Gove the popular

Gove the popular
This will come as a bit of a shock to teachers, or indeed to anyone
who has seen or heard Michael Gove. Michael Gove is the most popular
government minister.
However the people he is popular with are people with money rather
than, for example. pensioners.
Education Minister Michael Gove has received more donations into his
private office since the election than any other cabinet minister
including the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
He has received £35,500 for his private office and £61,279 at
constituency level.
His constituency has received a staggering 284,416 pounds and 40p
since he became MP. We don't know who gave him the 40p. We do know
that former Lehman Brothers' banker Jeremy Isaacs donated £3,000 to
Gove's office. Isaacs has given £100,000 to the Central Party fund in
the past but this was the first time he is registered as funding an
MP's private office.
Money management firm Christofferson Robb & Company LLP gave £5,000.
Electoral Commission records show Gove started registering his private
office donations in 2009. Since then around three quarters of his
private office donations have come from individuals with business
interests in The City.
The biggest single donation to Gove's private office was £150,000
donated in 2009 by Martin Calderbank of private equity firm Stirling
Capital Partners.
So obviously Gove has friends in high places. You can't call this
perfectly legal activity "corruption". That would be like saying the
whole capitalist system is corrupt.
And we wouldn't want anybody to think that :)

Lord Carey grovels to Tories

Lord Carey used to be on the Daily Mail hate list for his support of
women priests and his opposition to the persecution of homosexuals.
What a difference a day makes. The former Archbishop is now their
flavour of the month because he has supported the government's attack
on welfare.

Carey is well aware that the poor will suffer under the government's
proposals. They put a cap on payments to families. They put no cap on
rents and prices. A child of four could work out that the poor will
suffer.

It is as easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as it is
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It looks as if
millionaire Carey has given up on that idea :)

Borgen - media in bed with politicians

Borgen

The Killing was a TV series which interwove a police drama with a political drama and was a great success on BBC 4. In the series Borgen the same producers concentrate on the political shenanigans in the Danish parliament.

It is not written from a socialist perspective but what it does show is the political elite and the media in bed with each other (quite literally in one strand of the story).

One gets the sense from Borgen that the media and political elite live in a comfortable incestuous environment and the one group not heard in this political democracy is …. the people.

The latest episode shows a female prime minister trying to implement a modest reform. A bill calling for 50 percent of all boardroom appointments to be female. The government would carry out punitive taxation measures against any firm which did not go along with it. Ostensibly feminist it is not a measure which would benefit the overwhelming majority of Danish women.

I won't detail the plot because I think you should watch the show. Look out for media smears used to discredit a minister proposing this measure; a strike of capital aimed at allowing big business to dictate to the government and more than one rotten compromise.

The Labour Party are present as a comic turn responding to advances by the far right by trying to prove they can be every bit as racist, misogynist and Islamophobic as the fascists!

It is alternately political and deeply personal; searingly serious and hilariously funny; foreign and all too familiar!

Watch it.

Borgen fyi is a slang term for parliament in Denmark - "the castle" where the political elite meet.

No fix no fee

If I do not solve your problem you owe me nothing.If I solve your problem, you pay me £20 per hour or part thereof.


You can do this via paypal

Payment per hour or part thereof

up to 1 hour £20.00 GBP up to 2 hours £40.00 GBP up to 3 hours £60.00 GBP up to 4 hours £80.00 GBP up to 5 hours £100.00 GBP

Teacher unions unite against OFSTED chicanery

Ofsted wants to toughen the language of inspections in England -
changing the "satisfactory" rating to "requires improvement". Ofsted
are notorious for their violence towards the English language and
towards education in general.

By sleight of hand they change "satisfactory" to "unsatisfactory".
They label schools as "failing" in order to create a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Who would want to send their children to a "failing" school?
Or teach at one?

And the not-so-hidden agenda? Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary,
bluntly pointed out "The government's real agenda behind this change
is of course inventing yet another category of schools that it will
then seek to force into academy status."

In a welcome move another teacher union the NASUWT echoed the NUT's
concern: "The seemingly tough talk we have heard from the government
today, may have popular appeal but the reality is that it has nothing
to do with raising standards,"

"Instead, it is about ratcheting up pressure on schools, without
providing the support and resources they need to assist them in
securing further improvements.

"This announcement will encourage a culture of vicious management
practices within schools which will have a profoundly negative effect
on the workforce and children and young people alike."

Nothing illustrates Gove's hypocrisy more clearly than his dodgy "Free
School" project. For all his blather about raising standards, Free
Schools like the proposed one in Southwater, Horsham, are not required
to have qualified teachers.

So any Tom Dick or Harriet off the street can come and teach our
children on the cheap. The private
schools the millionaires in the government send their children are
staffed by professionals. If Gove gets his way they will be the only
schools that are!

Gove to reform ICT teaching?

Like a stroppy teenager, Mikey Gove put his feet up on the desk and
declared "Ere this is soooo boring!" as his considered opinion on the
teaching of ICT in all schools in England and Wales.

"Technology in schools will no longer be micro-managed by Whitehall.
By withdrawing the Programme of Study, we're giving teachers freedom
over what and how to teach, revolutionising ICT as we know it. "

Quite right. It won't be micro-managed. It will be Micro-soft. Gove is
proposing that schools should use teaching materials which promote
Microsoft and Google.

It is usually the case that when government ministers threaten to
"reform" something, they are going to reform it the same way the
iceberg "reformed" the Titanic. In this case the DFE mean they won't
run ICT on behalf of the corporations, they will let the corporations
like Microsoft and Google run ICT directly. For Microsoft education is
a chance to make a fast buck. For Google, everything is a chance to
acquire information on consumers so they can target advertising at
them.

Microsoft Office is available at a special educational price of £99.99
per unit with additional costs for upgrades. Open source alternatives
like Open Office are available free.. The upgrades are free too.

And if Gove seriously wanted pupils to be involved in developing
software he would be promoting open source software where the code is
publicly available. This is far more educational than Microsoft which
protects its code as a "business secret".

Ark the 'erald Angels Sing

It was a privilege and an experience to visit Ark on Christmas eve. A lot of the people here are "between a rock and a hard place" and find a refuge in Ark. Ark is a Horsham charity for people who are homeless or who have drug or alcohol abuse problems.

Many have experience of prison and living on the streets. Even in leafy Horsham this is no joke. The United Reformed Church provided their premises for the Christmas period and the hall was decorated for Christmas and food was collected at local churches.

Some of the people who come have severe mental health problems and have suffered abuse; some can't cope with the idea of living in a house. Some can't talk about things. Others can't stop. And my job – apart from a bit of judicious Information Technology and spud peeling – is to listen, and learn.

It is the only time I have seen the smokers congregating outside a church as if it were the pub.

We don't believe in shoving Christianity down people's throats. Ark's Christianity is the sort that shares our food with people who haven't got enough. We have a first-class cook and no shoving is necessary.

The URC is just opposite my own church: St John's Catholic Church. At 11 there was midnight mass at St Johns. For many people it was their first midnight mass. One of the guys thought he was conducting the congregation from the balcony but he didn't disrupt anything. The carols were all familiar and nobody was shy about joining in.

And who knows they might be tempted to come to Mass some other time too.