Author: Podcast News

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…

Words matter, as a member of the audience at a recent talk called “What’s Wrong with People with Names?” pointed out. A recent event at the University of Dundee examining the issues with nominators sparked a lively Q&A session. One of the most insightful questioners pointed out that government documents frequently use the words “included” and “inclusion.” But when it comes to children, “inclusion” is never used. These seemingly similar words have a big difference. “Inclusion” means to incorporate into a group or class, and the direction is inward. “Inclusion” means that (almost) everything is within the scope of consideration,…

A large crowd gathered at the University of Dundee this week to hear three speakers speak against the plans. Below is a recording of one of the speeches, given by Lesley Scott from the Tymes Trust. Has anyone read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett? Published in 1911, it is considered a classic of children's literature about family secrets and privacy and features no named characters. “The Secret Garden” was the subject of a recent Radio 4 programme called “Family Secrets”, which explored the societal shift over the 20th century from discretion and privacy towards openness and transparency: “how…

Amid the corruption and half-heartedness of much of the contemporary Anglo-Saxon establishment, there remains what Albert Jay Nock called “the foundations of right thinking and good conduct,” which manifests itself in the most unexpected of areas: in this case, family law. Recent important victory Nomination Refusal Campaign (No 2NP)in UK Supreme Court Contains some particularly memorable exampleIn its judgment, the Court referred to a ruling by Justice Barak of the Israeli Supreme Court that the individual uniqueness of human beings must be preserved (El Al Israel Airlines v. Danielowitz (1992-4) IsrLR 478, para. 14). The de facto premise is that…

182 years ago, in January 1835, the Airdrie Savings Bank opened its doors – then, and now, a locally run business where people could safely store their savings and invest them wisely. This week, it was announced that the bank would close and downsize in the spring. We see its closure as a harbinger of greater calamity. We live in a world where thrift – frugality and wise financial management – is a thing of the past.My first memory of banking as a young child is walking with my mother into the (to me) huge main banking hall of Airdrie…

In the final days of the Obama administration, after eight years of unproductive “nation-building”, a very surprising series of events unfolded over the Christmas/New Year holidays: First, on December 23rd, a UN resolution on Palestine (number 2334) was passed, which criticised recent Israeli policies, but which the US did not veto.In particular, this Solution: “1. Reaffirms that the construction of settlements by Israel in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal legitimacy, is a flagrant violation of international law and represents a major obstacle to the achievement of a two-State solution and a just, lasting…

My interest in this topic, certainly a sensitive one in contemporary Scotland, was sparked by social media posts that were scathing about a letter published in The National, a newspaper that fervently supports the SNP, highlighting the xenophobic and anti-English sentiment contained in the letter as symptomatic of the bigotry that underlies Scottish nationalism, and indeed most nationalist movements. letter The full text is reproduced below. So now we have a part-time deputy leader. Angus is out of the country four days a week. He's an MP, he was the leader of the SNP caucus in London and now he's…

GIRFEC (Getting It Right For Every Child) is the Scottish Government's version of Every Child Matters. The name is funny because it doesn't mean doing the right thing for your child.In this system the individual is not the centre, but rather the collective, the average, the aggregate. Your children are the error in this system, and the authorities have an eye on the greater good. And of course that greater good needs them. They, not your children, become the centre of the system, the ones who bring essential relief to the ignorant masses. So, dear listener, if you are going…

In the July 2015 budget, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced “the great privatisation”. The sale of government assets, he said, would “deliver the biggest privatisation proceeds in history”. To everyone, this appeared to be just another aspect of so-called austerity. Appearances can be deceiving.Following Chancellor Osborne's Budget, UK Column filed a Freedom of Information request with the Treasury seeking details of “great privatisation”, but no details were released and, a year and a half later, the Treasury has still not provided the information requested.In its response, the Treasury pointed to the fact that information about big-ticket…

In mid-January 2016, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron called for unaccompanied Syrian refugee children to be resettled in the UK. “Ignoring the desperation of these vulnerable children will only make it worse,” he said. What could possibly go wrong?For many years, the UK column has reported on the national scandal of child protection in the UK. We have extensive experience working with victims of abuse, parents who have had their children illegally removed from them, and children sold on the adoption market, and have sought to understand the scale of child trafficking and child sexual exploitation.I say “tried” because it…