This month, young Eric was at it again. Pickles’ Communities & Local Government Department issued new planning rules for schools, ordering local councils to allow good schools to expand and threatening the cane if they exercise their own democratic judgment. This is, to put it bluntly, an idiotic policy, created by idiots, for idiots toContinueContinue reading “Back to School”
Category Archives: Education
Six Months
That’s all it took. All it took for the Coalition’s true programme to be made manifest. It talks the talk about decentralisation and localism but does it walk the walk?We await with interest the so-called Decentralisation & Localism Bill. We shall withhold judgment until we can read it, but recent pronouncements on housing and educationContinueContinue reading “Six Months”
Non Homo Insula Est
No man is an island. The famous words of John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s in London. Written in English, translated here into Latin.Why Latin? A cloud of celebrities ranging from Joanna Lumley, a native of Kashmir, to Boris Johnson, former MP for Henley-on Thames, has recently been gathered in support of the proposition thatContinueContinue reading “Non Homo Insula Est”
The People’s Ponzi
We’ve been hearing quite a lot recently about Ponzi schemes, as the financial chickens come home to roost. A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam that promises investors a high rate of return but in fact is paying earlier entrants out of the money collected from later entrants. Eventually, for whatever reason, the scheme willContinueContinue reading “The People’s Ponzi”
Whither Wessex?
“At a number of places in his celebrated Imperialism (1902), J. A. Hobson used southern England as an image of the successful, imperialist side of British capitalism: a countryside of plush ‘parasitism’ drawing tribute from overseas via the City, supporting ‘great tame masses of retainers’ in service and secondary industries, and riddled with ex-imperialist hirelings.ContinueContinue reading “Whither Wessex?”
Beware of Barbarians
“…the forces of vandalism and cruelty are ever ready to exploit or destroy what so many generations have painfully laboured to create…”Dr Herman Finer, 1933Change itself is the only constant but there are different kinds or degrees of change. Some changes enhance the quality of life, others can diminish it (which is why ‘modernisation’ -ContinueContinue reading “Beware of Barbarians”
All the World’s a Picnic
It was, of course, insensitive to allow a teddy bear to be named Mahomet. What self-respecting teddy would want to bear a name that remains mired in such controversy? But if Sudanese folk want to make themselves and their religion the world’s laughing-stock by over-reacting, then that’s their business.The questions which the Gillian Gibbons caseContinueContinue reading “All the World’s a Picnic”
Wessex Regionalists 