Labour: Education has improved over 13 years

I was brutally awoken this morning by the sudden, hard onset of a wall of high blood pressure when I heard Nick Ferrari on LBC pose this question to one of Labour's Shadow Education ministers, Kevin Brennan:

"So Mr Brennan, do you believe that education has improved over the last 13 years under Labour?"

Brennan replied:

"Yes, education has improved under Labour"

I started furiously reaching out for my mobile to ring in but fortunately other listeners had got there before me. The anger was palpable. Accusations live on air included “liar”, "they should hang their heads in shame", “there should be a law against MP’s lying like that”, “rubbish” and many more. Caller after caller.

I have never, ever heard any MP admit they were wrong. Ever. I suspect that it’s due to the media training that teaches them never admit liability for anything and never answer a direct question unless you can convey your latest policy line or spin.

Journalists should simply state to these “education deniers” that they are liars and unless they retract that statement, the interview is over. Plain and simple.

The last caller summed up the situation quite well. He was a teacher and had been teaching for the last 30 years and stated quite categorically that standards had dropped and compared an O-level maths paper with a GCSE and said a C in the O-level paper would be the equivalent of an A* nowadays.

There was also mention that modules were being removed from certain subjects because pupils found them too hard, especially maths and the sciences and some schools, in order to improve their league positions, encouraged the pupils take the easier subjects e.g. Travel and Tourism instead of Geography.

Glad to see Michael Gove at least attempting to tackle this one.

Why LabourList will fail

As I haven't been there for several weeks, I had a quick look at Dolly's Labourlost blog, you know, the one that is "a place for labour-minded people to come together online and discuss politics".

Except that there isn't a great deal of discussion going on, just posts that mirror the labour party message du jour. Nothing about ID cards, crime figures, gordon's culpability of the demise of the horn of plenty etc Just a daily piece of propaganda from the labour bunker.

The whole raison d'être of a blog is to provide a platform to encourage discussion. To argue. To throw ideas around. To share viewpoints. To score points and to expose some other not necessarily tasteful human behaviours.

The problem with the old question: "why are labour so appallingly unsucessful at everything, including blogs?" can be answered with one word. Control.

Everything about labour can be distilled down into top down control.

You have a problem? Don't worry, the state will look after you.

Not sure what to eat? The state will tell you what you must and must not eat.

It's in their mindsets. It's in their DNA. It's their tribalist genes. The control. A blog without moderation and discussion is anathma to them. They can't allow people to disagree with the party line. They can't allow people to discuss freely their ideas. You must believe with all your heart that the state is right. And punishment for those that dare to differ and be individual.

So back to the image at the top of this article. This was in response to the drearily, obviously written by a wonk, Kerry "I agree with everything labour say and do without argument" McCarthy article about the argument for the privatisation of the Royal Mail.

Out of the pitifully small handful of replies that tried to deride labour's obvious attempts at spinning this awkward dilemma, only one person touched on the real reason behind this and...

... was promptly deleted as it was off-message.

That’s not a blog.

That’s Pravda. And we’ve already got one of those in Portland Place, London.