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The Great Education Reform Debate is the Gay Gordons as we used to dance it in the St. Aiden’s Old Time Dance night (Sundays). Groups advance towards each other, bow and retreat. People twist under other people’s arms. They jig around. Then they move on to another partner.
Except the Gay Gordons is positively organised compared to the Krazy Kellies. What’s the point in announcing you’re going to do something like shooting LEA members, letting Peter Stringfellow open an Academy, or the Letchworth Lapdancing Club run a Trust School, then changing your mind? Why say opponents of the White Paper went to Comprehensives and therefore aren’t able to read it, and then say you’re accommodating their views? Why force poor John Prescott to publicly confess he was wrong after a State Trial?
The Bill can’t actually say anything or it will be beaten. It can’t be based on the White Paper which was committee written rubbish. Rubbish in rubbish out. It may not even be fun.
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It shows how far the Liberals have come on that (a) they can win the Dunfermline and Fife West by-election (b) their spokespeople can be recognised by rent boys. I, on the other hand, am becoming steadily forgotten, recognised only by pensioners and people using Zimmer frames.
I have to check the age of rent boys and girls. Over 65 and it’s no deal. Particularly if they come from Yorkshire.
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Tony’s crammed all our problems into the first three days of next week to get them out of the way before the bigger mess of Education Reform: ID Cards, Smoking in Public Places, Terrorism.
We’re now deluged with multiple choice questions by newspapers, TV, even Whips. "How will you vote on this Lords’ amendment on costs?" I wish I knew. There doesn’t seem to be a choice when dealing with Lords’ amendments to reject the principle of the Bill.
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Baldwin said in 1926 that he thought the miners were the stupidest men in Britain. Until he met the mine owners.
It’s a bit like that with the Humber Bridge Board as if it was presided over by the famous Alderman Foodbotham, the crag visaged, iron watch chained, firm booted, perpetual chairman of the Bradford City Tramways and Fine Arts Committee. In 1979 they fixed a multiple of four times the car charge for buses, the highest in the country. They’ve stuck to it ever since and they’re buggered if they’re going to change it even if bus use falls to zero. Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s the view of the top civil servant in Transport as I got it on the Public Accounts Committee:
Q78 Mr Mitchell: I have a final question, and I am sure the Chairman will indulge me on this because it is very parochial to him and I! The Humber Bridge Board charges 400% more for a public service vehicle than it does for a car. That is the highest ratio in the country. By this policy of maintaining high toll charges and the highest ratio of public service costs to car use, the Humber Bridge Board has succeeded in driving down bus use over the years and it has now taken that benign process to its ultimate success of stopping it altogether because the company cannot afford to carry on the service and pay the charges. I just wondered, in the light of Government policy to increase the use of buses, what the Department for Transport might say to the Humber Bridge Board.
Mr Rowlands: Can I give you an answer in two parts? I am not briefed for this, I am sure the Department’s formal position must be that this is a matter for the Humber Bridge Board, or words to that effect. Speaking as a human being it sounds to me a dumb thing to do.
Committee of Public Accounts: Formal Minutes Monday 23 January 2006 [HC 851-i] |
