Labour U Turn on free school meals - The fastest U Turn in the West?

From the Conservative website:

Just hours after a national newspaper was briefed that a proposal to offer all children free school meals 'will be included in the [Labour] party's manifesto' for the next election, Ed Balls's chaotic department has denied any such plans exist.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families – the Government department responsible for this year's exam marking fiasco – said this morning there are "no plans to change existing national policy."

Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove said:

"Ministers clearly wanted to draw attention away from the Glasgow East result and placate the unions. But just hours after announcing an uncosted £1 billion spending pledge on free school meals, they are distancing themselves from their own plan.

"After the exam marking fiasco, this latest error by Ed Balls underlines how much the Government has become driven by positioning for the short-term rather than getting policy right for the long-term."

Michael Gove - Give teachers powers to keep order.

From the Conservative Party website:

Gove: We'll give teachers the powers they need to keep order.

Commenting on the General Teaching Council for England study, which found that four in ten new teachers leave the profession within two years with pupil discipline the most common reason for doing so, Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove said:

"The Government's failure to deal with discipline has seen over 400,000 suspensions from our schools in a year and huge numbers of teachers leaving the profession. We'll give teachers the powers they need to keep order and we'll change the law to give headteachers the legal power to ban and search for any items they think may cause violence or disruption."

With that in mind:

Should we bring back corporal punishment in School (With parental permission)?
	Yes for 11 year olds and over.
	Yes for 13 year olds and over.
	Yes for 15 year olds and over.
	No.
pollcode.com free polls

Gordon Brown - 11 years of high taxes and service cuts.

There are two things that all political parties see as their main campaigning priorities during a General Election: Health and Education. Labour claim to have a great record in both these areas. I beg to differ:

HEALTH:

Hospitals: The number of NHS hospital beds has fallen by 32,000 since Labour came to power. Last year saw a record cut in numbers, despite fears that this leads to overcrowding in the remaining wards and a higher risk of superbug infections. Daily Mail.

Maternity Wards: More than 2,000 maternity beds have been lost since 1997. Research by the Conservatives found that last year, 42 per cent of maternity units had refused to accept women in labour on at least one occasion. Telegraph.

GPs: The government's policy is to consolidate doctors' surgeries into a series of giant health centres, or polyclinics. Thousands of small practices will be closed and patients will be processed in buildings containing up to 50 GPs. The new clinics will also house some services at present provided by hospitals, which allows the government to claim that it is bringing healthcare "closer to home". The net effect will be a massive reduction in convenience. Guardian.

Dentists: Nearly 80 per cent of the population no longer has an NHS dental service. But rather than going private here, increasing numbers of people are heading abroad. It may be cheaper but, as Olga Craig discovers, the personal costs can be horrific. A survey, last week, of 5,000 patients and 750 dentists revealed that Britain is now so woefully short of state-funded dentists that one in 20 people say they have resorted to some style of DIY dentistry — a handful agonisingly pulling out their own teeth with pliers — because the soaring cost of private treatment is way beyond their means. Telegraph.

EDUCATION:

Schools: Figures published in February show that schools are being shut at a rate of nearly one a day, mainly in rural areas. Since 2002, some 1,704 schools - primary and secondary - have been shut in England. Those on sites which have now been sold will never re-open. Daily Mail.

League Tables: Britain’s young workers are among the lowest achievers at GCSE or equivalent in a league table of countries published today. The results show that Britain has plummeted to 22nd of 29 countries, from 14th place 40 years ago, despite its pupils attaining ever-higher grades. They raise fears that an underclass is emerging, increasingly unsuited to the job market as manual work declines and competition grows from abroad. Times.

Truancy: Truancy rates among pupils in England rose last year to their highest level since records began in 1997, new government figures showed yesterday. Nearly 230,000 pupils were classified as persistent absentees, meaning they missed more than 20% of school. Overall the number of missed lessons - including those lost to illness - decreased, but unauthorised absences rose to 1% of all school hours, indicating that 63,000 pupils were skipping class on an average day. Guardian.

What I want to know is where has all the money gone? According to Brown we have had "record spending" on health and education, if so, then it looks like a massive chunk of that money has been wasted. You know, I really do think that Labour know nothing about money handling or the economy. When we were doing well financially Brown spent more and more and he even borrowed money to continue spending beyond our means.

Now we are heading for a very sticky patch, Brown has nothing in the cupboard but a pile of loan agreement forms. For God's sake, Gordon Brown is now depending on the Unions to stop his party from going bankrupt. They can't even manage their party finances - what hope have we got that they can run the country's?

UPDATE: As if by magic from SKY: The Prime Minister has reacted to the Labour party's poor performance in the Henley by-election saying: "by-elections come and by-elections go".Responding to the news that Labour came in fifth place, behind the BNP, Gordon Brown added: "Of course we have to listen to what people say. "But my main job is to improve our public services, to get the economy moving forward, to make sure that in the health service and education people have the best services that they want and I am going to continue to do that." Yeah..... right.

David Cameron goes back to School.

I enjoyed watching this video. It shows that some Schools can get it right and the education system is not beyond saving. The one thing I noticed was that the children were in uniform. I've read recently that many Heads are telling us that a strict uniform policy is a real boost to behaviour and productivity in the classroom. I'd like to see a return to blazers and ties in all Schools.

Holocaust off the school curriculum - Is this true?

I received an email this morning which (if it turns out to be true) will get many readers into their blood pressure danger zone. I can only hope that this is not true:

It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken and for the German people from the surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead. He did this he said, in words to this effect. 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some ******* will get up and say that this never happened.'

'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing' Edmund Burke

IN MEMORIAL This week, the UK removed the Holocaust from it's school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population because they say it never occurred. This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easy each country is giving into it. It is now more than 60 years since the 2nd. World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, starved, burned and humiliated while German and Russian people looked the other way! Now more than ever, with Iran among others, claiming the Holocaust to be a myth, it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide! Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world. Don't just delete this, it will only take a minute to pass it on...

UPDATE: I've done a little digging myself (now I've had the time) And it seems that this email is causing quite a lot of controversy. There are several people out there rubbishing its contents. However there are also articles reporting on the dropping of this subject on the major news paper websites. These can be found if you google - Holocaust school curriculum. I think that the email may well be misleading because it says that "the UK removed the Holocaust from it's school curriculum". That's not exactly true, it has not been removed from the curriculum. However some schools have dropped this subject and the Crusades for fear of causing offence.

In my opinion, if it happened (which it did), then it is history and must be taught. Teachers should not be afraid of causing offence for teaching the truth.

Gordon Brown's re-heated Queen's Speech.

Gordon Brown has been struggling to come up with anything to put in the Queen's speech later today. This is no real surprise seeing as he broke with tradition and announced most of his so called "vision" at the State Opening of Parliament.

Brown is expected to pledge to build 3m homes by 2020 to fix the massive shortage in housing. This has already been announced so Gordon is just repeating a pledge that he thinks people want hear. What I want to know is if we need a minimum of 3m homes to be built in the next 12 years, how how many are we going to need to build in the following 12 years? And where are we going to build them. Eventually we are going to have a serious debate about immigration, without all the PC paranoia.

More old news to be announced will be the pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. This is just a crowd pleasing load of rubbish, if he wants to make a real impact on carbon emissions he should set 5 year targets, or possibly even shorter ones. Not that I'm at all convinced about man made climate change.

There seems to be a pattern emerging here - Brown's next proposal is to make kids stay at school until they are 18. This has been already announced, and surprise surprise, this is not to be instigated until 2015. Is he going to announce anything that is actually going to happen now? And how does extending the school leaving age to 18 tie in with wanting lower the voting age to 16. Has he found out that under 18's are more likely to vote Labour?

There are other policies being revisited, most importantly the wish to raise pre-charge detention beyond 28 days. 56 days seems to be Brown's preference. He has however failed to come up with any decent reason for doing this.

What I would like to hear in today's speech is something new, that will happen now and have a real positive effect on our daily existence. I will not be holding my breath. More later.....

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

When Teaching Politics In School Turns Bad.

An Australian education authority has defended a school's anti-war themed entry in the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge and said the event was about freedom of expression. Education Minister Julie Bishop has accused Davidson High School of hijacking the event to protest against a visit by US President George W Bush. The school's production, Bad Knight II, depicts Mr Bush as the pilot of a crashing plane and attacks the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Ms Bishop said: "There appears to be a teacher's political agenda here. And I think that's a shame, because I'm concerned that the message of the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge will get lost if the event is hijacked in this way."

Full story HERE

It seems that pupils could not participate without parental approval. However I must agree with the Education Minister that this is not about teaching politics, or freedom of expression, it is the hijacking of what should be a fun educational event to promote a political agenda. I agree that politics should be taught in School , but it should be done in a way that puts forward all sides of the argument. That way the pupils can make an informed decision while armed with all the facts. This is a slippery slope, teachers should teach, not use their students to promote their own political views.

Ten steps to win the next General Election

1) Promise a referendum on the EU Treaty (for Treaty read Constitution).

2) Promise an English Parliament. Or at the very least (as a start), English votes on English matters.

3) Promise to remove the UK from the Human Rights Act and draw up a constitution.

4) Promise to offer incentives on Green issues, not just use those issues as an excuse to tax us more.

5) Promise to give the running of Schools, Hospitals and Police Stations back to the Teachers, Doctors and Police Officers. Bureaucracy is strangling this country.

6) Promise to Scrap the Barnett Formula.

7) Promise to stop the Nanny State. Let us make our own decisions about smoking, drinking and eating.

8) Promise to scrap the ID Card. This will be a European ID Card, meaning that all member states will have access to the information held on that card. This fact is not widely known, and that is because it is being kept quiet.

9) Recognise England as a country in its own right, i.e English Anthem and a Bank Holiday on St George's Day.

10) Last but in no way the least, promise to build more prisons. At least 20,000 places (yesterday, if not sooner).

There are more, but I think promising any five of these will win the next Election.

Do you disagree with my suggestions? Can you think of any more?

The GTC want to scrap under-16 School tests (I don't)

The General Teaching Council (GTC) want all under-16 exams scrapped, as they believe they are demoralising children.

I, as a father of three children believe in testing. The results that my children bring home give me an indication of how they are progressing, and whether my wife and I need to become more pro-active in their education. I do not want to wait for their GCSE results to drop on my door mat to find out what their chances of making it in life are. Sats at 14 are a baseline indication of a child’s current standard, without which, it would be difficult to identify the areas that require working on.

My 14 year old daughter has just received a set of disappointing results, this has given me a chance to talk her through them and point out to her the consequences of not fulfilling her potential. Given the information contained in her results, I can now ensure I pay more attention to her homework and the time she spends socialising with her friends.

I am absolutely furious that the GTC claim that tests demoralise children. I am sick and tired of these sandal wearing fools telling us we should not hurt our children’s feelings by having a system of winners and losers. Without competition we would still be living in bloody caves and our children will be in for one hell of a shock when they leave school, only to realise that they have to compete for jobs.

There are winners and losers in life and as soon as our children realise that, the better it will be for them. Sticking our collective head in the sand and hoping for the best, will not be beneficial to our children, or the country.

Daily Referendum Results - Should we bring back Corporal Punishment in School?

Should we bring back Corporal Punishment in School?

YES 82%

NO 16%

DO NOT KNOW 2%

The results of each Daily Referendum are archived by the British Library.

Is Corporal Punishment the answer?

Corporal punishment refers to the use of physical punishment to correct behaviour. The term derives from the Latin corpus, meaning body.

A 2005 survey of nearly 1,700 parents by the ParentMail website found 20.8% would welcome the restoration of corporal punishment in schools, with 44.4% saying they would like it to be an option.

Although the various methods of corporal punishment were steadily outlawed throughout the 20th Century - the use of the birch in schools was famously abolished in 1948 - it was not until after the 1967 Plowden report, 'Children and their Primary Schools', that the abolition of corporal punishment in state schools was treated as a major issue, and in 1986 it was outlawed altogether.It was not until 1998 that corporal punishment was outlawed for the few remaining independent schools that retained the practice.

Phil Williamson, head of the private Christian Fellowship school in Liverpool, went to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the ban on corporal punishment in independent schools, which took effect in 1999. The campaign was supported by the parents at the school and backed by 40 other Christian schools across the UK. The court agreed that there was nothing to prevent schools using corporal punishment on children with the consent of their parents. But the UK court of appeal finally rejected the bid in 2005.

Mr Williamson feels the last 20 years have proved the legislation to be "an absolute disaster". "Teachers are less safe, there is more bad behaviour and violence in schools and that translates into more bad behaviour in society. I think Ofsted and the politicians are out of touch with what is really going on in schools."

In 1989 the Elton Committee said: "There is little evidence that corporal punishment was in general an effective deterrent either to the pupils punished or to other pupils."

In 1998 Baroness Warnock, of the School Standards and Framework Bill Committee said: "We are in a position to prevent corporal punishment in schools. We are probably not in a position to prevent corporal punishment in the home. It is not that corporal punishment is good in one case and bad in the other. It is bad in all cases."

Ref: BBC News, Politics.co.uk

Q. Should we bring back Corporal Punishment in School?

To view the results go to:

http://dailyreferendum.co.uk/

Child well-being (Mary Whitehouse was right).

The league table for child well-being across 21 industrialised countries has shown the UK to be at rock-bottom. I don't believe the government are totally to blame. We as a nation are slowly losing are moral fibre and our ability to feel shame in response to our poor behavior.

I remember as a child sitting in front of the TV with my family and laughing at what we thought was the nosey do-gooder Mary Whitehouse. She was seen as overly prudish by a large portion of the population and was ridiculed by parts of the media. Now a quarter of a century later I desperately wish we had taken notice of the prophetic Mrs Whitehouse. We and our children are now bombarded with mindless crap on daytime TV and reality shows in the evening.

Daytime TV programmes such as Jeremy Kyle, Trisha and Ricki Lake profess to help people overcome their problems. Utter shite, all these programs do is parade societies low life and morons across our screens, barely capable of communicating without grunts these people just shout, scream and swear. It is morbidly fascinating watching how poorly people can behave, it makes you cringe but people can't help watching. Most worryingly these programs are aired during the hours parents and children are at home together.

Reality shows such as Big Brother are designed in much the same way. The producers rely on the fact that if you put people from different backgrounds into stressful situations they will start behaving badly towards each other. Big Brother is just a old fashioned freak show, people tune in just to see the arguments, foul mouth rants and tantrums, without which there would be no show. Don't get me wrong, being an ex-sailor I've nothing against swearing, I've just got a problem with when and where it is used.

BLEEP: This really gets on my nerves, if something has to be excessively bleeped before the watershed then it should not be aired. You can watch one of these daytime shows where almost every word has to be bleeped, it's like bloody Morse code. Children are intelligent enough to realise what is being said and because mostly young mothers watch this crap, they believe it is an acceptable way to behave. I think we have all been out shopping and heard something like this from a young mother: "shut the f*ck up Brittany I'm trying to buy some fags." Nobody even thinks of reprimanding these idiots for their behaviour because you just know that all you are only going to get for your trouble is a foul mouthful.

I believe the recent behavior of contestants on Big Brother has shown us that we have let our moral values slip too far towards the gutter. We have put a foul mouthed moron with the mental age of a 12 year old (at best) on a pedestal and now we have been embarrassed internationally.

Gordon Brown thinks he can fix this with lessons in Britishness - crap, what our children need is moral guidance at school and in the home. When children are young and impressionable, it really is a case of monkey see monkey do. You cannot watch a soap episode now without someone getting punched or slapped. This is not how things happen in the real world. If this happened in your local it would be closed down within a week or very empty.

We now have a generation of kids who have no respect for the law, their parents or their school teachers. Unfortunately some of the young parents of these children are no better and it's only going to get worse unless something is done about it. For a start we could give the Police the powers to deal with groups of yobs. Curfews and dispersal orders in New York reduced crime by a staggering 55%, surely this would be a great initiative that could be easily implemented in our country.

The watershed could be moved to 10 pm and any show that requires excessive bleeping should only be aired after this time. The bleep was brought in to allow shows to be aired where one or two swearwords were used. It has now been abused to allow shows that are a constant torrent of bad language to be shown before the watershed.

As far as Jade Goody being a racist goes, I don't believe she is. She is just a girl who is thicker than a whale omelette and we have made her famous for it. Now through an international embarrassment we are paying the price. Unfortunately Jade is now seen by many as a role model.

Mary Whitehouse I am so very sorry.

Mary Whitehouse, I am so SORRY.

The public morals champion began her career with the Clean Up TV Campaign in 1964. It became the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (NVLA) the following year and she finally stepped down as its president in 1994. Following Mrs Whitehouse's death in 2001 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, said: "In reminding broadcasters and others of their obligations in respect of taste and decency she greatly enriched the public debate about media freedom and responsibility."

I remember as a child sitting in front of the TV with my family and laughing at what we thought was the nosey do-gooder Mary Whitehouse. She was seen as overly prudish by a large portion of the population and was ridiculed by parts of the media.

Now a quarter of a century later I desperately wish we had taken notice of the prophetic Mrs Whitehouse. We and our children are now bombarded with mindless crap on daytime TV and reality shows in the evening.

Daytime TV programmes such as Jeremy Kyle, Trisha and Ricki Lake profess to help people overcome their problems. Utter shite, all these programs do is parade societies low life and morons across our screens, barely capable of communicating without grunts these people just shout, scream and swear. It is morbidly fascinating watching how poorly people can behave, it makes you cringe but people can't help watching. Most worryingly these programs are aired during the hours parents and children are at home together.

Reality shows such as Big Brother are designed in much the same way. The producers rely on the fact that if you put people from different backgrounds into stressful situations they will start behaving badly towards each other. Big Brother is just a old fashioned freak show, people tune in just to see the arguments, foul mouth rants and tantrums, without which there would be no show. Don't get me wrong, being an ex-sailor I've nothing against swearing, I've just got a problem with when and where it is used.

BLEEP: This really gets on my nerves, if something has to be excessively bleeped before the watershed then it should not be aired. You can watch one of these daytime shows where almost every word has to be bleeped, it's like bloody Morse code. Children are intelligent enough to realise what is being said and because mostly young mothers watch this crap, they believe it is an acceptable way to behave. I think we have all been out shopping and heard something like this from a young mother: "shut the f*ck up Brittany I'm trying to buy some fags." Nobody even thinks of reprimanding these idiots for their behaviour because you just know that all you are only going to get for your trouble is a foul mouthful.

I believe this weeks revelations on Big Brother have shown us that we have let our moral values slip too far towards the gutter. We have put a foul mouthed moron with the mental age of a 12 year old (at best) on a pedestal and now we have been embarrassed internationally. Gordon Brown thinks he can fix this with lessons in Britishness - crap, what our children need is moral guidance at school and in the home.

When children are young and impressionable, it really is a case of monkey see monkey do. You cannot watch a soap episode now without someone getting punched or slapped. This is not how things happen in the real world. If this happened in your local it would be closed down within a week or very empty. We now have a generation of kids who have no respect for the law, their parents or their school teachers. Unfortunately some of the young parents of these children are no better and it's only going to get worse unless something is done about it.

For a start we could give the Police the powers to deal with groups of yobs. Curfews and dispersal orders in New York reduced crime by a staggering 55%, surely this would be a great initiative that could be easily implemented in our country. The watershed could be moved to 10 pm and any show that requires excessive bleeping should only be aired after this time. The bleep was brought in to allow shows to be aired where one or two swearwords were used. It has now been abused to allow shows that are a constant torrent of bad language to be shown before the watershed.

As far as Jade Goody being a racist goes, I don't believe she is. She is just a girl who is thicker than a whale omelette and we have made her famous for it. Now through an international embarrassment we are paying the price.

Mary I am very sorry.