Watch both their faces. Delightful. She seems to be, rather brilliantly, boxing them into a corner.
From the category archives:
UK Politics
Dolly, a play by Christopher Douglas (aka Ed Reardon and Dave Podmore) about the events surrounding Basil D’Oliveira’s selection to play for England (described and analysed rivetingly in Peter Oborne’s Basil D’Oliveira: Cricket and Conspiracy: The Untold Story
Martin Kelner’s “utterly cynical piece in the Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/apr/13/hillsborough-disaster-liverpool-martin-kelner-bbc rather sums up the attitude of metropolitan journalists. OK, so he focuses on the BBC rather than asking directly, “why don’t those mawkish Scousers shut up about their 96 dead?”, but the comparisons to Diana and Jade Goody are there for a purpose (there are some excellent comments by readers in response). Actually, I think the BBC’s coverage of the anniversary has been rather good, especially Kelly Dalglish’s fine radio programme (not mentioned by Kelner, but also featuring interviews with the parents of the Hicks sisters). There are lots of good reasons not to shut up after 20 years. Not only has there been no apology from the police for their actions, but many things haven’t changed. I was reminded of this whilst listening to the current Chief Constable of South Yorkshire explain how much the police have learnt and how it wouldn’t happen today. Oh really? Well as we know from the G20 protests (and other recent events such as the de Menezes shooting) the police still try to get their “blame the victim” story in early. They still represent themselves as helping the victim but being prevented by a hail of missiles that no-one else saw. Videotapes that might have provided evidence of police misconduct or ineptitude still disappear, or cameras “malfunction”. And the police still get to compare their notes after events involving deaths, just to make sure that their stories are consistent and supportive of the institutional stance. Yes, all good reasons not to shut up.
I’ve posted before about harassment of photographers by police, para-police, security guards etc. The latest panic in the UK has concerned section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. I’m inclined to think this is actually less of a problem than random and unlawful action by police officers, and the British government, in the shape of Shahid Malik MP (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department) has told us all to calm down, “in the following terms”:http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090401/halltext/90401h0005.htm
bq. It makes it an offence to elicit, attempt to elicit, publish or communicate information about an individual who is or has been a constable, or a member of the armed forces or intelligences services. The information must be of a kind that is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing acts of terrorism. It has been suggested that the new offence could criminalise people taking or publishing photographs of police officers. A photograph of a police officer may fall within the scope of the offence, but would do so in only limited circumstances. The offence is designed to capture terrorist activity directed at members of the protected groups, which, sadly, we know occurs. An offence might be committed, therefore, if someone provides a person with information about the names, addresses or details of car registration numbers of persons in the protected groups. The important thing is that the photographs would have to be of a kind likely to provide practical assistance to terrorists, and the person taking or providing the photograph would have to have no reasonable excuse, such as responsible journalism, for taking it.
Well now we “have a very good example”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/ian-tomlinson-g20-death-video of why it is important for the public to have the freedom to photograph and film the police: in order to gather evidence against them of violent and oppressive conduct. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has appealed people who have film or photographs of the events leading up to Ian Tomlinson’s death. It would be perverse if the taking of those photographs were itself a crime.
The Telegraph reports that Ed Balls suggests that school admissions lotteries may be scrapped because they are unfair. I’ve dug around to find the actual speech, but can’t find it anywhere, and don’t entirely trust the report (or the Observer report, which makes him seem less hostile to lotteries) to have gotten the issues exactly right. The “twins” argument (that lotteries split up twins into different schools) is terrible — it is easy to build a sibling rule into a lottery (and that is what, for example, the Milwaukee voucher program lotteries have). This argument is pretty bad too:
“The issue of lotteries is causing some concern to parents around the country,” he said. “I have sympathy with the view that a lottery system can feel arbitrary, random and hard to explain to children who don’t know what’s going to happen and don’t know which children in their class they’re going on to secondary school with.
It is having the kid rejected, and having her go to a school other than her friends, that is the problem here, not the lottery — it’s an inevitable feature of school choice, and in fact has been with us since 1944 (the 11-plus lottery was abolished in lots of places after a while, but even in comprehensive LEAs friends got split up to go to religious or single sex schools, or just to some other school that had a nicer swimming pool, at the whim of their parents).
Can anyone point me to the whole speech, or explain what is really going on?
(It’s nice to see, by the way, that the Tories plan to abolish the lotteries — give power back to the state provider, where it belongs, that’s what I say.)
How do schools with disadvantaged populations beat the odds? England’s Chief Inspector of Schools just released a report examining a group of schools that do and analysing what they have in common:
* They excel at what they do for a high proportion of the time
* They prove constantly that disadvantage or not speaking English at home need not be a barrier to achievement
* They put students first, invest in their staff and nurture their communities
* They have strong values and high expectations that are applied consistently and never relaxed
* They provide outstanding teaching, rich opportunities for learning and encouragement and support for each student
* They are highly inclusive
* Their achievements happen by highly reflective, carefully planned and implemented strategies
* They operate with a very high degree of internal consistency
* They are constantly looking for ways to improve further
* They have outstanding and well-distributed leadership.
This is exactly what you’d expect from the school improvement and effectiveness literature. I’ve been reading a lot of this lately, and what is surprising is how much convergence there is on this. You might think that having achieved such a high level of consensus it would be easy to move into some sort of policy promoting such schools. But it’s not so easy.
A few summers ago we were having our house appraised. I opened the door to the appraiser who took a step back, blinked, and then stared rudely at me for about 30 seconds. Then “Oh, you’re English”, he says. (The tip-off being the large picture on my T-Shirt of Zebedee saying “Time for Bed”). He was from a Yorkshire mining community; his father and brothers had both been miners but he was too young himself; his brother (somehow) came to the US to become a hairdresser, and my appraiser followed a few years later.
There’s probably a dissertation to be written about the migration of participants in the Miner’s Strike to the US. A BBC exec chased down the two protagonists in this wonderful Don McPhee photo, and although the miner in the picture (George Brealey) died in Edington some years ago, the copper who you can see trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile now lives in Tennessee. Full story here. And, if it works, a gallery of McPhee’s pictures (they’re all great, but #4 of the kids being evacuated, and #6 of Wilson lighting his pipe, are fantastic). (Hat-tip, Chris, who thought this was more down my alley than his).
Non-Brits will be bemused by this story. This bit, in particular, is odd:
A row broke out earlier this month after Prof Nutt likened the dangers of ecstasy use and horse-riding. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith responded by accusing him of trivialising the dangers of the drug.
On the contrary, if youngsters knew that ecstasy was as dangerous as horse-riding demand would plummet.
Toward the end of the Miner’s Strike in 1985 I was accompanying some student march to County Hall, shaking a collecting tin, when I was confronted by a balding middle aged man in, I kid you not, a bowler hat and pin stripe suit:
(Angrily) “What are you complaining about now? I’m not going to give money to bloody students, the state already pays for you”
(Cheerfully) “Oh no, I’m not complaining about anything.” (I didn’t go into what I suspected was our agreement on the immorality of the state subsidizing the passage of the most privileged children in society into its elite, but I conveyed that complex message with a grin). “I’m collecting for the striking miners”.
(Surprised) “Oh”. He looked me straight in the eye, with genuine sympathy. “They can’t win you know. But..” he produced a 20 quid note and placed it in my tin “at least they might give this bloody shower in charge a run for their money”. (One of the lessons of collecting for the miners was never to judge a person by the way they dressed.)
Memory triggered by:
from Randy Newman’s wonderful Harps & Angels
Unless there’s some heroic parenting, on the other hand, my daughters have their entire lives to hear this in its proper context (particularly recommended for Laura).
Odd business, the honours system. In some fields, it seems that who gets offered an honour, and when, is not far from random: Cliff and Elton before Paul; Mick at all. Mike Brearley not a knight, still? Then there are the laggards: Cyril Washbrook getting a CBE in his 70s when almost everyone else had forgotten him except for the new Prime Minister of the time whose presumed intervention on Washbrook’s behalf is one of many reasons why I admire him more than anyone else I know does. And then there are the fields where you are bound to be offered something by a certain age unless you have done something very odd. Lead a party, get a peerage. Almost all significant cabinet ministers seem to be offered them eventually, so of those who don’t have them you pretty much know they have turned them down (Michael Foot has, apparently, turned everything down; Ted Heath must have turned down a peerage, though accepted other things). I presume that no-one has had a sufficiently surreal sense of humour to offer Tony Benn anything, but I also presume that’s the only reason he hasn’t been offered anything (or, maybe I’m wrong, and he has). I was told the other day that Nigella Lawson turned something down, which I find very surprising. But what could have been offered to her and why?
Anyway, no doubt the honours system is outdated, somewhat corrupt and faintly ludicrous. I just hope that its mostly harmless. Congratulations, Dad. Thank goodness they’re not hereditary.
(Explanation of title here. Key quote: ‘Professor Brighouse, a Labour Party supporter, used money he won in a libel action against John Patten, a former Conservative education secretary, for one of his most innovative reforms – setting up a University of the First Age at Aston University so youngsters from deprived backgrounds could get a taste of university life and seize the chance to go on to higher education. Mr Patten had described Professor Brighouse as a “nutter” who roamed the streets frightening little children.‘)
Talking of the 70’s, I just finished Kenneth Morgan’s biography of Michael Foot
The book is full of surprises – even if some of them are ones that you vaguely knew before, but hadn’t really believed. His friendship with, and sponsorship by, Beaverbrook, was just the tip of an iceberg. I didn’t know that Foot became, in later life, a close friend of Ian Gilmour. I did, somehow, know that he was a friend of Enoch Powell’s, but it is surprising nevertheless, and what is particularly surprising is that they seem to have become friends, on Foot’s initiative, shortly after the “rivers of blood” speech (Radio 4 had a very good evaluation of Powell last year, during which the son of some Tory MP told about how his parents, previously good friends of Powell’s, turned Powell away from the door the day after the speech, and never spoke to him again, which indicates just how unacceptable the speech was). They collaborated closely both on defeating House of Lords reform (Foot wanted it abolished, not turned into a House of place-men), and, obviously, opposing entry to, and then staying in, the EEC. Another close friend was Randolph Churchill, who twice challenged him in Devonport; they became friends, apparently, during the first campaign, when Foot and Jill Craigie would frequently give Churchill rides back from events where his Conservative election workers, who disliked him, had abandoned him. The second campaign was, apparently, vicious, and yet the friendship remained solid. A lifelong Republican, who has refused any and all honours, he became friends with the Queen when he was party leader, and also with the Queen Mother, who apparently admired his good sense in wearing his donkey jacket to the Cenotaph for the Remembrance ceremony. There’s better still: some MI5 report is quoted as saying the Foot, Benn, Mikardo, Driberg, Heffer, Hart, Castle and David Owen were “Labour MPs who are believed to be Communists and are in positions of influence”. Brilliant.
Liberty, the British organization that campaigns for civil liberties and against state abuse of power, has a new website centred on the British government’s proposal to hold people without charge in terrorism cases for up to 42 days. Fortunately, the House of Lords has thrown the measure out for the time being, but they may well try to bring it back again. In the meantime, whether in celebration of the measure’s defeat or anticipation of its return, you can read the thoughts of a collection of writers including Ian Rankin, Julian Barnes and Stella Duffy (particularly good, I thought).
The British government has abandoned proposals for non-voting preference shares and is moving towards full-scale nationalisation of the banking sector. According to the London Times(h/t Felix Salmon) the latest proposals would leave the government owning 70 per cent of Royal Bank of Scotland and 50 per cent of Halifax. The London stockmarket is likely to be closed, and it seems unlikely that many banks will remain private by the time it reopens. Presumably, with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in deep strife, the US can’t be far behind, though Paulson is still talking nonsense about non-voting shares. Still, it’s only three weeks ago that he was opposing any kind of public equity, and only six weeks ago that he was claiming that there were no real problems.
As the Times says, no-one knows how much toxic sludge will turn up when the government finally gets access to the books, but it seems unlikely that most governments will be overwhelmed in the way that Iceland has been. The capacity of developed-country governments to raise additional revenue is huge, easily enough to cover trillions in bad debt over a few years. So, once the sector is nationalised it should be possible to get lending flowing again. And, the prospects for an orderly shutdown of the massively overgrown markets for derivatives like credit default swaps suddenly seem a lot better.
There’s an ongoing low-level argument in our house about Teach for America, which may reflect our own dispositions more than any actual disagreement. My spouse doesn’t like it much, because it promotes the idea that teaching is something clever people can do just because they are clever, and she doubts that the students who do it are very good in the classroom (she has some experience of non-standard routes into the classroom, having, herself, entered LAUSD as an emergency credential teacher straight out of college, the year before TfA began). I agree with all that, of course, and the students of mine who have done it give very mixed reports back to me. But taking into account the fact that the classrooms the TfAers occupy would mostly be occupied by similarly under-qualified teachers, most of whom will leave within a couple of years and some of whom within a couple of weeks, and having seen on campus the way that TfA has harnessed (and, it seems to me, contributed to) the idealism of high-performing students, I have a more positive take on it (the dispositional difference here is probably between viewing glasses as half-full or half-empty; though our dispositions are reversed when it comes to politics more generally). So when the TES asked me to profile a “thinker who has influenced education”, my wife suggested Wendy Kopp, and I thought it would be a way to work out my thoughts a bit more. It was a nice coincidence because Charles Windsor had just become the patron of Teach First, the UK organisation modeled on TfA.
Martin O’Neill has “a characteristically interesting piece”:http://www.newstatesman.com/health/2008/08/life-nice-treatment-nhs-health in the New Statesman, this time on QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years) and their role in the National Health Service decision to provide or deny expensive drugs to patients. Read the whole thing, as they say.
I had one quibble with Martin’s analysis. He writes:
bq. Littlejohns [the clinical director of NICE] has released a preliminary ruling, denying access to the drugs Sutent, Avastin, Nexavar and Torisel to patients with advanced metastatic kidney cancer. These patients will, on average, die months earlier than those with the same condition in other countries in Europe where such drugs are available.
But then later in the same piece:
bq. … if such decisions are made locally rather than nationally, we are thrown into the familiar problems of the ‘post-code lottery’. A patient in Nottingham may find herself denied treatment that is provided to someone in Newcastle. Allowing matters of life and death to depend on the good or bad luck of geographical location seems like the very opposite of finding justifiable policies.
Hmm. So in the first-quoted paragraph, Martin presents the supra-national geographical variation as a troubling datum, to which the adoption of a sensible national drug-evaulation policy is a response, whereas in the second, he presents sub-national geographical variation as a decisive reason for rejecting local discretion. But why not say that local variation is OK, just so long as it is backed up by good reasons, or, alternatively, that we should have European (or even global) standards that treat like cases alike?