From @LabourList
This is the LabourList ShortList, bringing you a weekly summary of the best content on the site over the last week and keeping you up to date with some of the current thinking in the Labour movement:
Al-Megrahi- why let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory?
Jack Straw on why the decision to release the convicted Libyan terrorist was the Scottish Executive's alone.
Rejecting selection- why the 11 plus must be abolished
Fiona Millar argues that the major parties should take their opposition to selection to its logical conclusion.
The shocking social reality behind the Edlington brothers
Andrew Neilson of the Howard League for Penal Reform looks behind the headlines of the shocking case of deprivation and crime in Yorkshire.
New party organising UK-style
Gisela Stuart MP and Caroline Badley explain how they applied some lessons from the Barack Obama campaign in Birmingham with startling results.
A citizens tax on inheritance would spread wealth, freedom and opportunity
Stuart White argues that a different approach to inheritance tax could make a large positive difference for all.
Labour needs to learn to love Academies
Mike Ion laments the fact that many people in the party have not yet reconciled themselves to the positive impact that Academies are having on lesser advantaged communities.
Having a job is a route to having a stake and say in society
Graeme Cooke of the Open Left Project presents a vision for continuing investment in skills and work as a key dividing line between Labour and the Tories.
Carbon emissions- If you can’t measure them, you can’t manage them
Kathryn Corrick on why the 10:10 campaign is likely to fall short and what should be done about our individual impact on the environment.
Dulce et decorum est- the continuing fight against fascism
Julian Ware-Lane marks the anniversary of the beginning of WWII by catuioning us that, though changed, the fascist threat remains.
The lost generation - who's to blame?
Sonny Leong says we excuse too much and the young must take greater responsibility for their own lives.
The left is about redistributing wealth and power
Andrew Lomas argues that we must move beyond income and instead considers the resdistribution of wealth and power to create a fairer society.
Cameron's approach to rights is legally illiterate and will harm the vulnerable
Ed Williams takes on Cameron's ill-thought and populist opposition to the Human Rights Act and says that it is further evidence that these Tories are anything but 'progressive.'
Goodbye social democracy. Hello economic democracy.
Bill Kerry of the Equality Trust makes the case that social democracy doesn't go far enough. A new enthusiasm for employee ownership would shift wealth fundamentally to the disempowered.
The rhetorical question- how to craft a great speech?
Paul Richards gives some top tips on how to craft a great conference speech in his column this week.
Challenge and reward: teaching in a London Academy
Warwick Sharp describes the pride and privelege of working in a London Academy.
Giving traction to Tobin - why think tanks and unions should start a campaign
Gary Kent picks up where Lord Adair Turner left off and spots the opportunity for a serious pro-Tobin campaign.
New Diplomas are a positive step forward
Shamik Das explains that the new diplomas match real work experience with academic rigour and basic skills so should be applauded.
PPC Profile: Eleanor Tunnicliffe
Eleanor's political conviction is summed up by: "I think that what you get out of life should depend on what you put into it, not where you start off from."
Creating a Britain where everyone has a stake and everyone has a say
And finally, your guest editor, Anthony Painter (i.e. me!) sets the scene for his week helping Alex out by getting stuck into the Tories about their progressive history claims and arguing for a strong direction for the left.
Is this the sort of content LabourList should be working on? Let us know what you think about this week's content below.
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"None of the above"
This would then stop people having the excuse that there was nobody worth voting for. At the moment politicians can say "oh yes x% voted for me" but if they were beaten by "None of the above" they might start listening.
The past decade has been pretty awful for all of us - and the past 18 months especially gruesome for Labour....
we need to do our bit to change the situation. what should we do?
are you a saying that polls and the membership trends are not linked?
I presume party memebership is linked to number of people who vote....
does it mean that we are still on thepath of every declining number of people who vote. and that is depressing.
and does it mean that smaller parties (as they tend to have a more passion driven activist base) will keep on getting a disporportionate more say. Sure you may say that the silent majority is represented by the media...and that is the check and balance in the way that the country is run. But that also poses other difficulties. Sounds like a logjam.
my point was the contrast between the supposed popularity of mr cameron and his declining membership....he seems not to have a positive impact on his membership - ever. Did New Labour ever push ever their membership up...or is this part of ever declining confidence in our political class.
with the points you make (a 3rd of the associations and all that) it id invlear to me now what has been happening to Tory party memebership. is the indie misleading?
anyhow it seems now there is now a separate article above dedicated to this subject. thanks very much for you comment.
According to the Indie, membership among the 229 constituency associations covered by the figures, which account for only a third of the total number of associations, was 145,000. Labour's total membership now (which, again, it seems there wasn't room for the report to include) is estimated at 160,000.
odd but true.
the popular Tories.
(source - Independent)
For instance, a politician visits a school. Effectively they are wasting 3 days of education. One day preparing for their visit (and the preparation ofen involves the 'leave' of any disruptive pupils), then the day they visit followed by a day trying to get back to normal. And what for? A photo opportunity. Plain and simple.
Then the said politician makes suggestions about the school. From what vantage point? In what way are they qualified to make suggestions? In the same way that Burnham bundles his way through the health service, he would be lost without his advisors. I know this to be true because I know his beginnings quite well and he is wholly unqualified to look after the health service of the nation.
Politicians need to be selected for jobs that they are qualified to do and unfortunately that isn't the case, not now and not in the past. Look at the great Kenneth Clarke. One time health secretary, then onto education and finally landing the prime time job of Chancellor and with what qualification for any of them? He was a disaster in health and education and arguably without his advisors he would have made a mess in the treasury, yet he is apparently a respected politician. Just goes to show what a joke politics is in some quarters.
The state schools have much to learn from private schools, but to be frank, the politicians need to learn to leave the kitchen before any lessons can be learned.
"....a Gradgrind model of education...."
When I was in Junior School, around the age of 9 I guess, we had a mental arithmetic test from time to time when we all stood on our chair and the teacher fired mental arithmetic questions at us (9 x 7? 15 minus 6? and so on). If you got the answer wrong, you sat down and the last pupil left standing 'won.'
As far as I can recall, no opprobrium was heaped on those who 'dropped out', at whatever stage, either by the teacher or children in the class.
I went on to grammar school - definitely working class area, South Yorkshire - where we learnt parsing of sentences, Euclidean geometry, algebra and, probably (although I did not recognise it at the time) an intellectual rigour that appears to be missing these days, ie facts, conclusions therefrom ('logic?') and not much 'touchy-feely' stuff. I acknowledge that appears at odds, given my comment above about the 'A' level paper that my wife brought home.
Harold Macmillan remarked that 'an educated person was someone who could recognise a line of bulls*it when it was being fed to him.' I just wonder whether the way we have taught our children for the last thirty years or so has taken us away from Harold Macmillan's definition of an educated person? Definitely, we need enough people to recognise 'bulls*it' - especially the sort that the financial services industry produces with monotonous and harmful regularity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8238759.stm
I do think (b) became in some ways a new issue once GB talked about parity of funding for state and private. As soon as he did that, more parents are bound to ask why their bright kid isn't getting the same results as the bright kid at private school. Particularly when LEAs begin outsourcing to the private sector because it's more economic.
This is a issue that will have to be addressed if Labour is to rethink its policies with a view to ever being re-elected.
The lessons are not massively different and the pupils seem from the outside to be engaged, so why the big difference in results?
1. Class sizes
2. Private schools can be selective and have far fewer kids from homes where education isn't valued.
There are other factors of course, but we sometimes look for complex reasons when the simple ones are staring us in the face. And I do say this some experience of assisting teachers in Hackney myself.
(1) could be tackled by reducing the vast wastage of resources which, alas, has got worse under the current government.
Its not that I exclusively blame Labour, but the problems in the average classroom are not really giving most kids a chance and it ends up with a huge imbalance between private education and the state system. Why is that? The state system doesn't have any less qualified teachers? The lessons are not massively different and the pupils seem from the outside to be engaged, so why the big difference in results? I'm not talking about O level results, more what those pupils go on to do once they are finished with secondary education. There is an answer, but not one that the current Education Secretary is searching for. I get the impression he is too busy looking towards another position in government to further his career, which is very sad, especially for the kids that want a future.
The minute politicians get involved in something like education, or even health, there are problems brewing immediately. Personally I trust the trained staff to do the job they are trained to do, but the paid monkey at the helm always manages to throw a spanner in the works, and unfortunately at the point where progress is just about being made.
Whilst I agree with your solution I think a major problem is that GB has his fingers wedged in his ears.
We can call for him to go and criticise his futile attempts to become popular instead of trying to be respected for doing the job he's paid to do, as much as we like. The only people who seem to have the power to remove him seem to be the voters in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. Unfortunately I imagine the SNP won't be trying to unseat their greatest asset. The PLP seems to have lost the will to live, so I won't hold my breath waiting for them to act.
GB has done some things right economically, but some of these things are partly patching up previous errors. However, the obvious trigger for his big popularity fall this year was the Draper smearmail affair.
Since then he has contrived to make himself neither respected or liked, and just scorned for all his subsequent transparent attempts to court popularity. Not to mentioned being caught out blatantly lying.
Another major issue is that he has clearly set out for years to actively undermine anyone who could be considered a rival/threat.
Classic instance is Alan Johnson. Much too popular and sensible sounding. So off he's sent, to the elephants graveyard that is the Home Office. Where it's guaranteed there's some deeply unpopular policies for him to take over implementing.
AJ being stupid enough to continue the push to promote ID cards, seems to have resulted in sufficient flack for AJ to have decided that keeping his head down and gob shut is a tactic to survive the Home Office. (No doubt he'll ruin that theory next week.)
Just the latest in a string of examples starting with GB trying to get shot of TB as soon as possible.
Credible alternatives to GB are therefore in short supply. And those untainted by a whiff of scandal even fewer, given the verifiable information that Ralph has published recently.
The only thing I've found re-assuring recently was the article on how the Edgebaston constituency party have sort to listen to people, to find out what their concerns are, and trying to deal with real issues that real people care about, in a way that doesn't alienate them. That's the way back.
It's not rocket science. The wonder is that the so called professional politicians forgot it's the voters who choose MPs, not the Constituency parties, or the people trying to parachute in their favoured candidates.
Sorry. Rant over.
In essence I agree with you- re. backing off and trusting the expertise of Heads/ teachers (with the proviso of smart regulation.)
And I don't doubt that many still receive a level of education that is simply not acceptable. But sorry to sound like a broken record but if we don't acknowledge improvement where there has been improvement then we hand everything over to those who just want to grab what they can from the public education system and leave the rest stranded.
But in terms of your vision for education, I don't think we're a million miles apart at all.
When I was in education it wasn't all roses, I acted as a teacher's assistant at the age of eleven to help the teacher to get through a lesson. Unbelievable as it may sound she did not have the physical time to explain the lesson effectively to the class and as I already understood what she was trying to teach, I helped the kids in my class to get through the lesson and learn what was being taught. It wasn't a one off and ended up being a situation that lasted for a number of months until I was accepted into boarding school. I don't blame the teacher because I chose to help, but I do blame the education system in place at the time for holding me back from further studies. There was no chance at all that I could advance whilst the other children in my class were so far behind. Saying that, given my time again I'd do the same thing, but I'd still be annoyed with the 'candid friend', one Kenneth Clarke for his actions as Education Secretary. A fat lot of good he did in the job! Anyway.
One thing I wouldn't like to do is take anything away from the kids that get their O levels now by saying the tests are easier. I know they work hard. I have worked on voluntary basis in schools and worked closely with a number of pupils who are desperate to ensure they have a good level of education, even to the point of researching the class before it even takes place, but at the same time I do feel the education system lets those pupils down.
Until government as a whole side steps the education system and allows teachers to teach without the pressure of target after target, its unlikely that we'll see any significant advances. The teachers know whats at stake as do the pupils but the politicians see it as another photo op or a statistic exercise. Thats wrong whichever way they spin it.
From a politician stand point they should provide good funding, ensure that the infrastructure is there and then walk away for the most part. If the right teachers and headmasters are in place, what do they need to do? Why can't politicians trust the people who are trained to do the job because I'm sure that politicians like Ed Balls haven't strived and worked through Cert Ed. I'm not saying the man is uneducated, especially considering his time with the Conservative Association (I'd say ironically, but its not) but he lacks the inside knowledge to lecture to the people on the frontline in modern education.
Am very interested in your opinion on what I've said Anthony, if I'm mistaken I would like to be corrected and given an opportunity to see things I haven't had chance to, opinion or otherwise.
b) That is not a new issue. Any injection of new funding initially lowers productivity- we are dealing with human not physical capital. As newly trained teachers etc. develop their skills and experience, you see a dividend over a 30-40 year period.
I do have an issue with the overall framework of education which is test-obsessed and saps teaching creativity. I'm not arguing for no regulation, I'm just arguing for more subtle regulation of education.
But what I am absolutely not saying is that education has not improved under Labour. It has. In a big way. But still a long, long way....
a) do you not feel there is an issue for teachers in the big increases in "training", consultations, wordy new strategies from central government? I have lots of friends and family in teaching, and all those in the state sector think this has been a major problem post 2000.
b) do you not worry that so much of the extra funding Labour have provided is being absorbed in the multiple layers of bureaucracy before it reaches the pupils? To me this seems to be the biggest structural issue in state education, and the Government's failure to improve efficiency one of its most damning failures - one that personally makes me reluctant to vote Labour next year.
All I would say that if we don't give the Government credit where it has done some good then we will definitely end up with a Tory government. And I promise that we'll absolutely notice the difference.
A
You could be right but there was a lot of concern about the gulf between GCSEs and A levels in the early 1990s. I strongly suspect that some of that was massaged.
Anyway, that is all rather academic now. The reality is now that this 'dumbing down' argument is partly about restoring a Gradgrind model of education (disastrous given the modern economy) and partly about undermining equality in education so that some are free to go alone and we know what that means in terms of impact on the least advantaged.
Anthony
I hope am not being a pain , We have lost our party the polices that are printed are not labour ones , If i wanted a tory goverment i would vote for one .
ricki
I agree that there are enormous issues- especially for the least advantaged. But that is a really tricky set of public policy/ education issues that are seldom cracked. The journey is far over but I don't think it's fair or accurate to say that all Labour did is buy a new car that never left the garage. It has achieved more than that- if we don't acknowledge it then we pull the rug from underneath our own feet.
And I can say all this and still believe in major educational reform...,.
Personally I do not recognise GB as a leader, I never have. I recognised TB, mainly because he had some front in going to the people in 2005 knowing that he could be hung out to dry. Whatever the faults of the man he allowed democracy to take its course, whilst GB runs away from it at every opportunity.
The real leaders are the people trying to make a difference now to deal with the inevitable defeat that Labour will soon face, and don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking about myself but people like Alex, Ralph and a number of others who know what is coming and are preparing for it. Unlike me they will campaign for Labour in the next election, they will continue to try and change things right up until the last vote is cast because they have character and belief. My belief in the current lot when I started to dig down into their finances and realised just what they have been doing for the past 3 or 4 years. All the cabinet will have a good old time on the spoils of the last few years, but it is at the expense of a good government doing the right thing for the electorate which is unacceptable.
If you truely believe in Labour and you want a win, don't concentrate on things you can not change but concentrate on listening to people, listening to what they want and being what all of Labour should be - a democratic organisation with the prime goal of ensuring that the working people of this country get a fair deal and those who can not work through illness, disability or lack of employment opportunities are not left on the scrap heap. Listening is the key, and look at Labour's politicians next time you see them on the television. They are not listening, they are simply waiting for their turn to speak so they can communicate what was said in the primer held before they went on camera.
I think that you make a valid point regarding the introduction of GCSEs -they were a 'half-way house' between 'too difficult' 'O' levels and 'easy' CSEs.
I took my 'O' levels in 1959. I have invigilated GCSE examinations for the last two or three years and that has given me an opportunity to compare 'O' level examination papers (admittedly, from memory) in 1959 to today's GCSE papers.
In mathematics, there is no comparison (the old 'O' level was in a different league). Having said that, my wife (a teacher at a local authority grammar school) this year brought home an 'A' level paper in mathematics for me to look at, and I would have struggled to have done well.
My conclusion, I accept from very limited data : whatever the 'shortcomings' in GCSEs nowadays, compared to 'O' levels of fifty years ago, somewhere in the process line of education pupils are able to proceed to 'A' level papers that are just as stretching as they were a long time ago.
I don't disagree that certain aspects of education have been addressed, but nowhere near enough. Surely there should be something within the last decade that can be held high as an example of change? Architecture doesn't count, I can build a fantastic shed in my back garden but it doesn't mean I can invent like Trevor.
Unfortunately it isn't up to us oridinary folk about whether GB stays in office, if it were he would have been out of a job quite a long time ago. Until the PLP decide to take their heads out of their books and the Labour Party realises that they have a lame duck at the helm, nothing will happen other than a likely election loss. I suppose they figure that the next election is lost due to poor policy decisions so they may as well grab as much as they can before May, then let GB take a walk of shame after election night.
Thing is GB has already made clear he'll walk away and maybe get a job in a university. Not that he needs to, the gold-plated pension he will enjoy by stretching his time as PM until May will make sure he is very well off, not to mention a bit of severance pay as afford to most MPs when they lose their seats. Half a years salary or something along those lines.
Its so great living in a transparent and open democracy isn't it?
I dont think we disagree much , I live in East London and though the bulidings are better the deep rooted problems are still there , I see kids selling drugs on the street corner and i see fear in peoples eyes when they walk around .
There is another class that is being left behind and we have let them down .
ricki
I don't doubt for a minute that you see many of the same problems that were around 15 years ago.
But many more kids are achieving. Which we should celebrate- while acknowledging the very tough challenges ahead.
The problem with the 'nothing's changed' narrative is two-fold- it's not right and it makes any argument for improving things in the future based on strong intervention very difficult to sustain.....so you end up with an everyone for themselves attitude....and I promise you that will never benefit the kids that you are doing such a good job to help.
A
Thats all most voters ask , is to be honest , Thats why i ask for a change of leadership and culture .
ricki
I done youth work ( voulentry) and found the same problems that i had 15 years ago .
Yes the bulidings are good but there are still the same amount of children left behind now , We must admit even though we had the right intentions that our labour goverment has failed the most poor and needy in our country.
ricki
That's not the message I get from people in education at all. They talk of a different educational world from 12 years ago.
I come from a teaching background and I'm very involved in education here in Hackney....so I speak to a lot of people in the profession....
Anthony
The bulidings have changed ( on debt) but the culture is the same .
ricki
Was not the big change in the last 30 years the introduction of GCSEs which were a hybrid of (harder) 'O' Levels and (easier) CSEs? I don't think it's any easier now to get a good grade than 12 years ago. But it is easier than 30 years ago because of this structural change....and that was the comparison point of the research that I'm assuming you are alluding to.
Students work hard, teachers teach to the test; they are measured on that so it's hardly surprising that grades are improving- everyone is learning to play the game. The overall framework is a problem but I don't think that it's any easier now than when Labour came into office (if anything, everyone's working harder.)
There is now an argument for rejecting the architecture put in place by the Thatcher government at the end of the 1980s. Labour's mistake was not challenging it. But there is nothing Labour has actively done to make it worse. In fact, its investment and innovations such as Academies has made a faulty system better.
We have lost the stamina to be bold now , I despiar over our leadership .
ricki
lets be honest we have had a bad week , We must tell the truth , I have seen the papers and the bbc they say the pm and alistar darling are sending out different messages.
We must be strong and say to gordon time out .
ricki