The Miseducation of Michael Gove
I suppose there’s a difference between the harmless conference season patter shadow education secretary Michael Gove practices now, and the more mundane – but massively consequential – steps he’ll take as Secretary of State.
On arriving at the DCSF, he’ll hopefully be informed that most schools do, in fact, have school uniforms, that classes are often set by ability and that for all the horrid neglect of Winston Churchill in history lessons, kids are at least not being taught that WWII was won single-handedly by a smilin’ Joe Stalin.
Take this list of topics Gove wants kids to be taught in history lessons. All our Greatest Brit hits are on there: the Roman invasion, 1066, the Bill of Rights, the Napoleonic Wars, the Great Reform Act, both world wars (with particular emphasis on the awesomeness of a former Tory PM!) and something rather vaguely called “Modern history to the present”.
Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with having knowledge about these or any other areas of British (or even – gasp! – non-British) history, and it’d come in extremely handy if your son or daughter ever wanted to work in a museum or on Time Team. However, the emphasis here is on what is taught, when it should really be about what is learnt.
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The depressing thing about Tory welfare proposals
I was depressed by the announcement at this week’s Tory conference of plans to remove incapacity benefit (now known as ESA – Employment and Support Allowance) from around 500,000 claimants. Michael Gove puckishly characterised the move as being part of the Tories’ ‘crusade to help the poor’. So far, so Tory.
So I dug around a bit, and I discovered that this isn’t actually the depressing bit.
The Tories propose to subject all ESA claimants to an enhanced medical assessment, which is being touted as a ‘tough back-to-work test’. Those who are adjudged to be capable of work will be taken off ESA and be placed on Jobseeker’s Allowance instead – a cut of £25 per week. As ever, the unspoken assumption is that half a million (at least) of those who currently draw ESA are workshy fraudsters.
But that’s still not the depressing bit.
Two crucial issues – whether those who assess ESA claimants will be required to meet targets, and what training or professional background the assessors will have – are not addressed in the Conservatives’ document ‘Get Britain Working’. The Telegraph’s report of the Tories’ proposals, chillingly, mentions bringing in private firms to carry out the assessments; one can imagine the damage that could result from an army of poorly-trained assessors with punitive targets to meet. Will there be a right of appeal?
But brace yourself, because that’s not the depressing bit.
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LC Briefing: Cameron’s Council-tax Pledge will only impact 1-in-5
David Cameron’s Council Tax pledge, unveiled in the Sun Newspaper this week, has not received the necessary scrutiny it deserves.
To make everyone’s job slightly easier, I’ve pulled together a briefing that takes apart Cameron’s claims and subjects it to some number-crunching.
This is meant to be a time-saver for journalists and activists and interested parties. It is also meant to point out that Cameron’s pledges don’t stand up in the way they are framed.
Key findings
1. A two year Council Tax freeze will cost Local Authorities in England between £2.48 billion and £2.53 billion in lost revenues. The Conservatives have yet to indicate how they will fund their proposed Council Tax freeze, through cuts in local public services or by increasing the level of central government grants paid to local councils.
2. At present, 3.7 million households in England would not benefit at all from a Council Tax freeze because they receive full Council Tax benefit, including 1.7 million pensioner households who currently receive pension credit/minimum income guarantee. The number of households who will not benefit from a Council Tax freeze will increase over the next 12-18 months, as unemployment increases.
3. To save ‘over £200’ in Council Tax over the course of a two year freeze, the ‘typical family’ referred by David Cameron in his pledge would, in at least 300 of England’s 315 Local Authorities, need to living in a Band E property and paying more than £1644.74 a year in Council Tax. But only 9.5% of properties in England are Council Tax Band E, placing these properties amongst the 20% most valuable in the country.
4. We estimate that a typical family living in a Band B/C property (a typical family home) will save, on average, only between £136 and £158 during a two year Council Tax freeze, not ‘over £200’ as David Cameron has pledged.
Download the briefing (pdf) here.
Why would a Tory not want a landslide?
contribution by Plural Progressive
This from Jonathan Freedland on the Guardian website:
Nicholas Boles, head of David Cameron’s “implementation team” and one of his inner circle of advisers, has just said he hopes the Conservatives will not win by a landslide at the next general election.
In a moment that recalled Francis Pym’s notorious 1983 admission that he thought landslide governments dangerous – a statement that prompted Margaret Thatcher to sack him as her foreign secretary – Boles told a Guardian’s fringe meeting this evening that he hoped Cameron would win next year by a “decent, but not over-large majority”.
Why would a Tory activist from the “Notting Hill” set of Westminster Tories (George Osborne, Michael Gove, David Cameron, Ed Vaizey etc.) not want his party to have a landslide victory?
A bit of background. Nick Boles was the founder and Director of the Policy Exchange think-tank up until 2007 when he stood down upon becoming the candidate for the safe Tory seat of Grantham and Stamford. He was previously the candidate for Labour-held marginal seat of Hove in the 2005 General Election.
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When Boris met Dave: let’s not go there
Simply branding David Cameron a posh tosser worth worth thirty million quid – and that’s what he is, of course – is not enough to constitute a serious electoral strategy. Even if it were, New Labour no longer has the credibility to pull it off.
Yet the government seems to be relying on crude toff bashing as some kind of political Vergeltungswaffe, capable of reversing the fortunes of war even in the dying months of the conflict.
When Boris met Dave, tonight’s C4 docu-drama on the teenage adventures of today’s top Tories, will be only the first doodlebug to land on the plucky British electorate, as a party that in its modern form is essentially an Old Fettesian creation moves into full-on anti-Old Etonian overdrive. But hey, I never did get these obscure public schoolie feuds.
Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. I’m a Marxist; for me, politics is all about class. The interests of the vast majority of society, who live by selling their labour power, are directly opposed to the interests of the small minority who live by exploiting it.
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What about those people on the margins?
Whilst the media spotlight has been shining on the sparkling big-teethed smiles of Tories in Manchester this week, I have been living with a family in the shadows. Yasmin and her 13-year-old daughter are asylum seekers from Bangladesh.
They invited me to stay with then in their Bolton home, just ten miles away from the conference, to write about family life on the poverty line.
Life on benefits for Yasmin is not a choice; it’s a legal obligation. She is desperate to work, but like all asylum seekers who are waiting to have their claims processed, she is forbidden to do so by the Home Office.
As I write, the signs of relentless cost cutting are scattered all around me. By the kitchen sink there is a small pot of diluted washing up liquid to make it last longer. A small jug sits in the bathroom, helping to make the most of their deliberately shallow baths. She knows about efficiencies.
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David Davis shows why we can’t trust Tories
John Harris reports from the Conservative Party conference:
Richards asked him if there was a specifically Tory story on civil liberties, at which point he went on about poppies, Churchill, and – once again cranking up the testosterone – the supposedly unreliable ways of lefties. “If we had relied on Guardian-reading vegetarians to defend liberty,” he reckoned, “we’d all be speaking German.”
You’ll remember that last year when David Davis decided to resign from his seat to re-fight it under the banner of civil liberties – many of those same “Guardian-reading vegetarians” decided to support him because they also cared for civil liberties (me included).
Many of us on LibCon were split because a sizeable contingent were of the opinion that you can never trust a Tory. I’m afraid they have been proven right.
Also, as someone said in the first comment:
More accurately, if we’d have relied on the Daily Mail’s 1930s editorial stance to defend liberty, we’d all be speaking German
(via Chicken Yoghurt)
Tory education policy: Set ‘em while they’re young
Here’s my (brief) story. I’m a web developer, I dabble in new web technologies and find it all incredibly exciting. I started web development almost as soon as I first got an opportunity to go on to the internet, around 1998 and years later I took Computer Science at A-Level and university. Yet despite all of this I was never at any point sure, not even 70 or 80% let alone 100%, what it was I wanted to *be* when I “grew up.”
One of the reasons for this was the feeling that the state of this world was not one for pigeon-holing one’s self; I’d started my journey with 28.8kbps internet, AOL chat rooms and over the next 5 years was entering a world of ISDN, CSS, standards and the monopoly of internet explorer.
The fact was that the world of employment and hobby could change very quickly, for the better or for the worse. For me a broad understanding of science, mathematics, philosophy and literature would provide for my future far better than becoming an absolute expert in the one field that I had such an affinity for.
So why, in this world of changing ambitions, vast opportunities for development and greater accessibility to new careers and education, do Tories want to propose to set up highly specialised schools for kids aged 14+?
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Conservatives: party of jobs and opportunity?
David Cameron this morning asks us to believe that an entity he notably refers to as ‘the new Conservative Party’ is now ‘the party of jobs and opportunity’. Either the overnight transformation took several tonnes of fairy dust, or it is a hallucination caused by some other magical powdery substance reputedly once much favoured by opposition frontbenchers.
Nobody who is historically literate will forget that it was the Tories that ruled Britain through most of the 1930s and all of the 1980s, the only two decades in which the dole queues topped three million.
And didn’t Cameron once work as special adviser to Norman ‘Black Wednesday’ Lamont, the Conservative chancellor who famously argued that joblessness on a massive scale is ‘a price well worth paying’ to control inflation?
The truth is that the brand of free market economics to which all good Tories subscribe clearly maintains that involuntary unemployment can only arise in a limited range of special cases. Until Cameron explicitly disavows this doctrine, the suspicion has to be that he agrees with his former boss. continue reading… »
Pt 2: How the Tories abandoned gay rights over Europe
I’ve been collecting information on one of David Cameron’s allies in his new European grouping. This is the second part of that investigation, the first part is here.
In part one I exposed how the Lithuanian member of David Cameron’s new European grouping had voted to support some very homophobic legislation.
To reiterate, the ‘Law on the Protection of Minors from the Detrimental Effects of Public Information’, which has been described as a harsher and more wide-reaching version of Britain’s old Section 28, bans discussion of homosexuality not only in schools but in any public places and media that could be accessed by young people.
It has been condemned by Amnesty Intl, the European Union itself and activists in the UK.
Valdemar Tomaševski, the Lithuanian MEP in question, is also on record as having branded homosexuality a “perversion”. Yet the Tories apparently did not view that as a reason not to welcome him into their European alliance.
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Cameron’s dishonesty over his EU intentions
contribution by pagar
Assuming the polls are right and David Cameron is set to become our next Prime Minister, any signs that we are about to enter a new era of honest government are completely undermined by his currently stated position on the Lisbon Treaty.
This is as follows.
1) He is against the treaty being implemented.
2) In a referendum on UK ratification he would campaign for a no vote.
3) If the treaty has not been ratified by the time he takes office he will hold a referendum on the issue.
4) If the treaty has been ratified by the time he takes office he will not tell us what he will do regarding holding a referendum.
5) The reason he gives for not telling us what he will do is that to do so could influence the decision of the remaining two countries that have not yet ratified.
His dishonesty is exhibited by the obvious disconnect between 1 and 5 above. If he is against the treaty being ratified, why does he not commit now to a referendum if that would be the best way of influencing those still to ratify not to do so?
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More Tory turmoil over EU friends
At the end of their front-page article on Cameron today, the Observer picks up our little story:
Last night it emerged that another of Cameron’s European allies had been accused of holding extreme views after backing anti-gay legislation in Lithuania. Valdemar Tomasevski, an MEP and a member of the Tories’ European coalition, voted for a Lithuanian law on 16 June that bans discussion of homosexuality, not only in schools but in any forum open to young people.
Soho Politico will write more about the extent of Tory hypocrisy over this issue tomorrow morning.
Cameron’s ‘typical family’ is a rich one
If you missed yesterday’s edition of The Sun – which I guess means most of you – then I’d suggest that pop over to Tom Watson’s blog, where you’ll find a copy of David Cameron’s ‘10 Key Pledges‘ for the upcoming General Election, much of which the FT’s Westminster blog has already neatly picked to pieces.
However, one thing that did intrigue me was the very first pledge on the list…
We will work with councils to freeze council tax for two years – saving over £200 for the typical family.
Oooh, a saving of £200 in just two years – can that be right?
And if it is then exactly how typical does a family have to be to make this kind of saving?
Let’s crunch a few numbers shall we…
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Miliband shouldn’t back down over Cameron’s EU friends
It annoys me about lefties that they get scared too easily by the media. David Miliband is likely to be the latest victim of Tory faux-outrage and he shouldn’t back down. He said in a speech:
Last week on the BBC, and you should go through the transcript, Eric Pickles, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, explained without a hint of shame that we should not condemn one of their new allies, the ‘For Fatherland and Freedom’ party, who every year celebrate the Latvian Waffen SS with a march past of SS veterans, because they were only following orders.
It makes me sick. And you know what makes me sicker? No one in the Tory party batted an eyelid. What do they say? All you need for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent. I tell you conference, we will never remain silent.
All this is factually true. But the Tories have gone on the offensive, calling it an anti-semitism row.
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A social democrat is a conservative with some research
A while back, I wrote that:”One criticism of the welfare state is that once you include tax credits, child benefit, housing and council tax benefit and so on, a lone parent who is not in paid employment and has two children has roughly the same income as a single person who works and gets the average wage.”
One possible reaction to this is “that’s a disgrace, and it shows that benefits are too high.” This is the one which you will read a lot in the newspapers.
Fraser Nelson, Thatcherite editor of the Spectator, wrote something similar a couple of weeks ago:
Take, for example, a British girl leaving school and imagining a life of lower-paid work. The UK government presents her with two options: employment or pregnancy. If she has one child and no job, the benefit income of £207 a week is more than the average wage for a hairdresser or teaching assistant. With two children, it is £260 a week — more than a receptionist or library assistant earns. With three children, it is £324 a week, more than a lab technician, typist or bookkeeper.
Fraser is not, however, arguing that benefits need to be slashed.
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Surrendering to “Euro-extremists”
The Guardian reports:
David Miliband today described the Conservatives as “a bunch of schoolboys” and “a national embarrassment” as he rallied Labour at the end of its annual conference. The foreign secretary accused David Cameron of surrendering to “Euro-extremists” in his own party and said the fact that Tory MEPs were in alliance with a party that celebrated the Latvian Waffen SS made him “sick”.
…
He reminded delegates the Tories have formed a new group in the European parliament that put them in alliance with the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom party, a party that takes part in an annual event commemorating the Latvian Waffen SS, and he said Eric Pickles, the Tory chairman, had been asked about this in a recent BBC interview. Pickles said the Latvian SS veterans who take part in the event had been just “following orders” during the war, Miliband said.
Of course the Tories are going to hit back any minute saying Labour is just smearing. But given that we have uncovered evidence of Tories allying themselves with homophobes who actually voted for draconian legislation – what excuse will they offer then?
Power without responsibility
Much excitement over the fact that a right wing newspaper owned by a wealthy foreigner will be urging its readers to vote Tory at the next election.
But I thought this was the most interesting report to come out of it:
It is rumoured that The Sun had made it clear that it would not back the party as long as Dominic Grieve remained Shadow Home Secretary. The previous Sun Editor, Rebekah Wade had made that clear after an unhappy dinner she had had with the man now moved to the Justice portfolio.
That’s not a rumour started by bitter Labour activists, but comes from Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home. And it isn’t a complaint – Tim seems to think it is perfectly normal that David Cameron would move his ministers if they upset Murdoch’s minions over dinner.
EXCLUSIVE: David Cameron’s European ally supports “deeply homophobic legislation”
Over the past few weeks I have been collecting information from human rights to shed light on one of David Cameron’s allies in his new European grouping. This is the first of a multi-part investigation.
Despite the persistent criticism that it has allied itself with extremists, David Cameron’s Conservative Party now sits in the European Parliament with the European Reformists and Conservatives group (ECR), led by Poland’s Michal Kaminski – a man allegedly with a racist and homophobic past.
But so far it has gone unreported that another ally of the Conservatives in Europe has a much more serious and recent record of homophobia.
Valdemar Tomaševski, MEP from Lithuania, and member of the Tories’ Euro coalition, is on record as having branded homosexuality a “perversion”.
Not only that, I can now reveal for the first time that he also personally voted for a Lithuanian law that has been described as a harsher, more wide-reaching version of Britain’s Section 28.
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Labour: writing off their generation
Listening to a group of young people shouting ‘Labour, Labour, Labour; out, out, out’ while marching past Brighton’s conference centre yesterday took me back to when I was the same sort of age. We had a similar chant, you see. But back in the 1980s, the slogan was aimed at Maggie.
Instantly recognisable was the intensity of the hate on display, which was clearly of the kind that will last a lifetime. My twentysomething animosity to the Conservatives has been enough to secure decades of commitment to the far left, and I don’t doubt that a whole layer of students, young workers and a million or so NEETs in 2009 are in pretty much the same frame of mind about the party of which I a member.
I’m assuming, if only from what I overhear apolitical workmates in a similar age bracket say, that this mood is generalised and not confined to the radicals that each successive decade inevitably throws up.
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ConHome paranoia about ‘liberals’ at the BBC
Recently, Mike Smithson questioned the reliability of ConservativeHome’s polling of Tory grassroots members. He suggested that the site ought to join the British Polling Council if it wants to be taken seriously as a pollster. “Otherwise”, Smithson wrote, “shouldn’t we be dismissing each new finding as just another voodoo survey?”
On Friday, ConservativeHome links from its front page to yesterday’s Guardian story about Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s outrageous political meddling in the BBC’s hiring practices. Hunt had argued that the corporation ought to be actively seeking more Tories to be part of its news team, in order to counteract supposed liberal bias.
Directly below its link to the story, ConservativeHome alerts readers to a shocking discovery about the BBC that it had made on a previous occasion:
ConservativeHome discovered two years ago that there were eleven times as many liberals at the BBC as conservatives.
Er, actually, what they found was that, among BBC employers who were members of Facebook, eleven times as many recorded themselves as having ‘liberal’ political views as self-identified as ‘conservative’.
And not only is the sampling technique they employed a joke: there’s no attempt to analyse what parts of the corporation these liberal covert operatives were working in, or how senior they were, or what was the likelihood that they could influence BBC output. Just another voodoo survey then…
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
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» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
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» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
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» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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