大象传媒

the 大象传媒 news this morning featured a Union Jack waving about with, double exposure, a group of 5-6 scarved/veiled women

every university prosepectus i have recently seen shows a surfeit of scarved students

in Turkey scarf wearing is forbidden in university and there is no such thing as sharia mortgages / finance

is it not time that we were told the real reason why britistan (a term used on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago) has been created?

Could you not make '9 Days to War' available as a podcast for those of us who sometimes struggle to get quality live stream?

Are the media mis-covering the so-called sub prime mortgage crisis? Surely this is a symptom and not the disease? Perhaps the media has decided that Joe Soap will not understand what is going on. If blame is to be allocated for the impending economic meltdown in the west, we need to start with a failure in regulation, then move to unethical conduct of financial institutions, unharried by customers and government alike.

The Chalabi Choice for Iraq

It was inevitable that the US would seek to put in a corporation compliant Chalabi to favour US oil interests-perhaps the well publicised banking fraud for which a warrant existed in Jordan (a UK ally)
put them off.

No such qualms in the appointment of a gangster,Thaci, in Kosovo as prime minister.

State schools are breaking the new admission rules; maybe because selecting the best pupils makes less work for the teachers and more chance for the schools to hit govt targets. So maybe rule breaking in selecting pupils is just another unintended consequence of govt interference in trying to impose the socialist egalitarian dogma in our educational establishments. Chris Woodhead was accused of sitting in his ivory tower from the Labour school minister; well i thought that was a poor charge to make of woodhead as i always find his analysis of all things education came from the position of pure logic..some call it common sense. Maybe the school minister should consult MP Diana Abbot on how to improve the selection process and make it fairer.

why do all Blairite ministers have mad staring revolving eyes? They have a haunted look of the serious oppressed as though every argument to the contrary has been crafted in a sub-tarranian office of the Kremlin. They have sold their souls so much to the freemarket Thatcherite philophosy that any proof of disaster is met with a half smile of the seriously deranged. Why doesn't Jeremy expose these fraudsters. Hutton is a prime candidate.

wasn't if for 100 days a hundred or more years ago?

could add that this is a test too!!

best wishes
Bob

Good Newsnight last night with one of the best reports on Gaza/Israel tensions I have seen in a long time. Excellent.

Not sure about the argument that un- or deregulated admission procedures would lead to more 'good' schools (any evidence of that before the latest set of directives came into force?); it would be interesting to see a follow-up of this story when the commission releases the actual figures.

Slight confusion over the exchange rates, Pound's not yet worth 2 Euros...

Shouldn't all schools, in theory, be private schools?

Unlike any other public service that could at least be argued to have universal application; schools only exist for those people who have chosen to bring yet more children in an over-congested, dangerously over-populated world. Parents should pay for the children that they have chosen to have and those people who are responsible enough to do this should not be paying for the education of children of those irresponsible enough to have children they can鈥檛 afford to have.

It is very telling that middle-class parents (who seem to be able to afford an expensive mortgage but not the more important cost of paying for their child鈥檚 education) are buying into certain catchment areas to ensure that their child goes to a state school of their 鈥渃hoice鈥�; some schools are breaking the admissions code and some unfortunate children will have their school determined by a lottery. Well what do you expect when the state is expected delivery education?

State schools encourage irresponsibility and, therefore, can never be fixed as Chris Woodhead carefully explained on Newnight last night.

I think that childless taxpayers and parents paying for private schools should now form a political coalition to lobby and pressure the major political parties to abolish state education. Those who continue to have children they can鈥檛 afford to educate should be forcibly sterilised and have their children taken into care until they鈥檙e of working age. I know that there will be those who would be horrified by this suggestion but they really needn鈥檛 be. A few more years of unsustainable population growth and everyone (apart from irresponsible parents) will be where I am now and state schools will then be history.

Shouldn't all schools, in theory, be private schools?

Unlike any other public service that could at least be argued to have universal application; schools only exist for those people who have chosen to bring yet more children into an over-crowded, over-congested, dangerously over-populated world. In these circumstances, parents should pay for the children that they have chosen to have and those people who are responsible enough to do this should not be paying for the education of children of those irresponsible enough to have children they can鈥檛 afford to have.

It is very telling that middle-class parents (who seem to be able to afford an expensive mortgage but not the more important cost of paying for their child鈥檚 education) are buying into certain catchment areas to ensure that their child goes to a state school of their 鈥渃hoice鈥�; some schools are breaking the admissions code and some unfortunate children will have their school determined by a lottery. Well what do you expect when the state is expected deliver education?

State schools encourage irresponsibility and, therefore, can never be fixed as Chris Woodhead carefully explained on Newnight last night.

I think that childless taxpayers and parents paying for private schools should now form a political coalition to lobby and pressure the major political parties to abolish state education. Those who continue to have children they can鈥檛 afford to support should be forcibly sterilised and have their children taken into care until they鈥檙e of working age. I know that there will be those who would be horrified by this suggestion but they really needn鈥檛 be. A few more years of unsustainable population growth and everyone (apart from irresponsible parents) will be where I am now and state schools will then be history.

Since the 70s the middle classes have been deserting state education. That's not surprising because it had reach a level that could justify the term 'education'. Then having continued to desert this state system the schools went rapidly into further decline. When we reach a position whereby education can only be bought we deprive ourselves, the whole country in fact, of valuable intellectual resources.

We have seen the cost of a country being run by well education idiots, Hooray Henries, we are well on our way to furthering the proliferation of these fools.

Education must be free and well funded. Free paying schools should be squeezed until they squeal and the middle classes with their power and clout sent rushing back to a properly well funded state education system.