Sim-O

A few words from Manic:

Alastair Campbell’s book has been marked down to less than £13 by Tesco and Amazon. Copies are trading on eBay for less than £7. I thank you all for your input (or, rather, the admirable restraint that led to a notable lack of it). Cheers all.

I’m gonna take the button down a bit later. Can’t be bothered now.

Labels: Politix

Photo Courtesy of PDPhoto.org

Well, time for a celebratory glass of Vimto, ‘cos I’ve just had my 1000th unique visitor ever!!
Woo Hoo!!

Labels: Me

Source

A secondary school which has opened an on-site call centre where pupils can practise selling mobile phone contracts and answering customer complaints has been criticised for lowering children’s expectations.

WTF?!??!!!

The centre, at Hylton Red House school in Sunderland, was set up with the help of EDF Energy, which runs its own call centre a couple of miles away. Pupils taking the “preparation course” – worth half a GCSE – answer queries from computer-generated customers.

EDF Energy on a recruitment drive, then?

The assistant headteacher, Helen Elderkin, said the scheme gave 15- and 16-year-olds a wide range of skills that would help them to get a job or continue with their education.

Help them get a job in a call centre. What fucking education establishment asks for ‘grades A-C in English, History and Call Centre Wage Slaving’?

“Assistant head teacher says they’re geting a bucket load of cash out of some company to do they’re training as the company have outsourced it.” I’m paraphrasing here.

However, Howard Brown, secretary of the National Union of Teachers in Sunderland, said schools had a duty to educate pupils rather than turn out efficient, pliant workers. “We do have to equip our children for a variety of different jobs, but I think this is a step too far,” he said.

“It seems that this is going back to the old days when we told children round here that they had to go straight down the mines when they left. Now the mines have gone and we are saying they have to go and work in a call centre. We have an obligation to give them a bit more than that.”

Well fucking said. We need to give kids an education that can enable thme to do any job, not just working in a call centre or a McJob.

The school was deemed to be failing last year, although it has improved and was recently taken out of special measures. It has signed up to the government’s academy programme and will reopen in a new building in 2009

Ah! It’s a failing school, sell it off.

Ms Elderkin said that the call centre course, which is also open to adults in the area, was part of a wider attempt to support the community. “We are committed to raising pupils’ aspirations and offering adults, many of them former pupils, every opportunity to access training and employment that is going to be of real benefit,” she said.

Did you spot it too? “…every opprtunity to access training and employment…”
Not just about giving kids a taste of the real world, they can also get you a job!

Via Justin at Chicken Yoghurt, who has turned into a fortune teller!

Labels: Capitalism, Education

The way the weather has been recently, it feels like…

Labels: Music

The full transcript of the CPS decision not to prosecute any one is here.

In it it make pretty clear that even if anybody expected to receive an honour for the loan/donation, or if anyone was going to give an honour because of the loan/donation, there was no unambiguous agreement to give an honour for a loan/donation.

In a case such as this, the essence of the offence lies in that unambiguous agreement. If one person makes an offer, etc, in the hope or expectation of being granted an honour, or in the belief that it might put him/her in a more favourable position when nominations are subsequently being considered, that does not of itself constitute an offence. Conversely, if one person grants, etc, an honour to another in recognition of (in effect, as a reward for) the fact that that other has made a gift, etc, that does not of itself constitute an offence. For a case to proceed, the prosecution must have a realistic prospect of being able to prove that the two people agreed that the gift, etc, was in exchange for an honour.

Fair enough, as an agreement could be kinda hard to prove.

So. Definitely no agreement then… (nudge nudge wink wink)

Labels: Politix

Bad day for the Tories.
It’s surprising how a hug can make things better, so…

INSTRUCTIONS:

– Find a Tory weblog
– Leave a *hug* under ‘comments’
– Leave
– Spread the love by repeating this message on your weblog… and include a link to your hug

I thought the brave face Ian Dale is putting on, he needed a hug.

Update: Guido was obviously needing a hug too, what with the prospect of not getting a book out of Lord Levy.

(From Manic)

Comments

Labels: Politix

Tim Worstall’s post about the debate that has reappeared about reclassifying cannabis:

Yes, we know, the whole debate over whether cannabis should be Class B or Class C is stupid: the only sensible question anyone should be asking is whether the corner shop can sell it in packs of five or ten.

has quite a grown-up debate going on in the comments.

Labels: Drugs

Israel has begun the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners in an effort to bolster Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in his power struggle with Hamas.

Ian Domnitz, a spokesman for the prisons authority, said: “We have begun to free 256 prisoners, including six women.”
…
Israeli officials said 85 per cent of the prisoners being released were from the president’s Fatah faction.

The others are from smaller groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP].

Now, what about the other 10,500 palestinians rotting in Israeli prisons?

Labels: Palestine

After 16 months of investigation the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is to drop the case of the government giving honours in return for donations.

How can that be? I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but something doesn’t seem right.

Link

Update: This’ll be the reason why then.

Labels: Politix

Right. I’ve had enough.
I don’t like SPAM!!*
I’m cutting ties with an email address, it doesn’t affect anyone reading this unless I’ve logged into your blog, in which case you’ll find the new one, or just use the ‘Let’s talk’ link in the sidebar.

This is really just a tedious link to…

*may contain traces of lie.

Labels: The t’internet