The Cannibalisation of Education

Education in this country is pretty messed up. A conversation with the average British teenager, teacher or parent will confirm this. Both the Labour Party and the Coalition Government seem to have absolutely no idea what to do with this problem. Labour had years to improve our education system but seemed to spend the time moving pieces around the board and examining students / inspecting teachers to death. None of these strategies worked. The Coalition is so clueless about Education that they have simply adopted many of Labour’s education policies (just as Labour did when they originally took over from the Conservatives in 1997). Academies, for instance, were created by Labour but are now very much part of the Coalition agenda.

The Academy programme – under Labour or the Coalition – is a damaging, wasteful and intellectually insulting enterprise. The word itself is deceitful. Simply calling a comprehensive school an ‘Academy’ does not make it any better. A dictionary definition of ‘Academy’ suggests a level of excellence that shouldn’t statistically exist in an inclusive institution like a school – unless the figures themselves are being managed or fiddled. Successive governments believe that parents are stupid enough to be fooled by such a simple ruse. They might as well be called ‘Super-Dooper’ schools for all the difference a change of title makes.

Academies are financially wasteful. It takes millions and millions more to create an Academy than it does to improve a regular comprehensive school or build one from scratch. There is no evidence that Academies are more effective than other schools at academically improving the students in their care. Some Academies – even with their huge budgets and advantageous systems - have failed completely and have either had to be closed down or be put into Special Measures. This has not stopped two successive governments blindly expanding an untested programme at the cost of millions and millions of pounds to the British taxpayer.

Academies are opposed by teaching unions, who have found these new forms of educational institution to be extremely damaging to the societies in which they are situated. Academies allow for the privatisation of education, they practise ‘back-door’ selection of students and harm other schools in the local area by creating both a cash and brain-drain. They have sponsors, who partly finance the Academy: these can take the form of wealthy individuals or successful businesses. They have an input on the curriculum and organisation of the Academy. In these times of austerity these individuals and companies are almost certainly motivated by money, advertising and influence and these cannot be healthy factors to introduce into an educational environment.

Why do Academies attract parents? Simple. Some schools, due to their initial catchment areas, draw a greater number of Middle Class, advantaged students. These students generate better grades for their school than a school down the road that services a community that is less wealthy. If you take one hundred students and randomly create ten teams of ten, then you should have ten fairly equal teams. No significant advantages. No significant problems or weaknesses. If, however, you take the ten best footballers, place them in one team and then enter all ten teams in a football tournament, then the team containing the best footballers will routinely top the league. This is what happens in schools. The schools that recruit from Middle Class areas are not better institutions: they are simply full of students who are more academically advantaged – by virtue of the fashion in which they have been raised. These schools often generate less improvement in their students across five years of compulsory education than other students but that doesn’t matter because the only figures that are advertised for these different schools are the end-of-course examination results. The Middle Class school will always generate more ‘A’ grades under these circumstances.

This nasty problem has always existed, but the Academy programme embraces it and exacerbates it. These Academies are seen by the government and by British parents simply as better schools, with better facilities and better teachers. This, of course is a gross simplification. If fact, it is more likely that the better teachers generally work in the other, struggling schools, where more academic value is added to students, with less financial investment from the government and self-interested sponsors. This matters little to parents in general, however, who hear a high GCSE pass-rate in an Academy (which ironically might be statistically underachieving) and want to send their children there. Is this so wrong? Basically, it is. It is wrong in the same way it was wrong for the survivors of the Titanic to hog their lifeboats and not return to include others suffering in the freezing water. Academies take huge amounts of extra money from the Education budget, that is effectively being cut from other non-Academy schools. The parents of academically bright students in these struggling schools also give in to temptation and pull their children out, only to apply to the local Academy. The ‘success’ of Academies therefore relies upon creating schools that gradually ‘sink’, despite the best efforts of their teachers and students. Unsurprisingly in these situations, greater concentrations of behavioural problems occur since the Academy is hardly likely to take on students with poor behaviour records from their primary schools or previous secondary schools. These schools simply have to cope the best they can with greater behavioural problems, fewer gifted and talented students to set a tone and good example and, of course, less money. They are viewed cynically by parents as ‘bad’ schools, even though parents had a large hand in creating them.

Why doesn’t everyone simply apply to an Academy? Ultimately they can, but Academies employ fairly insidious strategies to further ensure the illusion of their own ‘excellence’, while further damaging other institutions. Academies are often placed in charge of these other struggling schools. A bizarre situation is then generated where a school that is helping students improve to a greater degree than the Academy is superseded and taken over by the Academy, simply because the Academy has a higher number of A grade students attending it(generated, of course by the lifestyle decisions of parents who want to be ‘seen’ to be doing the best for their children – even if they aren’t). If a student applies to the Academy and their predicted grades match the high grade aspirations of the institution, then they are accepted. This can happen even if the Academy is oversubscribed because Academies get money from the government to expand if they are seen to ‘succeed’. If an honest, hard-working student applies but has a predicted grade that would be damaging to the Academy’s existing reputation and grade-average, then the Academy declines. It can, of course, offer that student a place at one of the struggling schools, the management of which it has taken over. There is plenty of room in those and a D-grade predictor won’t do any damage there. This is how Academies select through the back-door. They damage other schools statistically and financially, parasitically head-hunt the better academic students from them and ensure the intelligence-insulting illusion of their own continued success.

Parents should not be blamed for wanting the best for their children. There has to be a better way of doing that than by selling a generation of other parents’ children down the river. We have cannibalised Education in this country. The politicians have orchestrated this obscenity and the public have either misguidedly empowered them or stood by and allowed it to happen. In the years to come, with Academies everywhere, our education system in tatters and standards cheapened, this will be judged as wilful negligence of our children. We will have created a societal Munchausen by proxy.

The Mineral Wars

You do not just happen upon colossal amounts of valuable mineral deposits in a war-torn country unless you are looking for them. US geologists have discovered an estimated $1 trillion dollars of gold, iron, copper and lithium in contested areas of Afghanistan. Prospecting companies take decades to locate and verify rich seams of valuable minerals and fossil fuels. It takes years to determine the ease of their extraction. In the wake of the 9/11 bombings, Afghanistan is one of the wars even fairly cynical people regard as moderately just and understandable.

In light of subsequent wars fought against ‘terrorist groups’ or ‘rogue nations’, even US motivations to go into Afghanistan have been brought into question. After all, the United States has never actually caught Osama Bin Laden. Other nations have taken to brokering peace with terrorist groups (e.g. the IRA) rather than all out military confrontation. Looking back in a generalised, history book-style fashion, the late twentieth century and early twenty first century will be seen to be dominated by mineral wars fought under the guise of a ‘War on Terror’. Taking place right before the world’s eyes is a resource-snatching exercise, whereby western nations venture imperialistically into other parts of the world. They do this on the premise of dealing with terrorist threats but are in fact only bolstering their dwindling energy reserves and economies. Of course, the US is going to want a healthy share of the mineral resources in Afghanistan in reparation for their ‘efforts’ within the country. About $1 trillion should cover it. Lithium also has a special significance given its extensive use in the computer and mobile phone industry. This is a highly sought-after metal during a global technology- boom.

What of the true terror in our world? What of the countries rich in human-rights abuses, dictatorship and innocent deaths, but poor in mineral resources? Their present existence will continue and the evil within them will be allowed to fester, since no country in the United Nations appears to have any intention of taking a war on terror to a place with unprofitable prospects.

The Real Cost of Football

Football is a fun game. A kick around in the park is not only enjoyable, it is good for you. Watching football on television can be engaging and a form of socialising. What people choose to watch on their television in the privacy of their own homes is ultimately up to them. On the other hand, I would imagine that there are a great number of wives and girlfriends out there who believe that their spouses spend a disproportionate amount of their time watching football matches, reading about football, talking about football (often at the pub) and playing the game (usually on a console of some description). Painful though this might be for them, this is not the real cost of football.

Football matches cost the British taxpayer millions and millions of pounds each year. A game that is enjoyed by relatively few in the stadiums, costs everyone else huge amounts of money. It seems an unfashionable thing to identify as a problem. The British seem unwilling to condemn negative aspects of ‘the Beautiful Game’. We hear endlessly about the skill of football players, yet we haven’t been able to secure an international victory in decades and decades. Footballers are paid obscene amounts of money, totally out of proportion with their actual level of skill and importance. This tiny number of wealthy sportsmen then in turn feed the false hopes of hundreds of thousands of schoolboys, for whom football becomes more important than achieving good grades in school or securing a decent job. News relating to football dominates Sports News on television and can almost take the same amount of time on the programme as all other news from around the rest of the world – let alone the country. The same pattern can be seen in the number of column inches it dominates in tabloid newspapers. The weather presenter even makes a special report at the end for football fans of specific games! As recent news coverage regarding referees has indicated, football can also be instrumental in developing misogynistic and violent attitudes in the people who attend football matches at all levels (parents and children attending after-school club matches right up to hordes of men travelling to Premier League events).

These aspects of football matches seem a high cost already to pay for a nation’s interest in football – although I believe whenever this phrase is used it is not really a ‘nation’s’ interest. A large number of people aren’t interested in football at all. Many have a passing interest and might watch a game on the television but won’t travel hundreds of miles to watch their team play in a distant stadium against another team in the same league. Essentially, football’s importance is overstated and nobody ever seems to challenge the stranglehold largely working-class young males have on our actual nation’s interests.

These are all negative aspects of football – but they are not its true cost. Every time a football match takes place in a stadium in a city centre, football clubs have to pay for policing costs within the stadium and in their car parks. This runs to thousands of pounds. This is also a relatively recent arrangement: a limited concession to the impact football matches have on our cities and society. There are two true costs to the average citizen in this country. The first is that the football clubs do not pay for the large numbers of police officers required to form lines that separate fans at train stations or police the often residential areas around stadiums into which fans spill following matches. If the recent coverage is to be believed then that is a lot of misogyny and violence being released into our communities. Football fans, of course, do not often just go home. Pubs and city centres are often venues for discussing disagreements and airing grievances with fellow supporters or opposing fans. Adding alcohol to the situation creates further consequences: violence and anti-social behaviour are subsequently maximised. These are all problems that the police have to deal with, on a weekly blank cheque written by the British tax-payer. The football clubs do not pay for the extra police officers that have to be deployed to secure the safety of citizens in these areas. They also don’t pay for the many hours of police overtime (charged at a premium, of course) required to investigate match-related crimes and gather evidence in the days following an event. The difference between the small concession the football clubs make to policing and the cost to the taxpayer for policing football matches in their entirety is millions and millions of pounds every year. This cannot be right. Why should the many pay through the nose for the luxury of the relative few?

There is one further heinous cost of football matches which is often overlooked. Most people can stomach the problems identified above, given that the football clubs have taken a token amount of responsibility and paid for the policing inside the stadiums. The real cost of football is that police forces do not magically grow extra officers to regularly police football matches – whether those police officers are operating inside the stadium, forming lines in train stations or splitting up fan-brawls in the city centre. These are the constables investigating your burglaries, trying to locate your stolen cars, attempting to prosecute child abusers and hunting for rapists. They are pulled off their cases for the evening - the essential workload of which simply has to wait – in order to police a ‘game’. A game in which fully grown men cannot be trusted to behave themselves or to adhere to the laws of the land. All of this so that a group of young men can experience the ‘atmosphere’ of the football match in a stadium: this seems far too high a cost for the rest of us to pay.

Maxing Out The Credit Card of Trust

The facts. The taxpayer owns 83% of the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland. Last year the bank made a loss of more than £1 billion. Stephen Hester, the chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland, this year was paid £1.2 million salary, a £2 million bonus (claimed annually) and £4.5 million in company shares: a pay packet this year of £7.7 million. Alongside Mr Hester, 323 other senior staff within the company were awarded £325 million this year. This in a year when the cost of banking reforms, the measures to increasingly force banks to behave more responsibly, have been passed straight onto shareholders and customers.

There are two major issues with this. The first is the way banks pay their senior staff and executive members. The issue is regularly raised by the public but the banks, sealed in a financial world of their own, seem not to hear their customers’ disgust and outrage. No one person within a company - even one making profit, which RBS isn’t – is worth £7.7 million in one year. His decisions couldn’t be considered so skilful as to justify that amount of money: there are others who could replace him and would replace him for far less. Even if he worked every hour of the year in that year he still wouldn’t be worth that amount. It is obscene. What is worse is the fact that the money going into his bank account comes directly from our pockets. The taxpayer owns 83% of the company, yet has little say over what this man can pay himself. The taxpayer, in these lean times, should be getting every penny of that money back and RBS should be running back under its own financial steam. We are being scammed. We are being screwed.

The second issue is that the disturbing deal identified above was sanctioned by our very own government. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne - who keep telling us how desperate the economic situation in the country is and how they are bringing the banks back to better practice – have signed off on this deal. They are happy for it to proceed, even given that the taxpayer is a 83% shareholder in the company. How little must the Coalition Government think of the electorate to allow this to happen, when they should know how powerfully we feel about the issue. The public hold the banks accountable for their part in the ‘financial crisis’. Although, it is looking increasingly like the crisis is not as pressing as the electorate were led to believe by the government, if they can voluntarily finance wars and afford to allow senior bank staff to be paid in such a fashion. Yet again, the government is demonstrating how stupid they think the electorate is. It believes it can continue to reward the establishment it truly represents, at the same time as fooling us into thinking they are taking our concerns seriously.

There are only really two forms of protest left against this kind of reckless behaviour. The banks aren’t listening. The Coalition Government isn’t listening. They won’t be able to ignore numbers, however. Nothing grabs the attention of a banking executive or politician more than a graph with a sharp downward trend. If people deplore this kind of behaviour and know of it happening in the bank that holds their money, then they should move their funds to a bank that behaves more responsibly and listens to its customers. Similarly, if the Coalition Government is insulting our intelligence – saying one thing but doing another – then this breach of trust should result in large numbers of people who voted for the two constituent parties making up that coalition, not voting for them again. Only this way will both banks and governments listen and behave in line with our expectations. Only this way - in the creation of a cautionary tale - will banks and governments be forced to behave better in the future.

A Referendum on Nick Clegg

Regardless of how you feel about AV, the process of debating voting reform in this country will have one beneficial effect. Nick Clegg - a man who has lied to himself about what the electorate wants, what the country needs and his own necessity – will finally come to understand what a dreadful series of mistakes he has made. The AV referendum shouldn’t be about Clegg, but it inevitably will be. Voters will associate Clegg with the ‘Yes’ vote. They know it is something he desperately wants, that his party will definitely need in the next election and that success for the ‘No’ vote will ultimately humiliate him. It is the electorate’s first opportunity to punish Nick Clegg for his broken promises, his misguided leadership and joining an ideologically opposed party in a coalition. They will find it very hard to resist that temptation. He is already absent from the public side of the AV debate – his image has been removed from campaign leaflets and he has failed to attend key ‘Yes’ vote functions and launches. Given that Clegg must have been involved in such strategies, surely he must now be beginning to question his previous decisions. There is a sick irony to Clegg’s justification for coalition government. One of the clear concessions he received for backing so many Tory policies to the hilt has been this referendum. It seems now that this very act is one of the biggest deciding factors in voters not backing his flagship proposal. Perhaps even Nick Clegg - deep down in some primitive part of his brain, the part dealing with survival instinct – might start to question the worth of his Faustian pact. It won’t be David Cameron coming for the Deputy Prime Minister’s political soul, however: it will be his betrayed voters.

The Politics of Policing

Police officers. They do a difficult job. They are the last person you want around when you’ve edged up to 35 in a 30mph zone; the first when your house is being burgled. They have to walk a line. There is, however, a certain insanity to their actions when ‘policing’ demonstrations against ‘Cuts’. They stand in their black uniforms – dressed in their riot gear, carrying shields and batons and sometimes riding horses. Before they take a step they are already walking symbols of intimidation and oppression. Black is the colour of uncompromising authority at its most extreme: think of the ninja, the SAS, the SS. They wear armour and they carry weapons – the instruments of violence and warfare - yet prohibit others from doing the same. They cover their faces with helmets, but now have fresh legal powers to force others to remove scarves and hats that might hide their features. They employ dogs. They use cavalry and ride down on gatherings and demonstrators who are all on foot. The threat is clear: this large animal will trample and injure you, possibly even kill you if you do not do as instructed. The tactic has been used in warfare since ancient times. To complete the Orwellian depiction, they are guided using cameras: one on every street in London - watching, observing and cataloguing.

This might seem a darkly poetic description but even members of the government characterise the police as such. Conservative MP David Jones describes their appearance as “sinister”. Commenting on their uniforms he said, "I think that the connotations of black shirts are obvious to anybody. They've got a kind of fascist, militaristic appearance."

The problem with the police is their inconsistency. They have a difficult job to do but their approach to different aspects of it seems contradictory. Hundreds of thousands of people may gather to demonstrate against government ‘Cuts’ of one kind or another and the police arrive dressed for battle. In terms of crowd psychology, the police imprint the idea that a demonstration is in fact a clash or struggle. When arriving equipped as they do, now a formalised pattern of behaviour, they signal that the street is a battleground. It is unsurprising then that small pockets of demonstrators within larger demonstrations resort to vandalism or violence. It is even less surprising that some individuals arrive at demonstrations kitted out for some kind of battle, even though their scarves and hoods are little match for helmets, body armour, shields and horses. Their spray cans look pretty puny compared to riot batons and the automatic weapons carried by the armed response vehicles waiting down the street.

Violence cannot be excused and these individuals should be prosecuted for crimes they carry out. We should review how the police are part of that problem. We should look at the way in which situations are handled and how the police conduct themselves – even down to how they dress, the equipment they employ and the psychological impact of these decisions on large crowds. Instead we have this impact manifesting itself in isolated pockets of law-breaking and demonstrators casually dismissed as ‘thugs’ by some senior police spokesperson. When groups of people go down a street indiscriminately smashing the place up, causing as much damage as possible, they are thugs. When damage is done to a shop or a business that uses loopholes to escape paying the tax due to the British public - who are partly responsible for the current shortfall and subsequent cuts to fill that financial shortfall – that damage is targeted and politically motivated. These people have broken the law and should be prosecuted, just like the companies who have broken the law by not paying the appropriate amount of tax. They are not the barbaric ‘thugs’ the police and media often make them out to be. Are they out on the street right now smashing shops up around the corner from you? No.

There are, however, people on your streets that do this: people who do commit violent acts and vandalism indiscriminately. Some of them are teenage criminals, shouting verbal abuse, stealing and terrorising people in their homes. Some are fully-grown adults who are out of their mind drunk: swearing, fighting and driving dangerously on our streets. Look at the way the police handle the true ‘thugs’ of society. Therein lies the contradiction. We have all seen the shows on television, following the police during their normal duties on a Saturday night. No body armour, helmets, shields, batons and horses then. If you are attacked in a city centre on a Saturday night or have your windows put in by a group of wayward teens you are lucky if you get one police officer to assist. Then it is the notebook and pencil that is used. Details are taken but little achieved. When people are prosecuted then the fines are miniscule and the mere warnings abundant. There is no ‘kettling’ of the drunken hordes or teenage gangs on our streets. And in fact there shouldn’t be – but it demonstrates the contradiction at the heart of British policing. Where a demonstration of true force and authority is seen to be required, the police in sufficient numbers are nowhere to be seen. When people are legitimately angry about issues that affect the entire country and demonstrate in the capital then the tactics of terror are employed.

The real insanity behind the entire situation is the fact that the demonstrators are out there in support of the police. They are protesting against cuts that would see police officers’ jobs, wages and entitlements taken from them. They are trying to secure the budgets that buy the helmets, batons and horses upon which the police rely in these circumstances. It could be argued that the lawbreakers are in fact risking the most – fines, physical injury, criminal records and imprisonment – to argue the case for police officers as public servants. What do they get for their sacrifice? A faceless wall of black uniforms and a truncheon in the face for not obeying instructions. It’s not right. The police are not allowed to strike and their off-duty involvement in demonstrations is unlikely to be trusted. Their unions could at least put out messages of support in relation to demonstrators’ intentions, rather than branding them as ‘thugs’ and reinforcing the government line. In Egypt, the Egyptian army would not act against the citizens of Egypt, despite government instruction. Why does our own police force, whose wages we pay and whose armour and weapons we purchase, act against the population without question or seeming conscience?

The Weaklings’ War

Prime Minister David Cameron and Presidents Sarkozy and Obama have published a letter declaring that they will keep pressure on Colonel Gaddafi until he is gone. Despite UN Resolution 1973 existing to ‘protect civilians’, the letter from the three leaders claims, ‘But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in power...so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations.’ It is clear that these men wish to exceed the resolution and enforce regime change in Libya. Cameron and Sarkozy particularly want to escalate the military conflict and bring more hardware into the operation – a desire not shared by the other UN member nations. Some nations already believe that the resolution has been exceeded. Why would these three leaders so desperately want to exceed the resolution and commit greater military resources to the conflict? What are their motives?

In Britain we were told by Prime Minister Cameron to expect Libyan government defections: these have not materialised. We were warned of massacres that have not happened and were encouraged by promises of Libyan uprisings as the rebels made progress supported by the military might of the UN. There are no reports of country-wide uprisings. It seems that they will never happen. With little of the promised evidence materialising, Britain shouldering a much greater burden of operational responsibility than first envisaged and Cameron’s desperation growing, his own Conservative Party MPs are beginning to call for a parliamentary recall to re-examine Britain’s involvement in Libya.

David Cameron did not win over the British public in the UK election. He did not win enough seats to form a government and was forced to negotiate a coalition. The Conservative Party’s poll ratings have slumped further since then, Conservative Party membership is down and both Cameron and some of his key players – the Foreign Secretary William Hague, the Education Secretary Michael Gove and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley have made embarrassing public mistakes. The Prime Minister is not in a strong political position. Perhaps he believes he can recreate Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands War victory and following success in the opinion polls?

President Nicholas Sarkozy is bombing in the French polls and is regarded as an unpopular leader. He is despised by the Left and even criticised by some on the political Right. He routinely re-shuffles his own cabinet in response to public criticism and has been personally involved in numerous embarrassing incidents. He is quoted as calling French youth “racaille” or ‘scum’, he believes that paedophilia, depression and suicidal tendencies are “genetic” and, during a speech in Senegal, Sarkozy referred to “African peasants”, angering many Africans who regarded the comment as racist. He was also filmed telling a voter to “get lost” after the man refused to shake hands with him : he then called him a “dumb-ass”. Sarkozy has been accused of receiving illegal campaign donations by French newspapers. He has also distributed photographs of himself that were subsequently proved to be forged. With elections looming, this is a president badly in need of a foreign war to distract his people.

What of President Barack Obama? Obama was always onto a loser. He could never live up to the colossal expectations of his voters. He could never live up to the world’s expectations of the first black president of the United States. Unfortunately, he is a politician and so he indulged those unrealistic expectations. Like Cameron and Sarkozy, his job approval ratings are down. Oil prices are rising and no American president likes to see that. With the Democrats losing the House of Representatives, it is increasingly difficult for Obama to get through the reforms he promised his voters. The Mexican Gulf oil spill was very damaging to his presidency. This demonstrted Obama to have little power to effect change in the face of environmental and economic disaster.

These men are ‘weak’ in a political sense - whether we agree with them or not. Regardless of other very significant problems in their own countries, all three are facing the economic consequences of a global financial meltdown and have little in the way of a solid solution. They are trying to hide their weakness behind a largely unnecessary war: a show of ‘strength’ to disguise their desperation and political vulnerability. They should not be leading the charge in Libya. This is war for all the wrong reasons. A war of political weaklings. At present, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that Colonel Gaddafi is still more popular amongst the Libyan people than Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama are with their own.

The Most Dangerous Man in Politics?

Majority: Michael Gove won the constituency of Surrey Heath in 2005. Surrey Heath is considered to be one of the safest Tory seats in the country and so a high majority doesn’t indicate very much about Gove’s success as a politician. The vast majority of Tory candidates would be assured of a high majority in Surrey Heath.

Competence: Gove has been made Secretary of State and has been given responsibility for a key policy area: Education. It is quite apparent that this is not a result of his professionalism and expertise. He is part of ‘the Notting Hill Set’, and as such is and has been a devoted supporter of David Cameron. He has been rewarded with a position far beyond his standing and ability. He has been responsible for several high-profile blunders during office, including the cutting of the school building programme initiated by the last government, in which he released information riddled with errors and was forced to apologise to the House of Commons.

He was also forced to make embarrassing funding u-turns on the Educational Maintenance Allowance and School Sports. The most damaging blow to Gove’s reputation has been a Judicial Review in which a judge stated that Gove’s failure was "so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power" and that "however pressing the economic problems, there was no overriding public interest which precluded consultation or justifies the lack of any consultation". Gove was then forced to reconsider axing projects on the Building Schools for the Future programme. Previous Secretaries of States have resigned over single, public blunders, but Gove shamelessly continues. The real danger resides in the decisions Gove has rushed through parliament - similarly ignoring the need for appropriate consultation - the blunder of which will only become apparent in the damage it will do to a generation of the nation’s school children.

Representation: Politically, Gove is considered to represent the centre-right, like his ‘moderate Conservative’ Prime Minister. He joined the Conservative Party at university and became secretary of the Aberdeen South Young Conservatives. As a journalist he primarily wrote for right-wing publications like The Times and The Spectator. He wrote speeches for Conservative Cabinet ministers Peter Lilley and Michael Howard and was chairman of the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange.

He is less representative of influences in his early life. He was adopted at 4-months old by a couple in Aberdeen. His adoptive father ran a fish-processing business and his mother worked as a lab assistant. They were both Labour Party supporters and Gove used to canvass for Labour door-to-door. He attended a local state school but won a scholarship to a nearby private school, from where he went to Oxford University and joined the Conservative Party. Since Gove benefitted from a private education on a scholarship, is seems unlikely under the present changes to university funding and fees, that Gove would have been able to attend Oxford, regardless of ability. Gove’s rags-to-riches story is hard not to appreciate: he has undoubtedly benefitted from some good fortune in his family background and with his scholarship. Unfortunately, he has used his gifts – those natural to him and those bequeathed by fate – to cripple the chances of those people that face the same challenges today. That is unforgivable.

Honesty: Gove has had to apologise for publically misrepresenting facts by delivering "not-quite-true information to Parliament" over the fees paid to school architects. His most disingenuous, public acts involve reportedly claiming £7,000 on taxpayer-funded expenses to furnish one of his London properties. One third of this claim went to an interior design company owned by his own mother-in-law. Gove also claimed money for children’s items, despite these being banned under Commons rule. He then 'flipped' his designated second home to a house in his constituency, a property for which he claimed £13,000 to cover stamp duty. While he was moving between his multiple homes he charged the taxpayer more than £500 per night to stay at the Pennyhill Park Hotel and Spa. This is disgusting given that, based on assets alone, Gove is estimated to be a millionaire.

Danger: Gove is notorious for not listening to advice. He is a politician of complete conviction and not in a good way. His belief burns with the unshakable fervor of a convert. His desire for absolute control is clear in the unprecedented number of powers he has freshly attached to his role as Education Secretary. His habit of taking his own personal preferences and applying them for all, borders on the almost-megalomaniacal. The perfect example of this is his introduction of the English Baccalaureate, which is only awarded to students who have selected a specific combination of GCSEs: a combination chosen by Gove himself. This is irrespective of an individual student’s abilities in those subjects. Students that are gifted musicians, artists, technically able with Information Technology or linguistically adept at the languages that are not included on Gove’s prescribed list, will not achieve the benefits of his Baccalaureate, even if they pass their core subjects with flying colours. Gove is an absolutely lethal Education Secretary, armed with an unwieldy raft of changes, applied at a reckless pace. If he was ever to become Prime Minister, the country would be changed from top to bottom – the average citizen’s choices reduced to those preferences approved by Gove personally. A democratic dictatorship.

A Plague On Both Your Houses

We cannot afford to pass the ball interminably between the Conservative
and Labour Party. Changes to the voting system are irrelevant in this respect. If the same parties and individuals are going to be in power - taking turns every decade-and-a-half or so - then it really doesn’t matter what the system is that gives them that privilege. Names might as well be pulled out of a hat. The electorate need more choice. Blair changed everything. The leaders of the three most popular political parties are all Blair clones. Slim, serious, media-savvy men, whose reach invariably exceeds their grasp. Men who would be dangerous in any political party. They live for power, and what they might do with it, and will compromise every principle that they ever held in order to achieve it.

The Coalition Government will undoubtedly do some serious damage during their five year shot. We cannot simply be complacent and hand power straight back to Labour, in an act amounting to nothing more than political schadenfreude. Life should be too short, for each of us to be repeating that mistake. If the last general election demonstrated anything worthwhile it was that anything is possible. It seems unlikely that there were even odds on a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition before the election. Smaller parties need to be ready to respond to the disappointment coming to traditional Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters. Labour voters need to question whether or not their needs might be met with greater success by another party: they have the benefit of recent memory to guide them.

Bystander, Inc. is non-affiliated and so does not endorse any of these smaller parties / independents. It does recognise that there will never be a better time than now for these people to prove their worth: on the run-up to the next general election, where literally anyone could take power. The last election resulted in a vote of no-confidence in all of the three most popular parties. The nasty horse-trading that took place following the result was all the work of politicians. The electorate’s verdict was clear: no one party had a majority and therefore no actual mandate to run the country on the basis of the policies they had spent years presenting. It was a plague on all their houses. They have all now had their chance. They keep telling us that there is ‘no other choice’. Fool the electorate once and shame on the party that committed that deceit; fool the electorate twice and shame on the electorate. We are not a nation of gullible fools. It is time to start listening to someone else. If there is even a chance that there is someone out there with an original solution to even one of the country’s major problems, then they deserve to be heard and considered.

Blood On ‘Our’ Hands...

The most recent polls suggest that support for Great Britain’s military intervention in Libya is waning. The British Parliament voted 557 to 13 in favour of military intervention: a no fly zone over Libya. Members of Parliament should be representing their constituents’ opinions: this would suggest overwhelming support for the action in Libya. A poll conducted by ICM for the BBC has revealed that 38% of people support such military intervention, whereas 35% said that it was the wrong decision. This is a fairly even split and says worrying things about the way politicians represent their constituents. How can 557 politicians vote for military action if 35% of the country opposes it? Political representation is complex. If our present voting system can create such an extreme skew then it definitely needs overhauling.

The present figures suggest that politicians are prioritising their personal opinions over the views held by thousands of their constituents. Those politicians who are voting because of party allegiance are certainly not taking into account opposing voices: voices that are as strong as those calling for military action. The fact that this has support across many countries in the UN has given these politicians the confidence to push the agenda for military action. If the politicians in these other nations have voted similarly and under comparable circumstances, then this would result in strong support across the UN member states. If the eventual acquirement of continued and cheaper oil reserves is the ultimate goal in Libya for these nations, then it is no surprise that the political votes in these countries are going to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Which of the UN member states is uninterested in securing the future of its energy sources?

Perhaps this has something to do with ‘mission creep’. The majority of people are probably behind the idea of a no-fly zone – as it was first described. NATO jets would keep the Libyan skies free of Gaddafi’s jets: an air force that ultimately would destroy any chance the rebels have to take the country. Almost immediately NATO, amongst a great deal of controversy, started airstrikes across Libya and in the capital city of Tripoli, at great risk to innocent Libyan civilians. Attacks committed by NATO jets - that are supposed to be keeping the skies safe for the rebels - have resulted in friendly-fire incidents and rebel deaths. How long will it be before a UN, frustrated with the lack of progress made by a disorganised rebel force and confronted with public disillusion in the face of a drawn-out engagement in Libya, resort to putting ground forces into action? Undoubtedly a way will be found to achieve this without ‘strictly’ breaking the UN resolution.

The situation in Libya is troubling for a whole host of reasons beyond the collateral consequence of military intervention. After Libya, agreement across the UN will no longer carry the legitimacy it has (for example, in relation to the invasion of Iraq). It will have been tarnished by oil-driven motivations, the blood of innocent Libyan people and its seeming refusal to assist rebel elements in other countries throw off their dictators, simply because those countries have less to offer in the energy-equivalents of victory spoils. Countries cannot be invaded – even with UN agreement – on the basis of what their leaders ‘might’ do. Colonel Gaddafi is undoubtedly a very shady figure. When Libya is over, however, and no mass graves are found as evidence of his ‘actual’ dictatorial brutality (on scale that would necessitate an invasion by the United Nations), then we are all going to look very foolish and greedy. It is going to be ‘weapons of mass destruction’ all over again, except this time it will be the evident reality of the Gaddafi threat under scrutiny, and David Cameron in the dock rather than Tony Blair.

‘We Are All In This Together’ (Aren’t We?)

When David Cameron promised the country that ‘We are all in this together’, there was the rallying suggestion of being partners in pain. The core of the Conservative Party’s backing comes from the wealthier segments of society, but Cameron’s promise indicates that he intends the wealthy to feel the pain of the cuts as much as the moderately well-off and the poor. Regardless of what different economists claim, the easiest way to put Cameron’s promise to the test is to simply examine the current spending habits of consumers. Most people don’t understand complex economic models. If the spending of all groups in society is down then we can presume all groups are at least being hit by the cuts, even if they aren’t necessarily being hit equally.

The latest financial figures show a worrying trend for society, however, bringing the Prime Minister’s word clearly into question. Companies like HMV, Currys, Next, Matalan and Mothercare are all suffering terrible trading currently, indicating that their profits are down. These are places the poor and moderately well-off do their shopping. Marks and Spencer’s profits were unexpectedly up, however. Marks and Spencer is traditionally a place where the wealthy tend to do their food shopping. Food is one thing but what about the expensive commodities that you would expect even the wealthy to be cutting down in on these lean times? If Cameron is to be believed and the wealthy are being hit also, then surely they’re not updating the models of their prestige cars. Apparently they are. Jaguar Land Rover has just reported its best sales month in its 63 year company history. More prestige Jaguars and Land Rovers (the land-owner’s favourite vehicle) are flying out of the showrooms than ever before. It seems that the Conservative Party are still serving the interests of the wealthy by ensuring that, at a time when everyone is paying dearly for the economic crisis, somehow they can afford to spend even more on expensive food and transport.

The Children of Thatcher

In April 2008, the now Foreign Secretary William Hague sent a cable to American officials reassuring them that Hague, David Cameron and George Osborne were all ‘Children of Thatcher’. The three most powerful men in the land, controlling our country, our economy and our interests abroad are self-confessed acolytes to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: one of the most reviled and destructive leaders of recent times. Presumably they share her appetite for mass unemployment, riots on British streets, privatisation and armed conflict – all of which dominate the headlines now that the Conservatives are back in power.

We all know this, but Cameron and his crew do quite a good job of hiding it from the general public with misdirection, Liberal Democrat stooges and this irritating insistence that unimaginative and painful decisions ‘have to be made'. ‘There is no other choice,’ the Conservatives tell us, forcing us to draw the conclusion that it was a waste of time replacing the previous government with these ‘Children of Thatcher’. If there are no choices, then it hardly needs a new government to make them. If a new government has no fresh ideas in respect to dealing with the country’s problems, then they really have little business asking for our votes.


That is unless their objective in government is simply to re-install their favoured ideology: Thatcherism. You have to ask yourself, what are three millionaires doing in the high echelons of the government anyway? Haven’t they got better things to do? Shouldn’t they leave government to clever people with new ideas who really want to change things for the better? If the country wanted cuts, they could have voted in anyone to do it. It might have been nice to see a party – even an individual – with an original idea with regard to the economy. Although we suspect that Thatcherism and its aims are David Cameron’s objective, and we see it in William Hague’s own fair hand, it is difficult to imagine that they would try to pull such a thing off right before our eyes. It’s nice then to be reminded by the smug Conservative Environment Minister, speaking to an American audience, that Cameron would have made his Iron Lady proud with cuts “Thatcher could only have dreamt of”.

Benjamin Zephaniah Airbrushed From ‘Yes’ to AV Leaflets

Okay, so this is pretty disgusting. The Conservatives do not do well on race relations. In the past they have been plagued with a vicious racism, as evidenced in Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. In modern times they seem to be a self-serving vehicle to resist previous comparisons, for example David Cameron’s cringe-worthy TV Debate quote, ‘I met a black man...’ This is of course suggestive of the fact that this had been a previously rare occurrence for the Prime Minister.

Even the Labour Party has had its race-related problems. Phil Woolas ran a disgraceful race-riot-inducing election campaign, which ended with his subsequent dismissal from Parliament. Taking into account their political perspective and appeal, the Liberal Democrats should do much better. Here they are, however, on leaflets for one of their flagship (almost only) policies, in which they have sanctioned the elimination of a famous black literary celebrity. Zephaniah has been retained on leaflets sent out across London, but not areas of the country with a smaller race differential. He has been replaced with a white celebrity whom the Liberal Democrats presumably assume might ‘play’ better to audiences in Sussex and Cornwall. Naturally, this massively underestimates the people in those counties. This is pretty despicable of the Liberal Democrats who should be fighting this kind of conduct – not embracing it. It is the kind of tactic we might expect the Tory Party to employ. The Liberal Democrat Party under Nick Clegg really are the new Tories. Unbelievable.

Does A 'Princess' Really Need Our Sympathy?

The Royal family. They cost the taxpayer about £40 million per year. On the other hand, they bring in some much-needed tourist revenue. It is difficult to quantify how much, since a hypothetical American tourist may visit Buckingham Palace but not actually hope to see the Queen. The palace itself is owned by the British public and the soldiers out front in their distinctive uniforms and hats are paid by the taxpayer. How much the Royal family contribute to this situation is unclear since if the monarchy were disbanded, Buckingham Palace would not be torn down: its history would still attract tourists.

Many members of the Royal Family have significantly questionable backgrounds and behaviour, for example the Duke of Edinburgh’s racist gaffes, Prince Harry’s Nazi SS-officer costume wearing and Prince Andrew’s embarrassing business associates / pimping ex-wife. The Royals have recently pushed to the fore Prince William as the more respectable face of the monarchy, with his fiancée Kate Middleton. The concept of having a ‘royal family’ alone is pretty offensive, with its suggestion of a social hierarchy, genetic superiority / significance and those that are ‘born-to-rule’ – even if we have long stopped them doing so.

Even the least offensive members of the establishment, as embodied in Prince William and Kate Middleton, still annoy by trying to court us through the tabloids. Prince William is presented as a helicopter pilot and Kate Middleton as bullied private school student and ‘working’ nobility. We shouldn’t have to be told that William and Kate ‘work’: it should be a standard expectation of anyone in the modern world. We should also cringe at the idea of their bank accounts being credited with future tax payers' money while they play at needing a job. William is a co-pilot, meaning he has the least essential job on the aircraft. He is neither responsible for primarily flying the helicopter or is the crew member lowered down the mountainside on a cable. Kate has been ‘bullied’ at her expensive, private school. She will no doubt get the sympathies of hundreds of thousands of people now, on top of her expensive education and the kind of royal connections it has allowed her to foster. That is a great deal more than the vast majority of school girls out there, who are being bullied, and don't have parents inclined to move them to another such elite institution. It demonstrates a clear lack of awareness of her position in the social scheme. Despite not being a ‘princess’ yet, when you read between the lines (instead of blindly adoring her), Kate Middleton’s egocentricity seems perfectly in check.

Should we get rid of the Royal family? I don’t think that is necessary, but I do think that such a redundant artefact of a previous age should be allowed to die out under the steam of its own finances – not ours.

Transocean Give Bonuses After Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

In other oil-related news, the offshore drilling firm Transocean, the company responsible for the Deepwater Horizon rig and blamed along with BP for last year's massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has given its top executives bonuses for its 'best year' for safety. Eleven workers, nine of whom worked for Transocean,died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded.

Oil companies and their commercial partners-in-crime seem to live in a completely different universe. Transocean claim that it was their best year for safety yet. How can we trust people who make such greedy and questionable decisions? A few more votes for the Green Party there.

Libyan Oil

So it begins. With Libya. Why on Earth is the United Kingdom in Libya? Humanitarian reasons? There are journalists all over the region – from Tripoli to the rebel-held eastern cities. If there are mass graves or evidence of the kind of atrocities that would prompt the UK (as part of the UN) to fly operations over Libya then we sure haven’t heard of them. It seems the rebels can’t identify them and neither can African / Western journalists.

Colonel Gaddafi is undoubtedly a poor leader, a megalomaniac and a man for whom unwarranted violence is a preferred solution. There are few around the world that want him as Prime Minister of Libya. Like most politicians, he has demonstrated himself across his career to be untrustworthy. Unfortunately, the problem with the UN action (legal though it might be), and the UK’s role in leading the charge in Libya, is that it is based upon what Gaddafi might do, not what he has done. That is not to say Gaddafi is entirely innocent: he has lead a military coup in his own country and undoubtedly assassinated individuals considered his opponents - both around the world and in Libya. He has attempted to procure weapons of mass destruction and openly supported terrorist groups like the IRA.

The problem with even these deeply troubling actions is that there are countries around the world, including our own, that have also committed such acts. The UN have not invaded every country around the world that suffers a military coup (e.g. the Democratic Republic of Congo – where the abuse of human rights and loss of life is considered far in excess of Gaddafi’s own regime). Countries like North Korea and Iran actively pursue programmes aimed to produce weapons of mass destruction and the UN have not invaded them. Possessing weapons of mass destruction is not an international crime since many member states of the United Nations do so, including the UK. Finally, since we have a policy of negotiation with terrorist groups like the IRA and respect their right to have political representation according to the law of the group’s origin, we can hardly hold Gaddafi’s support of the IRA against him to any great degree.

Our reason for invading Libya and desiring regime change cannot be based on any of these factors since Gaddafi has been legitimised by the leaders of many United Nations states in the form of political visits and meeting with the Libyan colonel. Russia had worked with Gaddafi to establish military bases in Libya; US Secretaries of State and the President of the United States have had diplomatic meetings with Gaddafi; UK Prime Ministers sit with Gaddafi for meetings on the economy, the French president has signed trade deals with him and the Italian president has ratified treaties of cooperation between Italy and Libya. Add to this the many US and European businesses, organisations and celebrities that have been happy in recent years to receive money from the Libyan colonel and, despite Gaddafi’s violent words and strange behaviour, it is difficult to view Libya as a pariah state anymore.

Enough of such defences. Regardless of everything stated above, the man is obviously dangerous. As Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry once said of Gaddafi: "He has a split personality—both parts evil”. This is not enough evidence (taken as fair comparison with other such world dictators) for Western nations to kill him and impose a regime change on a North African state, however. In terms of the Arab League that support the UN action, many countries that are part of the league struggle with their own legitimacy and suffer opposition within their own countries – not dissimilar to Gaddafi himself. If we take an example like Qatar - which might be considered to have more standing on the world stage (despite having been ruled by an absolute monarchy since the mid-19th Century and suffered coups of its own) – we soon find problems with international motive. Despite the speed of events in Libya, Qatar has already signed an oil export deal with the Libyan rebels fighting Gaddafi for oil extracted from rebel-held territory. Qatar – held up by the UN and the UK as an example of support for action in Libya from the Arab world.

While we spend so much time focussing on Gaddafi our eyes are off our own western leaders, leaders like Prime Minister Cameron. The US went into Iraq and despite the illegitimacy of their claims (and those of the UK government concerning the presence of weapons of mass destruction), US oil companies are pumping oil from under Iraq and securing just a little more of the State's energy future. The speed with which the European nations signed up to action in Libya could be down to a sense of not missing out on the next oil mother lode. All of these leaders are intent on securing their own political futures and the energy futures of their own states. This does not legitimise the action in Libya – vaguely legal though it might be (let's not forget that there are already countries that claim the UN have exceeded the parameters of their original agreement). Libya has 3% of the world’s claimable oil reserves (the United States with its huge oil operations only have 1.7%). There are estimated to be 40,000,000,000 barrels of oil beneath Libyan soil, made all the more attractive by their proximity to Europe and the relative ease of physical extraction in comparison to other oil fields. Add to this the fact that much of Libya has not been explored by oil companies and the fact that it is the largest oil reserve in Africa (ninth in the entire world) and you have excellent reasons for western nations desiring military action and regime change in Libya. Some might argue that if Prime Minister Cameron is not pursuing action in Libya because of oil then why isn't he?

It seems plain that he is. When asked why Libya must come first for intervention on humanitarian grounds, given the many other countries committing atrocities upon their populations, he simply claims that just because you cannot intervene everywhere doesn’t mean you shouldn’t intervene somewhere. Very noble, Mr Cameron, but why does that somewhere need to be Libya where there is so little evidence of current atrocities instead of a country such as Burma where the volume of evidence is substantial? Is it because Burma is sitiing on the same amount of oil as the tiny Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago? That is, hardly any at all.

We should all watch with vigilant interest as the UK falls over itself to get to Libyan oil: bungling evacuations, secret SAS missions, exceedingly poor assessments of rebel capability to take over the country and, worst of all, accidental airstrikes against innocent Libyan civilians and rebels. Gaddafi cannot be trusted: neither can our cash-strapped and profit-hungry Coalition government.  A government I am convinced is lying to the public they claim to represent about the real motivation behind the decision to commit billions of British pounds to effect regime change in Libya.  They are trying to pull, with the collusion of European leaders in similar situations, an international ‘fast one’ right before our very eyes. They must think that they are very clever and, by the same rationale, the British public very stupid. We should make them pay for that misjudgement.