Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Business of Blairs legacy (Education and all that)
Somehow I feel that the story of the newly built Academy School in Peterborough which has no play areas is symbolic of the new Labour Blair ethos.
Dan Hardie sums it all up well...
Hear, hear.
This really is Blair. Worship of power manipulators, contempt for real people, centralisation of services, misunderstanding of the real value of 'Market Forces' and Business'. Oh and the asbo-isation of childhood. (all those uncontrolled young things running around...)
Now we must wonder how Iron Broon picks up these messes.
Britain’s most expensive state school is being built without a playground because those running it believe that pupils should be treated like company employees and do not need unstructured play time.The authorities at the £46.4m Thomas Deacon city academy in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, due to open this autumn, also believe that the absence of a playground will avoid the risk of “uncontrollable” numbers of children running around in breaks at the 2,200-pupil school.We are all Company Employees now it seems, at whatever age...
Dan Hardie sums it all up well...
The local parents were not consulted as to whether they wanted their children to be sent to a playground-less school. They now have no democratic way of changing this decision- short of hoping for a change of policy in London. That’s it, because the management of the school is answerable only to central government, not to anybody elected locally....
Here we have a clear example of why local democracy can’t be dismissed as the obsession of a few anoraks. Petty authoritarians, grasping architects, empire-building managers: these have always existed and will always do so. The way that we can keep them from doing too much damage is to give the people most affected by their policies the democratic right to vote them out of power.
Hear, hear.
This really is Blair. Worship of power manipulators, contempt for real people, centralisation of services, misunderstanding of the real value of 'Market Forces' and Business'. Oh and the asbo-isation of childhood. (all those uncontrolled young things running around...)
Now we must wonder how Iron Broon picks up these messes.
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