what they are voting for and have their ignorance of parliamentary procedure played upon by the whips. This is about as much of a surprise as what bears get up to in the woods, having it articulated in the press though has set the cat squarely amongst the pigeons down Westminster way.

In an interview given to the Observer last weekend Tory MP Sarah Wollaston said ‘You are encouraged, it is the same in all parties, not to worry about what it is you are voting for because the whips are there to guide you.’ You might wonder why the whips don’t just be honest about it and bring a boarder collie with them to work, I couldn’t possible comment.

Ms Wollaston goes on to say that what frustrates her most about life at Westminster is that ‘in politics what’s really valued is absolute loyalty’, that and an ability never to say anything remotely controversial, something she, to her credit, is unable to do.

Sarah Woolaston, who worked as a GP before entering parliament, has said a great many things that have displeased her party in her short political career and as a result has frequently been ticked off for ‘damaging’ the re-election chances of her colleagues. What would otherwise be simple back bench naughtiness is elevated to something more important by the fact that Wollaston was selected through the ‘primaries’ that were all the rage in the run up to the 2010 election, since then they have gone out of fashion with David Cameron quietly dropping the whole idea.

She adds that candidates who have been through the ‘political sausage machine’ take to the odd half life of a loyal, sycophantic, backbencher ‘like fish to water’. Anyone with a brain or a soul though becomes increasingly frustrated, like Wollaston they come to realise there needs to be a change to the ‘narrative’ of how politics works. The public, she rightly notes, are tired of MPs who are cardboard cut-out lobby fodder asking planted questions and representing nobody but themselves.

Like Citizen Dave I too think primaries are a bad idea; but for very different reasons. He just wants to keep control of selection because that is the best way of ensuring the green benches are filled with obedient lobby robots.

Primaries don’t work, in the US they drag on interminably and that a figure like Sarah Wollaston emerged from one here is the exception rather than the rule. They tend to favour the products of the political ‘sausage machine’ because they are better at playing the games necessary to get on the ticket in the first place.

Dr Wollaston is quite right though to diagnose the damage being done to the heart of our democracy by an excess of complacency and an overactive sense of entitlement. We need more authenticity and less ambition from rank and file MPs; a greater willingness on their part to ask awkward questions and laugh in the face of the playground threats from the whips office.

In short we need a lot more of our MPs to be like the doughty Ms Wollaston.

Rainy days not going away

The UK could have to endure cold winters and wet summers for years to come, so said a conference of climate scientists who met at the Met Office this week. They concluded that we are slap bang in the middle of a prolonged period of Atlantic warming that is shifting the jet-stream and generally messing about with our already unpredictable weather.

Professor Stephen Belcher told the BBC on Tuesday there were ‘hints that we are coming out of the cycle’, but that ‘the loadings of the dice don’t seem to follow cycles.’ Talk about trying to have it both ways, with such a natural gift for making any outcome sound like the one he was looking for all along the good professor could have a career in politics.

The weather has a hugely powerful impact on the national mood, when the sun comes out we feel all is well with the world; when it rains we are sunk fathoms deep in gloom.

If you follow this to its, illogical, conclusion the coalition will be praying for the sun to have its hat on throughout 2015; meanwhile Ed Milliband and Ed Balls, like a post socialist Nurayev and Fonteyn, will be leading a corps de ballet of shadow cabinet members in a furious rain dance. Personally I just wish the forecasters didn’t sound so damned cheerful when they tell us it is going to rain.

AND ANOTHER THING

Oops Mr President, at this week’s G8 summit Barack Obama kept referring to George Osborne as Geoffrey, suggesting that he thinks the UK’s economy is in the care of a forgotten 1980’s soul singer. It’s an easy mistake to make, I often get Boy George mixed up with Mr Bean. The trick is to remember that one is a hapless idiot with the communication skills of a brick, the other is a character played by Rowan Williams.

On the subject of the G8, David Cameron told the world’s press this week that the leaders present had got so much work done because they didn’t wear ties. Proof, if you ever needed it, that we are being led by a man who, like a Big Brother contestant, can’t pass a microphone without babbling whatever inane drivel he has rattling about in his head into it. Just to be certain he also wore his lucky pants throughout the summit; which explains why nobody wanted to stand next to him in the group photograph.

A lead in the polls isn’t ‘connecting’ with the public.

Could this be the end for Dick Dastardly, otherwise known as UKIP leader Nigel Farage? An opinion poll published this week shows the surge his party experienced after the recent local elections had spluttered out like a cheap firework.

The poll conducted by ICM for the Guardian puts UKIP on 12%, down from 18% a few weeks ago but still three points up on their previous highest rating. Labour polled 36% with the Tories on 29 and the Lib Dems managing a minor rally to join UKIP on 12%.

Despite being ahead this is no time for the two Ed’s to be popping champagne corks, the same poll gives David Cameron and George Osborne a 9% lead when rated for economic competence; so showing themselves willing to dismantle the principle of universal benefits has brought Labour exactly nothing in terms of political advantage.

It isn’t all good news for David Cameron though, less than half the people questioned believed he has the backing of his party, a fall from 62% last year.

Speaking about the results to politics.co.uk on Wednesday Martin Boon of ICM said they showed that the public were ‘plainly fed up with politicians of all stripes’ and that as a result fewer people were willing to admit, even to themselves, ‘who they will plump for next time.’

The rapid decline of UKIP is hardly a surprise; they are a classic one trick pony of a party, on any subject other than Europe they have little to say worth listening to. Farage is an entertaining contrarian in small doses; prolonged exposure always results in severe irritation.

This poll offers even less comfort to the three main parties than it does to UKIP, many of the members of which are much happier shaking their fist at the world than trying to change it.

Labour have managed to establish a healthy lead, but not a good enough one to win the next election; the Tories have retained their, utterly unfounded, reputation for economic competence; meanwhile the Liberal Democrats are just relieved to still be breathing. As it stands the Tories will probably win the next election due to being seen as the ‘least worst’ option and the whole sorry farce will trundle on as before.

What this poll tells us is that the public are heartily sick of politics. They see it as a nasty parlour game played by strange people that has only a tangential connection to their everyday concerns.

This is almost entirely down to the antics of the boys, and a few girls, in the Westminster bubble. They hollowed out their grassroots party networks because they found all those members with quaint ideas about having a say on policy tiresome; preached hypocritically about tightening belts whilst fiddling their expenses and every week they are the ones who embarrass an ancient parliamentary tradition with the childish freak show that is PMQ’s.

I say the parlous state of British politics in the second decade of the twenty first century is almost entirely down to the behaviour of its practitioners, almost, but not completely; we the voters have to take a slice of the blame cake too. We had an opportunity to vote for a more mature type of politics in the 2011 referendum on AV, but thanks to a mix of apathy and fear let it slip though our fingers.

For the system to regain public confidence we need a parliament that looks more like the country it governs, with more BME members and women certainly and more people who have had jobs outside politics too. We also need a political culture that is lass adversarial and more collaborative; sadly I won’t risk holding my breath as I wait for one to arrive.

The three main parties will, no doubt, be relieved to see Nigel Farage exit stage left, although he was rather more like a character in a PG Wodehouse novel than a real extremist; a noisy, but ultimately harmless, buffoon who added to the comedy of life as he shot across the political firmament en-route to the inevitable pratfall.

The next such figure or the one after that to arise may not be so benign though; when the public lose faith in politics genuine extremism flourishes.

An iron chancellor in waiting and a party without a point

Winter fuel payments should be taken away from ‘wealthy’ pensioners, this isn’t the latest edict from the bunker inhabited by Iain Duncan Smith, it’s the latest plan from Ed Balls to rebuild Labour’s reputation for managing the economy. In terms of utility it is right up there with the chocolate fireguard.

In a speech made at the London headquarters of Reuters the shadow chancellor said it would be ‘completely irresponsible’ for Labour to promise increased public spending given the ‘bleak’ state of the country’s finances.

If returned to office an incoming Labour government would, he said, ‘inherit a substantial deficit, we will have to govern with much less money. We will need to show an iron discipline.’

Ed Balls didn’t, of course, give specific details of what would be in the Labour manifesto for the 2015 election, but he did drop a few thrilling spoilers about ‘tough fiscal rules’ to be followed and a ‘re-prioritising’ of the money ‘held within and between budgets. As part of this removing winter fuel payments from ‘wealthy’ pensioners would raise £100million; peanuts in comparison to the welfare budget.

Just to make sure the point that Labour can cut just as ruthlessly as the Tories little Ed Milliband announced this week that if returned to office the party would cap welfare payments and stick to spending targets set by the coalition.

The motivation behind the announcements is clear, they are designed to demonstrate that Labour understands the fiscal difficulties faced by the UK and is therefore fit to govern. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked; in fact it has made them look more muddled than ever.

The whole project is too drearily unambitious for words, Middle England, the market every party wants to woo, is hardly likely to take ‘re-prioritisation now!’ as its battle cry. There is also more than a touch of hypocrisy about a politician preaching ‘iron discipline’ on matters fiscal when a parade of his brethren have once again been trooped before the cameras accused of fiddling the system.

That the Labour Party is prepared to go down this route highlights the continued political naivety of the party leadership. They are willing to dismantle the principle of universality in return for a mess of financial pottage and the vague chance of having the Daily Mail, maybe, saying something nice about them; frankly the game isn’t worth the candle.

The two Ed’s have made the mistake of thinking the trick pulled by New Labour in the 1990’s, stealing the economic clothes of an unpopular Tory government, is the party’s route back to strength and office. It is nothing of the sort.

In fact, as Martin Pugh points out in his excellent and provocative history of the Labour Party it was always a symptom of the party’s decline as a political force. Times have changed, people are crying out for an alternative to a society where the lucky few sail happily through dappled sunlight whilst everyone else splashes like mad just to stay afloat.

By sacrificing its principles on the altar of expediency Labour isn’t winning votes and demonstrating its fitness for office, it is making enemies and exposing its weakness and lack of direction.


AND ANOTHER THING

The secretive to the point of being weird Bilderberg group is holding its annual conference in, drum roll please, Watford; oh the glamour eh. This is either the convocation of a sinister world government as the conspiracy theorists have it or a get together for sad pseudo alpha types who think turning up makes them look important. Given that George Osborne and Ed Balls are on the guest list, they’ll be letting Nick Clegg in next; I’d say it was the latter.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is getting a D-I-V-O-R-C-E, I wonder if like most divorced men of a certain age he will get a silly haircut and a second hand sports car; come to that who will get custody of the political prisoners? There are so many questions, most of which I’d get sent to Siberia for asking were this being written in Russia.

Prince Charles says there should be a wildflower meadow in every community to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the coronation. Bless, the poor booby probably thinks this will be the place where smock wearing yokels will merrily frolic in the sunshine, pausing only to nibble on biscuits sold at a huge mark-up under the Duchy Originals brand. I’m not the biggest fan of the Prince of Wails, but on this issue he’s got a point. I too would like to see a large patch of open ground in every community, they’re called school playing fields, what a shame the current government and the one before have sold most of them off.