Gove And Clegg

Teachers are incensed that the scheme to dumb down exams, resulting in ever better grades for the children they 'taught', is being challenged. The first upset has been the 'harsh' marking of exam papers, though it is highly likely that it was just the result of marking, as opposed to teacher oriented marking.

There appears to be some truth though that the edict arrived recently and didn't allow the teachers to get their story straight and their grade predictions accurate. In other words trivial stuff. But the teachers are incensed and on the streets protesting.

Except they aren't are they? Sure a rally organised by the NUT is loudly shouting down the Gove changes that threaten their stranglehold on the education system. A rally of North Korean standards, based not on anything real, but the wild imaginings of the party leaders.

The NUT are against private schools, Grammers or anything that looks like them because they claim, these systems are elitist. Certainly they achieve high standards. But the reason education in this country is so poor is not because some pupils are encouraged to do well, but that the people who want everyone reduced to a kind of lowest common denominator standard, currently run the comprehensive system.

The NUT and all Left organisations like them, want schooling to be of a very low level to turn out factory proles who will do the state's bidding unquestioningly. It is the aim of all communists.

Education should provide opportunity and children should be encouraged to take advantage of it. Not everyone will be a genius, but their potential should only be hamstrung by their own ability and level of desire, not by Christine Blower.

Clegg seems to have caught a Labour disease in that he opposes everything the Conservatives propose. It seems to have escaped his notice that he is part of a coalition, or maybe the nature of such politics is beyond him. Whatever, he is currently less popular than the EU, which is some achievement.

He doesn't want a third runway at Heathrow. He hasn't any proposals, just objections. Britain needs increased air travel capacity somewhere in the South without a doubt, but he isn't addressing that, just opposing something. He would have gained some respect if he had pointed out that the fairly aggressive attack on Cameron over a new runway came from Tim Yeo, simply because one of the many companies he makes money from has just signed a deal in China,

Hence his dismay at the paucity of flights between London and Chinese cities. Had Clegg attacked Yeo he would have been on solid ground; Yeo is a corrupt embarrassment to the Conservative party, a shameless advantage seeker at taxpayers expense. He wouldn't set off any alarms on a scanner looking for morals.

But Clegg, being a true Lib Dem is drifting around in a cloud of confusion and spouting contrary things from time to time. Both he and Yeo should be put out of our misery.