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 Thursday 2nd September 2010
Is William Hague guilty of poor judgment?It's not the scandal, it's the cover-up – or, in William Hague's case, the non-scandal. The statement issued by the FCO on Monday claiming that the Foreign Secretary's relationship with Chrisopher Myers was a "purely professional one" failed to kill off the story so a second one was released yesterday, this time by Hague himself, revealing that Myers had now resigned. The second statement also disclosed that Ffion Hague, the Foreign Secretary's wife, had had a series of miscarriages, presumably in the hope of killing off any speculation that Myers's resignation meant his relationship with his boss wasn't "purely professional" after all. If Hague and his advisers were hoping that yesterday would be a good day to release bad news because of the publication of Tony Blair's memoirs they were mistaken. The new revelations only served to give the story legs, as today's front pages reveal. That's a double whammy for the Coalition. Not only has Hague's mishandling of the affair resulted in promoting the story to the front pages, it's taking up vital space that would otherwise be devoted to the continuing civil war between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. (To read more, click here.)
Wednesday 1st September 2010
Tony Blair's memoirs: Behaviour unbecoming of an ex-Prime MinisterHang on a second. Blackmail? Problem drinking? Are these the memoirs of Britain's longest-serving Labour Prime Minister or the latest salvo from Katie Price in her ongoing battle with Peter Andre? I was expecting some high-minded lessons in the art of statesmanship, not a series of jaw-dropping revelations about Gordon Brown. Reading these memoirs, you get the impression that Tony Blair's visceral hatred of his chief rival has clouded his political judgment. Champagne corks will be popping in Downing Street tonight because The Journey does very little to enhance the reputation of either. (To read more, click here.)
Wednesday 25th August 2010
GCSE results are now worthless as a measure of a school's successThe lesson of this year's GCSE results is that New Labour's standard measurement of a school's success – the percentage of students getting five GCSEs at grade C or above including Maths and English – is hobbling an entire generation of state-school educated children. The fact that a secondary school's ranking in the league tables is determined by this metric explains almost all the bad news contained in yesterday's results: - The reason Religious Education is now more popular than French is because it's easier to achieve a passing grade in RE. - The reason Maths is now so easy that a five-year-old can get a grade C is because schools have effectively forced exam boards to dumb down the syllabus, knowing that their fate hangs on the percentage of their pupils who achieve a passing grade in the subject. (To read more, click here.)
Thursday 19th August 2010
Here's your starter for 10: How, exactly, can you fail an A-level?Judging from today's results, it's now virtually impossible to fail an A-level. The overall pass rate climbed for the 28th year in a row, with 97.6% of A-levels being graded A* - E. Sceptics used to joke that you only needed to write your name at the top of the paper to pass an A-level, but given the appallingly low levels of literacy in this country it seems probable that more than 2.4% of candidates failed to do that. From which it follows that A-levels are now so easy you can pass one without managing to write your own name. A simple 'X' will suffice, even if the rest of the paper is completely blank. (To read more, click here.)
Wednesday 18th August 2010
Sorry, Nick Clegg. Governments can't do anything about social mobilityNick Clegg made a keynote speech today in which he said he wants the coalition to be judged not only on deficit reduction, but on how much impact it makes on social mobility. "In five years time we also want to be able to look back and say that the children born in 2015 are less constrained by the circumstances of their birth," he said. Good luck with that, Deputy Prime Minister. Increasing equality of opportunity has been a common aim of the last three Prime Ministers and, to a greater or lesser degree, they've all failed. Measuring social mobility is a notoriously tricky subject about which no two sociologists agree – David Goodhart wrote an excellent summary of the complexities around the subject for Prospect a couple of years ago. But almost no one thinks it has actually increased in the past 25 years. (To read more, click here.)
Tuesday 17th August 2010
California's anti-gatecrashing law will just add to the thrillAs a seasoned gatecrasher, I welcome the news that California is proposing to jail anyone who tries to bluff their way into a showbiz party for up to a year. With a bit of luck this will put off some of the chancers who've been giving the profession a bad name – people like Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the Virginian couple who crashed President Obama's White House state dinner for the Indian Prime Minister last year. The Salahis were self-promoting socialites who publicised their exploits on Facebook, whereas the true gatecrasher has no motive other than to outwit a bunch of security guards and clipboard Nazis. I'm not quite in the fraternity's Hall of Fame, but I deserve an honourary mention for managing to blag my way into the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in 1994. Admittedly, it was the magazine's first ever Oscar Party and, back then, security wasn't as tight as it is now, but it was no cake walk. I came up with the not particularly cunning plan of pretending to be William Cash, a British journalist whom I knew had been invited because I happened to be staying with him in Los Angeles at the time. He was under strict instructions not to arrive before 11.30pm so the trick was to pitch up close enough to that time to get in, but not so close that I'd actually bump into him standing outside. In the event, I made it with seconds to spare and by far the best part of the evening was watching William remonstrate with the chief clipboard Nazi from my vantage point at the bar. (To read more, click here.)
Sunday 15th August 2010
Free Schools can close the ever-widening gap between state and private educationAccording to a report in today's Observer, privately-educated children are expected to get three times as many A stars at A-level as state school pupils when the results are announced later this week. Given that the new A star grade has been introduced to help top universities identify the most able applicants, that's a terrible indictment of New Labour's education policies. It inevitably means that the percentage of places at Russell Group universities filled by children from state schools will fall. Nic Dakin, Labour MP for Scunthorpe and a member of the House of Commons select committee on education, claims these results illustrate the folly of cancelling the Building Schools for the Future programme. In the Observer report, he says that the only way to narrow the gap between the state and private sector is to spend more money on school buildings. "It's about investing in state education, not scrapping Building Schools for the Future, so that our state system can have the state-of-the-art accommodation our young people deserve," he said. (To read more, click here.)
Friday 13th August 2010
Why have Western feminists been so muted in their criticism of Iran?The fate of the 43-year-old Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning took a sinister turn yesterday when she appeared on Iranian state television to confess to her "crimes". Her lawyer fears she will now be executed imminently, probably hung by the neck until she is dead. Many human rights groups have criticised the Iranian authorities for their brutal treatment of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, including Amnesty International and the International Committee Against Stoning. The mother of two has already received 99 lashes for committing adultery and according to her lawyer, who has fled the country after a warrant was issued for his arrest, she has been beaten and tortured in jail. Yet the response of feminists in the West has been strangely muted. (To read more, click here.)
Wednesday 11th August 2010
If Cameron is 'middle class', what does that make the rest of us?Like many members of the sharp-elbowed middle classes, I was shocked to hear David Cameron use precisely that description of himself and his wife. It happened last night at a public meeting in Manchester where the Prime Minister was defending the government's cuts to children's services. "There is a criticism sometimes of Sure Start that a great new centre is established and the sharp-elbowed middle classes – like my wife and me – get in there and get all the services," he said. Hang on a minute. Cameron was educated at Eton and is reportedly worth £30 million. His wife is the daughter of a Baronet and the stepdaughter of a Viscount. If they're "middle class" what does that make me? Is the economy really in such poor shape that everyone has to shift down one place in the class hierarchy? It won't be long now before the leader of the Labour Party is describing himself as "working class". (Actually, come to think of it, that already happened.) (To read more, click here.)
Monday 9th August 2010
Ditch the graduate taxWhat's David Willetts up to? His suggestion that graduates should make a "bigger contribution" towards the cost of higher education has been universally interpreted as an indication that the Universities Minister favours a graduate tax over an increase in tuition fees. But does he? In fact, an increase in tuition fees would also mean graduates making a "bigger contribution" since they'd have to repay higher loans after they'd graduated. So his statement could be read either way. It beggars belief that Willetts, a thoroughbred conservative intellectual, would actually be in favour of a graduate tax. According to the University and College Union (UCU), if graduates had to pay an additional 5% in income tax, a social worker on average wages would end up paying a total of £37,550 over 25 years, a secondary school teacher £46,046 and a doctor £70,526. Under the present system, by contrast, they each pay a flat fee of £9,440 for their degrees. (To read more, click here.)
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