Tuesday, March 25, 2008

So Weak: Dale's Diary, Weakest Five Posts Ever?


It is just possible that the last 24 hours or so have been the weakest ever in the history of Iain Dale's Diary. Looking for some acute political analysis from Britain's top political blogger today has been needle in haystack fruitless.

Instead we have had tedious treading water on the failure of Tory planning and highways authorities in Kent; the amusing antics of the nutty NUT,
specifically on military preying on schools (both NUT and Iain Dale are wrong); some vacuous twaddle on the conscience wrestling over the Frankenfurter Bill; some fillyblogbusting over alleged fillybustering from Jack Straw and some absolute tosh attacking the speaker of the house.

Presumably Iain has promised himself that there will be four posts a day and he's not had much time; but he's still hit the target, albeit with nonsense. I blame Total Politics, the new Cashcroft vehicle, substantially slower than the Dassault jet, but supporting the Tories direction of travel none-the-less.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you bored too, little heffalump Chris? You haven't had a go at slagging off Guido for a while. It's a bit quiet on the Libedemologist front too.

Oh well, early to bed and back to picking up litter in our red overalls tomorrow morning. This community service stuff is OK when the weather is fine and warm but it freezes your bollocks off at the moment.

Chris Paul said...

Thanks Dave, early for you to give up the drinking though, what's wrong?

PS Watch a few Libdemologist scandals develop here quite soon.

Harry Barnes said...

Try some non-top political bloggers.

silas said...

You say both Iain Dale and the NUT are wrong over the debate about stopping the armed forces into schools. I fail to see precisely what you mean.

Iain Dale's position seems to be that by even having a debate about it, the NUT are showing themselves to be unfit to teach children because they must be members of CND.

The NUT's position is that the armed forces shouldn't be allowed into schools because they're playing with the minds of children to make the armed forces seem like a reasonable career choice.

Are you saying that the armed forces should be allowed into schools and that the NUT are fit to teach children? Or are you saying that the NUT aren't the unpatriotic, leftist group described by Dale, AND the armed forces should be allowed into schools?

Chris Paul said...

Mmmm, Silas. Clearly Dale is wrong to think one's views on military careers content in schools might make one an unfit say mathematics or cookery teacher. What other views is he going to take into account in his restrictions on entry to the profession?

Clearly wrong.

But if schools present a variety of open days and career drop ins including military, police, NHS, accountancy etc etc then I don't see that any one of these groups should be nationally outlawed from access.

Clearly we have state schools already with CCFs and rifle ranges and the like.

The military do offer some useful careers and training that many people may benefit from. As well as being sent from time to time to do the will of the state which sometimes even coincides with the will of the people.

Barring the military from careers type content in schools is probably a bit OTT. 20 years ago they were getting banned from shows and parades including in Manchester, now they march in Gay Pride.

Between them they employ something around the same number of people as Tesco I'd guess. 200,000. With a 0.1% of being killed in action.

The school ban probably ain't going to happen. But it is actually up to LEAs, governors, parents, perhaps students, as well as educators to make any decisions on the matter together.

At least we can say that allowing access to schools career strands is a somethingly controlled environment - unlike say down the Mall with commission-driven recruitment of cannon fodder as occurs in the USA.

So, if we need to summarise I'm saying that the NUT aren't unfit to teach (though this resolution might question their focus) as Dale suggests, but that I'd prefer military recruiters going into schools as a career option alongside others - as long as we have a military - rather than hanging around in Malls and offering prize draws and cash back offers to trap the under class.