Trading lies

Now, one could be charitable and say that it's an editing issue. However, I choose to believe that Lucy Thomas is, in fact, telling a deliberate untruth in today's City AM debate. [Emphasis mine—DK]

Nearly half of our trade is with other EU countries, and the “outers” cannot say how British businesses would be affected by any of their scenarios for exit.

No, Lucy: "nearly half of our trade" is not with other EU countries, actually.

At any time, around 80% of "our trade" is internal. Our actual trade with EU countries is, in fact, about 10%—very far from "half" (and it is more like 8% when the Rotterdam effect is taken into account).

This might seem like nit-picking, but Lucy Thomas is the campaign director of pro-EU Business for New Europe organisation: we can expect organisations like this to step up the peddling of these subtle lies as the EU referendum approaches.

We need to be aware of them, call out those asserting them, and debunk them on a regular basis.

Do the shake and E-Bac and put the freshness back

Steve Baker MP has been discussing the English Baccalaureate with some of his constituents and has subsequently tabled a question about expanding the scope of the subjects contained within it.

So, what is the English Baccalaureate?

In most European countries school students are expected to pursue a broad and rounded range of academic subjects until the age of 16. Even in those countries such as the Netherlands where students divide between academic and vocational routes all young people are expected, whatever their ultimate destiny, to study a wide range of traditional subjects. So we will introduce a new award – the English Baccalaureate – for any student who secures good GCSE or iGCSE passes in English, mathematics, the sciences, a modern or ancient foreign language and a humanity such as history or geography. This combination of GCSEs at grades A*-C will entitle the student to a certificate recording their achievement. At the moment only around 15 per cent of students secure this basic suite of academic qualifications and fewer than four per cent of students eligible for free school meals do so57. So to encourage the take-up of this combination of subjects we will give special recognition in performance tables to those schools which are helping their pupils to attain this breadth of study.

Which is all very laudable. But part of the problem with GCSEs—and, indeed, all exams in this country—is that the standards have become deliberately debased for short-term political gain.

Thus, not only have schools pushed their pupils towards easier subjects but the means of passing any subject has become far easier: exams focus on "soft" questions of opinion rather than enunciation of facts; papers concentrate on empathy rather than deduction.

The results is that schools teach to the test, not in order to educate their pupils—after all, their funding depends on the number of passes, not whether the children leaving those schools are actually have the knowledge to thrive at university or to get a job or even to understand the subject that they have spent 11 years learning.

Even on the simplest measure of literacy, Britain has dropped from 6th in the world in 2000, to 26th in 2003 (although the headline rate of literacy remained the same). We also have only 19.1% of adults on a high literacy level, whilst 50.4% are considered to have low literacy.

The challenge for the government, then, is not to ensure that more schools get more "passes", because such scores are fundamentally meaningless: the aim is to ensure that children are educated to the highest possible standard. And one way of doing this is to ensure that the exams test practical ability and are not debased in order to massage a creaky government's education statistics.

And this is why the English Baccalaureate is so misnamed, its title evincing the International Baccalaureate. Because the whole point of the International Baccalaureate is that it is international—an international, non-govermental organisation.

As such, it is not subject to the political whims of politicians and that is why it is recognised—internationally—as a good educational standard of attainment.

The English Baccalaureate—despite the misleading name—is nothing of the sort. It is, essentially, a diploma based on a few compulsory GCSEs: it does not actually raise the level of attainment for any particular subject, it merely ensures that pupils take subjects that the government of the time happens to favour.

If you want to introduce a rigorous, broad and internationally-recognised diploma, then why not adopt the International Baccalaureate?

If, on the other hand, you have particular prejudices about which subjects should be taught in schools but want to keep the actual standards in those subjects so low that you won't be hideously shamed by the piss-poor state of education in your country's schools, then why not make up your own shit and hook its name to that of a rather more credible institution?

As should be obvious, the English Baccalaureate is the latter and is—not to put too fine a point on it—a pointless fucking waste of everybody's time.

In the meantime, another generation of children are completely failed by politicians, teachers, unions and parents. But who gives a shit, eh—as long as those "passes" keep rolling in, who cares?

Whilst the kids might be absolutely incapable of grasping basic mathematics, the educational and political establishments are more than capable of understanding that the children are most valuable as exam statistics breathlessly regurgitated in positive headlines by a docile media...

Mad Nad: declaring war on scantily clad women

Corrupt Tory MP, "Mad" Nad Dorries has another target in her sights right now—posters of scantily-clad women.

If you live or work in London you simply cannot help but be confronted by posters adorning the sides of all TFL buses depicting three beautiful teenage lingerie models. The poster is frankly OTT. Since when did it become acceptable to have larger than life posters of provocative and scantily clad women moving up and down every street in London? Where did the mystery go?

Woah! Could this be the same Nadine Dorries who carries a prominent picture of a scantily-clad ropey old boiler surrounded by other scantily-clad (and possibly under-age) girls on her blog's header banner...?


Yes. Yes, it could.

Oh, where did the mystery go, Nadine? Where?

Oh woe.

Farage vs Bercow

I think that it is safe to say that—amongst anyone who follows politics—John Bercow was not a popular choice as Speaker.

I just want to make this absolutely fucking clear, because it has a bearing on what follows: John Bercow is a corrupt little fuck who has not only maxed out his expenses account with our money, but he has also bent the rules to within breaking point in order to avoid the taxes that he is happy to impose on us—the taxes, in fact, that fund his lavish lifestyle through his fat fucking salary and his ludicrously high expenses claims.
...

So, what MPs should do is to elect a reasonably uncorrupt person to be Speaker, don't you think? Especially since it is the Speaker who oversees the MPs and ensures that they stick to the rules (such as they are).

After all, these very same MPs have been telling us how ashamed they are, how they realise that their actions were wrong, how they understand the people's anger. As such, they surely must want to elect an untainted Speaker who will be able to summon some moral authority when bringing reform to the system of allowances benefits-in-kind.

But no, our glorious representatives decided to elect John Bercow—who was incredibly corrupt. Most people seem to take it for granted that Bercow was installed mainly through the votes of Labour MPs who—knowing how much the Tories loathed this viper—voted for him in droves, merely to annoy the Conservatives.

Once again, MPs acted not in the interests of the country or of their constituents, but voted according to party political machinations and petty vendettas. Pathetic.

Anyway, the convention is that the main parties should not contest the Speaker's seat—something that leaves the people of that Constituency with no real choice over who should represent them in Parliament. This is hardly a democratic option.

Breaking with convention then is Nigel Farage, who—whilst stepping down from leading UKIP—has decided to contest the Speaker's seat of Buckingham.

Mr Farage, speaking as UKIP's annual conference got under way at Southport, Merseyside, said he had chosen to stand against the Speaker for a number of reasons.

While Mr Bercow had himself been "embroiled" in the expenses row earlier this year, Mr Farage said he was also the "symbolic" head of a Parliament which had ceded powers to Brussels.

"Everything from what light bulbs we can put in our living room to how we regulate hedge funds is decided in Brussels and the Speaker does not intend to reverse that.

"I want the election in Buckingham to be a debate about how we are governed in this country."

The Daily Telegraph said Mr Bercow had changed the designation of his second home - a practice known as flipping - to maximise his allowance claims but the MP said the moves were due to changes in family circumstances.

Mr Bercow, who was elected Speaker in June, said in a statement: "I am more than happy to be judged on my track record over 12 years as MP for Buckingham, my continuing commitment to the constituency and my determination to restore faith in Parliament."

John Bercow has absolutely bugger-all chance of restoring faith in Parliament because—as I have said—he was, and probably still is, up to his eye-brows in corruption and sleaze. His election was a fucking joke.

I was drinking with a number of young Conservative activists the other night, and almost all of them mirrored the feelings of Dizzy and Tory Bear—go, Nigel, go!

In fact, a number of these young Tories said that they were seriously thinking of campaigning on Farage's behalf. Because most Conservatives loathe Bercow as much as your humble Devil does, a fact that is amply shown up in Conservative Home's recent readers poll...


Although it's a tall order—Farage will need to overturn an 18,000 majority (although the fact that Bercow, as SPeaker, is an independent might help)—but I would love to see Nigel in Parliament.

And that is not only because I happen to like the guy personally, and not only because I think that he would throw a spanner or two into the Westminster works, but because it would be one in the eye for all those corrupt bastards who decided to stick two fingers up at the electorate by electing Bercow to "reform" Parliament.

As The Nameless Libertarian so rightly says...

It also shows that if a politician really pisses off the people enough, someone will stand up to tell them to fuck off. And this willingness to defy convention and the status quo can only be to the advantage of the British voter. It states simply that if politicians take the piss, then there will be people to fight against them.

Go for it, Farage. I hope you win. And let this be the first of many successful challenges to the politicians representing the greedy, undemocratic and sickening status quo.

Quite right: go for it, Nigel! Go for it, and beat the bastard!

Another turd in the offing (update)

Newly-minted Labour Whip Kerry McCarthy is positively salivating over Gordo's doomed 5 Year Tractor Production Plan plan for Building Britain's Future.

We're finally going to move towards an elected House of Lords, or a Senate as it might be called. The current life peers will be replaced in tranches, or so I understand it, by elected members.

Oh, goody-goody gum-drops—another House stuffed with corrupt, self-serving party apparatchiks and venal, mindless lobby-fodder.

I can hardly contain my joy.

It seems that, far from realising that they have utterly fucked up the country and buggering off both quickly and quietly, NuLabour are intending to entrench themselves in at least one House for as long as possible—because you can bet that it'll be bloody socialists stuffing the red benches.

Fucking hellski.

UPDATE: I left a comment similar to the above over at Kerry's place. Her response was as follows:

DK—your alternative to democratic elections is what, precisely?

To which I have replied thusly...

Kerry,


As The Bloke's Cookbook said [in that he maintained that I objected to "the travesty of democracy that sits in the House of Commons", rather than democracy per se].

But I do not value democracy, in that I don't think that it is a good system (and certainly not the "representative" democracy that we have)—to cite the old canard, it's just the least worst.

Democracy delivers the tyranny of the majority, and not even a very big majority at that. What this means is that democracy delivers a system whereby a majority can vote, for instance, to steal as much of my money—or the money of the minority—as they like, and I cannot object. Nor can I opt out.

That is morally wrong. But at least, some will say, democracy allows the majority to vote out a bad government.

Except that it doesn't—or not in our "democracy".

This government, Kerry, was elected by 21.6% of the electorate: that is tyranny of the minority.

For me, the virtue of the Lords was that they were not elected, and they did not have to curry favour with either the political parties or the electorate.

As such, they have tended to uphold the basic rights and freedoms—as defined by our constitution—of the minority: they have been the only defenders of those who are effectively disenfranchised by our "democracy".

DK

I have written a number of times about my dislike of democracy—especially the version that we practise—and I don't intend to rehearse my arguments right now (although I have another post on democracy and the lack of choice in the political parties in the offing).

I am always surprised at the fact that so many on the Left are fans of democracy: they seem constantly to back laws against the oppression of, say, homosexuals or ethnic communities, whilst being more than happy to oppress libertarians, etc. in order to achieve their aims. But then I am well aware that the Left has no moral consistency—it's just thoroughly annoying when they paint themselves as the moral arbiters of society.

Anyway, if you'd like a similar, but better-argued, perspective on democracy, may I recommend Doctor Vee's rather good post on the subject.

Good grief indeed...

The shorter Polly Toynbee:

"Labour got utterly kicked in the local and Euro elections because they weren't left-wing enough and didn't nationalise enough banks."

So, nothing to do with the high tax burden, their total fucking incompetence, Brown's utter inability to do anything right as well as being a total cunt, and the fact that the people are not quite as stupid as Polly would like, then...

Still, it seems that Polly really has given up on the Prime Mentalist now.

Pause a moment and ask: what exactly is radical or leftwing about Gordon Brown? There never was a whisker between him and Blair, beyond jealousy. It was a fiction that deceived many...

Who could Polly be talking about, I wonder...?

Hem hem.

P.S. Reviewing one of those articles, here is a classic Mystic Mog moment from our dearest Pollyanna—from 21^st March 2006.

People used to laugh when Brown bombastically promised to end boom and bust: it was once the natural British economic weather. Who's having the last laugh now?

Indeed.

No shit.

Today, we have another stunning anouncement from the University of No Shit Sherlock.

The UK chancellor's forecasts on the economy are "too optimistic", a committee of MPs has said.

The committee also concluded that "the balance of probability errs on the side of bears probably 'going poo-poos' in the woods" and that, all other things being equal, "the Pope is, on the balance of received reports, probably a Catholic".

Fucking hellski, remind me: what the fuck do we pay these people for...?

Even in the midst of all this joy...

... Mad Nad Dorries contrives to make an idiot of herself.

I also didn’t expect to be one of the four people that Damian McBride had slandered in the email, but I am.

The email accusations regarding myself are 100% not true. They are slanderous and therefore libellous.

Fucking hellski, Nadine: slander and libel are two different things: in short, slander is spoken and libel is written. As such, this line...

They are slanderous and therefore libellous.

...could only be written by a moron.

Anyway, as these allegations were written down—in an email—this is, in fact, libel. If you are going to be consulting lawyers, as you claim, perhaps you should ask m'learned friends to educate you in the finer points really fucking basic points of defamation?

Anyway, McBride and Draper, eh? Aaaaaaahahahahaha!

UPDATE: Bookdrunk points out that Nadine Dorries is not above doing a bit of smearing herself.

Shorter Nadine Dorries: it is utterly disgraceful that anyone should attempt to smear their political opponents with entirely false.. oh, wait, never mind.

Unity also summarises some of the finer points of Nadine's hypocrisy over at Liberal Conspiracy. Rumours that Nadine lives in a glass house are entirely unfounded...

I hate Welsh speakers

Translation of an article by the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Rhys Williams, in the current edition of Barn magazine.

Jonathan Swift said that he hated humanity but loved Tom, Dick and Harry. In my case, I would say that I hate Welsh speakers but love Heledd, Gethin and Glesni.

As one raised in a linguisticly mixed home in the coal mining village of Ynysybwl in south east Wales and who was a teacher in Ceredigion for some years, I have by now little patience for those who in self-pity mourn the decline of the Welsh language in rural Wales.

Over the past three or four years, to my surprise, my personal experiences and subjective impressions have been confirmed by two books – one by a Welsh speaking politician and one about a Welsh speaking politician.
The first is Mab y Pregethwr, Cynog Dafis’ autobiography. Here’s an excerpt from chapter three:

”As I was on the threshold of our O-lLevel exams, it was arranged for me to stay on in Aberaeron until the summer, where I would find accomodation with Jac and Olive Rees…While I was staying with Jac and Olive, their eldest child was being raised as a monoglot English speaker. When I went, the fledgeling free boarder raised bilingually without difficulty by an English speaking mother, to question Jac about this, his reply was that he had no choice as Olive did not speak Welsh, and anyway, the child would pick up Welsh in the street and in school. But it didn’t work out that way.”

And later, when Cynog started work as a teacher in Ysgol Cwm Tawe, we read:

”But the one I liked the most was Glyn Lloyd, a Mathematics graduate…Sheila (his wife) was from Cardiff, and didn’t speak Welsh. Like Jac Rees, Glyn, from the wholly Welsh speaking background of Rhiw-fawr, Cwmllynfell, was raising his two children as monoglot English speakers, but occasionally suffered pangs of conscience about it.”

This is one reader who didn’t share his ‘pangs’ when reading the sad story. The story reflected something that we see all the time among the hypocritical self-pitying Welsh speakers.

The next piece comes from Rhys Evans’ biography of Gwynfor Evans. Unlike the tearful insipid tone of the above excerpts, Rhys Evans’ description of Gwynfor arriving in Aberystwyth in October 1932 to begin his University course is a truly amusing masterpiece:

”He knew…he would have numerous opportunities to perfect his faultering Welsh there. But from the first day, Gwynfor was disappointed by Aberystwyth. There to meet him on the station platform was Gwyn Humphries-Jones, a boy from Bala who had shared accomodation with him for three years. Gwynfor expected the boy would act as a cultural guide for him, but it wasn’t to be. When Gwynfor asked him (in English) if he would be so good as to speak Welsh with him, he refused, saying he hadn’t the patience. Remembering hiis expectations regarding Welsh in his native area, discovering how things really were was a lesson to the freshman from Barry. It was kind landlady of Ceinfan, his lodgings on Trefor Road, not his Welsh speaking fellow-student, who helped him to perfect his Welsh.”

Fair play to the outspoken boy from Bala. He didn’t suffer from any ‘pangs of conscience’.

According to Ecclesiastes, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’. And behold, on New Year’s Eve, 2006, on the Taro 9 programme Keith Davies, Director of the Welsh Baccalaureate, or Bagloriaeth Cymru, related a story about Welsh speaking parents in Cwm Gwendraeth who were, today, speaking English to their children. And last year Caryl Parry Jones raised fundamental questions concerning the language standard of pupils in traditionally Welsh speaking areas. In the wake of the discussion that followed, it became clear that some commentators also doubted the standard of Welsh spoken by some of the language’s emmisaries, namely the teachers, who have left rural Wales in order to culturize the crude small children of the south and the north east.

Nonetheless, what is even worse than this is the way many of our Welsh speaking communities’ small important people, intentionally or not, use the language either to keep others out or to keep them in their place. That place, naturally, is several steps beneath them! Indeed, in many Welsh speaking communities the ethos of the Freemasons is rampant throughout society. In the Macpherson report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the London Met were accused of ‘institutional racism’ ie, the racism was so innate and profound that the institution was not even aware of its existence.

These days, after living in west Wales for a quarter of a century more or less, the last thing I’d want to be is a ‘country boy’. That isn’t something that has developed recently. Years ago, I remember my father asking, “Rhys, why are you so nasty when you speak about the country?” I should explain that my mother and father were from a rural background.

Reading Rhys Evans’ and Cynog Dafis’ books and listening to Keith Davies on the telly supplied me with objective proof that there was a basis to the opinion I fostered about rural Wales. Before then I feared I might be mistaken. After all, aren’t rural Welsh speakers a friendly and welcoming folk? That’s exactly how they see themselves. But the ugly truth is that these Welsh people, collectively, use the Welsh language as a weapon – either to close people out or to make them second class citizens.

Ych a fi. With ‘friends’ like these, the Welsh language deserves better.

Source: Casau'r Cymry Cymraeg on Barn 2.0. Crossposted on Welsh Noted, where you can also find Welsh author Dewi Prysor's response to the article. Links to some related posts can also be found here.