Laws and Gove Find One Voice

Yesterday’s Spectator event “The Schools Revolution, One Year On” was an opportunity for Gove to try to sell the rapid strides he has made in education reform. It was also an opportunity for David Laws to further his attempts at a political rehabilitation. Despite fighting each other in the shadow education briefs for their respective parties, one  year on and Laws was tripping over himself to “welcome, the necessary and important advances” that Gove has made.

In the delegate pack Laws continued to gush about the Education Secretary’s agenda, concluding;

“I cannot as a liberal justify preventing people from establishing schools to serve the public, within the same constraints of access and funding which are granted to other state-funding schools. So I wish the Free Schools movement, as well as the Academies movement, all the very best for the future.”

Gove was clearly inspired by the LibDem assessment, adding his thoughts;

“I cannot as a liberal justify preventing people from establishing schools to serve the public, within the same constraints of access and funding which are granted to other state-funding schools. So I wish the Free Schools movement, as well as the Academies movement, all the very best for the future.”

If Gove were to get the call up to the FCO it seems there is an identikit ready to step into his place…

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No Voice, No Rights

H/T Junican and Chris Snowdon for this ONS study: ONS is developing new measures of national well-being. The aim is that these new measures will cover the quality of life of people in the UK, environmental and sustainability issues, as well as the economic performance of the country.

To develop better measures of the nation's well-being we want to ask what matters most in people's lives and what is important for measuring the nation's well-being.

I signed up (just name and email address required) and wrote my answer to the following question: What things in life matter most to you?

The simplest of things in life: to be able to sit in a pub and drink a pint of beer and smoke a cigarette and talk to friends. This simple thing brought pleasure and laughter, and allowed networks of friendships and pub communities to grow and flourish within a shared culture.

It's illegal now to do this, of course. And so the happiness it provided, and the friendship, and the community, and the shared culture have all been crushed. With them also, needless to say, freedom and democracy were also crushed.

There was no indication that the above would be published anywhere, or even considered. Still, no harm done by writing something.

It will almost certainly be ignored. Smokers are people whose opinions are systematically ignored. They have no voice in this 'society'.

Chris Snowdon's piece is tagged 'pretend consultation', and he's almost certainly right. The British people will be found to be deliriously happy about everything.

Along similar lines is Michael Kelly's comment on Stewart Cowan's Facebook page:

Stop defending smokers' rights. They have none.

I took the trouble not only to check the Facebook page, but also to find out a bit more about Michael Kelly:

Michael Kelly - Celtic director (1990-1994)

Michael Kelly is a Scottish politician and businessman. He held the position of Lord Provost from 1980 to 1984, and was Lord Rector of Glasgow University from 1983 to 1987.

It's one thing to hear such vicious sentiments from some anonymous online commenter. It's quite another to hear them from someone who has held a number of senior posts in public life.

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