Tag Archives: teachers

The news in tweets: Friday, July 7, 2023

Is this Keir Starmer’s fastest u-turn yet?

Starmer’s relaxed attitude to keeping promises has been exposed so many times that even mainstream news shows are catching on:

Tory claim about consistent investment in the NHS is a myth

Is Tony Blair’s idea for people to ‘queue jump’ NHS waiting lists by going private merely giving rich people faster access to public services?

Is that a good point?

I think it is – as those providing private health services are very often also working for the NHS.

Getting people to pay for their services encourages them to spend more time on their private practices than on NHS work, thereby disadvantaging the poor. Right?

The UK is NOT ‘running out of money’, no matter what is said on Sky News

Malcolm Reavell is more or less right. The UK government does borrow money from the Bank of England, but as the Bank is wholly owned by the UK government, it is literally borrowing from itself.

This act, in fact, creates money – meaning the UK cannot run out of it. The trouble is that the act of putting more money into the economy is inflationary (or can be). The answer to that, of course, is to set taxation at a level that negates the inflation caused by pumping in the money.

The logical way to balance this taxation would be by weighting it strongly towards the richest people in society; they benefit the most from the UK economy as it currently works. Also, for the economy to work at all, more of the money being pumped in needs to go into the hands of the people with the least, who will have to spend it on goods and services, simply to make ends meet.

That money then travels further – thereby adding more value to the economy – than if it was given to the rich in the first place.

Here’s why teachers are right to demand more pay – and why the ‘inflation’ argument against them is wrong

How would Labour stop profiteering banks? By having a quiet word with them. Will that work?

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The news in tweets: Sunday, July 2, 2023

An average-sized class at a state-run school in England, due to teachers quitting over pay? No, not really. But it seems Labour doesn’t have any answers to the exodus from the blackboard because Labour won’t offer a decent pay rise either.

Vox Political is changing focus slightly – to concentrate (if possible) on the undercurrents that are driving the major political issues facing the United Kingdom (and, where appropriate, the rest of the world).

It isn’t an easy shift for This Writer. I’m going to be thinking that I’m missing important matters if I’m not writing about them all the time.

So here’s a compromise: The news in tweets (or whatever other means it comes to me).

The idea is to have something denoting the political stories of the day, even if I’m not actually devoting any time to actually analysing what’s going on.

Perhaps if you think I should go in-depth on a particular topic, you could comment in and let me know?

Let’s see what’s been happening on Sunday, July 2, 2023:

Labour ‘more Tory than Tories’ on teachers’ pay

Contradictorily, the BBC is reporting that Labour wants to give teachers a £2,400 bonus to keep them from quitting, and would restore the requirement for new teachers to have a formal teaching qualification or be working towards one – a demand that the Coalition (Conservative/Liberal Democrat) government scrapped in 2012 to allow unqualified teachers to take jobs in their disastrous “Free Schools” experiment.

Sunak said to have reduced university funding because students don’t vote Tory

Michael Howard reckons it was right to privatise water

The gist is that water was far down the list for investment under the Thatcher Conservative government, and privatisation was the best way to get that utility the investment it needed.

He’s wrong, of course, because we know now that privatisation didn’t launch a flood (sorry) of investment. In fact, shareholders have taken nearly twice as much from privatised water firms as they put in, while putting no money at all towards restoring the crumbling Victorian infrastructure.

The expectation is that the losses will be underwritten by the public purse, while the money we pay in our bills will go into the bank accounts of private shareholders. It’s a con-job; a racket.

Leading (alleged) figures in anti-Corbyn witch-hunt named

These are allegations; use your own judgement when watching the documentary – as you should when watching anything the BBC etc have put out about this.

Labour to abstain on anti-BDS Bill to help Israel

The anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Bill is clearly an attempt to clamp down on the freedom of people in the United Kingdom to make their own choices about whether to support governments of foreign countries that act in repressive ways.

As such, it should be opposed. Write to your MP via TheyWorkForYou.com or WriteToThem.com and make it clear that the people of the UK should not have their choices dictated by their government (or, as it seems in this case, a completely different country’s government).

Rishi Sunak wants unqualified people to be your dentists

Seriously!

Would he let somebody who isn’t a fully-qualified dentist work on his own teeth? I don’t think so.

Therefore he should not be foisting such people on the rest of us. This is more Tory “One Rule For Us”-ism.

Does anybody remember the “Backstreet Dentists” skit from satire show The Day Today?

Energy bills to stay high to give shareholders more fat profits

Home Office places lone child in hotel where others have gone missing

Clearly the decision-maker needs to be put under the spotlight and made to explain their intention in exposing a nine-year-old child to this risk.

If that doesn’t happen, you need to draw the logical conclusion about your government’s attitude to child trafficking.

Nigel Farage is cut off from his bank account. Why?

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Daily Heil’s teacher-shaming propaganda campaign is potentially deadly – and racist, too

‘Let our teachers be heroes’: is that because DEAD heroes don’t cause trouble for Tories?

The Daily Mail has scored a spectacular own-goal by not only attacking teachers who are fighting to keep our children safe from the coronavirus, but by doing it in a racist way.

The right-wing rag is supporting Education Secretary Gavin Williamson in his claim that teachers should “do their duty” and get children back into school at the beginning of June – despite the fact that Williamson has offered no evidence to reassure either teachers, parents or pupils that measures will be imposed to make them all safe from infection with the coronavirus.

This Site published information earlier, in which the Department for Education’s own scientific advisor admitted that reopening schools could potentially create hundreds of potential “vectors” – per school – that could then transmit Covid-19 into society at large. He offered no proof that scientific evidence had played any part in the decision to demand that schools reopen. And he admitted that he had not assessed whether the government’s proposals for opening schools safely could be implemented in an effective way.

In short, the plan to reopen schools is a deathtrap. And the Daily Mail supports it.

Not only that, but the paper that supported Adolf Hitler in the run-up to World War Two (he was also a racist) has managed to demonstrate its own racism with the stock picture it used to illustrate its Tory government propaganda piece – by cutting out the children of minority ethnic parentage from the image:

Sickening.

Fortunately, right-thinking people across the UK have been standing up to humiliate the Mail. Here’s just a sample of their comments:

https://twitter.com/Tobysdad41/status/1261247011149529088

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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The Tory attack on the people who put them in power has never been more vicious

The Tory vulture crouches over the symbol of the NHS in a revealing scene from a demonstration against the Conservatives in 2017.

Don’t be fooled by distractions like Brexit; the Conservative government’s main project – to deprive the UK’s ordinary citizens of the services we have come to expect in a civilised country, and to drive the poorest and most vulnerable into destitution and death – is now at its deadliest.

Theresa May will deny this with lies. She is currently lying in a big way about the National Health Service, which she is starving of cash in order to make us think it is incompetent and deserves the privatisation she and her forerunner David Cameron have forced on it.

Peter Stefanovic lays this lie bare in his recent video clip, which also provides a few more uncomfortable facts about her policies.

Let’s examine some of the policies that are hammering the people.

Universal Credit, the new (ha ha – it’s been in the works since the Conservatives slithered back into office in 2010) benefit, demands that claims are made online. This assumes that claimants are equipped to honour that demand – that they are computer literate, and that they have access to an Internet-enabled computer that they can use. This is not true for millions of claimants now – and will be untrue for millions more by 2023, when rollout is expected to be complete.

Many are resorting to the public library service for help. Libraries are traditionally considered places where information may be accessed by anyone, and the Department for Work and Pensions promotes them as ports of call for claimants.

That’s pretty rich, considering last year alone the Conservative government closed 127 public libraries, ensuring that 712 full-time employees lost their jobs (and became eligible to claim Universal Credit?). Over the last six years, the Tories have cut more than £200 million in funding. Will the service cope with the two million people expected to need help with UC this year alone? “There aren’t enough computers and there aren’t enough staff hours to help people,” according to an expert.

Read the facts here:

This serious contradiction in the way a so-called public service is provided hasn’t stopped DWP employees from pocketing £44 million in performance-related bonuses.

“According to the figures, 240 senior DWP officials pocketed a total £760,000 in bonuses, while a further 88,300 junior staff were each handed an extra £1,750 in their pay packets,” says this report by Welfare Weekly.

Considering the serious problems with Universal Credit, one has to ask why these people have received any extra money at all? Or is it because of the serious problems with Universal Credit and the harm it has caused to people who are only trying to survive.

Stephen Smith was only trying to survive when he claimed Universal Credit, after being thrown of Employment and Support Allowance under the pretence of being fit for work. He wasn’t; he failed to meet the DWP’s requirements; he was sanctioned. If you’ve seen I, Daniel Blake you may be familiar with the pattern. Over an 18-month period he starved almost to death. When he was rescued by employment law advisor Terry Craven this 64-year-old man weighed just six stone, had pneumonia, and was close to death. I wrote about him here.

Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, in a TV interview, was asked if she would be able to ensure that this would never happen to anybody else under the Conservative government’s system – and she refused to say that it would not. See for yourself:

Construction worker Marco Simoes, a Portuguese national, probably knows how Mr Smith felt. He had been receiving benefits as a joint carer for his son Tiago, who was severely disabled, until the youngster died at the age of four. He was told to switch to Universal Credit immediately – but was denied the benefit on residency grounds – despite having lived in the UK for 11 years, much of it working – and paying tax – to remove asbestos from buildings.

He, partner Sabrina McCarl and their remaining son Ruben are trying to survive on Ms McCarl’s Universal Credit payments, which amount to £20 or £30 per week once bills have been paid. He describes his experience of UC below:

But the couple, and Mr Smith, are the lucky ones.

Twin brothers Neil and Paul Micklewright took their own lives after their benefits – the report does not mention which – were cut due to them having received an inheritance. The amount was substantial but neither had more than a few pounds in their bank accounts at the time of their deaths. They were found by a dog walker, hanging from the same tree in Greater Manchester in July last year.

There’s no comment from the DWP in the report but the department always deflects responsibility for suicides, claiming that they are complicated and should not be pinned down to just one reason. The coroner said the twins’ suicide notes – found “neatly laid out” on a table – did not explain their reasons for taking their own lives, beyond stating that they had “had enough”.

Do you think the DWP is blameless in this case?

Another man – Brian Bailey – took his own life after the DWP used its “deflection script” to force him to claim Universal Credit online. He was not able to cope with the system and committed suicide instead. The DWP denied the existence of the “deflection script” but the following Sky News report shows that it is real – and that the DWP lied about it.

With so many people either dead or starving to death, you might think the only people to benefit from Universal Credit were the DWP workers who have been receiving millions in bonuses for putting their claimants into such conditions – but you’d be wrong. At least one DWP worker apparently tried to divert £3,000 into his own bank account by crooked means.

Enock Kimbowa abused his position as an administration officer at the DWP to divert and attempt to divert payments to two separate bank accounts, Bolton Crown Court heard. The report of the case did not provide any reason for his crime.

Another man to turned to crime because of the benefits system was Kenneth Bright. He raided stores in Paisley so he could sell his loot to buy food as his Universal Credit claim had been delayed for reasons that are not provided in this report. With no income, and therefore no means of sustaining himself, he turned to crime.

I seem to recall suggesting that people would be forced into crime by the Tory benefit system, years ago. This means that the Conservatives’ attack on benefit claimants is putting greater pressure on the police service – a service that has itself been starved – of 21,000 police officers since 2010. Forces across the UK are now incapable of handling the rising tide of crime caused by Conservative penny-pinching, meaning that reports of serious crimes have skyrocketed.

And the police service is not alone in being starved of valuable resources. What about the NHS? Theresa May claimed it is to receive its biggest cash boost ever, despite the fact that the current Conservative government is responsible for the lowest increases in health service funding since records began and the new cash is supposed to come from a so-called “Brexit dividend” that we all know will never happen. It must be enjoying a boost in staffing and performance, right?

Wrong. Record numbers of midwives – for example – have quit over the pressure of work, leaving those who are left to struggle with an even greater workload as the cash-starved service is failing to attract new employees.

According to the Daily Mirror‘s report (see the link below), “1,649 midwives said lack of time away from work was the reason for leaving their jobs over the past five years. They are among almost 3,000 to quit the health service every year, although some continue working in the profession. The RCM [Royal College of Midwives] estimates a current shortfall of around 3,500 midwives in the NHS.”

And Theresa May’s ambitious plans for the NHS? She unveiled a 10-year plan for it last month “but hospital leaders immediately branded it ‘undeliverable’ unless staffing gaps are plugged.”

Finally, let us consider our schools, which are being starved of teachers because salaries have fallen by 10 per cent since 2003. In real terms, teachers have become £4,000 a year worse-off since the Conservatives took office in 2010.

These are the facts of the Tory attack on the people of the United Kingdom – an attack that has seen the education service starved of teachers, the health service starved of nurses, crime spiralling out of control and its victims starved of justice, and benefit claimants starved to death.

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Tory starvation of school budgets has sold out the future, say head teachers on protest march

You can’t create the future of a country on the cheap – that is the message of the Worth Less campaign by head teachers. They’re saying no child is worth less funding from the ignorant rich who form the Conservative government; for all our futures’ sake, they deserve every opportunity.

Our future has been sold out because Tory policy demands it.

That is the message behind the protest at Downing Street by more than 2,000 head teachers.

The Conservative government doesn’t care because rich Tories can afford to send their kids to private schools – not that it helps them much, considering the lack of quality evidenced by recent graduates. Look at Boris Johnson (if you can bear it).

So our children are forced to bear the brunt of Tory cut after Tory cut, and their head teachers have been forced into the impossible situation of having to try to balance the books when it is impossible to do so without harming their pupils’ education – and jeopardising the future of the United Kingdom.

You see, every school-age child whose education suffers today is a future doctor, nurse, teacher, firefighter, captain of industry, leader in the fields of science and technology or pillar of the community who won’t achieve their potential because of the selfishness of the obscenely rich.

So enjoy the fruits of your tax cuts, all you Tory-voting idlers. You’ll be dining on ashes one day soon.

More than two thousand headteachers skipped class for an “unprecedented” march on Westminster demanding increased funding for schools.

School leaders from across England, Wales and Northern Ireland met in Parliament Square before marching to Downing Street where a letter was delivered demanding more money.

The protest – organised by grassroots campaign group Worth Less? – saw thousands of school leaders collectively take the day off work to ensure their voices were heard.

Headteachers on the rally warned of collapsing school buildings, significant cuts to teaching staff, bigger class sizes and a loss of support for the most vulnerable pupils amid budget pressures.

And more parents are being asked to pay for essentials – such as loo roll, paper and pens – while an increasing number of schools are considering a four-and-a-half day school week, unions said.

Of course the Conservative government’s Department for Education tells a different story – of huge amounts of money going into schools, with advice on how to cut non-staffing costs and government-backed deals on equipment and energy.

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said: “There is more money going into schools than ever before, rising to a record £43.5bn by 2020 – 50 per cent more in real terms per pupil than in 2000.

“The OECD has recently confirmed that the UK is the third highest spender on education in the world, spending more per pupil than countries including Germany, Australia and Japan.

“Every school attracts more funding per pupil through the National Funding Formula, high needs funding has risen to over £6bn this year and the 3.5 per cent pay rise we announced for classroom teachers on the main pay range is backed by £508m government funding.

“We know that we are asking schools to do more, which is why we are helping them to reduce the £10bn spent each year on non-staffing costs, providing government-backed deals for things like printers and energy suppliers that are helping to save millions of pounds.”

But you’ll have noticed that none of the information from the DfE refers to any independent research on the amount of money needed per pupil to provide even the most basic education.

Does the £508 million of funding set aside for a 3.5 per cent teachers’ pay rise actually meet the cost of the increase, or will some of it have to come from other budgets?

An increase of 50 per cent more in real terms per pupil than in 2000 means nothing if it isn’t enough.

Labour’s shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner, put the right perspective on it:

As did Dr Lauren Gavaghan:

And Rachael Swindon:

Source: Thousands of headteachers march on Westminster over school funding ‘crisis’ | The Independent

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Tory immigration plan will cut number of nurses, teachers and care workers


Nice work, you Tory dunderheads.

Only the stupids in the Conservative Party could come up with an immigration plan so idiotic it deliberately makes it more difficult for the UK to recruit badly-needed expertise – because only they are stupid enough not to understand what their stupid plan means.

Let’s make it clear for them:

That’s the Institute of Directors saying this, not some Leftie on the internet.

Let’s narrow it down a little:

And it seems the paper itself is misleading. Here’s Steve Peers:

This is correct. It is currently entirely possible for the UK government to deport anybody who has moved here but failed to find work within six months.

This is why it is important for the so-called Repeal Bill to be opposed, of course.

Yes there are statistics – or were, at least. Migrant workers create a net increase in GDP; they are less of a drain on the state than UK citizens.

 

So there you have it: A document full of nonsense and lies from a party that may actually be stupid enough to believe them.

The Home Office document states its intention clearly enough: to end free movement “in its current form”. It proposes that after Brexit day all newly arrived EU migrants, unless they are highly skilled, will lose their rights to live permanently in Britain. At a stroke they will be turned into temporary workers with a maximum two-year permit.

When the time comes to renew that temporary permit the rules of the game will have changed. By then a new UK immigration policy for EU migrants will have kicked in. That will, it is suggested, include possible numerical caps on those working in lower-skilled jobs. For some occupations, deemed not to be suffering from labour shortages, the door may be closed completely.

Restrictions are also to be imposed on the family members that a post-Brexit EU migrant can bring with them to live in Britain. At present a Briton married to somebody outside the EU cannot bring their spouse to the UK unless they earn £18,600, a threshold described as “particularly harsh but legal”. For the first time this will apply to EU citizens too.

The Home Office wants to go further still. Repealing the jurisdiction of the European court of justice means the UK can also restrict the rights of extended family to live in Britain to only the very closest of relatives: children and adult dependants.

The document also proposes to keep the current light-touch border checks for EU nationals rather than impose a vast new pre-entry visa system. That is probably vital if Britain’s airports and ports are not to grind to a halt the day after Brexit.

Instead all newly arrived EU migrants will be required to register after three or six months for a biometric residence permit for which fingerprints may be required.

Source: Home Office document exposes heart of Theresa May’s Brexit | Politics | The Guardian

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Prepare to lose all credibility if you like Michael Gove

Spot the boob in this picture.

Spot the boob in this picture.

Among a cabinet of fools, the Education Secretary – Michael Gove – seems to be leading a charmed life.

His department has won praise for its “radical” policies, which have led to the creation of ‘free’ schools, plans to impose performance-related pay on teachers, the development of the EBacc exam, and the introduction of £9,000 university tuition fees.

Hang on a second!

‘Free’ schools are nothing of the kind! They cost a fortune, and suck desperately-needed money away from state-maintained schools!

Performance-related pay for teachers? How do you measure that? It isn’t a manufacturing job, you know! School pupils’ abilities vary, their temperaments vary, their concentration levels vary. They may have any number of other issues interfering with their learning experience and you can’t pin any of the above on teachers’ performance! How perverse!

The EBacc exam has been widely criticised ever since it was first suggested! Just do a quick web search for it – four out of the first five results are about reforming it! Many of the others are complaints: “EBacc has forced arts off curriculum”, “PE should be part of Ebacc exam system, experts warn”, “EBacc threatens creativity”.

And as for the introduction of university tuition fees… life is too short to discuss the dire threat to higher education in the UK that this represents.

Now we have confirmation of our worst fears about the Schools’ Dunce and his department – from teachers themselves, in a new YouGov poll.

You know there has to be something wrong when 77 per cent of teachers in the NUT – that’s the National Union of Teachers, the largest organisation representing the profession – say the current government is having a negative impact on education.

Morale has plummeted, with 55 per cent – more than half, saying their confidence in the future of their profession was either low or very low. Only 15 per cent said their morale was very high.

Taking this further, 69 per cent said their morale had declined since the 2010 general election and 71 per cent said they rarely or never felt trusted by the government.

Academy and ‘free’ school programmes were taking education in the wrong direction, according to 77 per cent of respondents.

Cuts and austerity measures were harming some or most children and their families, according to 76 per cent of those asked – and that’s before 2013’s toxic cocktail of cuts has even arrived!

And the performance-related pay argument suffered another hit when 74 per cent said children’s educational achievements were affected by their family’s income.

The EBacc was being rushed through without enough consultation, according to a staggering four-fifths of secondary school teachers (81 per cent).

Only five per cent – one-twentieth of those asked – thought the Coalition government was having a positive effect on schools.

The general opinion is that Mr Gove is rushing through changes according to an outdated philosophy, rather than taking the time to gather evidence on what might, in fact, work.

According to The Guardian, it’s called “new public management” and is a Neo-Liberal idea calling for public services to mimic the market in order to ensure high standards and accountability. The only problem is, it doesn’t work. Managers are brought in, to keep the ‘producer interests’ – teachers and academics – from controlling the system, but they then distort the system with league tables and performance targets; instead of providing a varied and engaging education, teachers are coerced into following government-imposed incentives. Education suffers as a result. And that is what we’re seeing here.

The Education Department’s response? Teaching is an “attractive” profession with vacancy rates “at their lowest since 2005”.

The changes will raise standards by giving more power to head teachers, attracting the best graduates and professionals, and helping those teaching now to do their jobs even better. How? They didn’t say. I don’t think they’ve got the evidence to back themselves up.

So teachers are the latest professionals to go on the state-starved sick list – along with the police, doctors and nurses, and anyone working in the public sector.

And Mr Gove? All things considered, if we were to tell him to modify his own surname into a word describing what he should do, he’d probably spell it “goe”.