Management by spin

The Times republishes a government press release about failing schools.

Headteachers from grammar schools are to take over the management of failing schools in their area under plans for reform in England.

The author of the piece, Alexandra Frean, who rejoices in the title of education editor, doesn't see fit to ask any questions about this announcement at all, which is surprising because the government has been saying for some time that its intention is to close down failing schools altogether. Reasonable people might wonder whether this is a change in policy or spin, or something else altogether. Ms Frean however is happy just to parrot the government line.

She goes on: 

There are 638 such [failing] schools in the country and the Government hopes to team up a significant proportion of them with grammar and other successful types of state school.

Again, this is a bit strange because there are only around 160 grammar schools in the country, so even if every grammar school head was put in charge of a failing school, the majority of failing schools would still have to be run by the head of another non-failing bog-standard comp. In other words, the headline would be more representative if it said that failing schools are to be taken over by their successful colleagues. Unfortunately, this is a headline which has already been issued umpteen times already.

That's the problem with government by spin doctor: eventually you run out of new things to say. Perhaps they might actually try, you know, doing something about the problems in the education system? 

I've been censored

The Department for Schools, Children and Indoctrination has been spending freely on an ideas tree - a website where people can submit their ideas for how to help support parents in bringing up their children. My contribution was this:

Remove the state completely from any involvement with children or their education. Privatise all schools, and endow them with the proceeds so that they can provide education for the needy. Fire all educational bureaucrats, inspectors, and assorted busybodies and burn down the DSCF.

It's odd but I can't find it on the list of submitted ideas.

SNP politician in gross display of honesty

Take a look at this posting over on the BBC Editors' blog. There's a very funny video of SNP MSP Mike Russell ridiculing the debate he has just had to sit through.

Another day, another story of sleaze

It's remarkable how the story of an elected representative getting their comeuppance can cheer one up. And with this morning's news that Conservative chairman Caroline Spelman has been on the fiddle too, I have a positive spring in my step. That's now four Tories caught out.

The deafening silence from the other parties continues too, and I have no doubt they are as bad, if not worse. If you look at the results of the Open Europe survey of MEPs that started this run of sleaze stories off, it can be seen that Labour and LibDem MEPs were even more evasive about answering questions about their expenses than the Conservatives.

I don't think we've heard the last of this.

Zipedeedoodah, zipedeeay..... 

Is this too small?

One of my readers tells me that my blog's font size is too small. Does anyone else agree with this - should I up the size a bit?

Sleaze in Chichester and Dover

Guido has been doing great things in pushing the Giles Chichester sleaze story to the top of the news agenda, and it looks as though one of GC's colleagues will be following shortly.

There's an almost deafening silence from the other parties, which a cynic like me takes to mean that they're all at it. Gordon Brown did have this to say about his own MEPs though:

He said Labour MEPs had "insisted since 2000 on their being separate validated audits of their own expenses and they have a separate register about family employment".

What we should note about this is that none of these arrangements would have picked up the scam that Giles Chichester seems to have been operating. An audit would have noted valid invoices from a service provider company. Tick. The register of family employment would have correctly shown that he didn't employ any family members (they were employed by the service provider company, right?).

This is a classic case of saying something that looks like a denial, but which on closer inspection, isn't anything of the sort. 

Microgeneration

Climate Resistance crunches the numbers on the Guardian's claim that microgeneration is the future for our energy needs, and discovers, shock horror, that the Graun is once again talking tosh.

This is well worth a read, and lest anyone says that bloggers never produce anything original, includes some proper investigative journalism.

Link. 

In the post...

Eamonn Butler's Best Book on the Market: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Economy.

(I always wanted to write that).  

Getting colder....

The satellite data show that May temperatures were chilly - the anomaly was even cooler than the first few months of 2008, which were pretty damn cold to start with.

Lubos has the details. 

Family makes home in ashtray.

Times are hard. The credit crunch has bitten deep and families across the country are finding themselves forced tighten their belts. This story is shocking though. A family has been forced to make its home in an ashtray!

I kid you not.

The family - believed to be two adults and four children, currently reside in a rural area in Central Scotland and, presumably lacking any alternative, have had to risk lung cancer, bronchitis and all manner of other ills, just to keep a roof over their heads. I'm surpised the children haven't been taken into care.

And these are no johnny-come-lately migrants - they're native Brits. What are things coming to in Brown's Britain when we have sunk to this.

Still, look on the bright side. Apparently they at least don't have CCTV watching their every move in their new home.

Full story here. 

Today is....

TAX FREEDOM DAY!!!

(Via the ASI) 

Priorities

The BBC reveals an interesting set of priorities for its headlines right now. The headlines and "top stories" (in the BBC's opinion at least) are:

Youth anti-drink plans criticized
Police uncover body in suitcase
Blaze ravages Universal Studios
Stabbing woman detained under act
Israel sends back Hezbollah spy
MPs 'will support terror plans'
Bradford & Bingley chief resigns
Kampusch making chat show debut
McCartney set for Liverpool show

The story you don't find on their front page, or even on the front of the World section, but buried in the Middle East pages is this:

US Iraq deaths 'at four-year low'

I don't know about you, but I'd think this might be slightly more important than even "Beatles set for Liverpool show", but maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned about these things.

This is what they mean by fairness

Taxation Web reports that the government is set to reduce the period in which taxpayers can claw back overpaid tax. Currently six years, a clause tucked away at the back of the Finance Bill is set to reduce the period to four years.

It goes without saying that there is no similar reduction in the time in which government can pursue taxpayers for underpaid tax.

Taxation Web notes that the people who usually end up paying too much tax are pensioners. As I noted in an earlier posting, Labour party people aren't that bothered with pensioners, so it may be that they have considered and discounted the fact that this is not actually not be very equitable.

Socialists mean something different to you and I by "fairness". To them it's something along the lines of "pay up".

Government attitudes to the rest of us

Two recent articles have summed up pretty nicely the government's attitude to the rest of us.

Adair Turner, Labour peer, quangocrat supreme and soon to be head of the Financial Services Authority told the FT that high energy prices were a legitimate way to cut greenhouse emissions. So if your granny freezes to death this winter,  you have Mr Turner's word that what the government is going is entirely valid. This will probably make you feel better if you are of a green persuasion. You should probably be grateful, in fact.

Meanwhile your government tried to suppress a report which showed that fortnightly rubbish collections posed a health risk. This is because you are a bunch of ungrateful proles and are largely expendable.

Still, if they carry on like this, Labour might not even be the official opposition next time round (if they haven't gone bankrupt in the meantime), so all this pain might in fact be worth it. 

No-go areas for non-Muslims, and West Midlands police.

I had an interesting debate with Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy the other day over whether the Bishop of Rochester is a bigot or not.

Sunny took the position that, because Bishop Nazir-Ali had condemned the creation of no-go areas for non-Muslims, but had failed to identify one, he (the Bishop) was a bigot. I found this a bit of a stretch, and pointed Sunny to a report by a former race relations adviser in Bradford which seemed to be saying that such areas did in fact exist.

By strange coincidence today's Telegraph carries a report about two Christian preachers being threatened by police under hate crimes legislation for proselytising in a Muslim area.

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned.

Now obviously, this is police doing the enforcing, but, if true, it represents further support for the Bishop's claims.

The outraged among us will notice that this is a further faux pas by West Midlands police, the same force who reported Channel Four to the regulators for making a programme about Islamic extremism. This force looks like it is out of control.

Update:
It may well have been the same officer, Anil Patani, deputy chief constable (security and cohesion), who was responsible for both of these crimes against civil liberties.

Update:
Anil Patani seems to have a colourful past, having sued the police twice - once for overlooking him for promotion and once for promoting him too quickly! Methinks it will be overfast promotion again, the next time round. (See the comments at this link)