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Posh Lunch: Social graces for social mobility
The excited Year 3 children began by introducing themselves to each other. They’d already changed out of their school uniforms and into their very best clothes. Maisie had a brand new dress, there was...
View ArticleThe not-so-Big Society
Who’s in charge of Britain these days? I don’t mean who’s in power, or who has the most MPs. I mean who is looking at the country’s complex economic and social problems and saying, “Here’s how we’re...
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Phailed School Policy?
Why is Education Secretary Michael Gove setting children up to fail? His highly prescriptive, not to say idiosyncratic approach to what’s learned in schools (to be formally announced later this week)...
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Letter from Spain
If, as Mahatma Ghandi said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members,” then I might move to Spain. True, Spain is going through unprecedented economic turmoil. The $36bn...
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Goodbye Bush House
Photo:Bogdan Frymorgen Long before globalisation, there was Bush House. Home to the BBC World Service – grand in parts, beautiful in its own labyrinthine way, Bush House nurtured multiple languages...
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Going for (Economic) Gold
I never had any doubt that Danny Boyle’s Olympic celebration of proud, multi-cultural, contrarian Britain was spot on. I loved every minute of the opening ceremony’s anarchic creativity. It even...
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The Playing Fields Myth
Find me the 2012 Olympic medallist who owes their sporting success to wet afternoons on an English school playing field and I’ll get worked up about selling off school playing fields. The fact is, like...
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Don’t mention the C word
How should we deal with our remnants of Empire? Some (the Falklands, Gibraltar) cling to us, more British than Britain, terrified of the alien nations next door. Others grudgingly accept our existence...
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Lessons from the Savile saga
Stoke Mandeville hospital is being urged to open one. The BBC’s already started two. There’s another at the Department of Health. The inquiries into Jimmy Savile’s abuse of children are mushrooming...
View ArticleRenewing the BBC
At last, Lord Patten, Chairman of the BBC Trust, has said it. The BBC needs a “radical structural overhaul”. What took him so long? Most organisations struggle when budgets shrink – especially if...
View ArticleBut what about the kids?
England’s teachers are unhappy? Miss, Sir, join the crowd. From the young unemployed, half of whom say they regularly feel depressed, to nurses suffering low morale in the NHS upheaval, not to mention...
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The world according to Gove
It’s hard being a visionary. Just ask George W Bush. You come up with a brilliant idea that you know will fix the world and what happens? Someone somewhere moans that it doesn’t fit the facts. Where’s...
View ArticleWho’d be a School Governor?
Ofsted head Sir Michael Wilshaw doesn’t so much tread on toes as stomp on feet and then slap their owner’s faces around a bit. England’s Chief Inspector of Schools has in the past told teachers they...
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Delusions of Empire
All Empires like to think their colonial subjects love them. Which is why the undying devotion of the Falkland Islanders is so satisfying for the British. But it’s also dangerous. It helps us maintain...
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Labour isn’t working (hard enough)
Rising youth unemployment, impending triple-dip recession, falling standards of living, the severely disabled stripped of dignity by disproportionate cuts to their allowances. I could go on, for the...
View ArticleLessons from the Library
There are few things we British love more than to see one of our elite institutions with egg on its face. So of course news that an Oxford college is at the centre of a “Harlem Shake Scandal” has made...
View ArticleFocus on abuse of women not welfare
Sometimes hell – or in this case, England – does freeze over and one finds oneself agreeing with Ann Widdecombe. The former Conservative MP once spent a week with the Philpott family in Derbyshire,...
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Me and Mrs T
A former dock worker, 60-ish, ruddy-cheeked, and too big for the bar stool in this central Liverpool pub. Not somebody I’d expect to find channelling my thoughts. But yesterday, we were in tune on...
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Making MINTs from BRICS
Remember the BRICS? Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa were the future of the world economy once upon a time. Fast-growing countries with either abundant natural resources or vast forces...
View ArticleName Calling
David Cameron’s years in public relations weren’t wasted. Whatever one thinks of his government’s policies, its mastery of linguistic tactics has been spot on. Repetition has planted key words and...
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