Progress with Manual for Teachers

I have written 16000 words of the manual for teachers. The introduction now reads like this:

If you were trying to find out how to clean a teapot, the chances are that you would go to someone who had cleaned a lot of teapots successfully. If you want to know how to dance, wouldn't you go to a dancer? Yet when you want to learn about teaching you often find yourself in the rarified realms of some ivory-towered academic.

So this is not a book of educational theory, or pedagogy to give it its Sunday name. My only qualifications are:

1. 32 years of successful teaching.

2. Running a helpline for stressed teachers on behalf of the West Sussex Teachers' Association for 16 years.

3. Founder member of Classroom Teacher http://classroomteacher.org.uk

And of course the one thing anybody can tell you is that teachers are idiosyncratic. In the end you have to teach your way not mine. But listen to an old master – learn from my mistakes then you can make your own!

“Taking ownership of your pedagody” is what they call it. I would caution you to avoid the word “pedagogy” around Sun readers. They will have burnt your house down before they have looked in the dictionary and found out it is not the same as “paedo”

The book is arranged in alphabetical order. It seemed like a good idea at the time but then it took me ages to decide what to put under “Z” I can tell you.

A note on grammar

I will state this now, before it irritates you. I have used “they” and “them” in place of “his or her” and “him and her”.

I could quite grammatically have used “him” but when well over half of teachers are female that is ridiculous. I could have used “her” thus excluding myself from the teaching profession.

I opted for something which is grammatically incorrect. I don't intend to cite Shakespeare as my authority for this. Shakespeare did so many things to the language that you can only get away with if you are Shakespare! (He spelt his name several ways too).

I will cite Jane Austen: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, the King James Bible, Dean Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, W. H. Auden,  George Orwell, and C. S. Lewis.

I refer the reader who is really really interested to the website http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html




Derek McMillan
http://derekmcmillan.com

Welcome to your police station!

The writer Nevil Shute advised a young American from the southern states that the safest place to evade racial attack and abuse in England was a police station.

This has never been a very convincing assertion but with Group 4 Security becoming the first firm to run a police station it may become even less so. G4S have controversially been given a £200 million deal to build and run a police station in Lincolnshire. They hope it will be the first of many and the death of the existing police service.

Jimmy Mubenga was "restrained" by G4S officers whilst being deported in 2010 and the result of their restraint was that he died.

Gareth Myett, a 15 year old boy, died in G4S custody in 2004.

Even the home office seems to have noticed a problem here and reportedly "warned" G4S about their dangerous methods of restraint. However the warning must have fallen on deaf ears because it came in 2006 i.e. *between* the two deaths.

Campaigners in Western Australia believe G4S should stand trial for murder over the death of an aboriginal elder, Mr Ward. Instead the G4S employee responsible was merely fined. Mr Ward had died while being transported in a stifling prison van at a temperature of 55 degrees. You can see that G4S will put health and safety at the top of their agenda.

Privatisation of policing is even opposed by the Police Federation who have not been in the forefront of campaigners against deaths in custory in the past. They can see that a privatised police service "may not have the same level of public duty and dedication as current police force staff."

Privatised police stations, schools and hospitals. The pattern is clear enough. Unfortunately the Coalition can always point to the Labour Party as the originators of their most odious policies. A party of the working class would oppose this.

Unison leadership found guilty of “unjustifiable discipline” against four Socialist Party activists.

Once again, the Unison leadership has been found guilty of "unjustifiable" disciplinary action against four activists for producing a leaflet protesting about the exclusion of resolutions from the 2007 Unison conference.

Today an Employment Appeal Tribunal (Judge Michael Supperstone QC) upheld the unanimous judgment of an earlier Employment Tribunal (Employment Judge Ms H Grewal, 27 January 2011).

That ET judgment last year rejected false allegations of racism against the four and found that the real reason for disciplinary action was that they had issued a leaflet criticising the Standing Orders Committee and the union leadership of preventing discussion on issue of union democracy.

Today's EAT rejects all five grounds on which the Unison leadership appealed against last year's ET judgment.

The four activists who were disciplined by Unison were banned from holding any union office for up to three years. The four are Glenn Kelly (formerly Bromley branch secretary and NEC member), Onay Kasab (formerly Greenwich branch secretary), Brian Debus (formerly Hackney branch chairperson), and Suzanne Muna (formerly Housing Corporation branch secretary).

The judgments of the ET and the EAT completely vindicate the four's struggle to defend union democracy. The unjustified sanctions against the four are part of a wider witch-hunt being carried out by the Unison leadership against activists fighting for union democracy and effective action to defend public services, jobs, pay and conditions. There is now a rising tide of discontent within the union at the ineffective policies of the leadership when faced with a tsunami of attacks on the public sector.

The Unison leadership unscrupulously tried to bolster their disciplinary charges with allegations of racism. This related to a cartoon on the leaflet protesting about the Standing Orders Committee's suppression of over 50 resolutions that used the well-known image of three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

The ET judgment forcefully rejected the allegation of racism: "All four Claimants are committed anti-racists and have fought against racism. They quite reasonably assumed that anyone who saw the leaflet would understand the cartoon to be saying that the SOC was out of touch in closing its minds to and ignoring issues that concern the membership."

"Looking at the context in which the cartoon was used (i.e. to depict the attitude of the SOC towards controversial motions) it cannot be said that any reasonable person would or should have realised that it would cause racial offence, and that not doing so was somehow 'careless'. That is reinforced by the fact that [it] never occurred to many people who saw the cartoon before its publication. These individuals included an Equalities and Diversity officer and black members."

Incredibly, during the case, it was discovered that Unison's own lawyers had used a cartoon of the three wise monkeys.

The tribunal found that the main reason for disciplinary action against the four was that they produced a leaflet criticising the SOC for rejecting a large number of branch resolutions.

It is estimated that the Unison leadership must have spent at least £100,000 on the disciplinary hearings and tribunal cases. At a time when the focus should have been on fighting public-sector cuts, the four have been dragged through four years of tortuous, money-wasting investigations and hearings.

Glenn Kelly, one of the four, is demanding that the witchhunts must stop,and the four branches taken out of regional administration so that the members can run their branches.  Also that the bans on the four should be rescinded and the latest charge against Glenn should be withdrawn.

Glenn  urges UNISON to fight the Condem government instead of hard working union activists.

 

For more info phone: 07595352795

Oh no they killed Scroogle!

Google has killed off Scroogle . That sounds more like a children's TV story than anything else. 

In fact the big bad Google search engine has been very annoyed for some years with an independent non-profit web service called Scroogle. Scroogle's crime was to offer Google searches without the ads and without Google getting all your personal details on file as they are wont to do. Google tried an imaginative array of dirty tricks against Scroogle. They sought in the US courts to have it declared illegal but even their million-dollar lawyers weren't up to that trick. They then blocked all the Scroogle computers from using Google at all.

Not long ago, Google changed its privacy policy to give itself more liberties with user data. Consequently search volume increased on Scroogle.

Microsoft even blocked anybody using the word "scroogle.org" from MSN messenger. Now Google and Microsoft are supposedly rivals but the corporations will always hang together against anything quite so un-American as blocking adverts.  

The final straw came with a series of "denial of service attacks" on Scroogle by person or persons unknown.  But surely someone else will come up with a similar way of thwarting the dreaded Google! Meanwhile here is a good object lesson for anyone who thinks capitalism equates with freedom of choice.

Trade Unionists and Socialists in London elections

Martin Powell-Davies (NUT) is standing on 3rd May to support 

the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

 

Education is under attack from this Government: budgets are cut, schools facing forced privatisation, workload at intolerable levels - yet young teachers are told they should work until they’re 68!

But, shamefully, New Labour's leadership won't oppose these attacks: Ed Balls won’t reverse cuts, Stephen Twigg supports Free Schools , Ed Milliband opposes trade unionists striking to defend their pensions. 

Teachers know they can’t just fight cuts and privatisation through trade union action alone. We also need political representatives that will speak out in support of union policies. 

The London Assembly elections on May 3rd provides a great opportunity to elect candidates who will stand out against the pro-cuts consensus from all the main parties.An excellent list of trade unionist and socialist campaigners has now been agreed to stand in the London-wide list section. It has a real chance to succeed in electing at least one assembly member. This would be a real breakthrough for everyone who wants to defend education and public services from cuts and privatisation.


The list will be headed by Alex Gordon, National President of the RMT Union. I am also proud to be part of the list of candidates and pledge my full support to the campaign.

As Alex Gordon has said in the latest TUSC Press Release: (http://www.tusc.org.uk/press160212.php) 

“We believe ordinary Londoners should have the choice of an alternative to the political consensus in favour of public spending cuts, privatisation and pay freezes advocated by all the three main parties. Recent statements by Labour Party leaders that in government they would not reverse Tory/Lib Dem spending cuts confirms that they do not offer working-class people an alternative and cannot be a viable opposition to the attacks on our communities and our public services.”
  

The full list will be:
Alex Gordon, president of RMT will head the list.
Nick Wrack, TUSC national committee
April Ashley, Unison executive, representing black women members
Sian Griffiths, FBU women's committee
Steve Hedley, RMT London organiser
Ian Leahair, FBU national committee member
Gary McFarlane, anti-racist activist
Martin Powell-Davies, executive member for Inner London of the NUT
Merlin Reader, CWU London committee
Joe Simpson, assistant general secretary of the POA
Jenny Sutton, UCU (FE) London committee
Nancy Taaffe, library worker made redundant, former chair Waltham Forest Unison
Jackie Turner, doctor and health campaigner
Lee Vernon, Young Members convenor for London PCS
Lesley Woodburn, unemployed, Unite rep on SERTUC LGBTQ committee 


Candidates are in a personal capacity 


Public rally to launch London TUSC GLA campaign: 
Speakers: Bob Crow, TUSC candidates, plus others to be announced. If you live in London come along and get involved… Wednesday 21 March, 7.15pm at 235 Shaftesbury Avenue London WC2H 8EP


Get involved
If you live in London and want to get involved in the campaign, e-mailtuscbulletin@yahoo.co.uk with your borough.

Gove the popular

Gove the popular
This will come as a bit of a shock to teachers, or indeed to anyone
who has seen or heard Michael Gove. Michael Gove is the most popular
government minister.
However the people he is popular with are people with money rather
than, for example. pensioners.
Education Minister Michael Gove has received more donations into his
private office since the election than any other cabinet minister
including the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
He has received £35,500 for his private office and £61,279 at
constituency level.
His constituency has received a staggering 284,416 pounds and 40p
since he became MP. We don't know who gave him the 40p. We do know
that former Lehman Brothers' banker Jeremy Isaacs donated £3,000 to
Gove's office. Isaacs has given £100,000 to the Central Party fund in
the past but this was the first time he is registered as funding an
MP's private office.
Money management firm Christofferson Robb & Company LLP gave £5,000.
Electoral Commission records show Gove started registering his private
office donations in 2009. Since then around three quarters of his
private office donations have come from individuals with business
interests in The City.
The biggest single donation to Gove's private office was £150,000
donated in 2009 by Martin Calderbank of private equity firm Stirling
Capital Partners.
So obviously Gove has friends in high places. You can't call this
perfectly legal activity "corruption". That would be like saying the
whole capitalist system is corrupt.
And we wouldn't want anybody to think that :)

Lord Carey grovels to Tories

Lord Carey used to be on the Daily Mail hate list for his support of
women priests and his opposition to the persecution of homosexuals.
What a difference a day makes. The former Archbishop is now their
flavour of the month because he has supported the government's attack
on welfare.

Carey is well aware that the poor will suffer under the government's
proposals. They put a cap on payments to families. They put no cap on
rents and prices. A child of four could work out that the poor will
suffer.

It is as easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as it is
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It looks as if
millionaire Carey has given up on that idea :)

Borgen - media in bed with politicians

Borgen

The Killing was a TV series which interwove a police drama with a political drama and was a great success on BBC 4. In the series Borgen the same producers concentrate on the political shenanigans in the Danish parliament.

It is not written from a socialist perspective but what it does show is the political elite and the media in bed with each other (quite literally in one strand of the story).

One gets the sense from Borgen that the media and political elite live in a comfortable incestuous environment and the one group not heard in this political democracy is …. the people.

The latest episode shows a female prime minister trying to implement a modest reform. A bill calling for 50 percent of all boardroom appointments to be female. The government would carry out punitive taxation measures against any firm which did not go along with it. Ostensibly feminist it is not a measure which would benefit the overwhelming majority of Danish women.

I won't detail the plot because I think you should watch the show. Look out for media smears used to discredit a minister proposing this measure; a strike of capital aimed at allowing big business to dictate to the government and more than one rotten compromise.

The Labour Party are present as a comic turn responding to advances by the far right by trying to prove they can be every bit as racist, misogynist and Islamophobic as the fascists!

It is alternately political and deeply personal; searingly serious and hilariously funny; foreign and all too familiar!

Watch it.

Borgen fyi is a slang term for parliament in Denmark - "the castle" where the political elite meet.

No fix no fee

If I do not solve your problem you owe me nothing.If I solve your problem, you pay me £20 per hour or part thereof.


You can do this via paypal

Payment per hour or part thereof

up to 1 hour £20.00 GBP up to 2 hours £40.00 GBP up to 3 hours £60.00 GBP up to 4 hours £80.00 GBP up to 5 hours £100.00 GBP

Teacher unions unite against OFSTED chicanery

Ofsted wants to toughen the language of inspections in England -
changing the "satisfactory" rating to "requires improvement". Ofsted
are notorious for their violence towards the English language and
towards education in general.

By sleight of hand they change "satisfactory" to "unsatisfactory".
They label schools as "failing" in order to create a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Who would want to send their children to a "failing" school?
Or teach at one?

And the not-so-hidden agenda? Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary,
bluntly pointed out "The government's real agenda behind this change
is of course inventing yet another category of schools that it will
then seek to force into academy status."

In a welcome move another teacher union the NASUWT echoed the NUT's
concern: "The seemingly tough talk we have heard from the government
today, may have popular appeal but the reality is that it has nothing
to do with raising standards,"

"Instead, it is about ratcheting up pressure on schools, without
providing the support and resources they need to assist them in
securing further improvements.

"This announcement will encourage a culture of vicious management
practices within schools which will have a profoundly negative effect
on the workforce and children and young people alike."

Nothing illustrates Gove's hypocrisy more clearly than his dodgy "Free
School" project. For all his blather about raising standards, Free
Schools like the proposed one in Southwater, Horsham, are not required
to have qualified teachers.

So any Tom Dick or Harriet off the street can come and teach our
children on the cheap. The private
schools the millionaires in the government send their children are
staffed by professionals. If Gove gets his way they will be the only
schools that are!

Gove to reform ICT teaching?

Like a stroppy teenager, Mikey Gove put his feet up on the desk and
declared "Ere this is soooo boring!" as his considered opinion on the
teaching of ICT in all schools in England and Wales.

"Technology in schools will no longer be micro-managed by Whitehall.
By withdrawing the Programme of Study, we're giving teachers freedom
over what and how to teach, revolutionising ICT as we know it. "

Quite right. It won't be micro-managed. It will be Micro-soft. Gove is
proposing that schools should use teaching materials which promote
Microsoft and Google.

It is usually the case that when government ministers threaten to
"reform" something, they are going to reform it the same way the
iceberg "reformed" the Titanic. In this case the DFE mean they won't
run ICT on behalf of the corporations, they will let the corporations
like Microsoft and Google run ICT directly. For Microsoft education is
a chance to make a fast buck. For Google, everything is a chance to
acquire information on consumers so they can target advertising at
them.

Microsoft Office is available at a special educational price of £99.99
per unit with additional costs for upgrades. Open source alternatives
like Open Office are available free.. The upgrades are free too.

And if Gove seriously wanted pupils to be involved in developing
software he would be promoting open source software where the code is
publicly available. This is far more educational than Microsoft which
protects its code as a "business secret".

Ark the 'erald Angels Sing

It was a privilege and an experience to visit Ark on Christmas eve. A lot of the people here are "between a rock and a hard place" and find a refuge in Ark. Ark is a Horsham charity for people who are homeless or who have drug or alcohol abuse problems.

Many have experience of prison and living on the streets. Even in leafy Horsham this is no joke. The United Reformed Church provided their premises for the Christmas period and the hall was decorated for Christmas and food was collected at local churches.

Some of the people who come have severe mental health problems and have suffered abuse; some can't cope with the idea of living in a house. Some can't talk about things. Others can't stop. And my job – apart from a bit of judicious Information Technology and spud peeling – is to listen, and learn.

It is the only time I have seen the smokers congregating outside a church as if it were the pub.

We don't believe in shoving Christianity down people's throats. Ark's Christianity is the sort that shares our food with people who haven't got enough. We have a first-class cook and no shoving is necessary.

The URC is just opposite my own church: St John's Catholic Church. At 11 there was midnight mass at St Johns. For many people it was their first midnight mass. One of the guys thought he was conducting the congregation from the balcony but he didn't disrupt anything. The carols were all familiar and nobody was shy about joining in.

And who knows they might be tempted to come to Mass some other time too.

The Iron Lady in meltdown

The film is not intended to cover all the political events of Thatcher's life and it deals with the political issues through the incoherent rambling recollections of an old and demented Thatcher.

A first-class actor like Meryl Streep can make the most unpromising of villains appear to have a sympathetic side. And of course she does. As well as eliciting sympathy for Thatcher's declining years and mental instability, she also portrays her as a “woman in a man's world” striking a blow for women!

However there are many women – miners' wives, Argentine widows of war, the millions who stood up against the poll tax (and I could go on!) – who are not quite sure Thatcher was a crusader for women's rights. It is their story which is excluded here. She was a crusader for Margaret Hilda Thatcher. And if that meant trampling on men or women she was indifferent.

And what about Thatcher's less likeable abiding hatred of the working classes – the miners, the poll tax protestors and practically the whole city of Liverpool? That seems to have remained on the cutting room floor. She once told a friend only to hire a servant “who had patches on the knees of his trousers” - she liked the working classes well enough in their place. Down on their knees!

And the other missing area from the film - apart from the political omissions whose name is legion - is Thatcher's use of racism for electoral advantage. Echoing Enoch Powell she ranted about Britain being 'swamped by people of a different culture'. That's on the cutting room floor too.

Jim Broadbent's comic relief as the ghost of Denis Thatcher is a masterpiece. The only thing missing is the other side of this apparent jovial buffoon. Denis Thatcher made sure his business interests came to no harm as a result of his Downing Street connection - on one occasion complaining to Nicholas Edwards, the Secretary of State for Wales using Downing Street notepaper just to underline the connection.

One thing Meryl Streep did get off pat was Thatcher's style of delivery - one which makes sure nobody gets a word in edgeways. This applied most of all to her cabinet colleagues or "bastards" as she used to call them. And there is a chilling sense in the scenes of the Falklands conflict, when Thatcher orders the sinking of the Belgrano that this was a woman with a finger on the nuclear trigger. It is a wonder any of us lived to tell the tale.

Thatcher is famous. Her claim to fame is that she led one of the most hated governments of all time, certainly of the post-war period. Even that dubious honour is likely to be taken away from her by the ConDem coalition.

“Where there is discord let us bring harmony” intercut with scenes from the miners' strike and the anti-poll tax movement showing Thatcher's carte blanch to the police to use force is as good as it gets for an obituary of a figure who came to symbolise the Conservatives' heartless attitude. They don't talk about class war. They are too busy waging it.

Oasis not top of the pops with teachers.

Horsham Churches together are proposing to work with the Oasis group to set up a controversial faith school in Southwater. Oasis, as you may know, celebrated Christmas by sacking teachers from their Salford academy. Oasis are not top of the pops with either the NASUWT or the NUT. Story in the Salford Star http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=1224

Shylock was an amateur

Shylock - the caricature of a moneylender demanding his pound of flesh
- has nothing on the payday loan sharks of today. Interest rates of up
to 5000 percent APR - and there is no decimal point missing there -
have been quoted for these philanthropic uncles who help the poor to
make ends meet. Even the more modest of them are charging 1800 percent
- the sort of figure that would have had Shylock's eyes watering.

And if the poor can't pay, never mind, these kind people will roll
over their debts adding interest to interest and then keep them in
Chronic debt. Shelter estimate that many could lose the homes they are
desperately trying to hold on to.

A YouGov survey for Shelter in December 2011 asked 4,014 people in
Great Britain if they had used payday loans, unauthorised overdraft,
other loan or credit cards to help pay their rent or mortgage in the
last 12 months.

One in seven respondents (15%) who took part said yes, representing a
national figure of almost seven million people, with almost one
million people using payday loans.

Have no fear the government are going to "look into it." Don't hold
your breath, they are still "looking into" the banks.

The conditions of the working class in the UK are intolerable but the
milk-and-water opposition are quite prepared to tolerate them. From
inside their cosy little bubble of padded expense accounts it probably
looks quite rosy.

A party of the working class would not put up with this.

A sell out for Christmas ... but not in the high street.

I don't know if the TUC are more comfortable on their knees than up on
their hind legs but it would seem they need a bit of encouragement not
to sell us down the river. (excuse the mixed metaphor - I am an
ex-English Teacher!)

I got this from Martin Powell-Davies (NUT Executive and Classroom
Teacher) today:

Just when this Government is cracking at the seams, just when we have
had one of the largest strikes for generations, some in the TUC are
trying to recommend a shoddy deal that will allow the Government to get
away with their pensions robbery.

Urgent pressure needs to be applied in every union to make sure that
negotiators do not cave-in but show the same courage and determination
as their members showed in their millions on November 30.

Reports from today's TUC PSLG meeting suggest that some, such as Brendan
Barber and Dave Prentis, are arguing that 'we have gone as far as we
can' and that unions should all agree to sign-up and throw in the towel
on Monday. Reportedly, the PCS have even been told that if they don't
agree by then, all talks will be ceased - with the threat that any
concessions that have been offered (not that there are many!) will be
removed.

I understand that the PCS, NUT and others like the NASUWT have stood
firm - but others are clearly looking to settle. But what gains have
been made? Prentis can apparently point to the offer of a two-year delay
in increased contributions in Local Government - but that only postpones
the pain to come. I understand that he has nothing similar in the Health
negotiations. Certainly, nothing similar has been offered in education -
in fact the hope that the Government might offer retirement ages set
lower than the State Pension Age has been dashed - so it's still
retirement at 67 and 68 for many. The only minor concession might be
that if you retire at 66, you'll only lose 3% of your pension for every
year of 'early' retirement instead of 5%!!. Even that would have to be
paid for by losses elsewhere in the scheme.

Crucially, the Government has refused to lift the 'cost-ceiling' - in
other words they are insisting that we pay for the Government's debts,
even though they have refused any valuation to justify their attacks. So
that means we still pay more, to get less and retire older - yet Brendan
Barber wants us to settle on Monday!

If these union leaders have no stomach for a fight, then they have no
right to call themselves a leadership. They will be guilty of accepting
a pensions robbery which, just two weeks ago, we were all united in
saying was unjustified and unacceptable. They will demoralise and
undermine our united movement and invite the Government to go on the
attack on jobs, facility time, TUPE, pay bargaining, capability
procedures - and all the other attacks that they have lined up.

So put out an urgent call in every union - don't cave-in. Call the
Government's bluff and announce the next day of united strike action in
January!

Martin Powell-Davies

http://electmartin1.blogspot.com/2011/12/urgent-pensions-no-shoddy-deal-set-date.html

Standing up for Britain - or for the bankers?

According to the children’s song - “In the big rock candy mountain, the cops have wooden legs.
The bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs.”



Obviously in the never-never land inhabited by the Financial Services Authority those bulldogs would be examples of “due diligence.”



Charged with the apparently serious job of regulating the banks, the FSA admit in their recent report that their light touch approach allowed the Royal Bank of Scotland to get away with (metaphorical) murder in its financial shenanigans.



“"This approach reflected widely held, but mistaken assumptions about the stability of financial systems and existed against a backdrop of political pressures for a 'light touch' regulatory regime."

The FSA were scared of exercising any “supervisory function” and admit they “failed to challenge the
management of RBS.” One is tempted to ask what the FSA are they for? A cop with two wooden legs would have done a better job.

Well thank heavens that sort of thing couldn’t happen nowadays……



Except of course one David Cameron was among the advocates of the light touch with the light-fingered speculators of RBS and his most recent brave stand for Britain was actually a brave stand for the City of London. God forbid that anyone should interfere with their activities.



It is obvious to everyone that we need control over the financiers; bulldogs with real teeth. Yet the politicians of all parties stop short in pious trepidation before the big banks and attempt to drain the ocean of depravity with spoonfuls of inadequate control.

Anders Behring Clarkson

New Top Gear Presenter?

Jeremy Clarkson might sound like some sort of bad joke, but in the
wake of recent mass-murders by an EDL sympathiser, and with EDL
supporters here in the UK posing for Facebook photos with guns,
incitement to murder is a crime that needs to be taken seriously.
Anyone is entitled to make fair comment on a matter of public concern.
There is a feeling that Jeremy Clarkson may have shown less than
sufficient care in his "Anders Behring Breivik" moment. There is also
a feeling that complaining about it will just inflate the Big C's Ego.
Like Breivik, his self-importance is already beyond safe levels.

Inciting people to shoot strikers is not funny. If Clarkson needs an
ambulance (perhaps after an overdose of Top Gear) I hope he realises
shooting the driver wasn't a smart move.

He is of course a friend and neighbour of David Cameron. One wonders
if he is just repeating something he heard from the other Big C?

However if you feel that it is worthwhile to complain about this
overgrown kid the links are as follows:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/#anchor
https://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/tell-us/specific-programme-epg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15977813

Dominic Lawson joins the dark side

Dominic Lawson's article in The Independent is a rehash of government
propaganda against the public sector.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-it-is-the-haves-going-on-strike-not-the-havenots-6269308.html

I wrote the following to d.lawson@independent.co.uk
You might like to give him your two penn'orth as well :)

I expected the Independent to go one better than the tabloid "gold
plated pensions" and "selfish striking scum". You are a disappointment.

As you very well know the government is attacking all pensions and
benefits - except of course the bonuses paid to deserving bankers, the
50 percent pay rises for top executives and Francis Maude's
astronomical pension!

You seem to think that a contract between an employer and an employee
can be torn up. Everybody in my profession agreed to accept less pay
in return for a good pension. Then forty years down the line people
like you can laugh at us and say "and you wont get the pension either
sucker!"

God Bless

New Blog for Horsham Ironing

This morning I set up a blog for Mandy at ARK who has an ironing business. Later on we will be setting up websites using wordpress. And tomorrow the world :) 

http://ironinghorsham.blogspot.com