tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34003162007546835192024-02-08T08:07:20.829-08:00The Baronteacher* blogger* writer* Arsenal fan* father of two* husband*
I have written articles for The Spectator, The Sun, the TES, Breitbart, Conservative Home and The Daily Telegraph*Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-61933761737325934192020-07-03T06:12:00.002-07:002022-01-17T11:42:46.843-08:00Starkey raving racist or cantankerous old goat?<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1">David Starkey’s a racist! That’s right, a racist, a knuckle-dragging ignoramous better suited to what passes for debate at The Den than that practised in the cloistered, cerebral majesty of his alma mater. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">In a recent interview with the brilliant yet spooked Darren Grimes, he argued that the Atlantic Slave Trade was not a genocide. If it had been, he said, rather injudiciously in the current climate, I must concede, there wouldn’t be so many ‘damned blacks’ in Africa. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">But was this statement a clumsy faux pas or an expression of Starkey’s barely concealed racism? </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’d be inclined to go with the former. Yes, as I said, his words were clumsy and ill-considered, but he wasn’t damning black people per se, and anyone who listens to the interview objectively can see that. He was expressing his exasperation with those who claim that the Atlantic Slave Trade was an act of genocide. If it was, he implied, albeit slightly exaggeratedly, then after 300 years of unrelenting genocide, there wouldn’t be any black people left in Africa. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">But he’s done this before, his detractors scream. He said that British whites were emulating blacks. Again, this blunt, provocative, shoot-from-the-hip style does not betray the heart of a fascist. It betrays a thoughtful historian exploring socio-cultural trends without the burden of political correctness.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It enables him to speak freely and explore ideas, ideas that will no doubt be honed and modified, sharpened into a more accurate and nuanced diagnosis, in the distiller of free and open debate. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">His claim that whites are emulating blacks, for example, hits on an important sociocultural phenomenon in which US and Jamaican ‘cool’ gangster culture has been imported and adopted by black, Asian and white, often but not always, inner-city youths with not only dialectal and sartorial consequences, but violent ones too. It’s a very important discussion to be had. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Okay, he’s too general for my taste, and could be misinterpreted - as he has been - and open to accusations of promoting and perpetuating stereotypes. Indeed, it’s easy for me to say, but he should have modified his remarks and said that, yes, a destructive subculture has been imported from mainly black communities in Jamaica and America, but that’s not to say that all Afro-Caribbeans inhabit it, or even that those who manifest some aspects of it are dangerous and afflicted. But he didn’t.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He shot from the hip. That doesn’t make him racist, though. It makes him clumsy. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">What worries me more is the reaction to Starkey’s tactlessness, especially among those claiming to be against race-baiting and for free speech. They immediately accused him of racism - knowing that the accusation alone will cancel him - and, more worryingly, anyone who defended him, me included, has been branded with the same rotten, damaging label, my accuser weirdly saying that she still liked me. It was like being carted off to the Gulag after being denounced, only for my denouncer to say, as I’m being herded onto the cattle wagon, ‘I still like you.’ Incredibly worrying.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Where’s the forgiveness for misspeaking? Why think the worst of people? We need to be more charitable and stop shouting racist; otherwise, people will stop speaking, ideas won’t be explored and remedies will remain lost.</span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-90328616272457252252020-06-13T06:08:00.000-07:002022-01-17T11:12:42.469-08:00Neo-Marxist academics have spent decades radicalising their students. They must be reined in.<span style="font-family: inherit;">Julia Hartley-Brewer conducted a fascinating and revealing interview with Dr Kojo Koram earlier this week. A lecturer in race and empire at Birkbeck College, the University of London, Dr Koram could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the violent removal and illegal submersion of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol. He pointedly refused to condemn the violence and, at one particularly surreal moment, even claimed that vandalising the statue - a statue that no doubt served as a comforting mainstay for over a hundred years, bearing witness to the trials and tribulations of successive generations of Bristol's proud inhabitants - was both educational and supported by the majority of the British public. It was astonishing. A learned academic not only condoning but celebrating mob rule.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">You could be forgiven for being taken unawares by the events of the last week or so. Statues have been toppled, monuments desecrated and national heroes publicly humiliated. It's indeed been a disorientating time for us all. Why do so many youngsters appear to despise our country? Why are so many immune to reason and seemingly possessed by a visceral, uncontrollable fervour that manifests itself in blood-lust and violence? As I said, it's incredibly disorientating. And when you add the complicity of our educated elites and previously respected institutions into the mix - either through actively encouraging and cheering on the rioters or cowardly turning a blind eye - you get a perfect storm of bewilderment, confusion and, as an inevitable consequence, anger and frustration.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That's why Dr Koram's revelation was so helpful. He represents the source of our current unrest, the womb in which these destructive cultural forces gestated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Broadly speaking and simply put, our universities are to blame. They are the madrassas responsible for this recent assault upon our cultural heritage. Indeed, over the course of the last several decades, they've become hotbeds of neo-Marxist thought disseminated and promoted by radical left-wing scholars like Dr Koram. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Heirs to a heady mix of Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukacs and a long line of anarcho-socialist thinkers, they wish to overturn the hegemonic cultural conservatism that, in their eyes, oppresses the less fortunate, whether represented by working class, BAME, gay or transgender groups. For these scholars, Scientific Marxism is inadequate to the task: oppression is not only experienced through economics; it's also experienced through culture and religion. That's why our statues, monuments, art, even television programmes are under attack. They are seen as instruments of oppression.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And if you believe I'm being alarmist and reductive, that Dr Koram is one man, unrepresentative of the university sector as a whole, consider this: a 2017 survey conducted by the Adam Smith Institute found that eight in ten university lecturers were left-wing. According to the report, '<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">Conservative and Right-wing academics are particularly scarce in the social sciences, the humanities and the arts', and, as a consequence, universities</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> are 'afflicted by group think and a dysfunctional atmosphere where key assumptions go unquestioned, dissenting opinions are neutralized, and favoured beliefs are held as sacrosanct'. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">In addition, signalling their underlying desire to subsume and suffocate our cultural particularism </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">as embodied in the nation state</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> - which, let's not forget, they view as oppressive -, nine out of 10 university staff backed Remain during the EU Referendum. And this phenomenon isn't just the preserve of the UK, either. </span>A 2016 study conducted in the US found that left-wing university professors outnumbered their conservative colleagues by 12 to 1. It couldn't be clearer. The Left has a stranglehold on the dissemination of ideas throughout our great educational institutions. Furthermore, it has progressively increased this stranglehold over the last five or six decades.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Think, for one moment, what this means. Yes, academics are brainwashing impressionable young kids who - armed with a bit of knowledge and the passion, naivety and arrogance of youth - are deployed as shock troops, violently railing against perceived, largely mythical inequalities, and practically applying the trite, unoriginal anarcho-Marxist theories of their tutors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But they have also indoctrinated the politicians, Silicon Valley hipsters who patrol and police the Web, right-on journalists and broadcasters: all those university-educated elites who provide the rioters with covering fire and control the narrative. They, too, are sympathetic to the protesters' demands, for the simple reason that they've been inculcated with the same worldview that sees oppressor and oppressed in just about everything.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay, you might say, but many of the protesters aren't university educated neo-Marxists. And you'd be right. But they've been exploited by groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. These are the groups orchestrating the incipient cultural revolution taking place. And they are very much led by university educated neophytes. Just take Black Lives Matter as an example. This radical, extremist group which calls for nothing less that the abolition of the police, the nuclear family and, among other things, the destruction of capitalism, was set up by Alicia Garza, a devout Marxist and sociology graduate from the University of California, San Diego. Her comrades in arms, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi are, again, like Garza, left-wing graduates. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Antifa, moreover, hardly needs to be introduced. It's full of middle-class, highly educated, privileged radicals demanding revolution. Make no mistake, these groups are conducting the purge, and they're led by graduates brainwashed by leftist professors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, they're being tacitly, sometimes explicitly, supported by our cultural and political elites - elites imbued with the same worldview as the iconoclasts. Even our Police Force appears to be sympathetic to the cause.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's quite incredible when you think about it. Those who extol the virtues of a university education the most - its recipients -, are the first to forget an important aphorism: a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. And by giving their students a half-baked, highly ideological, one-sided educational experience, our universities are failing in their duty to provide a well-rounded, objective view of the world, a failure that's leading to grotesque displays of intolerance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dr Koram did us a huge favour this week. He inadvertently exposed the insidious source of the cultural vandalism we've borne witness to over the last week or so. Neo-Marxist academics have spent decades radicalising their students - students that are now both our elites, and our cultural vandals. They must be reined in. </span>Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-16292589001253171862020-06-05T06:56:00.001-07:002022-01-17T11:12:53.968-08:00George Floyd's murder was not the result of institutionalised racism.<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">George Floyd's death was shocking. To witness David Chauvin, a man ostensibly employed to enforce the law and uphold the highest standards of conduct so publicly and brazenly do the opposite, choking a defenceless citizen whilst he begged for his life and, most disturbing of all, pleaded for some final gesture of maternal love and comfort during his dying moments, was indeed a profoundly grotesque and provocative experience. I felt both sickened and angry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The protests that followed were therefore understandable. America certainly seems to have a problem when it comes to police brutality. There were over a thousand victims of police shootings in 2019 alone. But the protesters - and later the rioters (criminals with whom I have little sympathy) - are not protesting against police brutality per se; they're protesting against what they perceive to be institutional racism within the US-wide police force - racism that, according to them, leads to African-Americans being disproportionately targeted and murdered. That's why the protest movement Black Lives Matter has played such a significant part in the demonstrations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But are African-Americans disproportionately the victims of police brutality and, if so, is such disproportionality the result of endemic, institutionalised racism? Many seem to think so. From politicians to media luminaries, celebrities to ex-president Barack Obama himself: all subscribe to the pervasive and, in their eyes, incontestable view that racism is incubated within and secreted from the very institutions responsible for dispassionately and equitably upholding the law and with it, the constitutional rights of every American citizen, regardless of race. According to this perspective, that's why blacks are more likely to be shot and killed by the police. Obama even linked George Floyd's murder to 'slavery, Jim Crow, redlining and institutional racism'. He hastily concluded that Floyd's murderer was indeed motivated by racial hatred tolerated and encouraged by an institution that remains bedevilled by the legacy of Jim Crow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But these charges don't stand up to scrutiny. First, we don't know what motivated the officer responsible for Floyd's death. It is therefore presumptuous and, I must say, knowing the possible repercussions of making such inflammatory claims, irresponsible and reckless to ascribe motive when it's far from clear what prompted the offender. Trump's not the only one stoking the fire here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Secondly, let's not forget that w<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; white-space: pre-wrap;">hites are the victims of half of police shootings. Okay, they'll say, but blacks only represent 13 per cent of the population, therefore, proportionately, they’re more likely to get shot. But blacks are responsible for over 50 per cent of the nation’s homicides; </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; white-space: pre-wrap;">they account for 40 per cent of the prison population; in short, they are more likely to commit violent crime. Bearing this in mind, they’re also more likely to find themselves confronted by an armed police officer, increasing the likelihood of getting shot and killed. </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #14171a; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3125; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any sane, reasoned glance over the statistics reveals the charge of endemic racism unsustainable. That is not to say that racism doesn’t exist within the police force; nor that racism wasn’t the primary motivation for the murder of George Floyd </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #14171a; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3125; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">- though, as I said, that hasn’t been proven yet. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; white-space: pre-wrap;">But these protests are motivated by spurious claims of endemic, institutionalised racial hatred. They’ve even led to nauseating mea culpas by white, privileged virtue-signallers. They must be challenged with the facts.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">This will be no easy task. University educated opinion-formers, virtue-signalling celebrities, corporate CEOs and politically correct politicians - brainwashed by an anti-Western, self-loathing, anti-white and anti-democratic educational establishment and encouraged by an elite culture that values the public display of moral superiority above all else - are almost irredeemably invested in this lie. Antifa activists are their shock troops; members of Black Lives Matter their useful idiots. It really is incredibly disturbing to watch educated people gleefully report the looting of shops and destruction of businesses, especially when they belong to the very people they purport to champion. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is also incredibly disturbing to watch people in this country who, just over a week ago, hysterically called for the head of one man accused of breaking the Government's lockdown rules, refuse to even question let alone condemn the Antifa-inspired protests gripping London - protests that clearly and flagrantly breach the Government's rules as thousands of people stand cheek by jowl, refusing to even pay lip service to the social-distancing strictures. The West is in a deep malaise.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, the murder of George Floyd was more than a tragedy. It was an abhorrent display of police brutality that caused public revulsion and understandable demands for justice - demands that, let's not forget, have been met with David Chauvin's arrest and indictment. Moreover, it shone a light on the charged and highly sensitive issue of police brutality in America - though perhaps the prevalence of firearms can at least partially explain the nervous overreactions of some officers. But febrile charges of institutional racism - the accusations that sparked and sustain the protests - just don't stack up. The real story here appears to be the chattering class, bien-pensant willingness to perpetuate lies in an effort to sow division and further demoralise the Western democracies. We must not let them.</span></span></span></div>
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Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-80812647350174016332020-05-02T09:07:00.001-07:002022-01-17T11:14:30.532-08:00Leaving the EU is a joyous expression of national self-confidence. For that, we have Thatcher to thank.<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When one considers our historic, ever-changing and uneasy relationship with the European project, one can’t escape the conclusion that it’s predicated upon a post-war diminution in national self-confidence brought about by the decline and fall of the British Empire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Our victory in the great twentieth-century struggle against nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism may have led to unbridled celebrations and unprecedented feelings of national pride, but, ultimately, and quite unexpectedly, it introduced a period of national decline and soul-searching, punctuated by the odd awakening, until 1979, when a more long-lasting and irreversible revival took place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, the referendum result and Boris Johnson’s election victory, culminating in our departure from the EU last week, were the long term consequences of Margaret Thatcher’s revolution and the resurgence in national pride and confidence that accompanied it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">During World War Two, the contradiction immanent in Britain’s fight for freedom against Nazi imperialism whilst presiding over the largest seaborne empire in history was necessarily ignored. After victory, however, this was no longer possible. It had to be confronted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The British empire had become morally unjustifiable and consequently unsustainable, as well as, after the financial strain of the war, economically unviable to boot. In 1947, the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown was granted independence and violently partitioned into Pakistan and India; Ghana gained independence in 1957 and Nigeria in 1960; indeed, throughout the 1950s and 60s, Britain’s imperial possessions fell, like dominoes, into the hands of charismatic, indigenous leaders armed with the language of liberty devised by the British themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Britain had become a shadow of its former glory. Britannia no longer bestraddled the world, mistress of the seas, trident in hand; instead, she sat passively, seeking handouts from her new creditor and master on the other side of the Atlantic – an ocean once dominated by the imposing guns of her navy. In 1956, in a final coup de grace, her master and patron chased her out of Suez with a swift, humiliating reproach. Britain’s hegemony was at an end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s just imagine for one moment what this meant to its people, how disorienting it must have been. Everything they had known, everything they had taken for granted, their identity and the sense of self that came with it, had been turned upside down. It is unsurprising that a great loss in national self-confidence ensued and, to make matters worse, Britain, exhausted and demoralised, peered across the English Channel and enviously observed the economic miracle taking place in Europe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In West Germany, for example – as a result of Marshall Aid, currency reform and responsible labour relations, as well as the opening up of global markets -, industrial output doubled and Gross National Product grew by 9 to 10 per cent each year between 1950 and 1957. Between 1947 and 1973, moreover, the French economy grew by, on average, five per cent per annum. Both countries, along with Italy, which also experienced phenomenal growth rates during this period, caught up to and eventually exceeded Britain’s GNP. Furthermore, from 1950 to 1965, Britain’s GNP per capita slipped from 7th to 12th in the world. By 1975, it was down to 20th.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Riddled with inflation, beset by poor productivity, declining industries and truly dreadful labour relations, not to mention a precipitously haemorrhaging empire and concomitant decline in global prestige, Britain’s leaders desperately sought to find a new role in the world and forge a new identity by joining the Common Market and, they thought, tying themselves to Europe’s economic miracle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After Britain was refused entry in 1961, Edward Heath’s Conservative administration finally joined the European Economic Community in 1973 – a decision ratified by the British people in a referendum two years later. The loss of national self-confidence that resulted from our post-war imperial retreat and relative economic decline had led to a decision made of desperation and fear. We indeed joined the EEC in a fit of anxiety-induced panic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">However, Thatcher changed everything. Her radical reforms, unapologetic patriotism, uncompromising will and remarkable character lifted the nation out of its post-war torpor and restored its self-confidence. The unions were tamed, fiscal profligacy was replaced by fiscal restraint, markets were liberalised, inefficient nationalised industries privatised, inflation was controlled and, consequently, annual growth exceeded four per cent during the late 1980s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A British ‘economic miracle’ was being enviously mooted on the continent – a truly remarkable turnaround from the stagnation and misery afflicting the nation just 10 years earlier. Successive governments, even Labour ones, refused to reverse the Iron Lady’s reforms and, in 2015, Britain became the fifth largest economy in the world, largely thanks to her courageous endeavours – wisely left to bear fruit by her successors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Most important, though, was the national pride restored by Thatcher’s indomitable spirit and sense of moral purpose. Along with Ronald Reagan, she led the free world’s fight against the inhumanity of Soviet communism; in 1982, she ignored her doubters and successfully dispatched a task force to wrestle back the Falkland Islands from Argentina’s military junta; and in 1990, just before her downfall, she encouraged George Bush senior, then American president, to dispense with the wobbling and stand firm against Saddam Hussein after his unprovoked attack on Kuwait. Like Britannia, Thatcher bestrode the global stage, handbag in hand, and gave Britain back its pride and self-confidence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That this national revival led to rising public disaffection with the EU cannot be gainsaid. Why should a wealthy, self-confident country like Britain sacrifice its sovereignty to a sclerotic, unresponsive, undemocratic, supranational and meddlesome bureaucracy like the European Union? On 23rd June 2016, the answer was clear: it shouldn’t – a decision that, after three and a half years, was reaffirmed by Johnson’s election victory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If Britain joined what was to become the EU in a moment of disorientation and self-doubt, it voted out as a confident, self-assured, optimistic, outward-looking and independent nation state. For this, we have Thatcher to thank. And as a delicious accompaniment, she posthumously drove a stake through the heart of her vampiric nemesis, Michael Heseltine. Victory has never been sweeter.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;"><i>First published on Conservative Home on 3rd February 2020</i></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-45592717696172401812019-12-27T09:39:00.000-08:002022-01-17T11:15:29.927-08:00What we can’t but must say about the NHS<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p1" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Where do I begin? Watching Channel 4‘s recent drama about the Mid-Staffordshire NHS scandal, The Cure, was an evocative, thought-provoking and highly emotional experience. Heartbreaking, exasperating and intensely depressing in equal measure - yet, at times, strangely uplifting as the drama’s unlikely heroine courageously fights and, to an extent, though not as resoundingly as one would’ve liked, defeats powerful vested interests - The Cure is a story that, above all else, serves as a timely reminder of the things we can’t say about ‘our’ NHS, even if its employees kill our loved ones.</span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The story begins as Julie Bailey’s elderly mother, a bright, kindly 86-year old lady named Bella, is taken ill with complications caused by a pre-existing hernia. What should have been a routine medical response for a treatable condition, however, turned into an eight-week ordeal. Bella was subjected to the daily invective of a nurse more suited to employment as a guard at Ravensbruck and with it, cruel, almost routine levels of neglect. Much to her daughter’s dismay and confusion at the callousness of individuals ostensibly employed to help the elderly and infirm, the nurses withheld vital medication and a disinterested doctor nonchalantly informed her of her mother’s imminent and unavoidable death, contradicting a colleague who had recently described Bella’s condition as eminently treatable.</span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">Finally, after two long nightmarish months, the hospital delivered what can only be characterised as a coup de grace. Bella was forcefully dropped onto her hospital bed and, as a consequence, died of heart failure shortly afterwards. It really was heart-wrenching.</span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">Bella’s experience was no exception, though, as became horrifyingly apparent to her daughter both during and after her ordeal. Julie witnessed a desperate, dehydrated and disoriented patient drinking water from a vase, food left out of a neighbouring patient’s reach and later, when embarking on her campaign for justice, hundreds of victims’ families with similar stories of abuse and neglect. On a personal level, having witnessed the mistreatment of my own grandparents at the hands of a clearly failing health service, I found it particularly harrowing, memories of neglect and the daily battle for decent, humane treatment flooding back. </span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">I’ll say it again: the NHS is failing! Its labyrinthine, impenetrable bureaucracy is impossible to navigate, as demonstrated by the endless and confusing list of agencies and acronyms that make it up. The Department of Health (DOH), General Medical Council (GMC), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the Chief Independent Health Regulator known as Monitor, the Strategic Health Authority (SHA), Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), the Patient Advisory Liaison Service (PALS) and the HCC (Independent Health Regulator Watchdog). See what I mean? This multitude of interconnected tentacles is not only impenetrable for patients, opaque and impossible to understand thus disempowering, it’s also dehumanising. The patients become mere pawns, often irritants, in the daily game played by multifarious producer interests relentlessly competing and jostling for favoured positions within the bureaucracy. </span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">Patients become nothing more than numbers as ambitious bureaucrats obsess over data and targets. At one point in the drama, the CEO of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust, Martin Yeates, suggested altering the way the Trust collected data in a bid to hide the fact that its mortality rate was 40 per cent higher than the average. No concern for the patients, just a desire to save his career, an appalling trait shared by Toni Brisby, the Chair of the Trust, who, in one scene, gave grieving families just three minutes to share their experiences before abruptly cutting them off. They were clearly an inconvenience. She had better things to do with her time, like trawl through and manipulate data, one supposes. </span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">I was left wondering whether the bureaucracy is to blame for such spiteful, insensitive behaviour. In other words, given the unique, highly charged and, yes, undermanned milieu, would we all become like Yeates, Brisby and the abusive nurses and care workers, or does it take a sociopathic personality to display such cruel indifference? I’d go with the latter. I don’t care how pressured and overworked you are, common humanity, your ability to empathise, should always inform your actions. Look at the tortured, wonderful nurse and whistleblower. She was a beacon of light in a dark dystopian cesspit of maltreatment. </span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">The problem that the NHS faces, however, is that the wrong people are attracted to such bureaucracies. Caring, good, apolitical people have no wish to enter such a cutthroat and deeply cynical organisation. Those that do, I suspect, are either fighting against the tide or ready to give up, frustrated and demoralised. I have several friends in this latter category. In addition, and according to another friend who was an NHS manager and before that, worked in a Trust’s HR department, it’s almost impossible to sack someone for incompetence. So mediocre, sometimes highly unsuitable individuals are left to do their worst.</span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">The most striking aspect of The Cure, however, apart from the wonderful performances of the actors, was the degree of opprobrium that Julie Bailey attracted for making public her mother’s treatment. Her shop was vandalised, her tires punctured, she was shunned by the local community and even received death threats. In the end, she had to close her business and move away. And what happened to the individuals responsible for hundreds of needless deaths? Yeates, the CEO, was suspended on full pay before resigning. That’s right, not a single prosecution was pursued. Julie may have received a well-deserved MBE but, in many ways, she endured a harsher punishment than the care workers, nurses and NHS executives. She was the one hounded out of her home.</span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">Our politicians spent the whole General Election talking about the NHS whilst saying the sum total of nothing. It was extraordinary. You could be forgiven for thinking that everything is perfect, provided we chuck it a few more quid. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It needs root and branch reform. But incessantly calling it ‘our’ NHS as though it’s some kind of sacred, infallible institution, denouncing critics as puppets of big-pharma and the US, and intimidating into silence anyone who questions or criticises its care, is obstructing open debate, discussion and, as a result, the reforms we so desperately need.</span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p2" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"></span><br clear="none" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1p3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="yiv4969495143ydpec7989dfyiv5873534880ydp8fdcba14yiv4098096534ydp702c4789yiv5437478978ydpd4478831yiv3044118176ydp45d26514yiv8087539612ydp400efde1s2" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">I would urge our politicians to watch The Cure and take inspiration from Julie Bailey. If they demonstrate a tenth of her implacable courage, we really will have the best health service in the world.</span></div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" />Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-87556563094124743082019-12-17T11:16:00.001-08:002022-01-17T11:15:37.029-08:00Farage is a political Titan – yet now he risks being Brexit’s executioner<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m a big fan of Nigel Farage. He’s a political Titan. Without him, we’d still have Theresa ‘the grey’ May in number 10. That fact alone makes him worthy of a knighthood, in my book. But he has really messed up during this general election, brutally demonstrated by the defection of four of his most prized candidates yesterday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">His excuse that Annunziata Rees-Mogg’s withdrawal was down to her loyalty to her brother Jacob was desperate, as was his conspiratorial claim that all the defectors had ties to the Tory Party. It’s been a precipitous, ugly and perhaps irrevocable fall from grace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He’s unconvincingly attacked Boris’s deal, and, although agreeing to withdraw Brexit Party candidates from all 300-odd constituencies held by the Conservatives, he’s continued to attack Boris, our only hope of delivering anything close to what the people voted for back in 2016, and stubbornly refused to withdraw candidates from marginal seats currently held by Labour – an unfathomably vacuous decision that could see a Labour victory as the Brexit vote splits in these crucial marginals. Brexit could be put to death. And Farage, yes Farage, could be the executioner. Hard to believe, eh?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It could have been so different. He should have withdrawn his troops from all but a few seats in which the Tories had no chance of winning. Such a move would have been selfless, statesmanlike and, above all, rational. As things stand, he’s allowed his ego and visceral hatred of the Tory Party to cloud his better judgment. Yes, they may be arrogant, entitled, born-to-rule, sneering mediocrities who’ve gleefully attacked and disparaged Farage for 25 years. But they’re our only hope of Brexit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Further, if Farage had played his cards right, appeared statesmanlike and above the fray of petty party politics, committed to the betterment of his country and uninterested in personal advancement and devoid of ambition, he’d have elevated himself to greatness among Brexiteers and, perhaps, constructed a powerful springboard for a resurgence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Tories are still the Tories, wet, dreary and perpetually bullied by our liberal-left media and institutions. Even after Brexit, immigration will continue unabated and loony leftist policies on transgenderism, crime and punishment and terrorism will continue to be implemented. There is a place for a modified Brexit Party, committed to finding sensible, thoughtful answers to the challenges of identity, the mass movement of peoples, democracy and statehood that we face.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I, for one, am only voting Conservative because I believe, tentatively, that Boris is our best chance of realising what 17.4 million people voted for back in 2016. And because the survival of our democracy will be determined by Brexit’s fate, for me, this is a single issue election. As far as their wider policies and ideological outlook are concerned, from what I’ve seen, the Tories do not offer an imaginative, radical programme that matches the grave magnitude of the challenges we face. And I’m not talking about the largely confected threat of anthropogenic global warming. I’m talking about Islamic terrorism, mass immigration, globalism and identity, as well as the unsustainability of the NHS in its current guise, crime, punishment and education. The Tories offer no credible answers to these challenges. It’s going to be the same old same old.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Farage had a window of opportunity. He may have blown it, though, and unwittingly stumbled into obsolescence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;"><i>First published on Conservative Home on 7th December 2019</i></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-37966467634317134722019-05-27T11:42:00.003-07:002022-01-17T11:15:44.270-08:00Can teachers be trusted to teach primary school pupils about LGBT relationships?<div align="center" class="yiv9174205259ydp49acc880yiv3325681351ydpab919829MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anderton Park Primary School has found itself at the centre of what some would characterise as a dispute between two very different value systems. On one side you have the self-styled defenders of secular, socially progressive liberalism and with it, alternative lifestyles, whilst, on the other, you have conservative religious values or, more accurately in this case, conservative Muslim values.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For several weeks now, predominantly Muslim parents have been demonstrating against the school’s approach to promoting equality – an approach that exposes pupils to books featuring cross-dressing children and gay families. Shakeel Afsar, the self-appointed leader of the demonstrators and, interestingly, an individual without a child at the school, accuses the headteacher, Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, of ‘social engineering’. Ms Clarkson has reportedly received threatening emails and phone calls and, last week, in a further escalation of the dispute, hundreds of pupils were kept off school by disgruntled parents.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But should we see this as another example of secular values conflicting with those held by some of our more conservative Islamic communities? A recent Newsnight report certainly thinks we should. Apart from a perfunctory nod to ‘some’ Christians sharing the reservations of ‘some’ Muslims, there was little exploration of wider societal concerns about the exposure of children to such material. Neither was there an adequate discussion of the benefits and disbenefits of the school’s methods which, by the way, are now replicated by similar programmes in hundreds of primary schools across the country.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This, in my view, is a mistake. First, of course we need to discuss and explore the possible implications and consequences of making pupils read books about cross-dressers, same-sex relationships and gay marriage. These are our children, after all. Secondly, we shouldn’t be dragged into viewing this dispute through the prism of progressive secularism versus reactionary religious conservatism. It is much more complicated than that. Many who consider themselves to be progressive secularists, for example, share the concerns of their more traditionally minded, religious friends and neighbours.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And what about me? I suppose I’m a partially progressive (I supported civil partnerships but opposed gay marriage; believe that a person should be, out of common courtesy, addressed by their preferred gender pronoun but, in reality, can’t really – actually - change gender), partially conservative, partially secularist (I converted to Catholicism to get my children into a good school, but, if I’m being honest, would probably describe myself as agnostic and detest fundamentalist creeds of all stripes) mishmash of confused, contradictory positions, as you’ve probably deduced.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The point is, like many progressive secularists and conservative Muslims, Christians and Jews, I’m deeply concerned about schools exposing children to books about same-sex relationships and transgender peers without, at the very least, shedding some light on the possible implications through a public debate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, some might argue that by openly challenging bigotry, encouraging tolerance and making LGBT pupils feel safe, respected and valued, such an approach has enormous benefits. But what if, instead of encouraging tolerance, highlighting alternative lifestyles does the opposite, especially if it conflicts with belief systems that are prominent in the pupils’ homes? Could emphasising difference draw unnecessary attention to LGBT pupils and, as a consequence, encourage rather than discourage vilification? Are these not questions worth asking, before we jump in, feet first, experimenting with the lives of our children?</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Furthermore, teaching children from the age of four or five about alternative lifestyles may plausibly raise awareness of human sexuality, encouraging them to question and even experiment with their own sexuality. It may elicit unnecessary confusion, even distress, leading to hitherto unconsidered behaviours.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By far my biggest concern, however, is trusting a highly politicised, ideological profession to dispassionately promote tolerance rather than encourage, even glorify, alternative lifestyles. Children are extremely impressionable and, generally speaking, will do almost anything to please adults, especially those, like teachers, in positions of power and authority. What wouldn’t my kids do to impress their teachers? What if one of these teachers insidiously convinces my son that he is gay or transgender? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. After all, three generations of educators have convinced our children of the evils of capitalism, the Tory Party and now, more recently, the abomination that is Brexit. Indeed, going one step further, what better way to attack petit bourgeois capitalism than launch an assault upon its bulwark, the traditional family? Such a fear is neither outlandish nor unfounded.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And before you accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist, consider the following: a teacher turned whistle-blower recently exposed his/her school for tricking vulnerable children into believing that they were the wrong sex. Indeed, according to the whistle-blower, most of the 17 pupils in the process of changing gender at the school were autistic. Dr Joanna Williams, a university lecturer and author of the book Women vs Feminism, believes that schools are ‘sowing confusion about gender identity’ by ‘encouraging even the youngest children to question whether they are really a boy or a girl.’ This is extremely worrying. If true - and, as a teacher of 15 years, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of such claims - some teachers are abusing their positions to further some kind of warped, misguided political agenda. Would you trust them to dispassionately teach your children about LGBT relationships? I certainly wouldn’t.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And herein lies the problem. Too many schools believe they’re in the business of indoctrinating and socially engineering our children. They’re not, or, at least, they shouldn’t be. Until this simple fact is widely accepted and rectified, I’d rather teachers didn’t involve themselves in issues as sensitive as marriage and relationships, especially when one considers the age of many of them. They are young, naïve, inexperienced and armed with youthful idealism and a terrifying, burning sense of the new, politically correct morality. They are Corbyn’s shock troops.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dressing up the Anderton Park Primary School dispute as a conflict between progressive secularism and reactionary religious conservatism serves as a kind of displacement activity. By characterising the demonstrators as reactionaries and, by implication, extremists, the school - and its decision to promote equality through the introduction of books that feature same-sex couples and cross-dressing children -, being their antithesis, is naturally portrayed as moderate, reasonable and mainstream. Therefore, according to this narrative, there is nothing to discuss, apart from the intolerance of our more conservative religious communities. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Many people, including some that would consider themselves to be progressive and, dare I say it, even atheistic, are deeply troubled by the prospect of their children being exposed to such material. Indeed, the school’s position is neither moderate nor mainstream. It must be debated as a matter of urgency.</span></span><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"> </span></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-9237822633504732292019-05-07T09:26:00.001-07:002022-01-17T11:18:56.479-08:00The Tory Party's already dead<div class="yiv9527975045ydp902a66a4yiv3123853318ydpdc341876MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228;">
<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If only the Tories were in the last death throes of their long and distinguished existence. At least that would suggest a desperate desire to endure in the face of near certain expiration. Instead, they’re more like a farting corpse. What seems like the odd flicker of life, even hope, turns out to be nothing more than hot air burping from the backside of a dead political party.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let’s take their leader’s response to last week’s local election results as a case in point. They were a calamity. The Tories lost more than 1,300 seats. But Theresa May - in her unique and now fabled ability to deny reality - responded by pointing the finger of blame at the House of Commons. The public had punished the two main parties for failing to deliver Brexit, she opined. In other words, they don’t blame her; they blame those pesky politicians for voting against her Withdrawal Agreement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unsurprisingly, there was neither an ounce of contrition born of a sense of personal responsibility for the disaster, nor an indication of, having listened to the people, a change in her government's approach. Indeed, in her mind, the results were not a demonstration of the unpopularity of her agreement; they were a protest against the two main parties and, in particular, the stubborn ERG, for failing to get it through the House of Commons. Her uncanny predilection for self-deception is truly mind-blowing. She now seems to believe that the public’s anger will be pacified by a deal with Jeremy Corbyn that ties us to a ‘customs arrangement’. As I said, truly mind-blowing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not just about Theresa May, though. It’s about the entire Tory Party, both anti-democrat Remainers and craven Brexiteers, most of whom, like Boris, have sat back and raised the odd objection but, in reality, done nothing to stop May’s betrayal. I realise that this sounds counter-intuitive, but in order to save at least a semblance of something that could claim to be the heir to the Conservative tradition, they should have forced a split and taken many of the grassroots activists with them, calling themselves something like the Real Conservatives. Fortune favours the brave. It’s too late now, though. Farage’s party has beaten them to it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If they want to save their seats - putting the survival of the Tory Party to one side for a moment - their only hope is to defect to the Brexit Party now. Even this, though, may not work. Tory Brexiteers are tainted by their inaction, and that includes – and I say this with a heavy heart – Jacob Rees-Mogg. As a result, the Brexit Party may not accept them anyway, justifiably seeing them as an electoral liability. I certainly won’t vote for them, and I’ve always considered myself to be a natural Conservative. Furthermore, the party has proven itself to be so incompetent, so craven, so dishonest and so full of charlatans, that I don’t think I can ever vote for its representatives again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At first glance, it is obvious that the Conservative Party faces an existential crisis. However, when one witnesses the Prime Minister’s woeful, purblind response to last week’s electoral disaster, her wilful refusal to accept reality and change course, and the prevarication and procrastination of the party’s Brexit wing which impotently looks on, one realises that it’s already dead. The party’s various leadership contenders vying for the top spot are a bunch of zombies talking to themselves.</span></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-10187453791255098622018-11-29T01:09:00.015-08:002022-01-17T11:19:02.773-08:00Guardian-Land is a land of chaos and confusion <div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">They live in Guardian-Land. This was the rebuke given to indulgent judges by an ex-police chief on LBC radio recently. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">He was talking about the case of an 18-year-old who threatened a motorist with a 12-inch zombie knife, only to receive a derisory suspended sentence, nine-month curfew and 150 hours of community service. </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">Leaving aside the judge’s unfathomable decision to set a 7pm curfew for someone convicted of an offence committed at 5pm, this sentence is a scandal, especially when one considers the Home Secretary’s promise to get tough on knife crime.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">It is also indicative of our elites’ morally perverse and reprehensible approach to dealing with offenders. The judge justified his leniency by citing the offender’s traumatic history. Apparently, some years ago he had been profoundly disturbed by the sight of his brother’s corpse. But does that justify his reckless behaviour? Is that really a mitigating circumstance? I mean, lots of people experience traumatic events. Life is indeed full of them. We don’t all kick cars and wave knives around though.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">Such an inadequate punishment sends a truly appalling message to violent offenders. If you threaten or harm a law-abiding member of the public, you only have to tug on the judge’s heart strings with a hard luck story and, at worst, you’ll receive a community sentence. Where’s the deterrent?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">The judges appear to view criminals as victims. And this is the crux of the matter. The legal establishment consists of liberal-left activists who see offenders as unwitting victims of an unjust society. They must therefore be molly-coddled and protected from punishment, not locked away. If anything, this extraordinary and perverse view of the world sees the victim as the de facto guilty party (at least partly responsible for the societal conditions that spawned the criminal in the first place) and, of course, vice versa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">It is therefore no surprise that we’ve seen such an astronomical rise in crime. And before you scream ‘cuts’ or even Kahn in the case of London, it’s not a recent phenomenon either. Crime’s been rising since the 1960s - when these views first became fashionable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">As a school teacher, I witness exactly the same approach on a daily basis. Bullies and violent pupils are treated as the real victims- victims of an uncaring society. They are thus permitted to torment their targets with impunity. The poor souls they abuse, in contrast, are left unprotected and, in some cases, even take the blame for the cruelty inflicted on them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;">It really is shocking in its perversity. Morality has been upended by leftist elites. Criminals go unpunished and bullies unchecked. Guardian Land is indeed a land of chaos and confusion. And it’s going to get worse.</span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-57861900817683312932018-11-08T10:17:00.002-08:002022-01-17T11:19:16.993-08:00Will the British go the same way as the Ottomans?<div class="jb_0 X_6MGW N_6Fd5" style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 24px; padding-right: 16px;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">During the nineteenth century successive Ottoman sultans, most notably Abdul Hamid II, in a desperate bid to modernise and challenge Western military dominance, enacted a series of reforms to Ottomanise, or force uniformity upon, the disparate peoples of their empire. A polity that had for centuries derived its legitimacy from its tolerance of difference and the decentralised structures of governance that enabled such tolerance to flourish, now sowed the seeds of its own demise. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The different ethnic, cultural and religious groups within the imperium - each already imbued with an incipient national consciousness - resisted such centralisation and enforced uniformity and, one by one, broke free from Ottoman rule. With the help of World War One, Great Britain and France - who mischievously fomented nationalist opposition within the imperium throughout the nineteenth century - the Ottoman empire finally expired with the formal abolition of the sultanate in 1922. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Yes, the war precipitated its end, but, in reality, the Ottoman polity's loss of legitimacy made that end inevitable. From Serbia and Montenegro to Bulgaria and Romania, gradually, former Ottoman territories, angered by Istanbul's centralising programme and filled with nationalistic fervour, became either semi- or wholly-independent. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">What lessons can we learn from this bloody catastrophe and what relevance does it have for us in Britain? Well, unless it has the wherewithal and inclination to rule by fear, the survival of any state depends upon the consent of its people. If that consent is withdrawn, its continued existence becomes impossible. In the case of the Ottomans, consent was dependent upon the metropole's restrained interference in the affairs of its peripheries and the different ethnic, religious and cultural communities which inhabited them. When this tolerance was reversed, so too was the consent of Istanbul's subjects, leading to the empire's inevitable break-up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In the case of Britain, over the last fifty or sixty years, we too, like the Ottomans before us, have begun to question the very nature of our existence as a political entity. Our state's legitimacy, though, unlike the Ottoman one, has historically been based upon uniformity. We have an established church, a common language, a strong commitment to equality before the law and, until recently, a common culture as well. But these things, this uniformity, is now being questioned and undermined like never before. Our elites are engaging in nothing less than an ambitious programme to redefine the relationship between the state and the citizen, to reformulate the social contract, just as the nineteenth century Ottoman elites reformulated theirs - with, it has to be said, catastrophic consequences. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Through the damaging doctrine of multiculturalism, successive governments - supported by politicised, liberal-leftist civil servants, teachers, police officers, university professors and the media - have promoted and encouraged difference at the expense of social cohesion and national solidarity. People live entirely separate lives, speak different languages within the confines of their respective communities, hold different, incompatible beliefs, demand special privileges and even seek justice in different courts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In the cases of FGM and Pakistani grooming gangs, for example, the British state has abrogated its duty to prosecute the law, as a consequence of perceived cultural sensitivities. Indeed, the state has accepted that its jurisdiction does not extend to include the communities that house those responsible for these outrageous offences. Equality before the law, that precious British constitutional gift, has thus been repudiated. The state now believes that different communities need to police and govern themselves. We're no longer one people, bound by culture, the rule of law and shared experience, loyal to the British state as historically constituted. Instead, we're a fragmented collection of different peoples and cultures, linked only by a shared and rather flimsy commitment to tolerate one another. The hope is that Britain - now a mosaic of loosely affiliated peoples - will derive legitimacy and loyalty from this new settlement. I have my doubts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Like the Ottomans before us, we're in the process of radically changing the relationship between the individual and the state. In their case the state became more centralised and powerful, demanding greater uniformity across the empire, and in the process delegitimised itself in the eyes of its subjects. In ours, it is becoming less centralised and more tolerant of profound difference. Could it have equally catastrophic consequences? Time will tell.</span></div>
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Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-78737771656990120872018-09-22T08:38:00.000-07:002022-01-17T11:19:27.579-08:00We need to expose these so-called ‘centrists’ for what they really are: extremists<div class="yiv8040925521ydp630a5bfeMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I always find the tendency of some to label those who wish to see more immigration controls as extremists mildly amusing. I mean, what could be more extreme than advocating uncontrolled immigration and a border-free world? Indeed, the irony would be delicious if the charge were not so terrifyingly Orwellian, and so successful in its ability to stifle debate and crush dissent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ditto Brexit. Since when was championing national sovereignty and, by extension, the democracy that gives legitimacy to national governments an extremist, indeed fascistic, endeavour?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As an ordinary voter and, I hope, a sentient human being, I find it deeply unnerving and disorienting to see reason jettisoned so readily on a daily basis. The likes of Tony Blair, Andrew Adonis and Alastair Campbell are apparently centrists for example, despite advocating the abrogation of democracy and open borders. When in power, they presided over a policy of unprecedented, untrammelled immigration that saw communities irreversibly altered, against the wishes of their inhabitants, all of whom looked on with a mixture of fear, impotence and horror, terrified to raise objections lest the New Labour propaganda machine denounced them as racists. And get this: according to a Labour insider, they did this simply to rub the right’s nose in diversity. Do these individuals honestly sound like moderates to you? Do they even sound sane?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And, as if this isn’t bad enough, they now want to reverse the biggest democratic vote in our nation’s history, and, instead of reviving our hitherto moribund democratic institutions, stay wedded to an authoritarian oligarchy. For heaven’s sake, let’s call a spade a spade: these people aren’t moderates; they’re radical extremists and, more to the point, always were.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So why do our commentators insist on characterising them as centrists? It’s either an act of wilful dishonesty, self-delusion, blind ignorance or perhaps a combination of all three.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Even their political opponents have fallen for it, referring to them as Labour centrists before mimicking many of their policies – just consider the fact that net migration is now higher under the Conservative Party than it was during Tony Blair’s period in office. The Tories have been radicalised in an effort to show the world how moderate they are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fanatical globalists like Blair have indeed been extremely effective at sowing linguistic confusion and painting themselves and their policies as moderate. Consequently, these same policies have gone mainstream. We actually see them as centrist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But they aren’t. Notwithstanding their verbal acrobatics and blatant dishonesty, advocating open borders and mass migration is an extreme position to take, as is the negation of parliamentary democracy and the ‘pooling of national sovereignty’ – another example of the globalists’ Orwellian desire to obscure reality (for ‘pooling’ read ‘abolition’).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Recently, they’ve been at it again. An attempt to overturn the June 2016 people’s vote, before it has even been honoured and acted upon, has been marketed, incredibly, as, yes, you guessed it, a people’s vote. Thus, an egregious act of anti-democracy is sold as the opposite. You couldn’t make it up!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We need to spread awareness of this globalist con trick and expose its conjurors for what they really are: extremists.</span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-78197066091846144712018-05-28T02:24:00.002-07:002022-01-17T11:19:59.677-08:00If Damian Hinds really wants to reverse the teacher staffing crisis, here's what he needs to do<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 2.5rem; margin-bottom: 16px;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The bell finally goes. I dismiss the class; breathe a sigh of relief and slump into my chair, exhausted, head in hands, ruminating on the events of the school day. I’ve had to break up a fight; deal with the fallout from an earlier assault upon a Year 7 pupil; phone the home of a notoriously surly parent who – surprise, surprise – spat venomous abuse at me for having the audacity to question her daughter’s behaviour and, lest I forget, taught four lessons, as well.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I now have to gather myself before attending two back-to-back meetings with concerned parents. When will I get the chance to mark books and plan lessons? I worry, before angrily considering Damian Hinds’ latest pronouncements.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="m_first-letter m_first-letter--flagged" style="box-sizing: border-box;">A</span>ccording to our Education Secretary, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/05/10/grammar-school-expansion-will-create-16000-new-places-educationsecretary/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(118, 118, 118); border-left-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-right-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); border-top-color: rgb(118, 118, 118); box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 1px; text-decoration-line: none;">his top priority is the staffing crisis in our schools</a>. He’s concerned that we’re failing to recruit and retain enough teachers. He isn’t wrong. In my school, for example, we have an acute staffing problem. Nobody wants to work here. And if you think we’re unrepresentative of the country at large, you can think again. I’ve worked in lots of different schools over a 15-year career. They’re all the same.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="m_first-letter m_first-letter--flagged" style="box-sizing: border-box;">B</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">ut why? I hear you ask. Why is there a recruitment and retention crisis? Well, where do I begin? Our workload is unmanageable. To paraphrase our Vice Principal, each teacher is doing the equivalent of two jobs, that’s how stretched we are. I am a Head of Year – a position in which one would expect to teach fewer lessons. Not a bit of it. I have a full timetable and teach thirteen separate classes, seven of which I share with different colleagues. I now teach more lessons than I did before my promotion.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="m_first-letter m_first-letter--flagged" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">n addition, the behaviour of our pupils is atrocious – a factor that immeasurably adds to everyone’s workload and general stress levels. We spend a huge amount of time dealing with feral children when we should be marking books, planning lessons and, yes, spending time with our more respectful, hard-working kids.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="m_first-letter m_first-letter--flagged" style="box-sizing: border-box;">M</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">isguided school leaders have spent decades encouraging their staff to view children – even those with criminality etched into their souls – as infallible. This Rousseauian philosophy conspired with the social and moral revolutionary movements of the 1960s to challenge and erode the authority of the teacher. Children were not to blame for their misdeeds – they’re pure and innocent – it was society, controlled by corruptible and corrupting adults, that was at fault. This philosophy still endures, as is demonstrated by my school, day-in, day-out.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Violent children are never excluded. It’s never their fault, you see. They’ve been corrupted. The result: chaos, a Hobbesian nightmare as children fight for their survival, the bullied recoil in fear and us teachers, bereft of authority, suffer physical and verbal abuse on a daily basis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="m_first-letter m_first-letter--flagged" style="box-sizing: border-box;">S</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">o, Mr Hinds, you want to reverse the staffing crisis? Then deal with the above. Force Ofsted to scrutinise school behaviour policies, encourage schools to protect their teachers, even urge them to permanently exclude violent pupils if necessary. And crucially, penalise them if they don’t.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="m_first-letter m_first-letter--flagged" style="box-sizing: border-box;">E</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">xtend the Free School policy to encourage the birth of new units for violent and psychologically disturbed children, thereby reversing Blunkett’s cruel inclusion policy and relieving the pressure on mainstream schools and educators. These kids need to be helped by specialists. Lastly, and again through Ofsted, penalise senior leaders who create unnecessary work for their teaching staff. That should make trigger-happy head teachers, all too prepared to pile task upon task, think twice.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Sorry if I appear cynical, Mr Hinds, but this could and should have been done years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>First published on The Telegraph website on 11th May</i></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-26175525417417377502018-05-22T09:57:00.000-07:002022-01-17T11:20:04.960-08:00Divorce is responsible for our crime epidemic<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Violent crime is up. Police numbers are down. There must be an inverse correlation between the two, surely. It stands to reason. Cressida Dick, the metropolitan police commissioner, certainly thinks so, as does Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We’re in the midst of a crime epidemic, nominally due to the Government’s - and, in particular, Theresa May’s - short-sighted cuts to the policing budget - a decision that’s unavoidably led to a reduction in police numbers. Indeed, the number of police officers in England and Wales has fallen by over 20,000 since 2010. In the year ending in December 2017, moreover, ostensibly as a result of these cuts, there was a 22 percent increase in knife crime and an 11 percent increase in offences involving firearms. Violent crime’s certainly on the up. Since the beginning of the year, London has even seen more homicides than New York. No mean feat, I’m sure you’ll agree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But is it really caused by a reduction in police numbers? I have my doubts. According to Home Office data, there are now more police officers per capita than during the 1960s. There are 462 people for every officer in contrast to 807 in 1961. One could be excused for thinking that, based on this measure - and based on the intuitive assumptions of negative correlation espoused by such luminaries as Cressida Dick and Sadiq Khan -, crime must have decreased during this period. After all, both proportionately and in terms of total numbers, there are now more police officers on the streets than there were back in 1961, right? Wrong. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Crime has risen exponentially. In 1961 there were only 806,000 recorded crimes compared to 5.2 million in 2017. When one considers both the statistical and anecdotal evidence - in which people old enough to know recall going out and leaving their front doors unlocked - the general trend of rising crime since the late 1950s is irrefutable. On average, there were 1 million recorded crimes committed annually throughout the 1960s, rising to 2 million in the 1970s and 3.5 million in the Eighties. Even if we allow for the more rigorous recording of crime as a partial explanation for these statistical differences, the general trend is hard to ignore.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">For homicides, moreover, a crime for which recording methods have not drastically altered, the growth in cases is clear, despite an increase in the number of police officers. If indeed there is a negative correlation between the number of police officers and the volume of crimes committed in England and Wales, we haven’t seen the evidence to support it yet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So, if it isn’t the evil Tories and their inhumane, vindictive cuts, what is responsible for the recent spike in crime? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In my view, this question is a distraction - a distraction used by liberal-leftists to score cheap political points and divert attention from the real causes of soaring crime rates over the last 50-60 years. How can we possibly draw meaningful conclusions from a recent development that could be an aberration? Such conclusions invariably lead to misguided responses that do more harm than good, after all. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">No, we need to look at longer term trends in an effort to get a fuller, more accurate picture - trends that show, notwithstanding a relative decrease during the late Nineties and Noughties, an increase in crime over the last 50-odd years. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As mentioned above, this is not the result of having fewer police officers - numbers have actually risen. Neither is it the malign consequence of increased poverty levels. Both relative- and absolute-poverty have declined since the 1950s. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It seems to be, all things considered, the unique product of an increase in family breakdown, a concomitant rise in drug misuse and the stubborn refusal of our betters to adequately punish and deter offenders. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Seven out of 10 prison inmates come from broken homes. According to a recent study, moreover, children from such homes are nine times more likely to end up in prison and significantly more likely to abuse illegal drugs. It is therefore no surprise that since the Sixties, as the number of broken homes has inexorably risen, so too has the number of recorded crimes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In addition, prison - when eventually offenders do get there - has ceased to be an adequate deterrent. Inmates have televisions, games consoles and relatively short sentences. They have unfettered access to illegal drugs, too. In short, they are treated as victims rather than criminals - that’s why our reoffending rates are so high.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">These causal factors are the progeny of the irreverent, subversive Sixties - a decade that challenged conservative attitudes, traditional values and the rigid social boundaries that accompanied them. Moral and cultural certainty was replaced by the creed of non-judgementalism, through which different ways of living were deemed equally valid. Christianity became an anachronism, abortion was legalised and divorce, that enemy of societal stability, was made more accessible and acceptable for unhappy couples. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In addition, anarchic, nihilistic rock-stars encouraged drug misuse as an act of rebellion against old, crusty fuddy-duddies and their suffocating conventionality. And our justice system, in the vice-like grip of a revolutionary ideology that still endures today, endeavoured to stop judging criminals by normal standards of behaviour. Henceforth, they would be seen as unwitting victims of their unique socio-cultural and economic circumstances. They are casualties of an unjust society, driven to criminality by desperation and despair. As a consequence, only in the most extreme cases would long prison sentences served in austere conditions be fair. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Some of these developments were undoubtedly liberating. For example, single parents and women who had chosen to have abortions were no longer harangued and insulted for their choices. However, there was an altogether darker side to them. As divorce rates increased, so too did childhood angst, adolescent drug abuse - promoted by influential celebrities, remember? - and criminal activity before, ultimately, incarceration at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Non-judgementalism and soft-sentencing encouraged further criminality, as well. It was a radical social and cultural shift, driven, aided and abetted by leftist hardliners like Jeremy Corbyn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Not that you would know. With the help of the mainstream media, such individuals have hidden these inconvenient truths and constructed a new, fanciful narrative in which crime was under control until the Tory Government’s reckless cuts to the police budget. To fit this ahistorical claptrap, they focus on a short term relative spike in crime, from which it’s impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions concerning causation. It’s one great big red herring.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the real world, crime has been on the increase since the 1960s, despite a significant rise in police numbers. Furthermore, it has increased because of the liberal non-judgementalism espoused by people like Corbyn and the right’s craven surrender to their intimidatory wailing. When will a Tory politician stick his or her head above the parapet and say so?</span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-45202653638407195422018-05-07T01:40:00.001-07:002022-01-17T11:20:15.560-08:00I suspect that powerful interests have covered up the circumstances surrounding Ann Maguire’s death<div dir="ltr">
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ann Maguire was a dedicated teacher, utterly devoted to the children in her care. She had worked in the teaching profession for over four decades, had a loving husband, two grown-up daughters and, after the death of her sister 30 years earlier, selflessly raised her two nephews as her own. She was a good person who clearly cared about others. But tragically, back in 2014, she was brutally murdered by a disturbed and deranged pupil. She was attacked and stabbed seven times in her classroom, as she marked another pupil’s work.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Since then, disgracefully, her bereaved husband’s attempts to find out about the circumstances surrounding her death have been met by a wall of silence. A secretive internal report was followed by an inquest in which the coroner refused to interview the killer’s friends and classmates – quite an omission when investigating, among other things, whether the murderer had evinced any signs of what was to come in the weeks and months leading up to the crime, I would suggest. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Needless to say, both concluded that the school was not to blame in any way for Mrs Maguire’s tragic death; it had not failed in its statutory duty to protect her welfare at work; in short, there’s nothing to see here, guv. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This, I’m almost certain, is utter hogwash. Over my 15-year teaching career, I’ve worked in lots of different schools, and, without exception, in every single one of them, senior leaders and school governors have failed in their duty to protect their staff. Teachers are assaulted with impunity. Sometimes we’re even blamed for the assaults we suffer, as though we’ve somehow aggravated and antagonised our attackers. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In the real world, you’d be forgiven for assuming that violent pupils are permanently excluded in an effort to protect their peers and, of course, us teachers – we’re humans too! But you would be very much mistaken. Pupils who attack their peers and teachers are rarely permanently excluded. They may experience a week in isolation or, in some schools, a brief suspension, but they are, as I say, rarely permanently excluded.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">So teachers and pupils are expected to run the gauntlet, day-in, day-out, anxiously awaiting the next outburst from our more violent charges, with not so much as a whisper of protest. If we do, we risk attracting the opprobrium of our senior leaders and, in my case, our CEO.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I currently work in a school that refuses to exclude pupils, no matter how violent. Indeed, our most severe punishment is a brief spell in isolation. The result: anarchy and chaos, a brutish Hobbesian nightmare as children, unprotected and fearful, fight for their survival. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Others simply leave, hoping that their next school will be different. Last week, a pupil was forced to leave after being attacked a second time by an unrepentant thug. His parents, understandably, chose to move him. The alternative was to throw him to the wolves. The trouble is, his new school will probably be no different – at least we’re honest about our no-exclusion policy. As a head of year, since September, I’ve admitted several new pupils desperate to escape violence and bullying in their previous schools. To my shame, I am prohibited from telling them that our school is no different. If anything, it’s probably worse.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">One of my colleagues, moreover, has been absent for the last seven days. He was attacked by a pupil who repeatedly slammed a door into his back. Astonishingly, the pupil was back in school the very next day. Another deeply disturbed boy has physically attacked his peers and two of my colleagues. He also keeps threatening to stab us. He really is a tragedy waiting to happen. God forbid, if the worst should happen, and he was to maim, hospitalise or even kill someone, the school would be responsible. It could not honestly say that the warning signs weren’t there, could it?</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I suspect that Ann Maguire’s school had a number of warning signs before her tragic end, too. That’s why they’ve seemingly done everything to obstruct a thorough, transparent investigation – an investigation that would not only expose the school’s failings but start a nationwide conversation about the abject failure, no refusal, of schools to protect their staff and pupils from violent thugs. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Such a conversation would reveal the widespread incompetence of senior leaders and education trusts – in thrall to discredited progressive ideas that proscribe the punishment of poorly behaved pupils – the inadequate nature of our organisational structures (in short, we need more special schools for violent and emotionally disturbed children), the failure of the unions to protect their members and the egregious state of Ofsted’s inspection regime. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">When you consider these myriad failings and the vested interests that their exposure would harm, a cover-up seems eminently preferable for everyone involved – everyone, that is, except Ann Maguire’s family.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;"><i>First published on The Spectator Coffee House Blog on 10th May 2018</i></span></span></div>
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Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-437412169854846192018-03-12T05:53:00.000-07:002022-01-17T11:20:54.472-08:00Phoney Blair isn't a Philosopher King; he's an incorrigible nincompoop<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have to say: the self-appointed Philosopher-Kings of our age are, all things considered, a bit of a disappointment. Phoney Blair, for instance, Philosopher-King-in-Chief, claims to be a uniquely enlightened man of considerable erudition, tinged with a dash of urbane sophistication and the uncanny ability to header a football. He really is Narcissus-plus, ordained by God to understand things that us mere mortals cannot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Since July 2016, this self-styled guardian of Kallipolis has gone into overdrive, desperately trying to reconnect with the plebs who voted to leave the European Union. Phoney is frantically running from television studio to radio studio, determined to change our minds but, failing that, willing to ignore our longing cries for self-determination and democratic accountability. You see, we don't understand these things, by all accounts. We don't know what's good for us. Philosopher-Kings like Phoney and his friends in Brussels are the only suitably qualified class of individuals capable of making judicious decisions. The rest of us are glaringly incapable. He's been to Oxford, after all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Okay, Phoney doesn't say this in so many words, he's even happy to use the illusion of democracy to legitimise his actions when it suits him - as he did during his time in office -, but his thoughts, words and deeds since the referendum expose his previously hidden contempt for the electorate. We didn't know what we were voting for, apparently. He doesn't trust us, sees us as low-information halfwits and clearly regrets the extension of the franchise. How else can one explain his behaviour over the last 18 months?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But is this egomaniac capable of making decisions for us? Is he the Philosopher-King he purports to be? Well, judging by his track record, the answer has to be a resounding no. This is the man who gave us the dodgy dossier, mass migration and Gordon Brown's fiscal irresponsibility. Back in 2004, before the accession of ten new EU member-states, he reassured us - Remember?! -, based on his refusal to countenance temporary restrictions on migration from the new territories, that only a few eastern Europeans would make the journey to our shores - 14 years and 1 million Polish emigres later...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Honestly! How can he keep a straight face? And let's not forget his decision to give away Margaret Thatcher's hard-won rebate in exchange for reform of the CAP - something that - surprise, surprise - never happened. This bloke was a car crash, not an enlightened, wise philosophe.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, he's more akin to one of Plato's reviled sophists, more concerned with personal gain than any Socratic conception of justice. He charms and deceives, covets, courts emperors, rogues and potentates of all stripes before trousering their ill-gotten gains and filling his bulging coffers. In short, the man's a crook.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">And now he has the audacity - as all crooks do - to claim special status, insult us and strive to reverse a democratic decision. Well, Phoney, I have news for you: you're not a Philosopher King; you're an incorrigible nincompoop. </span></span><br />
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Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-12675733041660304372017-11-19T07:50:00.001-08:002022-01-17T11:20:45.768-08:00Is it me, or is Alastair Campbell the most loathsome creature on Earth?<div class="MsoNormal">
Alastair Campbell is surely the most loathsome,
objectionable character on the planet. I’ve just had the misfortune to witness
him, on the Sunday Politics show, attempting to bully and intimidate the
phlegmatic and unflappable Gisela Stuart during their debate on the merits -
or otherwise - of Brexit. It was nothing short of a disgrace. He interrupted her
incessantly – interruptions that, to her considerable credit, she calmly
endured and insouciantly swatted away. This
further highlighted the brutish mediocrity of her half-witted interlocutor.<o:p></o:p><br />
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He really is an awful human being. He simply can’t accept
the democratic decision made by the British people on 23 June last year. He’s
fuming. This anger, though, is perhaps forgivable. One can’t switch off one’s feelings and debate doesn’t stop after one
vote, after all, as he’s so keen on telling us. What’s perhaps less forgivable
is his dishonourable aim to thwart the will of the people and use any means, no
matter how unpatriotic and underhand, to do it. Just yesterday he advised the
Irish Taoiseach to ‘play hardball’ against Theresa May, his country’s Prime
Minister. Then today he had the audacity to say that he loves Britain. Who does
he think he’s kidding?!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Gisela Stuart rightly asked him whose side he was on. Do you
even want a successful Brexit? she enquired. It appears that his every
intervention is designed to undermine Theresa May and make her negotiations
more difficult, thus the outcome less favourable to this country. Stuart
wistfully urged him to work with her in the interests of the country. He
refused point blank - in a typically surly, petulant grunt. Like his fellow
Remoaners - Clegg, Clarke, Adonis and Blair - he sides with our opponents in a
determined effort to undermine the Brexit talks and get the worst possible deal
for Britain. Only then, they perversely conclude, will the electorate change
its mind, demand another say and this time vote the right way. In short, along
with the rest of the Remainiacs, he is willing to damage his own country in a
desperate bid to prove, to himself, if no one else, that he was right all
along.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, this all fits into a pattern of behaviour that
screams Quisling. Whilst Director of Communications in Downing Street under Phoney
Tony Blair, he contrived in the wanton destruction of our communities through
mass, uncontrolled immigration – just to rub the right’s nose in it. It is no
exaggeration to state that East London, where I live, has been ethnically
cleansed of the white indigenous population as a consequence of his government’s
policies – a government in which he wielded considerable power. It has become a
country within a country. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And why? Because he despises Britain and wanted, with Blair,
to radically remake it. It was to become a multicultural paradise, and, in true
Marxist style, he was willing to break a few eggs to rustle up an omelette.
What’s a bit of ethnic cleansing between friends? The folly and inhumanity are truly
breath-taking.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Okay, I accept that the indigenous population of East London
wasn’t violently forced to flee. But come on! If you love your community, why
would you want to see it changed irrevocably by a massive, uncontrolled influx
of non-English speaking, culturally alien foreigners? Indeed, why would you
wish to stay and, in some places, hear the call-to-prayer five times a day? So
really, in essence, these people were forced out, ethnically cleansed – not by
the barrel of a gun, granted, but certainly by decisions made by Blair and
Campbell’s Government.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To put it another way, when westerners encroach upon, alter
and deface the habitats of ancient, settled tribes, forcing them to move on, it
is rightly labelled as ethnic cleansing. Well, what’s happened in East London
is no different, and the likes of Campbell are undeniably responsible. This
wasn’t a small influx. It was a tsunami – a tsunami that, disgracefully, hasn’t
been halted by the Conservative party - but that’s another story.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Campbell’s toxicity goes well beyond his obvious treachery,
though. He’s also an amoral bully who’s willing to do anything to get his way.
Just look at his treatment of Dr David Kelly back in 2003. This poor man was
hounded by the attack dogs of the media, unleashed by Campbell himself, before,
desperate, cornered and frantically hopeless, he took his own life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This same blustering, quarrelsome, iniquitous, loathsome, emotionless
bully was in full attack-mode today. Gisela Stuart deserves enormous credit for
treating him with the contempt he deserves.<br />
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Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-8321990267001779832017-07-01T10:05:00.001-07:002022-01-17T11:22:49.672-08:00Brexit is Lady Thatcher's baby. Let's hope the eternal pessimists don't undo her good work.<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">When one considers our historic, ever-changing and uneasy relationship with the European project, one can't escape the conclusion that it's predicated upon a post-war diminution in national self-confidence brought about by the decline and fall of the British empire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">Our victory in the great twentieth-century struggle against Nazism, Fascism and Japanese Militarism may have led to unbridled celebrations and unprecedented feelings of national pride, but, ultimately, and quite unexpectedly, it introduced a period of national decline and soul-searching, punctuated by the odd awakening, until 1979, when a more long-lasting and irreversible revival took place. Indeed, last summer's vote, one could argue, was the consequence of Thatcher's revolution and the resurgence in national pride and confidence that accompanied it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">During World War Two, the contradiction immanent in Britain's fight for freedom against Nazi imperialism whilst presiding over the largest seaborne empire in history was necessarily ignored. After victory, however, this was no longer possible. It had to be confronted. The British empire had become morally unjustifiable and consequently unsustainable, as well as, after the financial strain of the war, economically unviable to boot. In 1947 the jewel in Britain's imperial crown was granted independence and violently partitioned into Pakistan and the new self-governing nation of India; Ghana gained independence in 1957 and Nigeria in 1960; indeed, throughout the Fifties and Sixties, like dominoes, Britain's imperial possessions fell into the hands of charismatic, indigenous leaders armed with the language of freedom used by the British themselves, and promising self-determination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">Britain had become a shadow of its former glory. Britannia no longer bestraddled the world, mistress of the seas, trident in hand; instead, she sat passively, seeking handouts from her new creditor and master on the other side of the Atlantic - an ocean once dominated by the imposing guns of her navy. In 1956, in a final coup de grace, her master and patron chased her out of Suez with a swift, humiliating reproach. Britain's hegemony was at an end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">Let's just imagine for one moment what this meant to its people, how disorienting it must have been. Everything they had known, everything they had taken for granted, their identity and the sense of self that came with it, had been turned upside down. It is unsurprising that a great loss in national self-confidence ensued and, to make matters worse, Britain, exhausted and demoralised, peered across the English Channel and enviously observed the economic miracle taking place in Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">In West Germany, for example - as a result of Marshall Aid, currency reform and responsible labour relations, as well as the opening up of global markets -, industrial output doubled and Gross National Product grew by 9 to 10% per year between 1950 and 1957. Between 1947 and 1973, moreover, the French economy grew by, on average, 5% per annum. Both countries, along with Italy, which also experienced phenomenal growth rates during this period, caught up to and eventually exceeded Britain's GNP. Furthermore, from 1950 to 1965, Britain's GNP per capita slipped from 7th to 12th in the world. By 1975 it was down to 20th.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">Riddled with inflation, beset by poor productivity, declining industries and truly dreadful labour relations, not to mention a precipitously haemorrhaging empire and concomitant decline in global prestige, Britain's leaders desperately sought to find a new role in the world and forge a new identity by joining the Common Market and, they thought, tying themselves to Europe's economic miracle. After being refused entry in 1961, Edward Heath's Conservative administration finally joined the European Economic Community in 1973 - a decision ratified by the British people in a referendum two years later. The loss of national self-confidence that resulted from our post-war imperial retreat and relative economic decline had led to a decision made of desperation and fear. We indeed joined the EEC in a fit of both pique and panic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">However, Thatcher changed everything. Her radical reforms, unapologetic patriotism, uncompromising will and remarkable character lifted the nation out of its post-war torpor and restored its self-confidence. The unions were tamed, fiscal profligacy was replaced by fiscal restraint, markets were liberalised, inefficient nationalised industries were privatised, inflation was controlled and, consequently, annual growth exceeded 4 percent during the late 1980s. A British 'economic miracle' was being enviously mooted on the continent - a truly remarkable turnaround from the stagnation and misery afflicting the nation just 10 years earlier. Successive governments, even Labour ones, refused to reverse the Iron Lady's reforms and, in 2015, Britain was crowned the fifth largest economy in the world, largely thanks to her courageous endeavours - endeavours wisely left to bear fruit by her successors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">Most important, though, was the national pride restored by Lady Thatcher's indomitable spirit and sense of moral purpose. Along with Reagan, she led the free world's fight against the inhumanity of Soviet Communism; in 1982, she ignored her doubters and successfully dispatched a task force to wrestle back the Falkland Islands from Argentina's military junta; and in 1990, just before her downfall, she encouraged George Bush senior, then American president, to dispense with the wobbling and stand firm against Saddam Hussein after his unprovoked attack on Kuwait. Like Britannia, Thatcher bestrode the global stage, handbag in hand, and gave Britain back its pride and self-confidence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">That this national revival led to rising public disaffection with the EU cannot be gainsaid. Why should a wealthy, self-confident country like Britain sacrifice its sovereignty for a sclerotic, unresponsive, undemocratic, supranational and meddlesome bureaucracy like the European Union? On 23rd June 2016, the answer was clear: it shouldn't.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">If Britain joined what was to become the EU in a moment of disorientation and self-doubt, it voted out as a confident, self-assured, optimistic, outward-looking and independent nation state. For this, we have Lady Thatcher to thank. I do hope that the eternal pessimists, with all their threats and scaremongering, don't undo this wonderful affirmation of patriotism and national self-confidence.</span>Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-4947378555673865472017-04-23T02:46:00.000-07:002022-01-17T11:22:54.459-08:00John Simpson claims that Brexiteers are as intolerant as ErdoganLast week I listened to a report from Istanbul by John Simpson, the BBC's world affairs editor, with a mixture of alarm and disbelief. Maybe it was my own sensitivity regarding the ongoing Brexit debate, but he seemed to put undue emphasis on the 48% who rejected President Erdogan's proposal to extend his powers in Turkey's recent referendum. In fact, there was so much emphasis on this minority and Simpson's expressed belief that President Erdogan must listen to them, having only received a slim majority thus a questionable mandate, that I suspected an ulterior motive, a veiled message specifically designed for a British audience and, in particular, a pro-Brexit one.<br />
<br />
In my view, he was mischievously using the tenuous and entirely coincidental parallels between Brexit and Erdogan's referendum victory to confirm his own prejudices and question the Leave vote's legitimacy. He wanted his audience to believe that last summer's victory was some kind of moral equivalent to Erdogan's rigged vote and corrupt, autocratic regime.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The fact that 48% rejected Erdogan's argument, the exact same as the percentage who wanted to remain in the EU, was too delicious a coincidence to ignore. He thus set out to extract greater meaning from it than it deserved. If Erdogan must listen, so too must the Brexiteers, it said. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Okay, I thought, perhaps I'm the one extracting too much meaning from a short news report by an experienced and highly respected journalist. Perhaps I'm suffering from 'reds-under-the-bed' syndrome. But then I read John Simpson's article in this week's New Statesman. I wasn't imagining it, after all. My suspicions were correct. On this occasion, though, he was less subtle. He explicitly, unashamedly used Erdogan to denounce and delegitimise Brexit: </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
'It's been impossible not to be reminded of...Brexit...during the past week or so,' he said. 'Like the Brexiteers, he only just managed to squeak through; like them, he and his allies are shouting loudly about the will of the people and the duty of everyone else to accept the result. And like them, his instinctive response in victory is to be aggressive.'</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So let's get this right: Brexiteers are indistinguishable from Erdogan's administration and supporters. They crush dissent, rig elections and play lip-service to democracy whilst undermining its defining precepts.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Pull the other one, John. You're meant to be an intelligent man. The only aggression in this country is coming from the forever whinging, forever whining Remoaners who control the airwaves through the all-powerful BBC - a fact ironically demonstrated by you this week. I don't see Erdogan's opponents controlling Turkey's primary media outlet, do you? Nor do I see thousands of Brexiteers marching on Parliament and angrily accusing their opponents of racism and xenophobia. The amusing irony is that John Simpson has more in common with President Erdogan than any Brexiteer. He has used his privileged position to make entirely false comparisons and angrily denounce his opponents. Hard to believe and very alarming indeed.</div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-16752507223118751532017-01-15T08:01:00.001-08:002022-01-17T11:23:01.224-08:00Brexit rejected Blair's utopian vision'A new age is dawning, is it not?' These were the words of Tony Blair after his landslide election victory in 1997. They were meant to usher in a period of 'friendly' capitalism, unconstrained by the astronomical and punitive levels of personal taxation beloved of previous Labour governments, but ultimately altruistic and caring when it came to protecting society's most vulnerable. Bankers, traders and entrepreneurs of every hue would be free to let rip, get filthy rich and, in doing so, help finance public service reform.<br />
<br />
In reality, though, not only did these words inaugurate a shameful period, characterised by stealth taxes as the government deceived the voters and refused to admit to the contradictory nature of its message; they were also and more importantly the starting gun for an aggressive, intolerant, insidious and mendaciously executed assault upon the very foundations of our national identity. Mass immigration was encouraged, multiculturalism promoted, and anyone who objected to the truly radical changes being forced upon their communities was denounced as a bigot, a racist and a xenophobe. Remember Gillian Duffy?<br />
<br />
This latter point is of most concern here. Brexit was a rejection of Blair's internationalist vision in which borders and nations no longer exist. It has indeed uncovered a new political battleground, inadvertently crafted by the master of spin himself. The old left-right divide, based upon the size of the state and reflected by our political parties, still exists, of course, but its remaining, much reduced importance is mainly predicated upon habit and brand loyalty, which is diminishing by the day. In short, our existing political parties are anachronisms that no longer reflect voters' concerns. Due to Blair's disastrous assault upon Britishness, people are now and understandably exercised more by threats to the survival of our culture and national identity than the level of taxation. A new age has certainly dawned.<br />
<br />
But anti-Corbyn Labourites (and, in particular, Blairites like Tristram Hunt, the MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central who resigned last week, exasperated by the current leader's open contempt for Blair's beloved centrism, and still kidding himself that elections are won on the centre ground) seem to think, rather astonishingly, that if only a Blairite could take the reins, everything would be okay, the nightmare would be over, Labour would be back in Downing Street quicker than an undergraduate can accuse a middle-aged white man of being a tory supporting, safe space desecrating, racist, misogynistic scumbag. And that's pretty quick. Tony Blair even wants to make a comeback, seemingly unaware of the Leave vote's message. It was a great big collective raspberry blown at the ex-Labour leader's vision and worldview.<br />
<br />
He really is, along with his fellow travellers, deluding himself. Labour centrists are now as unelectable as Jeremy Corbyn. They just don't seem to get it.<br />
<br />
As Brexit exposed, the public is now split between a minority of internationalists who believe in uncontrolled migration, multiculturalism, open borders and the death of the nation state, and the patriotic majority who still cling to notions of nationhood, loyalty and shared identity. Recently, after years of bullying by the former, the latter has struck back. They have finally spoken and been heard. The nation does still matter, they said. <br />
<br />
Both the Corbynistas and the Blairites - once seduced and, in Corbyn's case, still possessed by Marxist utopian aspirations - have naively embraced and pushed the country towards a romantic and delusional vision of a post-nation-state world in which war is abolished and different peoples and cultures, all equally valid and valued, co-exist peacefully. This is a nonsense promulgated by dreamers.<br />
<br />
It's also the reason why both factions are unelectable. The public has at last seen through the lies and pretensions and woken up to their real intentions.<br />
<br />
So where does this leave the Tory party? Well, Theresa May has rightly promised to honour the referendum result and seems to understand and accept the new mood of the country. But her parliamentary colleagues remain a concern. Indeed, the majority of our parliamentarians, even Tory ones, either explicitly or tacitly support Blair's vision. This is a democratic problem that needs to be urgently addressed. Voters are currently unrepresented.<br />
<br />
With its rich history, having been home to the likes of Thatcher and Churchill, the Conservative party is perhaps best placed to reinvent itself as the patriotic political representative of post-Brexit Britain. It needs to encourage integration, reject multiculturalism in practice as well as theory, and control immigration. But to do that, many of its 'heirs to Blair' have to go, especially the ones who still refuse to accept the public's vote last year. They don't belong in a modern, unapologetically patriotic, post-Brexit Conservative party.<br />
<br />
If the party doesn't embrace change and re-invent itself, it, like Labour - both Old and New -, will face extinction. A re-alignment in British politics is now inevitable. Whether any of the established parties survive the upheaval is very much open to question.<br />
<br />
'The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again.' It wasn't Brexit that shook the kaleidoscope, but the venal utterer of these words - Tony Blair himself.<br />
<br />Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-32564706749055198202017-01-02T01:15:00.001-08:002022-01-17T11:23:07.389-08:00Obama’s foreign policy closes on a typically low note<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s face it: Obama just wasn’t cut out to be the leader of the free world.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">First he jetted around the globe and apologised to all and sundry for his country’s previous and myriad misdeeds, by making sententious speeches and highfalutin gestures that amounted to nothing less than America’s humiliating retreat from the international stage.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The era of Pax Americana was declared over in a series of beautifully delivered, high-sounding speeches that, in reality, ushered in an eight-year period of Russian expansionism and Middle-Eastern anarchy. He might make a good speech, but he’s been a disaster, most notably in terms of US foreign policy.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Even his embarrassing intervention in our domestic squabble over EU membership was a cock-up. Just like the Russians and Syrians, we ignored the incompetent numpty.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This brings me to the civil rights lawyer’s latest forays into the realm of international relations. Today he’s been ignored by Vlad the Impaler of House Russia after expelling 35 Russian diplomats over their involvement in attempting to influence the outcome of this year’s presidential election.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Barack is upset. Very upset. The trouble is, nobody cares, least of all Vlad, who decided to dispense with convention and retaliate by inviting all US diplomats and their families to a New Year’s Eve bash at the Kremlin.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Obama’s going. And no matter how many times he implies that he could’ve won a third term in office, if only given the chance by his country’s outdated constitution, he ain’t comin’ back.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mind you, even if he were to somehow circumvent the Constitution and affirm his pretentions as the chosen one, I’d very much doubt if Vlad’d care. To paraphrase Brian Clough, the man floats like a butterfly and stings like one. He looks the part and certainly talks a good game, but plays the international stage with all the innocuousness of a hot air balloon.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I must be honest: I’m also slightly confused by these Russian developments, and can’t help but doubt their veracity. It seems like a final, last ditch attempt by the sour-faced losers of the liberal-left and Democratic party, led by their outgoing, anointed messiah, to delegitimise Trump’s victory.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Their tactics have been so outlandish, desperate, anti-democratic and extreme so far, along with their anti-Brexit counterparts here in Britain, that I’d put nothing past them, I really wouldn’t, even if it means damaging America’s reputation and strategic position.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Obama hasn’t really done much to burnish his pro-American credentials thus far in his eight-year tenure, after all. So why would he start now?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To add insult to an injurious foreign policy, his Secretary of State has now publicly excoriated Israel’s government for being the most right-wing in history.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s correct: he hasn’t criticised Saudi Arabia for sponsoring terrorists; nor has he berated Iran for supporting Hezbollah and other extremist, destabilising Shia radicals in Iraq and Syria; no, his boss apologised to them during his first speech in Egypt back in 2009.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Instead he attacked America’s one true ally in the region. You couldn’t make it up.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #484848; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kerry’s attack on Israel is indeed totemic. It neatly sums up Obama’s approach to foreign policy. Abandon your friends; apologise to your enemies; self-flagellate; talk incessantly, but, ultimately, do nothing. Barack, nobody’s listening anymore.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;"><i>First published on ConservativeHome on 31st December 2016</i></span></div>
<br />Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-1820038224407599712016-11-20T01:02:00.000-08:002022-01-17T11:23:14.457-08:00My colleagues oppose Brexit, hate free speech and spread fear among our foreign pupils<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is Friday
24<sup>th</sup> June. As I squeeze into the overcrowded train carriage with the
rest of the oxygen-starved commuters, I contemplate how I can approach my
colleagues after voting for Brexit yesterday. They’re all Remainers. How can I
possibly tell them that we’re leaving the EU because of me? I’ll be lynched.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I decide to
keep schtum and, if challenged, and if faced with a blood-thirsty Remainer
looking to exact revenge, I’ll tell a big fat porky. I’m going to be an
indignant Remainer from now on, whingeing and whining about the ghastly,
xenophobic, racist little-Englanders who’ve finally got their way. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Walking into
our faculty office, I see a young colleague crying. She is distraught and
inconsolable about the result. She’s been a fully signed up member of Project
Fear from the beginning of the campaign, forever wailing and railing against
evil Brexiteers and their fascistic Daily Mail-reading supporters who inhabit
the darker corners of our society. She has spent the last few months
publicising her beliefs to anyone who’ll listen, including, of course, her most
attentive and easily manipulated listeners – our pupils. I ask if she’s okay
before slinking off to my classroom. The schadenfreude evoked is hard to
resist. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My first
lesson is interesting and worrying in equal measure. The kids can’t stop
talking about it and, being mostly first and second generation migrants of
Asian extraction, generally feel certain that it’s going to lead to pogroms and
deportations. Astonishingly, they’ve been led to believe that those who voted
out are genocidal neo-Nazis. I do my best to reassure them without exposing my
preference for leaving the European Union. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Their
misapprehension doesn’t altogether surprise me, though. Many of my colleagues
have spent the last few months openly claiming that the only thing standing
between immigrants and the baying, xenophobic British hordes is the EU. As an
appendage to Project Fear, it’s clearly done the trick. In a school referendum
organised to replicate the real thing, over 70 per cent of our pupils voted to
remain inside the European Union.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I later hear
about another colleague who has burst into tears, this time in front of her
class. There are reports of pupils doing the same. It is pandemonium. They
think it’s the end of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At lunchtime,
curiosity gets the better of me so I decide to eat in the faculty office. The
fury of my colleagues is palpable. I agree, albeit in a subdued and
unenthusiastic way, with everything said. It is easier that way, and, more to
the point, I remember only too well from past experience how alternative views
are received. They are neither welcomed nor permitted, particularly whilst
caring internationalists are in mourning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In amongst
the sound and fury is another, male colleague, quietly marking books. He is a
young, podgy, gregarious character who usually orchestrates our lunchtime
chats. On this occasion, though, he is mute. As the bell goes and everyone
eventually disperses, I give him a wink and whisper, ‘You voted out, didn’t
you?’ He grins and nods his head. ‘So did I,’ I say. ‘It’s our fault.’ We both
chuckle like two naughty schoolkids before heading back to our lessons.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The irony of
all this is, of course, that many voted for Brexit because of this suffocating,
unrelenting, need-to-conform-lest-you-upset-the-thought-police bullying that is
so prevalent, not just in our schools – though they are certainly an extreme
manifestation – but across the whole country.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Keeping up
politically correct appearances has indeed become exhausting, stressful and
all-consuming. I really don’t know what I can and can’t say. This, I think, is
compounded by the age of my colleagues. As older teachers have left the
profession, exhausted and demoralised by the overwhelming workload and woeful
pupil behaviour condoned by inept head teachers, NQTs in their early twenties
have replaced them. This is Generation Snowflake – the ruthless no-platformers
with an aversion to free speech and representative democracy; these are the
cry-babies devastated by the referendum result, the cry-babies teaching – no
brainwashing – our children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last week,
during what should have been a relaxed, lunchtime conversation with one of
them, we got onto the subject of women’s boxing. I said, quite innocuously, or
so I thought, that although I support their right to do it, I don’t really
enjoy watching women hit each other. You can probably guess what happened next:
she pounced on me, calling me a misogynist, saying that I shouldn’t be teaching
children and expressing her inability to work with a male, sexist reactionary
like myself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The irony
was too delicious to ignore. ‘So you want me to say that I love to watch women
beat the crap out of each other, instead?’ I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Seriously:
these are the unhinged lunatics who teach our kids; these are the people
spreading misapprehension and fear among our pupils. They think they’re going
to be deported, for heaven’s sake. That’s just cruelty dressed up as moral
outrage by imbeciles desperate to publicise their own virtue. It’s also a lie. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-54839200230198623912016-07-09T02:48:00.000-07:002022-01-17T11:24:03.419-08:00Government policies have failed to weaken the influence of progressivism in our schools<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">David Cameron’s administration has made no secret of its belief in the efficacy of traditional educational practices. It has radically reformed national assessments at all key stages to reflect its commitment to rigour and the pursuit of knowledge and excellence for all, regardless of sociocultural and economic background, in the belief that schools, faced with these new realities, would necessarily adopt more traditional methods to ensure their students’ progress. Traditionalist means to meet traditionalist ends, if you like.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Government also introduced a new, knowledge-rich National Curriculum which rejected the promotion of ignorance intrinsic to its earlier 2007 incarnation – apparently and rather laughably based on ‘21st century skills’. And under the stewardship of Michael Gove and his successor, it initiated market reforms to encourage healthy competition and, as such, respond to the demands of parents, the majority of whom still yearn for traditional practices.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was a three-pronged attack designed to weaken the influence of progressivism and reintroduce knowledge-rich curricula alongside traditional teaching methods; methods that were, in theory, to become necessary as the most efficient and effective way to impart knowledge.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In a speech delivered at Durham University earlier this year, Nick Gibb MP, our Schools Minister, outlined his government’s objectives: ‘Since…2010,’ he said, ‘our reforms…have focused on bringing a new level of academic rigour to English state schooling. And central to this mission has been elevating knowledge to become a central component of a good school education.’ His and his government’s commitment to traditionalism couldn’t be clearer.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But thus far it has signally failed to deliver on this most laudable of aims. Despite the Government’s best efforts, schools remain mired in a progressive morass. Their leaders – after investing so much of their self-worth in such practices – obstinately refuse to let go of a failed, damaging dogma that’s unfathomably come to define good teaching, against all the evidence to the contrary.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nick Gibb, Michael Gove and his well-meaning successor, Nicky Morgan, have all grossly underestimated the profession’s rabid faith in the illusory benefits of progressivism. ‘Nudge Theory’ – whereby governments act in an effort to gently manipulate behavioural change instead of enforcing it, exemplified by the DfE’s policies – simply doesn’t work with fanatics.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, with the contrivance of Ofsted, school leaders and powerful academy chains continue to insist upon using progressive teaching methods, even though more rigorous, demanding and knowledge-based public examinations require a more traditional approach that emphasises teacher/expert-led lessons, hard work and discipline.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In addition, academies can and do opt out of the new National Curriculum in favour of knowledge-light, skills-based and project-based schemes of work inimical to learning.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By far the Government’s biggest failure, though, has to be its flagship academies policy. This has not led to the adoption of traditional methods as liberated schools compete to attract parents empowered by marketization. On the contrary, the Government has given the patients the keys to the asylum. Unshackled and unrestrained, educationalists and teachers – supported by monopolistic academy chains that have been infiltrated by the very same progressive fanatics the Government wanted to neuter – are now freer to impose their destructive dogma on our benighted children. This huge leap of faith was just that: a blind hope that more freedom would lead to a long-awaited return to traditionalism and higher standards. Apart from a few notable exceptions, it hasn’t and it won’t. Children continue to be force-fed a diet of ignorance-inducing progressive bilge that no parent in their right mind would knowingly choose for their offspring.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile, teachers now have the worst of all possible worlds. On the one hand we face intense pressure to successfully guide our pupils through the Government’s new, tougher examinations, whilst, on the other, being impelled by our senior leaders to use progressive, inadequate methods to do so. We are being forced to use progressive means to meet traditional ends. And, as if that isn’t bad enough: our performance is being judged by pupil outcomes invariably retarded by the progressive means being prescribed by our superiors. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Government needs to stop ‘nudging’ and start using its democratic mandate to impose reforms that weaken progressivism and embrace traditional educational practices. Such an approach would certainly enjoy the support of parents.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 28px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;"><i>First published on the Conservative Education Society website on 8th July 2016</i></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-10939027226105654812016-06-21T11:44:00.000-07:002022-01-17T11:24:08.978-08:00The ‘London Effect’ won’t last<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5881" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5882" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It has been characterized as a tale of extraordinary success. As a consequence of enlightened and collaborative leadership unleashed by the New Labour-initiated London Challenge and the current government’s radical extension of Lord Adonis’ Academies policy, when it comes to our most disadvantaged children, inner London’s schools, after years of lagging behind, are now outperforming those found in the rest of the country.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5883" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5884" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5885" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5886" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2013, 48 per cent of children on free school meals in inner London obtained five or more A* to C grades at GCSE or their equivalent (including English and maths) – up from 22 per cent in 2002 – compared to just 26 per cent outside London – up from 17 per cent in 2002. It is indeed a considerable achievement.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5887" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5888" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5889" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5890" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But is it down to Labour’s London Challenge, the proliferation of academies or, as a report by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics suggests, a combination of factors, including the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority, gradual improvements in primary education since the mid-90s, more vigorous inspection regimes and greater parental choice enhanced by increased competition between schools?</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5891" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5892" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5893" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5894" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Simon Burgess, an economics professor at Bristol University, doesn’t think so. He cites immigration and the ethnic makeup of inner London’s schools as the decisive factor. ‘The children of recent immigrants typically have greater hopes and expectations of education,’ he argued in a Guardian comment piece back in November 2014.</span></span></div>
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<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5896" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5897" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5898" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a teacher in an inner London, ethnically diverse and multicultural school – and having taught for most of my career in places outside London, where the white indigenous population still predominates – I wholeheartedly agree with Professor Burgess’ explanation.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5899" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5900" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5901" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5902" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Inner London’s schools have benefitted enormously from high levels of immigration. My school, for example, has large and increasing numbers of bright, highly motivated young migrants, most of whom are hardworking, courteous, unashamedly moral and desperate to succeed.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5903" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5904" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5905" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5906" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It has indeed been a welcome culture shock. I’m used to chairs flying past my nose, not pupils requesting extra homework; surly parents covered from head to toe in tattoos, arguing and swearing about how I pick on their faultless little angels, not respectable looking foreigners evincing their unqualified gratitude. It really is quite a pleasant surprise.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5907" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5908" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
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<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5910" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That said, I do fear for the future. In fact, I’m not a betting man, but I’d be willing to put money on the so-called London Effect not lasting. But you sounded so upbeat, I hear you say.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5911" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5912" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5913" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;">
<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5914" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, regrettably, that’s where the good news ends. Just like other schools around the country, including my previous employers, our senior leaders continue to encourage pupils to challenge the authority of their teachers through crazy initiatives like ‘Restorative Justice’ and, as a consequence of a misguided commitment to moral relativism – a doctrine that makes virtues of excuse-making, low expectations for our most disadvantaged kids, ambiguity and inconsistency -, they’ve effectively abolished rules and promoted amorality. Our success is indeed entirely dependent on the cultural provenance of these fantastically committed kids. It’s nothing to do with the school, whose leaders continue to do everything in their power to subvert and extinguish the traditional values that make these pupils so successful.</span></span></div>
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<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5916" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
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<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5918" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And as our leaders continue to infect our newcomers with the values of a valueless, non-judgemental society, they too – just like their wretched white contemporaries who’ve been cruelly left to rot on the scrapheap of life – will eventually descend into an amoral abyss that inevitably leads to misery and failure.</span></span></div>
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<span id="yiv2487420233yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1464377015683_5923" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mark my words: the London Effect won’t last.</span></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-29548165294011168552016-05-21T10:04:00.001-07:002022-01-17T11:24:12.687-08:00Restorative Justice is an insult to teachers<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2682" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2683" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A colleague slinks into the office. She sits quietly for a moment, deep in thought. She then begins to cry. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask. ‘Oh…bloody Restorative Conversations. I’ve just been torn to shreds by Sabrina and Tess.’ She’s sobbing now, uncontrollably. Being relatively new, though – I’ve only been at the school for a few months -, I feel a little too unfamiliar to offer a comforting hug, so put the kettle on instead.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2685" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2686" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2688" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2689" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘Who’s Sabrina?’ I ask, half-expecting to discover that she’s yet another member of our oversized Senior Leadership Team. ‘She’s an extremely manipulative Year 9 student,’ she replies. Tess, believe it or not, is our headteacher. I’m speechless. ‘Tess was siding with Sabrina and blaming me for her behaviour,’ my colleague continues. ‘Apparently, her calling me a ‘F****** b****’ was my fault. I only asked her to remove her jacket, for Heaven’s sake. Okay, I raised my voice after my first two requests were ignored, but how does that make her abusive behaviour my fault?’ I feel like weeping with her.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2691" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2692" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2694" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2695" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It doesn’t matter how long I’ve worked in schools, I still can’t come to terms with the madness that stubbornly refuses to relent. Indeed, after 12 long years in the profession, and having experienced a number of different environments, I cannot help but conclude that to be a senior leader you must first be a misanthropic lunatic who naively believes in the infallibility of children and, I suspect, the tooth fairy, too. Why else would you institute something as ridiculous and counterproductive as Restorative Justice?</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2697" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2698" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2700" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2701" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In its educational incarnation, it’s meant to resolve disputes between pupils and teachers. The antagonists are brought together by an intermediary (usually a member of the SLT), as if they’re both equally to blame for the impasse, and encouraged to air their differences before both offering their apologies, extending their little fingers and singing ‘make up ginger nuts, never do it again’. Okay, I concede that the singing was a slight embellishment, but you get my point: teachers are being treated like children; or to look at it from another perspective: children are being treated like adults. Either way, it’s incredibly damaging. </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2703" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2704" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2706" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2707" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The former insults the intelligence of the professional and leads to an infantilized and demoralized workforce (I wonder why there’s a retention crisis…); the latter gives the child a responsibility that he or she is likely to abuse. And if you think such practices are confined to secondary schools, you can think again: my wife, a Year 2 primary school teacher, had training in Restorative Justice just last week. Imagine being forced to listen to an eight-year-old say he misbehaves because your lessons are boring. How humiliating.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2709" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2710" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2712" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2713" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Like its discredited 1960s antecedents that saw, in some schools, pupils addressing their teachers by their first names, and the relatively recent approach to recruitment whereby job applicants are interviewed by a panel of kids, Restorative Justice directly challenges and undermines the authority of teachers and with it, the hitherto settled and accepted way of raising, teaching and socialising our children. With every meeting and every SLT-sanctioned opportunity to spit vitriol at a member of staff he or she doesn’t like, the child becomes less deferential and more contemptuous of the teachers trying to help them – with entirely predictable consequences for behaviour and learning.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2715" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2716" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2718" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2719" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s pause for one moment and consider the logic of this now pervasive approach to behaviour management. If headteachers believe that adults should not hold dominion over children, then, taken to its logical conclusion, surely parents should be prohibited from sanctioning and making decisions on behalf of their kids, too.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2721" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2722" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2724" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2725" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When put in these terms, it really does underscore the policy’s vacuity and with it, the contradiction at the heart of our schools. Advocates of ‘Restorative Justice’ want teachers to be in loco perentis and, as such, responsible for the children in their care, both pastorally and academically – presumably because they rightly recognise that children, in the main, are too vulnerable and immature to make sensible decisions; but they are unwilling to give teachers the authority to adequately fulfil these duties. Instead, through such meetings, they encourage children to actively challenge their teachers’ authority. They really have got themselves into a terrible pickle.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2727" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2728" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2730" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2731" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And before you accuse me of being some cruel Gradgrindian monster who believes that children should be seen and not heard, I add this disclaimer: I am not against listening to a child’s concerns; neither am I against sitting down and explaining what he or she did to merit a sanction.</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2733" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2734" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div>
<div id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2736" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2737" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am against a systematized approach that, through ‘enlightened’ mediation conducted by some smug, condescending, self-congratulatory and self-righteous senior leader – which in itself assumes that the teacher can’t be trusted to be fair -, treats pupils and teachers as equals. When it comes to schooling, we are not equals – that’s why my pupils address me as Sir and, in theory at least, follow my instructions. As a professional, my word should not be gainsaid, but supported. If you happen to doubt my intentions, and insist on questioning my every decision through a disgruntled adolescent lacking the maturity to know what’s good for them, don’t employ me. It really is that simple.</span></span></div>
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<span id="yiv1348552592yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1463232762019_2743" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile, my colleague sips her tea, wipes a tear from her cheek and makes a promise. ‘I’m leaving at the end of the year,’ she says. ‘I can’t stay here.’ Another one bites the dust.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; line-height: 24.5333px;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;"><i>First published on www.conservativehome.com on 18th May 2016. Also published on www.conservativeeducation.org on 19th May 2016</i></span></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3400316200754683519.post-55855881991137924862016-04-20T12:33:00.002-07:002022-01-17T11:24:21.477-08:00Banning tag and rugby tackling is stopping boys being boys<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A recent diktat issued by an over-cautious primary head <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3484557/The-world-s-gone-crazy-Primary-school-bans-children-playing-tag-claiming-upset-traditional-break-time-game.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">prohibiting the playing of ‘tag’ at break time</a> came hot on the heels of an open letter signed by over 70 doctors and health ‘experts’ <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/02/uk-health-experts-call-for-ban-on-tackling-in-school-rugby" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">urging the banning of tackling in schoolboy rugby</a>. Both cases, in my view, reveal a long, barely noticed trend in society’s treatment of boys.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In short, masculinity has been the victim of sustained assault over the last several decades, and in no place has this assault been more prevalent, more zealously pursued and more enthusiastically executed, than in our schools.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Competitive sport has been the most obvious casualty – and not just because its benefits stubbornly refuse to be quantified, colour-coded and neatly recorded on some departmental spreadsheet in preparation for the next data-focused Ofsted visit. It’s been neglected and degraded because, according to our self-appointed, <em>Guardian</em>-reading consciences in the upper reaches of the education establishment and, of course, at the NUT, it crudely indulges the very masculine traits of risk-taking, aggression and competitiveness that we should be discouraging. These cause wars, after all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay: so the aforementioned doctors and so-called health ‘experts’ claim that tackling in rugby should be banned to protect pupils from serious injury, as should ‘tag’ at playtime – at least according to the head of Christ the King School in Leeds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But let’s be honest: reasoning of this kind is often simply a convenient excuse: these are just the latest offensives in a decades-long war being waged against maleness, the last bastion of which resides in a tiny minority of mainly independent schools, stoic in their refusal to deny their male pupils the obvious benefits of taking part in competitive contact sports and games.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Competition in most areas of state-school life is, if not strictly forbidden, then quietly discarded in favour of egalitarian approaches, subtly stripping young boys of a powerful motivational stimulant. Every child ‘must have prizes’, for example; mixed ability classes are widespread; in Key Stage Three, as a result of ‘life after levels’, refusing to grade pupils lest they become competitive and hurt the feelings of those less able is becoming more and more common.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In addition, Physical Education has gone from being a vital part of the school curriculum to an inconvenient add-on – something to combat obesity rather than nurture virtuous attributes like courage, the ability to work in a team, perseverance, competitiveness and resilience. Sadly, chivalry has become a concept to be embarrassed about and recoil from rather than a code to be followed. In most schools in which I’ve worked, games against other schools have been a rarity; as for weekend fixtures, they just don’t happen. Pupils aren’t even expected to do PE in the rain, for heaven’s sake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like the mad push to realize a communist utopia, this is yet another example of a fanciful left-wing attempt to change the very essence of human nature and deny reality. And like the push for Kallipolis, all kinds of unforeseen, malign implications arise as a consequence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Boys, starved of the activities that quell their baser instincts, find other, less productive, less controlled means of fulfilling their needs. They become frustrated, more belligerent in class and, as a result, tend to underperform, especially when compared to girls who of course, in a comparative sense, benefit from the gradual feminisation of the system.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Last year, 73.1 per cent of girls’ GCSE entries were awarded at least a C grade, compared to 64.7 per cent of boys’. I am not for one moment suggesting that this gap is solely the result of boys not being able to pursue competitive and what were once deemed masculine activities. There are other factors involved – not least the long-fought-for emancipation of the fairer sex. But discriminating against boys by preventing them from playing and acting like boys can’t help, either academically, physically or in terms of building character and attributes one might consider virtuous.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It really is time to face up to reality, reject the apprehensions and paternalistic lunacy of a self-important haggle of medical and childhood ‘experts’ and, once again, let boys be boys.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><i>First published on www.conservativehome.com on 18th April 2016</i></span></div>
Joe Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04662171333236319552noreply@blogger.com0