Murphy's Law #94,000

Yes, I read Timmy regularly, so it's only inevitable that I should decide that we should look at tax-avoiding accountant Richard Murphy's latest prognostications, shall we?

Google is tax avoiding: by definition that means what they are doing is legal, of course. And it may even be that what Google is doing is within the spirit of EU law, although that is to simply miss the fact that EU tax laws have now been spectacularly rigged to advantage companies over people so that the spirit of the law has itself been corrupted.

But even that is not the real point of why Google needs to be in the dock over its tax. The real reasons is that Google has set itself the motto “don’t be evil”. That means that Google explicitly recognises it has choices about the way it does business. And by choosing to do business as Google does, in a way that ensures it pays little or no corporate tax on its vast profits earned outside the USA in almost any of the countries where they actually arise Google is saying it is willing to free-ride our economies.

What that means is that in my opinion Google is saying it has no interest in giving a return back to the societies that are letting it prosper.

That’s doing evil in my book.

Look, I am no stranger to calling Google out on its somewhat optimistic catchphrase; but—via Daring Fireball—let's just look at another side to the company, shall we?

Instead, Bock, who joined the company in 2006 after a stint with General Electric, blew me away by disclosing a never-before-made-public-perk: Should a U.S. Googler pass away while under the employ of the 14-year old search giant, their surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50% of their salary every year for the next decade. Even more surprising, a Google spokesperson confirms that there’s “no tenure requirement” for this benefit, meaning most of their 34 thousand Google employees qualify.

Now, someone like Richard Murphy will shriek and scream about this benefit. The money that is going to the widows of people who actually added value to the company—people like Murphy will say—is actually owned to the millions of people who have added fuck all to the company.

But that is because people like Richard Murphy are, in fact, fucking devil-spawn. They are scum-sucking shit-holes, fit only for fucking with the most rancid cocks; they are like a three-week dead vagina with maggots and an unhealthy cockroach infestation.

People like Richard Murphy—though not, necessarily, Richard Murphy himself, you understand—are evil little bastards who, having saved huge amounts of money through their own tax-avoidance practices, would now deprive a company's widows and children of benefits so that Barry Wiggins down the council estate can buy another mastiff.

To describe Richard Murphy as a disgusting, hypocritical little cunt with all the morals of a weasel would, you might think, be utterly beyond the pale. And, of course, I am not doing that.

I will merely let you draw your own conclusions...

Treat kids as money boxes...

Regular readers will know that some of the benefits that your humble Devil gets most angry about are those surrounding children.

There are two strands to this ire. The first is a simple indignation that I—a childless man whose lifestyle is not only unsubsidised but heavily taxed (and sometimes illegal!)—should be forced to subsidise the lifestyles of those who choose to have children.

The second is based not on petulance but on a real concern for the kind of mentality that child benefits induce. Let me elaborate...

This year, it was reported that some GCSE students were visited by Michelle Obama, and one of them found herself inspired.

... before meeting Mrs Obama, Talitha didn’t see the point in school. She hung out with kids who didn’t take work seriously and was ready to throw her life away—to become a "stereotypical baby-mum", as she told the Times.

Why? Why would you saddle yourself with an expensive, time-consuming, helpless human being? Yes, all your friends may be doing it—but why are they saddling themselves with an expensive, time-consuming, helpless human being?

Because they will be paid for doing so.

More importantly, why should a visit from a strong woman convince Talitha that her hitherto chosen route may not be, y'know, entirely fulfilling.

Because using another human being simply as a way to gain money and a council flat is a pretty low ambition. And not just "low" as in morally suspect, but "low" as in "a pathetic way to waste your potential".

No, I'm not doing down those who choose to be mothers because they want to care for a child: I am condemning those who want to have a child because they cannot think of any other way to fulfil themselves—or, in too many cases, to make a living.

And of course critics tell me that no one would actually have a child simply for the money—that would be awful. Well, yes—yes, it would.

The 36-year-old woman is accused of shaving her son’s head and eyebrows and forcing him to wear a bandana to school to make it look like he was receiving chemotherapy.
It is alleged she then swindled the authorities by claiming a carer’s allowance, tax exemptions and a disability allowance for the boy, who is now aged nine.
Gloucester magistrates’ court was told how the mother allegedly forged doctors’ notes and prevented the boy and his seven-year-old sister from taking part in school activities by leading them to believe they were too unwell.

Of course I object to the £100,000 scammed out of our taxes by this pathetic excuse for a human being. But more, I object to the way in which she treated her poor children—she made them suffer simply so that she could get more money.

But what do you expect when our entire benefits system is set up to encourage people to pimp their children?

The Free Schools revolution

Regular readers will know that your humble Devil is a great believer in education: a good education can set anyone up for life—in the best possible sense.

Giving someone a shit education, on the other hand, should be regarded as tantamount to murder: only, in this case, it is not the murderer who suffers the life sentence, but the victim.

So, let us see what happens when the state is removed from the business of education, shall we?

Harris Academies, one of the best-known new chains of state secondaries, have today posted an extraordinary set of results. It's worth studying because it shows how a change of management can transform education for pupils in deprived areas.

Pour in money if you like, but the way a school is run is the key determinant. This is the idea behind City Academies, perhaps Labour's single best (and most rapidly-vindicated) policy. The notion is rejected by teaching unions, who loathe the idea that some teachers are better than others. Bad schools are kept bad by the idea that their performance is due to deeply-ingrained social problems, etc.

Harris has produced a table showing the results of their schools when they were last run by the council, and this year's results. It speaks best for itself:

I would most especially like you all to look at the data and compare the Final Year As An LEA School [state-run school] with the current results.

And that is why the state needs to be removed from the education of the nation's children.

And it is why anyone opposing Academies or Free Schools is not just a stupid, pig-ignorant bigot: they are actively evil people.

Many wet liberal arseholes would argue that such people "are not aware of the facts, so you cannot blame them" (as they do about murdering Greenies). Yeah? Well, my view is that ignorance is no fucking excuse—if you don't know the facts about the campaign you are participating in, then you shouldn't participate. And if you do participate, then you are responsible.

As for the bunch of shits at the NUT and the NASWT, and all those other teaching unions... Well, they know the facts. They know the results. And yet still they campaign against Free Schools and Academies.

Why?

Because they think that the jobs of piss-poor teachers are more important than the future prospects of millions of children. These people are utter scum.

Just think about it: these teachers and their fat-cat union acolytes would rather condemn millions of children to a life of missed opportunities and poverty and failure rather than risk their own fat wedge of cash.

These cunts are beneath contempt.

The Blog Society

Your humble Devil doesn't know where Anna Raccoon has gone: right now her domain is showing a placeholder, and it may be that she has simply forgotten to renew it. Or something else may have happened. (Grumpy Old Twat writes a eulogy, but seems to have no more idea than I: all we know is that her online presence has been entirely obliterated.)

However, I had meant to find time to write a comment on her superb article entitled The Blog Society and, as such, it was still in my Dock—waiting for some attention. However, whilst Anna is not around (and until we find out what has happened), I have chosen to re-publish the article, because it is such an important and excellent example of how we pimply, single, cauliflower-nosed loners can help ordinary people.

Let us hope that Anna returns in short order to complain about me hijacking her work—in the meantime, however, read and enjoy...

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The Blog Society

Did you hear it? Friday night, around tea-time? The crunch of gears engaging, the whine of engines turning over. Perhaps you smelt the noxious diesel fumes as Sandwell Borough Council revved up their engines, lowered their gun turrets and reversed their tanks off the front lawn they have been parked on for the past 136 days?

Sheila Martin’s front lawn. Sandwell Borough Council have blinked. Backed down. Taken their ball and gone home.

Sheila Martin, a frail 70 year old widow, in severe ill health, who had committed the dastardly offence of nibbing her cigarette and letting the lighted end fall to the floor, whilst dutifully stowing the ‘butt’ end in her handbag, is no longer to be prosecuted.

In the eyes of the apparatchiks employed by Sandwell Borough council as ‘enforcement wardens’, that millimetre of lit and sterile cigarette ash constituted ‘the discarded end of a cigarette’ within the meaning of section 98 of the Environmental Act 1990 as amended by Section 18 of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, and Sheila was to pay £75 for the crime of not putting burning cigarette ash into her handbag like a good little girl.

Adam Aspinall of the Sunday Mercury, Sheila’s local Sunday paper, was incredulous when he heard this news. He wrote a small piece for his paper that Sunday describing the subsequent events, detailing how Sheila had been threatened with a £2,500 fine for not paying the original fine.

I happened to read it; I wanted to speak to Sheila, I wanted to know more. I spent the better part of a day methodically telephoning everyone in the Oldbury area with the name of Martin. There are an awful lot of them—none of them turned out to be Sheila.

It didn’t occur to me initially to contact the paper—journalists and bloggers, they’re like oil and water aren’t they? At permanent war with each other, hurling insults with vicious abandon. I came from the ‘stench of the blogosphere’; that famed sewer; one of the pajamahadeen that journalists delight in looking down on. Some 40 phone calls later, in desperation, I thought it might be worth a call to the high moral ground of the newspaper.

I was in for a surprise. I had carefully marshalled my credentials; I had been instrumental in getting Nick Hogan out of jail when he had been an unfair victim of the anti-smoking legislation, I had a respectable readership, I was sure I could help Sheila Martin fight this iniquitous penalty; pumped up with self righteous adrenaline I was all ready for them to put me down.

They didn’t. Adam Aspinall was delighted that someone could help Sheila, he had been affected by her story too, and he was not a heartless hack thinking only of his next by-line. His problem, one shared with every other regional paper, was lack of resources. Newspaper no longer have spare lawyers sitting around their offices with nothing better to do than advise on legal technicalities; journalists are driven by deadlines, and the requirements of their advertising departments. His Editor couldn’t spare him to spend hours researching similar stories, writing letters, reading legal cases, phoning local councillors—but the Blogosphere could do all that and more!

We verbally shook hands on a deal. Adam would give me all the information he had—including the precious phone number of Sheila’s neighbour, if I would agree to publish nothing ahead of his Sunday deadline and share everything I had with him.

It was a deal that was to come under severe pressure when a major Sunday National became aware of one of the earlier stories I had written on Sheila. They contacted me; could I put them in touch with Sheila? Whyfore? Oh, you know, this was just a story in the Blogosphere and they had to check it out for themselves. My response was to say sorry, no can do. Half an hour later they phoned again. Was she Sheila Martin of ‘X’ Road. No, I said she wasn’t. Why was I being so awkward, they asked? They were intending to make a big story out of this; they might even mention my name—whoo hoo! The information simply wasn’t mine to give away, I said. Another half hour and they were back—they’d pay me, a not insignificant sum, and by the way, was she Sheila Martin of ‘Y’ Road? No she wasn’t! They were welcome to use what I had written already—I could hardly stop them, it was out there on the internet—but I wasn’t at liberty to give them any more than that.

Another half hour of that Saturday night rolled by—closer to their deadline, as I’d realised by now. The phone rang once more – they could double their offer. Wow! Why, I asked, were they so keen on gaining her phone number? Well, they had a photographer standing by in Birmingham—at 10pm at night, and thought they might just call round to this elderly lady’s house and surprise her in her nightgown and get a picture of her smoking to go with their story. They thought they might even get it on their front page. They’d ‘give me a name check’ and if I ever wanted to get into journalism it would be useful for me...

That entire exchange encapsulates why I would never want to get into journalism, why I am happy to be a ‘semi-literate blogger’—I would never want to be subjected to the pressures that see Sheila’s distress and fragility as fodder to fill a late night deadline on a slow news day. Her dignity and privacy invaded for a handful of tenners.

The following morning the Sunday Mercury and I both published our new stories on Sheila. The response of the Blogosphere was extraordinary—within a couple of hours I had more e-mails than I had comments—and the comments were at that time running around the 50 mark, a figure now way out of date. I had e-mails from Barristers and Academics, Solicitors and Local Authority Legal Advisors—all willing and able to pitch up with their specialist knowledge on Sheila’s behalf—free of charge. Detailed information on the legal technicalities behind her offence positively poured out of them. By the end of that first night we had a legal team that would not have disgraced the defence team for a major conspiracy trial at the Old Bailey.

We also had e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers for virtually everyone on the staff at Sandwell Council, home addresses, photographs of their houses for heavens sake, even, in one case, a photograph of the aluminium wheels on their BMW that were for sale on e-bay—the cuttings library at the Old Mirror building was famed for the ability with which it could come up with a cornucopia of information on any obscure subject; I would pitch the wit and wisdom of the Blogosphere against their sleuthing skills any day.

That was the network that the Sunday Mercury was able to engage with, and by putting their trust in the energy, expertise and exchange of information that the Blogosphere with its predominantly Libertarian ethos is so good at, and combining it with their on the ground knowledge, and contacts, together we have achieved a remarkable result.

Sandwell Borough Council has finally decided, after 136 days, that ‘it is not in the public interest’—decode that as you will!—to persecute Sheila Martin any longer. She was not just a frail elderly widow who would bow to their demands; behind her there was a mighty powerhouse, the combined forces of their local paper and the blogosphere that was marking their every footstep, dogging their every incompetence, detailing their every inaction, and Sheila didn’t look such an attractive ‘mark’ any longer.

Sheila is delighted; she has said:

“This whole process has been one long nightmare and my health is suffering as a result.

“The stress of everything has caused me to collapse twice and end up in hospital; I don’t know how much more I can take.

“If I was guilty it wouldn’t be a problem but I’m not so while there is breath left in me I will fight but I have to admit it is taking its toll now.

“What I cannot understand is why it is taking so long, surely it is costing the taxpayer lots of money to deal with this and it is a load of nonsense.

“It is funny how I haven’t seen one single enforcement officer since this came out and when you walk outside the council building the streets are full of cigarette butts and fag ends – where were they when that happened or do they belong to council employees?

“I am just so glad that I have had support from the Sunday Mercury and the internet bloggers because otherwise I would have felt so alone.”

I am delighted too. Not just for Sheila, but for a new era. One where the main stream media and the Internet can learn to work together. There are strengths and weaknesses on both sides, together we are more than the sum of our respective parts. Together we form the Blog Society—an Internet based version of the Big Society, which has the expertise and initiative to force back the cold, dead, hand of the State, and right the petty wrongs it imposes on decent men and women like Sheila.

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It used to be that no person could be fined or have their property seized in any way without a court order; it used to be that going to court meant being judged by a jury of one's peers. This is no longer the case.

We endure fines and confiscations at the whim of a mindless bureaucracy who then use our money to further constrict our freedoms.

And regardless of whether this is "the will of the population" (and I very much doubt that it is), this must stop.

A massive thanks must go to Anna and the others who have made a stand in this case. And I hope that Sandwell Council's officers, officials and councillors all burn in hell—along with any others who try the same.

Unfortunately, they won't, because the British people have exchanged their freedoms for security—and we all know how that ends up.

I wouldn't mind but, thanks to the wonder of the world that is democracy the tyranny of the majority, they have taken all of us with them...

Not just dangerous—stupid and corrupt as well

To follow on from my last piece on Catherine Bennett and Harriet Bradley, my impecunious and peripatetic Athenian friend has dug a little deeper and found that the whole article is even more insulting and poisonous than even I had thought.

Do go and read the whole thing but—in the manner of the very best debaters (of which, I am assured, the poor little Greek boy is one)—Mr Eugenides's summary admirably encapsulates the entire sorry debacle in a few pithy sentences.

So, just to recap: a woman who used to live with a lord in a 365-room mansion, now in a household with a combined income of some quarter of a million pounds a year, has read a PR puff commissioned and paid for to advertise a price comparison website, and uses this as evidence that we should all just take what we're given by the state and shut up.

Welcome to the world of chattering-class leftism, readers.

That's right—chattering-class leftism involves fascism, gullibility, corruption, stupidity, massive riches and utterly piss-poor writing. I just can't imagine why everyone isn't bought into this...

Can you?

What a strange hero

Margaret Hodge: "I love the sound of children screaming in the morning."

In a depressingly self-serving article, Brown's pollster and shyster, Deborah Mattinson, wibbles on about immigration.

Most insultingly, however, she builds Margaret Hodge MP into some kind of people's champion.

Mrs Hodge was a local hero: here, at last, was a politician who was prepared to listen to voters and speak out on their behalf.

Obnoxio points out that she was, essentially, just someone who said what the public wanted to hear—which is, of course, being a politician through and through.

However, long-time readers of The Kitchen will know that your humble Devil has a loathing for Margaret Hodge for entirely another reason—one that is laid out in this Telegraph article at some length (and also in this Grauniad timeline).

All right-thinking people like to imagine, when hearing stories of the maltreatment of children, that they themselves would guarantee sanctuary. But often they simply don't. A senior social worker, Liz Davies, and her manager, David Cofie, first told Margaret Hodge, then leader of Islington council, in 1990 of their suspicions that there was widespread sexual abuse of children in Islington care homes.

Ms Hodge instead believed senior officials who assured her that nothing was the matter. In 1992, the London Evening Standard published extensive evidence of the abuse, which Ms Hodge denounced as "a sensationalist piece of gutter journalism". In 1995, an independent report found that the council had indeed failed to investigate the allegations properly.

As the author notes, in 2003 Tony Blair appointed Margaret Hodge to be the first ever Minister For Children which remains, in my opinion, possibly the cheekiest "fuck you" that Chuckles ever doled out to the British people.

That Margaret "la-la-la, I can't hear the screams of the children being raped" Hodge would accept such a post is adequate enough to tell you what a shameless little shit she is—even without her dog-whistle, BNP-aping whining in previous elections.

So, whilst Margaret Hodge was prepared to "prepared to listen to voters and speak out on their behalf", she was not, apparently, prepared to listen to staff members who told her that there was systematic child abuse going on in the care homes run by the Council that she headed up. And so she just let it continue.

There is no real point to this post, other than to remind people what this disgusting woman actually stands for: to keep foremost in people's minds that Margaret Hodge represents BNP-style immigration laws and systematic child abuse.

These people are dangerous

This is Catherine Bennett, an Observer columnist. Remember this face, keep it in your mind. Because this is one of the faces that evil wears.

Some unpleasant little turd named Catherine Bennett has an article up at Comment Is Forbidden which is not only unbelievably patronising but actually dangerous.

I mean, the headline is an absolute corker—yes, I know that the columnists don't (necessarily) write the headlines, but it does betray the mindset of unadulterated evil that is endemic in those who run The Grauniad and The Observer.

Since when was giving people a choice a good idea?

That statement alone is one that takes my breath away. How can anyone who enjoys the freedoms and privileges of a liberal democracy—circumscribed thoough those have become—write such a line?

The coalition's obsession with self-determination, whether on schools or GPs, penalises the least able

Ah, yes, of course—the "least able". That's right: because some people might make bad decisions, then choice should be removed from everyone, eh?

Except, of course, the really important people. Like Observer columnists, for instance.

Anyway, let us continue with some of the highlights in this delightfully authoritarian article, shall we?

It is not merely the chorus from anguished parents (and patients), that they cannot exercise choice where there is no spare capacity, that might give a rational education secretary pause, but a growing body of research indicating that too much choice is overwhelming. Gove will know of the much cited experiment with jam, by the US academic Sheena Iyengar, which found consumers were more than six times more likely to buy a pot if they had to choose from six varieties, rather than 24.

This is, I think you'll find, a rather well-known phenomenon, elaborated upon in a 2004 book by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice—Why More Is Less. In this lovely tome, Barry opines that too much choice makes us unhappy.

But I don't think, darling Catherine, that he maintains that therefore there should be no choice at all.

If uncertainty about preserves is a problem one can probably live with, or possibly enjoy, a similar helplessness in the face of big, irreversible decisions is, to judge by a new study, State of Confusion by Professor Harriet Bradley of Bristol University, something that should worry a government that advertises choice as an unmitigated good.

And again, Catey-baby, I don't think that this government is advertising "choice as an unmitigated good": that would be very difficult to square with the fact that, actually, they are offering us very little choice in anything.

However, what this government does advocate is that some choice is better than none.

Because otherwise we would be living in the very worst kind of dictatorship and you, my little poppet, could well be working down a fucking mine—or simply forced to be a breeding machine—and not sitting comfortably at home and vomiting your authoritarian fantasies in a lefty rag.

I mean, the French (just to pick one example) have a massive range of choice in their health provision: they pay some Social Security to the state and for the rest they have to choose a private insurer, and choose a doctor and choose a hospital and... Well, you get the idea.

The point is that the French have far more choice in their provision of health alone, and they seem to cope. Not only do they seem to cope, but their health system is—in terms of outcomes—far, far better than ours (WHO ranked it the best in the world in 2000). And the French people do not seem to be standing still, paralysed by the choices open to them.

After surveying 3,000 people on their attitudes to choice, Bradley says: "I believe most people want the state to make these big decisions for them."

But this is the problem, isn't it? The state can't make choices for some—it must make choices for all. And thus those who do want to choose have that freedom removed from them. Or, of course, they choose to move house to get into a good school's catchment area; or—horror of horrors—they choose to send their children to private schools.

At which point, of course, they get attacked, ridiculed and demonised by Grauniad columnists (who all, of course, do precisely the same thing and so leaven their more aggressive articles with the occasional 1,000 word screed declaring how guilty they feel about being rich enough to be able to send little Jocasta to a "good school" rather than the local shithouse).

Anyway, who is this Professor Harriet Bradley?

BA (Bristol), PGCE (Bristol), BSc (Leicester), PhD (Durham)

Research Interests
Harriet Bradley is a specialist in the study of women's employment. Her broader research interests are the sociology of gender, feminism, industrial relations and the sociology of work, along with a general interest in social divisions and inequalities. A developing interest is in issues around women, health and maternity.

Ah, I see: Professor Harriet Bradley is one of these eternal students, someone who has made a choice about her career. In fact, Harriet Bradley made a choice to swan about studying sociology on our dime, and then to write articles about how we should not have any choices. Which is kind of sensible of her because, given the choice, I wouldn't be forced to fund her utterly pointless career.

This is a point that Timmy makes rather eloquently because, of course, people like Harriet Bradley and Catherine Bennett—like most of the other middle-class lefties that one meets—fully expect that they will be giving the orders, not having to obey the rules themselves.

An obvious question presents itself. Did Professor Harriet Bradley choose to become an academic? Work, strive, to become a Professor? Decide to write a book?

Wouldn’t she be happier stacking shelves in the supermarket if that’s where the State would place her to relieve her of the anguish of having to make a decision?

And if not, why not?

Is there perhaps some special class of people who both should decide for themselves and also decide for the peons? Those special enough to cope with the difficulty of choice and to alleviate others of it?

Because if that is the argument then they can all go fuck themselves quite frankly.

Absolutely right—these people are dangerous scum.

But hark! Catherine is not finished with her fascist screed...

This is not only because, in many cases, consumers are well aware that the choice of, say, school or hospital is – unlike a commercial selection of jams or phones or holidays – an utter fiction. The process of choosing is itself oppressive when the issues are life-changing, relating to health, money or careers.

Yes, but we allow people to have a choice of jams, but we constrict choice in the really important things. And because some people cannot cope with too much choice, we should allow people to have a choice of jam but not choice in their childrens' education.

Because, you see, being able to choose how your children are educated is way too important for you stupid, ignorant parents to be trusted with. The beneficent State will make the choice for you.

"Don't like what the State has chosen? Well, that's just tough shit. Here, have some fucking jam and shut the fuck up."

Or, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, "go back to bed, Britain: your government is in control."

In her London focus groups, [Harriet] found parents "absolutely terrified of the whole process of selecting schools", because of the impenetrable, changing rules about eligibility.

Yes, this is a reason to simplify the rules on eligibility, not to remove the ability of parents to choose which school to send their children to. And, of course, one of the reasons that parents might be terrified is because if they try too hard to get a good education for their child, then they will find themselves in court.

And those articles linked to above give the lie to this whole article: not only do people care enough about their children's education to go to massive lengths to be able to make an informed choice—they are prepared to break the law in order to do so.

Even allowing for those professional oxymorons, choice advisers...

Um, if people are confused by the choices on other, then they will often ask advice. Sometimes those people will be friends, sometimes they'll be a shop floor worker, sometimes they will be random people on the internet. If you have to make a choice, then you want to make the right one—so you ask for advice. So, I fail to see what is "oxymoronic" about choice advisers (assuming, of course, that advise is all that they do which is, I grant you, a big assumption).

... this situation favours society's most able, while it penalises confused, passive, busy or ill-informed individuals, though they all want the same thing: a good local school.

Yeah, well, you see Catey, my little poppet, we've tried the No Choice route, and it has delivered shitty local schools. Do you see?

Choice is not simply about giving people the freedom to choose the course of their own lives, rather than being funnelled down whichever route the state thinks best, but also about introducing competition: because, like it or not, competition makes things better. In this case, competition will deliver better schools—if only because so many of them (especially in inner cities) would really struggle to be any worse.

And one of the main reasons that people have such a difficult time choosing for themselves is because our education is so utterly, comprehensively [geddit?] shit that they have had all of their reasoning ability stripped out of them. And that is assuming that they are not part of the 20% who leave school in Britain unable to read or write.

For those people, "choice advisers" are probably the only way in which they can make a choice, given that they are unable to read about them for themselves. But this illiteracy is not entirely the fault of the people themselves: it is the fault of an education system that gets pupils and money regardless of results—because those pupils are forced to go to those schools, and we are forced to pay for them.

It is the abolition of choice that has created people who are incapable of choosing. But we should not screw over future generations because people like Catherine Bennett and Harriet Bradley believe that the world would be better if no one was allowed to choose at all.

In the world of Catherine Bennett and Harriet Bradley, we should penalise "the most able" so that we do not confuse the least able. These disgustingly evil harridans want to drag everybody down to the lowest common denominator so that everyone can suffer to the same extent.

Except, of course, people like Catherine Bennett and Harriet Bradley: they will be allowed to make their own choices, looking down from their taxpayer-funded ivory towers watching the slaves file past below.

These people are the scum of the Earth: god help us all if they are ever put into a position to be able to do anything about their desires. As it is, they can only whisper their poisoned words into the ears of the gullible, the stupid, the corrupt, the brutal and the would-be dictators: the only thing that Catherine Bennett and Harriet Bradley are upset about is that—unlike the previous bunch of bastards—this government does not want to listen to them.

And thank fuck for that, frankly.