Monmouth M.P. Is Bottom Of The Class

Education, education, education.  Three things the current Conservative Party seems not to like very much.

Here in Monmouth, we are unfortunate enough to be saddled with a Member of Parliament, David Davies, who shoulders a chip so large that it carries an EU health warning.  In a recent exchange with a Minister of State for Education, he asked what steps were being taken to reduce red tape for employers.  A pretty standard question, you may think, and fairly uncontroversial.  An equally bland response came forth.  Then Davies follow up revealed his true colours:

"I thank the Minister very much for that. Does he agree that, to many people, high-quality vocational courses will offer a far better route to gainful employment than a meaningless degree somewhere?" (1)

A meaningless degree?  Meaningless to whom?  To which degrees was Davies referring?  The one he took?  Sadly not.  For Davies did not attend University, and has never wasted an opportunity to deride those who do.  Instead, he worked for the family firm.  One can only imagine the intensity of that particular interview.  "What is your name?"  "Davies."  "Welcome aboard."

If this was the singular, isolated case of Davies showing his dislike for education, he could (at a push) be forgiven.  Unfortunately, it's not.  Back in February, Davies criticised students as being bone idle - a ridiculous generalisation, and, as I have pointed out, not one based on any personal experience.  Such knee-jerk reactions do not enhance anyone's reputation, but given that he made his comments within the Monmouth Constituency, it's doubly embarrassing.

Back in 2007, Davies blundered his way into a debate on education inspections with characteristic thought and consideration:

"I saw  that it is schools in the independent sector which will face snap inspections, to ensure compliance with Charity Commission regulations. The state sector will continue to receive ample warning of any effort to uncover their failings."

This, according to Davies, was unfair, given that:

"The majority of parents who educate their children independently do so at great personal sacrifice often because their local state schools are not performing well." (2)

Which schools was he thinking of?  Maybe Monmouth Comprehensive, judged by it's most recent inspection to be:

"... a very good school with outstanding features in the standards it achieves, the quality of education it provides and in the effectiveness of its leadership and management. A particular strength is the innovative approach it adopts in all areas but especially in devising stimulating and effective learning experiences. Inspectors’ judgements match the school’s self-evaluation grades in all seven key questions." (3)

Perhaps he was referring to Chepstow School (another Comprehensive in his constituency) where over three quarters of "lazy" students managed to achieve 'A' level grade C or better last year, higher that the national average?

If not those two schools, what about another in his constituency, King Henry VIII school in Abergavenny?  Unfortunately for the ignorant Davies, inspectors who stayed for a whole week:

"...found that pupils at key stage 3 'had made significant progress' since the last inspection in 1999. In national curriculum tests, they found that 'the proportion of pupils achieving the expected level or higher in all three core subjects is well above national averages'. GCSE results for pupils gaining 5 or more passes 'are above the national average' ." (4)

Or maybe none of the above.  Perhaps, in keeping with many of Davies utterances, he hadn't bothered thinking before opening his mouth.  If students in his constituency had been as lazy as he in doing their homework, then the inspectors may have had reason to complain.

Another interesting point here is  an assumption Davies seems to make about independent schools.  If they are superior to these excellent state schools, then surely they have nothing to fear from snap inspections?  Another confused and muddle-headed idea is that parents who educate their children privately are the only ones to make sacrifices.  Rather than deride the parents of children at state schools, he should be praising those people in Monmouth who work exceedingly hard in helping their children achieve more than ever before.

Monmouth's students are not lazy.  They, along with many of their compatriots across the country, are working harder than ever before, achieving more than ever before and are rightly lauded for it.  Apart from by Davies, of course, who seems to dislike education, students, parents and schools, unless they are private.  Monmouth's students deserve everything they have worked hard to achieve.  What they do not deserve is a series of ignorant rants by an unthinking and unintelligent M.P.

(1) http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2011-06-09a.260.6&s=speaker%3A11719#g261.0

(2) http://cornerstonegroup.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/the-new-education-inspection-regime-by-david-davies-mp/

(3) http://www.moodle.torfaen.gov.uk/monmonmouth/file.php?file=%2F1%2FWebsite%2FSchool_info%2FSUMMARY_REPORT_FOR_PARENTS.pdf

(4) http://www.kinghenryviiischool.org.uk/about/inspection/

React Today, Recant At Leisure

The Archbishop of Canterbury's criticism of the current Government has drawn some fairly predictable reactions.  The very people who were cock-a-hoop over praise from a bunch of right wing overseas economists earlier in the week suddenly filled the television studios with their strangely puce faces, growling that a religious leader (and Parliamentarian) should not have the temerity to voice an opinion.  The award for Biggest Charlie of the Day went to Ian Duncan Smith, who seemed to be implying that the Archbishop's criticisms of his welfare policies were unfair because he had spent a long time on them.  As with Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms, it is fair to say that Mr Duncan Smith is meticulous in taking a long time to get things badly wrong.

Who politicians listen to and who they ignore will always be a bone of contention.  After all, most Governments since the war have been accused of not listening to the people, and many of those who preceded them probably only got away with it only because society was more deferential.  There's no doubt that Governments do conveniently ignore the will of the majority in certain cases, and there are times that we should say thank you for that.  If this wasn't the case, we would probably rival Iran for our policies towards crime and punishment, while the various wars we would have started would have had Tony Blair producing a dossier a week.

The nature of democracy in this country is such that we elect people under one guise, then expect them to behave in a completely different way once they enter Parliament.  Come election time, we want to hear about policies.  "What can you do for me?" is a familiar refrain on the doorstep.  Our candidates are then expected to put ideas forward and be judged on them via the ballot box.  Once we've elected someone, though, the nature of the relationship changes.  We no longer expect them to carry out the ideas they put forward, but to vote on issues in the way we want.  We want to elect ideas people, then turn them into directed delegates.

One of the reasons I voted against AV was the idea that politicians should try to appeal to the broadest number of people as possible.  A political culture that fosters this would lead only to blandness and a lack of principle.  The best example of this in the current Parliament is Norman Lamb, bag carrier for Nick Clegg and a man completely devoid of any political ideals.  Within the last fourteen months, Lamb has achieved a feat of political gymnastics previously unsurpassed.  He has both opposed tuition fees and supported their trebling.  He has promised to protect front line policing and also been instrumental in introducing 20% cuts.  He has promised to create jobs and helped preside over a large leap in unemployment.  All of this, however, pales into insignificance when one considers his somersaults on the NHS.  When he was trying to get elected, he wanted to defend the NHS.  When it was expedient for him, he supported Andrew Lansley's reforms.  Now his Leader's Leader has announced a change of mind, Lamb wholeheartedly supports it.  His appearance on Newsnight attempting to defend the position was squirm worthy tv of a kind not seen since Basil Fawlty's heyday.  When a politician behaves in this manner, people lose faith.  The kind of spineless display we see from Lamb and his ilk on a regular basis turns people off politics and brings the whole business into disrepute.

I have worked for and with various politicians and can vouch for the difficulty of mailbag management.  In any given week, people will expect the elected member to take two completely different positions on any given issue.  The politician who is permanently reactive would have to echo these sentiments expressed by Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister:

Sir Humphrey: Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I'd have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolitionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.  (From The Whisky Priest by Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, December 1982).

Perhaps Kipling's 'If' needs updating (poorly) for the current political climate:

"If you can listen to Archbishops and the IMF
And be a little bit more gracious when hearing both
You might be listened to a bit more often
And not be laughed at for squealing like babies when you're criticised"

Criticism will come and criticism will go.  Politicians should not get over excited by it.  When opposition is overwhelming (Poll tax for Thatcher, ID cards for Blair, NHS reforms for Cameron) there is a case for dropping a policy.  Being directed by the morning's headlines, though, merely produces a mess.

Nanny Needs To But Out Of More Than The Obvious Areas

http://thisismytruth.org/2011/05/23/bring-on-a-new-age-of-co-operatives/

This political generation has a genuine chance to be different, to change the political and economic culture for many years to come.  Just as the post war generation built the corporatist concensus and the Thatcherites made private sector adulation a holy grail, the current crop of politicos can equally make their mark.

Current political debate seems to be concerned with managing the slow, lingering death of Thatcherism with a Blairite tinge.  The Tories are overly concerned with "rolling back the frontiers of the state", to quote William Hague in 1976.  But rather than seeking to privatise the public services, we should be seeking to socialise business and build an economy that works for the good of society rather than a handful of individuals.

The co-operative movement is growing and a fanfare for that.  Co-ops involve local people taking an interest in the economy of their local area.  The ambition of large companies is that we simply see the total at the bottom of the receipt and not the damage that we do to our local area by filling their coffers.  For the sake of 10p off a tin of chopped tomatoes, we often close our eyes to the unethical shopping, the anti-union tendencies and the enslavement of producers, suppliers and distributors.  Better to pay the little bit extra to make sure that independent suppliers survive, making sure that we are not enthralled to one company for everything - a company who can then leave us in the lurch without notice or complaint.  Caring about your customers, staff, environment and the local economy makes a huge difference, every little genuinely helping.

While governments create the impression of trusting local people to make economic decisions, we are still not trusted politically.  Genuine local democracy does not exist and has not done since the introduction of rate-capping.  Margaret Thatcher's beloved Poll Tax (officially and laughably known as the Community Charge) was meant to increase accountability, but simply led to a rehash of the Rate Support Grant.  Council Tax has not moved the relationship between local and central government forward.  David Cameron is proud of having told councils to freeze council tax.  I think I'm more capable of knowing whether a rise in council tax is more necessary in this area than Cameron is.  Let the council set the rate and let the voters decide whether they want it or not.  If people want to re-elect their councils they will.  If they want to kick them out, they will.  Central government meddling in local affairs has reduced the role of local elections to an annual referendum on the performance of the occupants of Downing Street.

If we are to have a real localism agenda, we should be making our own political and economic decisions.  Local banks setting interest rates for people in their area would be a start.  Unemployment in the north is not a price worth paying for low inflation in the south, despite what Eddie George once said.  Areas with low college staying on rates should be offering grants and tuition fees to their students, those suffering low economic growth could vary their business rates, while elderly care should be regulated by vigorous local inspections, rather than the current, misfiring reliance upon a centralised system which is overloaded and underfunded.  And if you don't like what this costs?  Vote against it.  It's your democratic right.

From the large supermarkets who want you to buy one product to governments who want to give you Hobson's choice at the ballot box, it's time we started saying "no".  There are plenty of politicians who cry "Nanny State" whenever we are given any health advice.  Strange how they keep silent when their own paymasters interfere in our lives.  If any political party is serious about decentralisation, the time to prove it is now.