The Leader's Debate

[DanaC]

Grrrrrrrrr. F£$%ing bastard politics.

Why am I watching this? It just pisses me off. I'm not sure what pisses me off more; the leaders themselves, or the public (myself included) and the constant doublethink we play out on what we think we want from them.

Boooo .... schools don;t promote learning for learning's sake; too much management, teachers doing too much paperwork. Booo police should be out ion the streets instead of filling out paper work...

Great. Good points. But we fucking asked for this. Police forces were failing; schools were failing; social services were failing. How do we fix them? Well, first we need to identify the problems. How do we do that? By assessing process and result. How do we assess process and result, without putting an inspector into every classroom and walking the beat next to every police officer? We demand reports and measurements.

We demand that 'failing school's are identified and fixed. How do we do that if we don't have a measurable standard? How do we measure the standard if every school is doing its own thing entirely. If there isn't parity in how they are assessed, how can we be sure any of those assessments are valid?

We, the electorate, have demanded and been bought off by promises of greater 'accountability', 'informed choice', 'measurable standards' and 'quality control'. So, we ripped the control of schools and police from the local councils and put them into the hands of regional boards, local (private) groups and federations. We designed curricula and tied down every measurable standard against which to measure success and failure and built systems of intervention where failure was identified. Lo and behold, that has become the main sway of schooling and police work. So now we are demanding more freedom for teachers, and less paperwork for police. great stuff. But we forget that there was a whole other set of problems associated with lack of reporting and lack of measurability that all this bullshit was designed to counter.

It did counter it. It just brought its own completely different set of problems with it.

I sit here and listen to the three leaders and nobody is willing to admit (and why would they, we'd fucking crucify them if they did) that WE GOT WHAT WE ASKED FOR.

And now the party leaders of the two opposition parties are talking about reducing paperwork, and putting power into the hands of teachers and headmasters...

Great stuff. But one of them is the leader of the conservatives who spent their own administration privatising the fuck out of schools and destroying teachers' working conditions, training, funding and unions, and were the ones who (at OUR request) took schools out of local council governance and also (at OUR request) tied the teachers' and headteachers' hands behind their backs with standardised curricula.

The other, can't be judged on record because they've never had power, but was almost certainly along for the ride when we as a public were demanding clearer indications of school and pupil performance.

Gordon Brown meanwhile, is fighting for his survival and daren't actually say : there ye go! That's what you asked for.

This is what pisses me off about politics. The fuck off big crowd of elephants in the room. The disingenuous nature of any and all questions and answers that don' actually take them into account.

So we have people criticising a system for too much paperwork and too many targets. They say: we need to know this. We need to be sure of this. We demand that all schools are equally good. We demand all hospitals provide equally good care. How do we measure that if there is no paperwork? When there was little or no paperwork, there was little or no accountability and little or no way to measure standards and lo and behold there was no fucking parity whatsoever. And we all cried about post code lotteries and bad teachers being left in post.

£"$%^

[Sundae]

I've already rehearsed my speech for when (if? they didn't doorstep for the last election) the Tories come calling; why does David Cameron hate Britain so much? He's always on Five Live when I'm in the shower. And always like the hateful papers the 'rents read - Britain has failed, Britain is shit, Britain is a shitty, cocksucking, awful place etc etc etc.

I'm officially allied with the LibDems this election. Mum paid for me to join the party. She agreed with you - it gets me out of the house. And I'm not against their policies after all. Although working in a school I do wonder what will happen to "20 pupils a class". "My" school has two classes of 30 in Year Two. Where are the other 20 going to go?!

I don't hate Labour. But I don't think they have any chance of winning this election. I don't want the Tories to win, but I suspect they'll get this seat I want Steven Lambert to win this seat; at the very least he'll commute (like my bro) and not waste money on a second home.

I'm stuffing envelopes and delivering leaflets for the cause anyway. Colour me yellow.

[DanaC]

I think it's brilliant that you've joined the campaign. In truth, politically speaking, a large swathe of Lib Dems and a large swathe of Labour are pretty aligned.

Electioneering is a bloody good way to get fit and active, I found. I haven;t been so involved this time around. I'll maybe do a little leafletting at some point. But most years for quite a few I've been doorstepping and leafletting.

[TheMercenary]

Sounds like the US.

[HungLikeJesus]

Dana, the thread title confuses me.

[TheMercenary]

There was a debate by the three major leaders of the leading political parties today in the UK.

[HungLikeJesus]

... but then, shouldn't the apostrophe be ...

[DanaC]

Feck. That's what happens when I post in an angry frame of mind ...

Should have been Leaders' debate.

Feckity feck, feck, feck, fecking twat.

Feck.

twat.

Is my sense of political dislocation coming through loud and clear yet?

[HungLikeJesus]

Thanks Dana. That made me laugh.

[DanaC]

:P I aim to please !

[ZenGum]

Dana, you're far too honest for politics.

And you have put your finger on the basic problem with democracy - a substantial proportion of the general population are not actually much good at making governmental decisions. Still, it does at least allow for the occasional change in regime, which seems to do a bit of good.

[lumberjim]

this thread is rife with words i will never read

[DanaC]

Thanks for letting me know that Jim :P


This thread was a form of therapy. Writing it was more important to me than you reading it. It's a rant.

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Sounds like the US.

UK does only in five months what is now almost constant in the US.

[classicman]

Is that a real sentence?