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Showing posts from 2016

Where's Jezza?

Autumn, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, when people of a certain bent turn their minds to party political conferences..... You don't - can't -  expect much sense from Conference season. After all, they're basically big freebie jamborees for the converted: It pretty much doesn't matter what you say from the podium, you'll get a cheer. Having said that, what has been emanating from the Conservative Party Conference would be genuinely jaw-dropping in the breadth of its inanity, asinine attitudes, and dementedly cheerful willing capacity to ignore basic truths, were it not for the fact that Brexit has inured us all to such lunacy. Look at what's been said: We will essentially cut the continent off from the mainland; Africa is, according to Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, a country; the future of the poor will be picking fruit for the rich; we can sell English Air to the Chinese; We'll train more doctors and kick the foreign ones out by

Er...where's my voice?

It has been, to put it mildly, one hell of a time in politics. As I write, Andrea Leadsom has withdrawn from the contest to be the next Prime Minister, leaving Theresa May unopposed; and David Cameron has announced that Ms. May will take over on Wednesday evening. He must have one hell of a good removals company - it usually takes months to move house, but he appears to be going with extraordinary expeditiousness. It's almost as if he'd been planning this months ago... Meanwhile, over on the other side of the chamber, Angela Eagle has announced she will challenge Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour Party. Just when we needed a united main opposition party the most, we find that once again we're back to the bad old eighties, and the Tories' capacity for holding onto power no matter the cost comes into play. And while the chicanery and treachery continue in Westminster, all the rest of us are trying to get on with our lives, and I'm sure that I'm

All in it together.

This has been quite possibly the five most depressing days in the life of the British body politic. Well, it seems the Prime Minister was right when he said 'We're all in it together'. It was just that he crucially omitted to mention what the 'it' was. It seems I may well have been right when I said that senior politicians were playing a game with the referendum, but it is now apparent that the Opposition also need to pile in and play Silly Buggers, too. There's an Ex-Prime Minister, presumably pining for the fjords of Chipping Norton or whatever, meekly bending over in Brussels to have his bum deservedly kicked by other European leaders; Labour's front bench resigning and Jeremy Corbyn so desperate for a cabinet that he's phoned IKEA; Boris Johnson and Michael Gove looking as abject and useless as a pair of opened condoms in a lesbian orgy; Farage shouting Ya Boo Sucks in the European parliament; and only Nicola Sturgeon seems to have any form o

Honour, Respect, Dignity.

Three little words that mean so much to so many - and yet are used to mask so much. It's coming up for midday on the post-Referendum UK now. I can't pretend I'm not deeply affected by the outcome. Disappointed, yes; Somewhat angry, yes, but calmer now; Truly surprised? Not entirely. And that honourable man, David Cameron, has done the honourable thing and respectfully, with dignity, has proffered his resignation. Because, as we all know, David Cameron is an honourable man. Indeed, this covey of triumphant politicians - Mr. Duncan Smith, Mr. Gove, Mr. Farage, and above all Mr. Johnson - are all gentlemen of honourable intent. The Prime Minister has said 'The British people have voted...and their will must be respected'. And he is a respectful man. Mr. Johnson has said 'This is a glorious opportunity...for the UK'. And he is an honourable man. Mr Farage has called today 'our independence day', with all his usual reserve and dignity, and

EU In or Out?

...or doing the EU Hokey-Cokey, part two. Right. I am now officially fed up of this bloody campaign. I am fed up of these stupid, overfed, overentitled, immature morons treating this referendum as if it were some silly little game played out on Eton's fields, a game that will end with a 'well played, old chap' and a handshake, and nothing more. I am fed up of the culpability, moral blindness, and sheer vanity of the politicians who have been most prominent in the media. I am fed up that you do not understand whatsoever that you are playing with the very real lives of very real people, and all you can do is muster up false outrage, false claims, and false rhetoric. You splutter at the claims of the other side: it is false spluttering. You rebut a lie with another lie, and it is nothing more than a game of Risk played on a very real field of conflict. You are a disgrace to us all. Instead, I have talked with people in all sorts of places, and had real conversation

TTIPping over the edge again

This is just a very short update post on a very big topic - the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, aka TTIP, aka the Huge Big Deal That You Haven't Heard Of Because It's All Being Conducted In Secret. Greenpeace Netherlands have just leaked a 248-page draft of the agreement - and this leak could spell doom for the whole deal. If you're interested in having a look at the whole thing, you can download it here . In summary though, as I know you're all busy people, just have a look at my previous post on the topic , which, even more compressed is:  - this soi-disant deal will create a net fiscal migration to the US, undermine democracy in the EU, permit currently banned GMO foodstuffs to be sold here, dismiss the ban on Neonicotinoids (the herbicide killing bees en masse), relax restrictions on the use of Glyphosates, and allow private companies to buy up whole swathes of public health and education - and, should you protest, allow companies to sue you

Joined Up Thinking

There's already rumbling unrest in the Conservative back benches about the 'Academisation' of schools - but does this bill hide something more insidious? One of the things that I've levelled at the current administration in the past is their seemingly inability to harmonise their political offerings - or, in other words, it looked as if they were planning everything on the back of a fag packet. Partly, this stemmed from the fact that we had a coalition until 2015, and this stymied some of the Tories' planned legislative shenanigans. However, it also derived from David Cameron's really rather laissez-faire attitude to whatever his minions in the various ministries were up to, an approach so laid-back even his body language needed subtitles. The PM lets his team get on with things. We saw this attitude resurface once more when Ian Duncan Smith spectatularly resigned: Cameron's letter had the air of a puzzled headmaster, bemused at the antics of the L

What price education? It depends who's buying

The principle of schools and colleges collaborating in a learning network is a good one - but forcing schools to become academies is not the way to do it. Today, Chancellor George Osborne is due to announce that all schools within England and Wales will become academies, whether they like it or not, by 2020. Quite why the Chancellor and not the Secretary of State for Education is announcing this seems a puzzle - until you realise that, once again, education is the thematic football of choice for those players vying to big up their political game. As an educator, I personally find it deeply frustrating when politicians with no knowledge of pedagogy or educational theory make broad announcements that will have a profound effect on the lives of everyone for years to come. the image the government projects.... The last truly effective changes were, in my opinion, the Education Reform Act of 1988 under Kenneth Clarke - this lead to, among other things, the expansion of Higher Educa

TTIPping over the edge

It's the biggest set of trade negotiations you've never heard of - and it will cost us all dear While our own UK politicians are getting their respective knickers in a twist over whether to stay in or get out of Europe, and claim and counter claim are flung about with gay abandon, there's something going on behind the scenes they really would rather prefer for us not to know all that much about. It's the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. It's been the subject of intense negotiations between the EU and the US for over a year now. OK, so you're probably thinking 'So what? It's just another trade thingy' However, this trade thingy has been discussed rather secretively. Incredibly secretively, in fact: The only information in  the public domain is that which has been uncovered through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. This is odd, as these negotiations will have a profound effect on everythhing you do, say, eat, drink a

In, Out, or Shake it all About?

We're all doing the EU Hokey-Cokey, whether we like it or not. Wait long enough, and the same old things come back round. Fashions come, go and return - we seem to be in a bit of a 90s Nostalgiafest at the moment, for example. This is bad enough, as there is nothing worse than one's youth and young manhood being repackaged as History, but I am damn glad that there is currently no serious attempt to bring back the 70s. Cheesecloth shirts. Flares and platform shoes. Really BAD hair. The great smell of Brut. And, for me, the sheer terror that was any form of group dancing. The Hokey-Cokey in particular - you have no idea how much I hated that bloody dance. My seven-year-old self couldn't grasp why anyone would ever want to do it - I mean, what for? OK, here's my left leg in...now you want me to take it out..right...and the same process with my right leg....why are we doing this, and why do we now need to do this again? My Eyes! My Eyes! They're Bleeding! I&#

Gimme Shelter!

We're in the middle of a serious housing crisis. Here are two ways we could fix it. It's long been a maxim that the best place to invest your money is in bricks and mortar. That's probably never been truer than in the housing market in the UK for the last thirty years or so. Have a guess how much market prices have increased since 1970. Go on. 10%? OK, 25%? Hmm.. let's try a bit more....100% Nope. In fact, average house prices, in real terms, have gone up an eye-watering 346% since then. And that's the national average - it doesn't take into account regional variations. For example, in my home town the average home has gone up in monetary value by 6% in the last six months alone, and it is estimated that house prices may go up by 43% once the new Crossrail scheme becomes active in 2017. To put that in context, a property 'worth' £200,000 (just about a two-bed place) would be 'worth'  £288,000 within the space of a few months. For

The Way to Wealth!

English is a funny old language.  Being a long-term TEFLer, I've always enjoyed its idiosyncracies and foibles - the variable pronunciation of 'ea', for example, or the way that consonant combinations lurk in the linguistic shadows, waiting to mug any unsuspecting language learner (try getting students to say 'dwindle'. Or 'lengths'). Languages are in a constant state of evolution - by the time I've finished writing this article, at least one neologism or new meaning will have entered the English language. Words themselves have a habit of shifting meaning over time, in much the same way that rivers meander sinuously across a flood plain through centuries of ever-flowing movement. 'Enthusiast' started off as having heavy religious connotations, before becoming pejorative and then ending up as a way of describing someone with perhaps a not-too-healthy interest in a hobby, as in 'train enthusiast'. Likewise, 'silly' originally mean

No Word For Water

I’ve been reading Boris Johnson’s biography of Winston Churchill, ‘The Churchill Factor’, and I have to say that I’m quite enjoying it - it’s zippy, well-paced and entertaining, written with Johnson’s typical brio and zest. I’d certainly recommend it - if you like your history having a bit more emphasis on the ‘story’ bit. Johnson, being a journalist, knows how to write, and as the saying is, he doesn’t always let the facts get in the way of a good yarn. To be fair, he does state, quite early on, that he ‘isn’t a historian’, which should be enough to put the reader on their guard. He is also, quite clearly, a bit besotted with his subject: The book teeters on the edge of fanboy fiction, and it’s also obvious that Churchill, journalist, politician and serial self-publicist, has been a profound influence on journalist, politician and serial self-publicist Boris Johnson. He races through the life of his subject, placing Winston under the relatively lightest of scrutiny and conveni

A new home

Welcome to the Nth Columnist, my new home for matters domestic, political and things that are probably best filed under 'other'. Why'The Nth Columnist'? Well, let's face it - all my blog writing up till now has had a largely journalistic flavour, so I felt that a title that reflected that would be a good idea. It's also a reflection of the idea of outsider politics - despite the fact that life itself is very much a political thing, it seems that getting one's voice actually heard above the hubbub is increasingly difficult. And, let's be honest here, 'The Joy of Raki' wasn't getting that well read. I'll be including some old posts from there on here in due course. As to what you can expect from this, it will largely be a continuation of ideas explored and written about in the Joy of Raki, with the exception of the Turkish stuff - I'll be dedicating a new blog to that, once I've narrowed down my choices of name. Hope you enjoy!