Author: Podcast News
The prison treatment of a Nottinghamshire child abuse whistleblower has once again resembled something out of a Solzhenitsyn novel – or even worse.This morning I received the most harrowing letter I have ever read in my life. It came from Melanie Shaw's cell. UK Column News persists in its report that Melanie Shaw is a political prisoner convicted of undisclosed crimes in a secret hearing. The clarity of her handwriting and analysis throughout this letter reaffirms to me that she is a clear-minded individual who is open to sarcastic criticism. Psykshka The Thatcher government crushed her spirit and tried to…
Monday, Newcastle: I was going to speak Gilad Atzmon About his amazing new book In timeA few hours before the show, the venue, The Clooney, cancelled our booking. We went to inform the crowd of the change of venue and to ask the proprietors of The Clooney, a music venue Gilad had frequented for many years, why they felt they had to bar us. Their response was harsh. Harsh and bizarre. Bizarre was the problem. We were treated subhuman. Literally worse than a Whippet allowed into a venue we were barred from. When we asked “Why?” the manager and owner…
Late at night on April 14, several buses carrying civilians left the terrorist-besieged Kafaria and Foua regions of northern Syria as part of the so-called “Four Towns Deal.” What should have been a 45-minute journey took more than seven hours as the terrorist groups forced the buses to stop in villages they controlled along the way, with armed men taunting and threatening them at each stop.They were already traumatized by the time they reached the Nusra-controlled compound in Rashidin, their final stop before entering Aleppo. But their trauma was only just beginning as they were held captive on the bus…
This is the third in a series of articles exploring the Global Citizen Movement. How is the system built?Part I of this series can be found here and Part II here. In finance, an entry point is the price at which an investor purchases an investment. In computer programming, an entry point is the point where control is transferred from the operating system to a computer program; it is where the processor enters a program or code fragment and begins execution. How Global Citizens Receive Their Numbers In a previous post, we discussed the Global Citizen movement, which tricks millennials…
The benefits associated with the 1960s post-11 education system do not transfer to the current educational and social environment. The golden age of grammar schools is gone. What was once an institution for working-class social mobility has now degenerated into a “fee-pay” system.With the advent of private tutors and “tutoring to the test” (grammar school), educational institutions for the academically gifted Secondary ModernAs more and more “less intelligent” students enter grammar schools “at the last minute” after being thoroughly crammed by private tutors, new problems will begin to affect grammar schools: the need for mixed-ability classes and more rigorous ability…
Ms Smith v UK Supreme Court provides the answer.The recent decision of the UK Supreme Court in the case of West Lothian Council removing a newborn child sheds important light on the role of the courts and social workers in dealing with children and families. judgement It is well worth reading the full article, but I would like to briefly touch on the important issue of the role of social workers. Judge Hale emphasised that the decision to make an order violating an individual's rights must be made by an independent and impartial tribunal. To help the judge understand that…
In July 2013, Mike Russell, then Secretary of State for Education and Lifelong Learning in the Scottish Government, speech New Lanark is an 18th century cotton-spinning mill village that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the early 1800s, under the ownership of Welsh philanthropist and social reformer Robert Owen, New Lanark became an epitome of utopian socialism, and 2013 marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of his essay on 'Utopian Socialism'.A new perspective on society' Owen's vision of utopian socialism was based on the premise that “children may be trained to acquire any language, any feelings, any…
As the children's song goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” This old schoolyard song may soon need an update. Words don't always mean what you think they do.The political world is increasingly prone to strange uses of language. Nicola Sturgeon recently said:listen”We paid the top dollar to get 10% of Scots to pay a bit more tax.” Ask? Demand an answer? What this word now seems to mean is “demanding money by threat.” Because we are never “asked” to pay taxes, it is demanded of us by the power of the state,…
The government is pressing ahead with efforts to turn all state schools in England into academies run on a business model, despite the lack of agreement for the change.Last March we were all baffled by the insane news that the government was going to turn all state schools in England into academies. We all thought this folly would soon come to its senses. But the government's desire at the time remains. There is even talk of turning all schools into academies. Intention It will become an academy by 2020. The implication is that if academies are the greatest thing since…
Teachers reflect on the current state of teacher training and recruitment in England in 2017.it has been Confirmed This month the NAO reported that the UK is in a teacher recruitment crisis. The Department for Education has missed its recruitment targets for the last four years in a row, and plans to fill the gap by training ex-combatants as teachers have also failed. I believe the two biggest contributing factors to this crisis are teacher training and recruitment. One of the big issues that has had a decisive impact on this issue is the fundamental change in teacher training. When…