So can we start again with suggestions for cuts for Dave 'n' George 'n' Nick 'n' Dan ?

[non sociopath skin]

I agree with Alistair Darling about removing the charitable status from private schools, even if Ali didn't have the Balls (no, not that one) to do it himself.

And surely we could trim a few quadzillion off defence by pulling out of an unwinnable war or two and by getting rid of our nukes.

We could always get a loan from Northern Rock to buy a few more if the Warsaw Pact ever stages a comeback ...

The Skin

[oldironside]

1. Personally...

... I didn't think there was anything wrong with the last thread. That sort of comment is perfectly acceptable in British political discussion. When Lady Astor said to Churchill:
"Sir, if you were my husband I'd poison your tea."
he didn't go running to The Daily Mail whining about a threat on his life. He just said:
"Madame, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."

[non sociopath skin]

3. I think our Transatlantic cousins are a mite touchy on that score.

The left-of-centre ones, anyway.

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

4. Agreed...

or the well-known British political saying, "The last person to enter Parliament with honourable intentions was Guy Fawkes".

But I accept that DU have genuine reasons to be concerned about 'Agent Mike'.

[oldironside]

7. While we're on political insults...

... I love one particular example from John Wilkes to the Earl of Sandwich.
Sandwich: „’Pon my soul, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die upon the gallows or of the pox.“
Wilkes: „That depends, my Lord, whether I first embrace your Lordship’s principles, or your Lordship’s mistresses“

[LeftishBrit]

15. That's a good one!

[EmilyKent]

2. Get rid of all the overseas territories.

There is no point in keeping up a lot of random islands.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Agree about avoiding/ getting out of unwinnable and unnecessary wars.

[oldironside]

6. Okay, some sensible suggestions.

Reform the tax system so the rich are paying their fair wack. Even Adam Smith wanted a proper progressive tax system.

Scrap or seriously reduce useless Cold War weapons projects. I personally wouldn't scrap the Eurofighter altogether, because we live in an uncertain world, but seriously reduce the number ordered. And the two new supercarriers? A total waste of money. An attempt by the politicians and the navy to convince themselves that the last 100 years didn't happen.

Reform education by reintroducing discipline into the classroom. At the moment the country is wasting money on training teachers who rapidly leave the profession (or, in my case, the country), paying for sick leave for teachers who are too stressed to face the job they were trained for, or for the imprisonment and trial of those that snap. I realise that this may not be the most popular opinion on this site, but until you have worked in some of the worst inner city schools (I had a year as a supply teacher in some of the worst schools in the West Midlands) you can't really understand how bad it is.

[non sociopath skin]

9. You have me intrigued, Ironside.

Reform education by reintroducing discipline into the classroom. At the moment the country is wasting money on training teachers who rapidly leave the profession (or, in my case, the country), paying for sick leave for teachers who are too stressed to face the job they were trained for, or for the imprisonment and trial of those that snap. I realise that this may not be the most popular opinion on this site, but until you have worked in some of the worst inner city schools (I had a year as a supply teacher in some of the worst schools in the West Midlands) you can't really understand how bad it is.

So how would you go about "Reintroducing discipline"?

Presumably, you'd first have to get rid of those who decided to abolish it (The DfE? Headteachers? Governors?) - but what then? Re-introduce corporal punishment? Recruit ex-army "heavies" as classroom bouncers, as I remember the Tories suggesting at one point? Invite the Jesuits to organise retreats in order to put the fear of hell into students?

Pray, elucidate .....

The Skin

[oldironside]

10. Well, no, none of that.

And I don't have any real specific answers, not being directly involved any more. And if you go into a hundred different staff rooms and ask, you will get 1,000 different answers.

However, couple of annecdotes to help the debate along.

I remember one little expletive deleted who had been right through the system and was caught doing something terrible with a partner in crime who was a first offender (can't remember exactly what they'd done). As my head of department was reading them the riot act the repeat offender just kept calmly assuring his partner in crime:
"Don't worry, they can't do anything to you. Nothing!" He thought it was funny, but he was right. There is no sanction.
I don't personally think that beating young people is such a good idea on a lot of levels, but other sanctions must be available. The problem is that when I was at school (and I swore I would never end up sounding like my father but here goes) the threat that always worked was "I'll contact your parents." Nowadays that just doesn't work.

The perfect example was one little e/d who was being disruptive in a student teacher's class. I was sitting at the back, since by law you need to have someone with Qualified Teacher Status in the room. He was being insolent to the point that the Dalai Lama would have snapped, and it suddenly occured to me as I was trying to remonstrate with him outside that his father had told him:
"Don't you let anyone at that school tell you what to do. Only I tell you what to do." What can you do with that except take sanctions against the parents?

The one thing the government needs to do is the one thing that no government is willing to do - listen to the teachers. The level of moral when I got out (about seven years ago) was stunningly low. Every time I went to a new school as a supply teacher I was asked two questions - 1. From the language department: "You're a linguist? Wow! Do you want to work here for a couple of years so I can have a sabbatical?"
2. From the English and Science departments: "How much do you earn from your agency? I've got an idea to get out of here, but I need something to fall back on, just in case."

[non sociopath skin]

11. ... and if we listened to the teachers, they'd tell us about disruptive little e/ds ....

... and bolshy unco-operative parents, but they wouldn't have any answers, either.

Sorry, Ironsides, not trying to be dismissive or difficult, and I certainly have a lot of empathy with what you're saying. However, one of my favourite philosophers, Neil Postman, a man of infinite common sense, used to ask people, "What is the question to which that is the answer?". And, in that spirit, I have spent all of my working life asking myself what the question is to which our current "education" system is the answer. And I don't know.

My history, for what it's worth - over thirty years in schools, nearly two-thirds of that as a Head of Department, working largely with kids with special needs in an area of social priority. Then, at 50+, the hard realisation that I was largely pissing against the wind and that a lot of the families I dealt with needed a little more than the National Curriculum, moral-rearmament-through-good-discipline and a share-holding entrepreneurial culture. Hence a retraining as a therapeutic counsellor and work 1-1 with kids "in danger" of failing.

So I've given a lot of thought to why the centre doesn't hold in much of the school system - even have a book at the back of my mind - and I find myself going very much "back to basics". Why did we decide to have "Universal Schooling"? Were we ever serious about it? Is it compatable with the other things we prioritise? If we have even a 95% success rate, what do we do we the 5% who don't succeed? Can we truly say that they been "schooled"?

Maybe it's the "consumers" to whom we need to be talking in order to find answers, rather than the providers - who, by definition, are those who've succeeded in the system.

One thing I am pretty sure of. Ain't no government of any kidney or colour gonna put in the thought, personnel or cash to address the "answer" to whatever the question is.

Oh boy, here I am, off on my hobby horse and probably boring the pants off everyone else. Happy to have a private conversation about it, if you want, though.

Cheers
The Skin

[oldironside]

13. Well,

I can't see much point in arguing with someone who basically agrees with me.

A couple of points.

I found what you had to say about the philosophy of the education system very interesting, but it's not something I've given a great deal of thought to over the years. I think I was too close to the coal face and for too short a time to really get into that. Still, I find it food for thought.

Maybe it just comes down to the fact that education, like youth, is wasted on the young.

Since the original thread was about cost cutting I still feel that my points about reducing teacher wastage and absenteeism are valid, but the question of how to implement discipline is a difficult one. Obviously we can't go back to beating small boys for smoking, but the Utilitarian in me says that expelling the worst trouble makers would be better for the majority.

[non sociopath skin]

14. Well, yes, but ....

Since the original thread was about cost cutting I still feel that my points about reducing teacher wastage and absenteeism are valid, but the question of how to implement discipline is a difficult one. Obviously we can't go back to beating small boys for smoking, but the Utilitarian in me says that expelling the worst trouble makers would be better for the majority.

... that's not really "implementing discipline" is it?

What are you then going to do with those "worst trouble makers"? Put them under house arrest? Pay the folks (or someone else) to stay home with them? Give them individual tutors?(that won't save costs!)? Community service? Let them roam the streets?

And then when they're grown up and unemployable ....?

Besides which, in my experience, the worst trouble makers are often the ones who've been dealt the shittiest hand in the first place. Are we going to punish them for that ...? And is schooling a right - or a privilege to be earned with good behaviour?

As I say, I haven't got any answers: in fact, after almost forty years working with young people, their parents and their teachers, I'm still not sure what the question is ...

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Have a nice day.

The Skin

[oldironside]

17. You are right in that....

... this really is your hobby horse. :-)

Of course I don't want to see the disruptive minority under house arrest or given individual tutors, and I assume you were joking there.

Yes, the majority of the worst pupils are from the poorest (in every sense) background, but that is not always 100% true.

We need to draw a clear distinction between children with genuine behavioural problems and those who are disruptive simply because they can get away with it. I have some experience of teaching SEN classes (but obviously not as much as you) and it is a totally different challenge from a mainstream class. You yourself know that children need clear boundaries against which to push, and at the moment the boundaries are either not clear or non-existent, and that is the root of the problem. One of the things (I'm led to believe) that started Peter Harvey on his downward spiral was being forced to take a boy (not the one he attacked) who was well known to be disruptive, and who he genuinely didn't want to teach.

Removing the disruptive minority (either temporarily or to units that are properly equipped to deal with them) would have a snow ball effect on the rest of the system. It would send a message to the others (and here I'm thinking of, for example, the girl who sneaked a video camera into Peter Harvey's lesson) that such behaviour has serious consequences. Reducing teachers' stress would go a long way to easing the strain on the system, which was my original point.

Of course, you are right that there are no easy answers, and the reality of the situatin is that we will have to wait and see what bright ideas Mr Gove comes up with...

I wünsche dir einen angenehmen Abend. ;-)

[LeftishBrit]

8. I know in any case what I WOULDN'T do.

I wouldn't call in a lot of 'outside experts' from the business world to review the spending of the various departments. I doubt that people like that will do this out of the kindness of their hearts. Goodness knows what their bill will come to.

If I did choose to do all this, at least one 'expert' that I would *not* select is the former chairman of BP! Yes, I realize that the current disaster didn't happen under Lord Browne's watch; but it doubtless reflects a corner-cutting, penny-wise-pound-foolish, risk-taking culture that has been operating in that company for some time.

[Hopeless Romantic]

12. I think the public sector needs to decide what it is for

I know that this probably won't be popular on this forum but there seems to be an awful lot of mission creep and empire building around.

Here's a small example.

The Food Standards Agency.

What should it do?

I would say that it should be the body overseeing the safety and quality of food produced and sold in the UK. Perhaps it might also have a roll in educating people as to healthy eating.

But this is the sort of drivel that it is spending it's resources on...

http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/foodforsport/worldcup2010/

And this is a small example. The public sector is teeming with rubbish like this.

[non sociopath skin]

16. Call me naive, HR, but if the agency might have a role ...

... in educating people about healthy eating, why is this "drivel"?

But, hey, you have a point. Let's get rid of stuff like this and keep priorities like Trident and the Falkland Islands and Black Rod and the Civil List and Embassy Parties and tax exemptions for Eton and Harrow and all the other SERIOUS stuff ....

:evilgrin:

The Skin

[B Whale]

19. Don't fall for it hopeless romantic they are sucking you in ;). This kind of

'efficiency savings have been shown to not exist. 'Mission creep' like this, that you call it will amount to millions, we are in debt to hundreds of BILLIONS.

The only way out of this is through increasing tax revenue for the government. The only reason we have such a deficit is because of the banking crisis causing a recession, thus tax receipts plummeted!

two ways out, fairer taxes and growth. the last time we were in this situation with our deficit (but much worse) was 1945. what did we do? we borrowed like fuck, built the NHS, schools, roads, infrastructure and grew for the next few decades.

This is a generational moment, and reducing the foods standards agency, (even though what you say may and probably is completely right) will have zero effect on anything.

Japan took our method in the 90s and didn't grow for more than a decade

[B Whale]

18. CUT the bullshit the only way out of this is through cutting public services

cut the tax allowance for the richest 5% in the country, raising billions, cut the loophole for offshore tax evaders, cut the land monopolists tax allowance by increasing CGT for a start, and keep investment in the economy until we are properly growing again.

The reason for the deficit is the banking crash causing tax receipts to plummet. prior to that is was sustainable. cutting money now will fuck us all!

We need growth, not another fucking recession!

Japan tried this monetarist trick and stagnated for more than a decade!