The ministerial post of Education Secretary is often a hospital pass in rugby parlance and yet the current incumbent, Michael Gove, does not appear shy of taking the ball head down into the fray.
In the run-up to his speech this week setting out his aspirations, several leaks appeared designed, depending on your viewpoint, to either pave the way for a measured debate or create a full on battle.
There is nothing that gets the radio phone-ins going more than the subject of education; it seems everybody has a view and the unfortunate downside is that the likes of the smug, pontificating Nicky Campbell clearly have a job for life on Radio Drivel AM.
Of course, teachers themselves are often the main focus of ire from Angry of Amersham calling to vent his spleen at three in the morning.
Whether you see teachers as lazy, leftie-liberal, serial holidaymakers or proud, professional and highly committed individuals – as always – the truth lies somewhere in between. There will always be the brilliant and the hopelessly inept in any profession.
Having taken charge of classes at schools in recent years in a sports coaching capacity, it was an eye opening experience.
I would keep kids under lock and key all day, feed them through iron bars and bring back the birch; in short I would not be a teacher for Wayne Rooney’s salary unless I could set the terrifying Mr Mitchell, the Head from Educating Yorkshire, on them.
Two elements of what Gove has suggested seem good common sense ideas whether you like Gove or not.
Firstly, keeping schools open longer makes economic, practical and social sense. The buildings are already open, heated and and importantly the kids are captive; the streets would be safer for a few more hours.
Instead of turfing them out barely after Loose Women has finished simply to plug into their range of brain-draining gizmos, why not use the time to reintroduce sport?
Or teach them some of the basics of forthcoming adult life such as cooking or working out Wonga.com’s rates of interest? Maybe banks could run financial awareness courses – okay so probably not the best example – at worst kids could do their homework in a stable environment.
There are all manner of things that kids could do outside the normal academic timetable to use this time well.
Teachers need not be dragged away from the Thomas Cook website – just kidding you sensitive little souls – we have a million 18-25 year olds sat on their arses at the moment waiting to be engaged in something productive plus a wealth of older people with still much to give.
Re-engaging these lost generations to help facilitate this extension to the school day is a massive opportunity and probably cheaper than sending billions in aid to India so they can shoot monkeys in space rockets into orbit.
Of course it will cost money but, frankly, the payback on this investment long term really would justify the “bonus” to wider society. The whiners and detractors want nothing more than the status quo.
Call me naive as a child free adult but tell me if what we currently have in place really is doing the best for our young?
It’s about re-defining the country we all want to live in; we cannot all be rich and famous therefore improving the basics of our average “lot” is the best many can hope for.
Kids need so much more now to equip themselves for later life and we are failing them.
And what about parents juggling child care and the work/life/benefits conundrum? In many instances the number of road journeys would surely be cut…you see…even the polar bears win here!
The second issue he raised was also met with howls of derision and yet all he suggested was reintroducing standards of discipline and appropriate punishments. We are not talking mass executions here but you might have thought so.
All too often kids grow up able to stick two fingers up at all and sundry and nobody seems to be able to do anything. This is definitely where the drippy liberal lefties have got their way; it has not worked and kids need hard yards from time to time.
It is abundantly clear that the majority of kids today do not understand right from wrong; and there are few leaders in public life to offer them role models.
We all bleat about the lack of social mobility and opportunities for our youth but anybody that has witnessed the enormous gulf in educational standards between the private and the state sector cannot fail to see where it starts.
That such a small proportion of kids – some 7% – have a clearly advantageous start over the rest and right at the start of life cannot be good for society.
If Gove is simply trying to raise the bar then convince me what is wrong with that, like him or not?
Why Men Go to Gyms
The other night I was quietly pouring over the latest wonderful rants in the Daily Mail at the coffee bar in the gym. An instructor was pretending to do some paperwork as an excuse for eyeing up the flow of nubile young things streaming in.
All of a sudden up strode a rather pretty young thing in a smart business suit demanding to know why the showers would not turn off; suggesting it was a male head (terrible…Ed!) and probably did not want her to get out was not a good option I thought.
She waited patiently for an answer but none was forthcoming – he had lost his tongue and, with eyes rotating in their sockets, was doing a passable impression of a shaking retard on the spot.
Dismayed she strode off leaving him groaning and a puddle of drool oozing from my now slackened jaw destroying any hopes the owner had of taking the Daily Mail home.
Later in the changing rooms I was asking one of the regulars why he does so many classes hoping for an illuminating answer on modern day life.
“It’s the only chance I get to see women partially clothed” he calmly confessed and with a quick rearrange of his nether regions into his cycle shorts went happily off to two hours of torture in back to back spin classes.
The Dirty Old Town
Maybe, just maybe, things are on the up down in the abyss?
The Westfield shopping centre is at last underway and three alternative bids to redevelop the Odeon site are now with the much feared spiritual leader of Bradford Council, Cllr Ear Ring.
Commenting on recent developments in the local rag the leader said “We will now…determine which…meet the qualification of retaining all or as much as possible of the building, make a positive contribution to the vitality of the city centre and can be delivered within the next five years.”
How ironic from a council that has clearly wished for nothing more than the wrecking balls on site for the last 15 years and whose notion of improving the vitality of the city has created a ghost town.
And given the likely twenty year span of this saga note that during that time Leeds have built several shopping centres and a magnificent Arena; vitality indeed Cllr Ear Ring.
Or Maybe Not
This curious building on the outskirts of the centre of Bradford was conceived and built in the midst of the debt-fuelled property “boom” of the mid 2000s.
Those of us that saw it emerge wondered silently who was going to pay a fortune to live in a giant fish bowl with pimped out windows on a three-lane ring road next to a Chinese restaurant.
News of its current troubles would surprise nobody with a modicum of common sense.
Described as “iconic” (very famous and well known‘er…not quite) by a clearly desperate landlord on site whilst interviewed on BBC’s Look North it certainly is not.
What it represents is a stark reminder to all those that thought New York style apartment living could be had in Bradford or for that matter any number of crappy towns and that developers would get stinking rich overnight.
I once went to the opening of nearby Manningham Mills apartments where they were asking £300k for a view of Lister Park; had they been offering Hyde Park you might have understood. Put simply, many of these developments were driven by pure greed.
There was an idea offered by a junior minister several years ago at the height of the property crash to resolve the social housing shortage in a stroke. As usual brilliance is often twinned with simplicity.
In a nutshell, as the Government in effect owned RBS and Lloyds and both banks had over-valued property portfolios they could never expect to get out from, then why not turn these over to the Government? Buy one, get one free?
Brilliant? I thought so but it never saw the light of day. So what you have now are developments like the Gatehaus owned by a distant property company without the funds to achieve anything like the standards the original buyers were sold.
Overvalued, undesired these are the tenement flats of the get rich quick era…and it’s all about to happen all over again.
The Smelly Cook
I like the BBC’s The Good Cook – nice simple dishes and not a trace of Gregg Wallace popping out of your screen with another stupid, matey grin.
The only concern I have is that the chef – Simon Hopkinson – never changes his shirt. Six shows and still he wears the same shirt. The man must stink more than rotted parmesan biscuits…which looked great by the way.
More Reasons to Scrap The Licence Fee
This piece deliberately avoids a picture of the subject as I would have to punch my laptop violently. Who does the BBC seek a view from on the sacking of England cricketer Kevin Pietersen? A respected commentator, a former player or a team-mate?
No…they allow rent-a-gob Piers Morgan to bluster about his “mate” as if this idiot knows anything about cricket. A village cricketer would have been more knowledgeable but instead they opt for a village idiot.
A man so desperate for his own publicity that, after slagging off England’s cricketers in Australia, he allowed the ex-Aussie bowler, Brett Lee, to bowl at him beggars belief that he gets airtime and on R4 as well.
I never saw Morgan’s desperate bid to prove to the world he had courage – he didn’t by the way – and apparently they had to stop him running out of the nets. Brett Lee should have bowled at him with grenades.
I listen to old John and the team on Dull FM for a measured start to my day leaving the histrionics and banalities to Campbell and Radio Drivel Live. Dull added nearly half a million listeners last year; don’t lose one so soon John!
Arrivederci Nana Angie
My godson Harry’s Nana Angie slipped away recently and the world is a duller place without her. A feisty Italian lady who loved a drink and a smoke, she scared the shit out of me the first time we met; Angie was one of a kind.
When her daughter and husband moved in as my neighbours, naturally the Matriarch came to inspect; not Phil and Michelle’s new purchase but their neighbour.
Jabbing me in the chest with a piercing flash of those mad eyes she looked me up and down with incisive suspicion.
“Why you no married? What a wrong with you? Eh? Speak boy!!!”
On her many visits she instilled such fear in me there were times I thought I would wake up next to a horses’ head in my bed, given Nana’s alleged connections in Sicily.
In later years we were out in downtown Bradford – in a golden age before the hopeless leader sized power – with Angie and her three daughters. Things got lively and, for some unknown XXXX assisted reason, the girls decided to treat us to a flash…or three…
At the last minute the girls got cold feet…or boobs..and vests were pulled down. Dismayed by the woeful climb down old Angie seized the moment and whipped her top up in a flash as daughters’s jaws dropped in unison and we cheered loudly at the old girl.
And what a pair the old bird possessed!
Harry bravely stood up to deliver a few last words at her funeral the other day, beautifully penned by him and so here they are.
NANA
NANA WE’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR SPECIAL SMILE
THOSE LOVING HUGS WHEN YOU HELD US FOR A WHILE
HOW YOU WERE THERE THROUGH THICK AND THIN
THE WAY YOU MADE LAUGH WITH THAT SPECIAL GRIN
YOU LOOKED AFTER US WHEN WE WERE BABIES
HOW YOU WERE SO PROUD OF US AND SHOWED US OFF TO OTHER LADIES
TODAY, TOMORROW OUR WHOLE LIVES THROUGH
WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE BUT MISS YOU TOO
SO AS WE PREPARE TO SAY OUR LAST GOODBYE
YOU WONT BE HERE TO SAY DON’T CRY
YOU ARE UP IN HEAVEN LOOKING DOWN ON US ALL TODAY
YOU ARE THAT SHINNING STAR HIGH UP IN THE MILKY WAY.
ARRIVEDERCI NANA WE LOVE YOU.
Paul Thompson says
Another good one buddy! But are we looking at another DLT debarcale i.e “It’s the only chance I get to see women partially clothed” No names but in this day and age one has to be careful what one says and what one does! libel 😉