New Secretary of State for Education
Every time we get rid of some useless m**********r as secretary of state for education we breathe a sigh of relief....and then the next one is worse.

Clarke was less stupid than Blunkett but that is not much of a qualification. My cat is less stupid than Blunkett. He was the thickest Secretary of State for Education in living memory.

But Clarke was too weak to reverse Blunkett's policies and we will have to see if the new incumbent is actually any better:
*abolishing SATS
*putting an end to f******g stupid initiatives
*scrapping performance related pay
*relegating league tables
*having a policy for reducing workload which actually reduces workload
*putting an end to teaching by unqualified staff
*backing teachers who tackle indiscipline rather than setting pointless targets.
*spending some of the billions, which this government would otherwise squander, on providing decent salaries and pensions in the public sector.

and don't hold your breath!
None of the new Labour canaille will do anything.

http://socialistteachers.tripod.com

Poem culled from TES discussion forum
ASYLUM SEEKING DALEKS!
(For Ann Winterton)

They claim their planet's dying:
that soon it's going to blow
And so they're coming here - they say
they've nowhere else to go....
With their strange computer voices
and their one eye on a pole
They're moving in next door and then
they're signing on the dole.....

Asylum seeking Daleks
are landing here at noon!
Why can't we simply send them back
or stick them on the moon?
It says here in the Daily Mail
they're coming here to stay -
The Loony Lefties let them in!
The middle class will pay......

They say that they're all pacifists:
that doesn't wash with me!
The last time I saw one I hid
Weeks behind the settee...
Good Lord - they're pink. With purple bumps!
There's photos of them here!
Not just extra-terrestial....
The bloody things are queer!

Yes! Homosexual Daleks
And they're sponging off the State!
With huge Arts Council grants
to teach delinquents how to skate!
It's all here in the paper -
I'd better tell the wife!
For soon they will EXTERMINATE
Our British way of life.....

This satire on crass ignorance
and tabloid-fostered fear
Is at an end. Now let me give
One message, loud and clear.
Golf course, shop floor or BNP:
Smash bigotry and hate!
Asylum seekers - welcome here.
You racists: emigrate!

Changing Attitudes
There is a change in attitude which has left some people uneasy. When I was growing up in the 1950s being gay was illegal, barring women or black people from pubs was commonplace and there was an implied "racialism" as it was called then in popular culture.

When they made homosexual acts between male adults legal it was the end of the world! When they outlawed racialism with the race relations act it was "the end of free speech!"

There is a test question: "Do you think black people in this country get a raw deal." Every time they pose this question in Social Trends the number of people answering "Yes" increases and the number of young people answering "Yes" increases.

The BNP do not represent "the white race" and many of the people they will have to kill to get to power are white. "Either we will tranple the corpses of our enemies or they will trample our corpses" as their mentor uncle Adolf used to say.

The media has singled out a minority of the minority in attacking asylum seekers. In the 1930s of course that would have been the Jews. Some people would have cheerfully sent them back to Hitler's Germany. In many case sending back asylum seekers would mean the same.

Figures are exaggerated, the cost to the country is non-existent - people born outside the UK contribute more in taxes than they take out in benefits. It is only ignorance and prejudice which makes it a problem.

There are plenty of websites like http://www.asylumaid.org.uk where pupils can get information on both sides of the argument and it is a worthwhile exercise to make sure they are not manipulated by those whose only raison d'etre is hatred.

Racism
Racism
Ignorance
Prejudice
RIP

I had what could be described as a difference of opinion with campaigners against asylum seekers in Kent. I drew attention to some of the disingenuous mendacity they were engaging in - claiming asylum seekers were a drain on the health service when half the nurses and a quarter of the doctors are actually born overseas.....this led them to play their trump card.
Although my local hospital is in Kent, I actually live a couple of hundred yards from the Kent border in West Sussex. This was the clinching argument for them, I had no business interfering with Kentish matters if I was a foreigner from Sussex.
(Of course they had no objection to BNP activists being bussed down from London)
Interestingly they got a lot of support from a character using the internet soubriquet "Welsh Witch" and the BNP celebrate the birthday of a guy called Hitler who wasn't technically from Kent either.

TES debate on socialism
No ruling class has ever been able to conceive of a form of society beyond the one to which it owes its power and privileges. Capitalism is no more a "natural state of affairs" than feudalism or the social system of the pharoahs. It came. It will go.

Incidentally CIA documents show that the American government - despite its denials - was well aware of the attempted military coup against the government of Venezuela. Again a democratically elected government trying to carry out socialist measures and the US backing a military coup against it. Yet people continue to maintain Socialism=dictatorship; capitalism=democracy.

The Marxist theory of the state is difficult to summarise briefly but I will have a go:

1) Stripped of inessentials, the state consists of bodies of armed men.
2) The state is an instrument for the oppression of one class by another.
3) When class society vanishes, the state will wither away.

Lenin's alleged "departure" from this was to set out a program - including the election of all officials and for all officials to be subject to recall - in "The State and Revolution" which could bring this into existence.

The state existed in the USSR because it was an instrument for the rule of one class over another. It was termed a workers' state. Stalin utilised the isolation of the USSR to strengthen and reinforce the bureaucracy and to use a series of purges against the left and then against the right and finally against his own supporters to bolster his own position. Conquest's book "the Great Terror" details all this (and I don't think anybody could call Conquest a socialist!)

That is probably the shortest version of this theory which you will ever get and I urge anyone who takes these matters seriously to read Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed" or "Bureaucratism or Workers' Power" by Roger Silverman and Ted Grant.

The people who exposed and fought against Stalin are now being dishonestly lumped together with Stalin. It really is not good enough.

There has been an extensive debate about socialism on the TES website: the contributions are collected here
http://user1951.tripod.com/discuss.htm

RE not good enough but nor is OFSTED
There was a newsflash today on the TES website "Most RE lessons 'not good enough'". How could that be news? Of course it was not the story, as the quotes imply, it was just OFSTED complaining that the RE in schools does not reflect the diversity of faiths in the country.

I ought to nail my colours to the mast and mention at this point that I am a born-again atheist....OK just an atheist.

However OFSTED worship control and their idea that the people drawing up the various programs for RE "need professional help" is just cheek.

It was central government interference which gave us the "wholly or mainly Christian" assembly and now OFSTED in typical OFSTED fashion are moving the goal posts to prove that the teachers are all wrong and the politicians are all right.

I - and probably a majority of parents - do not worship at temple, mosque, synagogue, chapel or church. It is our views which are being ignored or patronisingly treated as "an error".

On the contrary I think you will find we are a wee bit more tolerant of others' right to pursue their religious observances; they do us no harm.

I think it may be OFSTED who need professional help. Unfortunately I am not a taxidermist.

ID Cards
Blunkett is bringing in ID cards and a whole raft of new powers for himself on the pretext of the war on terror and in an effort to emulate Bush's victory in America. Peter Hain has even said that the country will only be safe from terrorist attack under a New Labour government.

I remember the French presidential election where people had a choice of Le Pen or Chirac. The winning election slogan was "vote for the crook not the nazi!" I think the electorate (well I am one of them) are not stupid but deprived of any real choice. All this could change. All this has got to change.

In fact it is likely that the main opposition to Blunkett's authoritarian measures will not be inside Parliament but outside. Remember what happened to the Poll Tax. The Tories brought it in. Labour said "tut tut, don't you dare refuse to pay it." (socialists who advocated non-payment were expelled from the Labour Party) but millions refused to pay and it and Margaret Thatcher were completely stuffed. It could happen again you know.

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk

Here we go again?
From Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org)

"Report: Powell Based Iran Nuke Claim On Unvetted Source
The Washington Post is reporting that Secretary of State Colin Powell relied on a single, unvetted source when he claimed Wednesday that he had new evidence thast Iran was developing a nuclear weapon. The report was entirely based on information provided by a source who approached US intelligence with 1,000 pages of documents that purportedly showed nuclear weapons drawings. One governmental official told the Washington Post that the CIA remains unsure about the authenticity of the documents and how they came into the informant's possession. Powell's comments came in direct contradiction to findings by the United Nations. The International Atomic Energy Association announced earlier this week it had seen no evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons program."

Only days ago people were saying Colin was one of the "doves" in the Bush administration and mourning his passing. How long before they start claiming Iran is 45 minutes away from attacking US or UK targets?

This is the arrogance of uncontested power. Do they really imagine they can run Iran after they made such a good job of running Iraq?

Margaret Hassan
I think it is awful that Margaret Hassan is dead and I think it is awful that her husband and family and all the people she helped have had her love taken from them.

And it sickens me that the American and British media will try to use her death as an excuse to justify the massacre of unnamed unarmed men and women in Fallujah.

The fallujah massacre
The massacre at Fallujah will backfire on the US whatever the outcome.

A hundred years from now there will still be revenge attacks against American targets to commemorate the massacre at Fallujah.

Unlike Vietnam the insurgents do not have the backing of the Soviet Union and there is far less sympathy for the aims of the resistance in the West than there was for the NLF. Nevertheless the comparison with Vietnam is not unreasonable. The dilemma is the same. What Gore Vidal christened "American imperialism" can neither withdraw (and admit defeat?) nor stay (and count the body bags coming home?). To use a phrase used at the time of the Vietnam conflict they can "declare victory and come home."

Even filtered through the "embedded correspondents" the viewing public are seeing homes not so different from their own homes being destroyed. It takes a little imagination to realise that the people in those houses are without water, without food and forbidden on pain of death to go outside. What must it be like for them. Yes they sympathise with the resistance. Wouldn't you in the same circumstances?