Open Road

Wednesday Jan 27th 2010

Love-bombed Lib Dems

Oh yes, they can. Not only are the Lib Dems the nicest people in politics but they also secretly harbour some of the hottest young political things, with scarcely a sandal or beard between them. There’s a reason that they are the only political party being love-bombed right now…

Or, in fact there’s a couple of reasons; Julia Goldsworthy MP; star of reality TV, Jeremy Browne MP; the totty for Taunton, and of course, the real blond bombshell of the party; David Laws MP. Outside Parliament the Lib Dems are also holding their own; with East London’s finest Keith Angus, Alice Humphreys in Mole Valley and the man whose smile could melt a thousand Tory hearts; Paul Harrod working hard in Bristol North West.

Cream might always rise to the top, but I know what I’d prefer with my morning cup of tea…

Tuesday Jan 26th 2010

Cream always rises to the top…

So, it’s official.  (I have decided) The Conservatives, present and future, are the hottest…the most desirable…the dreamboats.
Personal incumbent favourites include Jeremy Hunt, George Osborne and, of course, Dave.  But with the likes of Peter Lyburn and Zac Goldsmith eagerly vying for their seat in Parliament – and let’s face it, they alone would boost the ratings of BBC Parliament – how can Labour and the Liberal Democrats compete?  Answer – they can’t.

Sermon from the Mount

Been reading Ferdinand Mount’s memoir ‘Cold Cream’ (highly recommended, by the way).  It reminded me of the extent to which Margaret Thatcher was despised, not only by the Guardianista/BBC/mandarin types, and by leading economists - over 300 of them signed an open letter criticising the 1981 budget which turned the tide of recession - but by the old patrician Tories in her cabinet and party.
These were people trapped in a past where the role of the right was the orderly management of decline, and a slow retreat in the face of received ‘progressive’ wisdom.
David Cameron will face exactly the same challenges if he becomes PM.  Thatcher never lost her focus and her sense of mission.  If Cameron wants a role model he could do worse than read the relevant section of Cold Cream.

Monday Jan 18th 2010

Treading lightly on teaching

David Cameron’s speech on education runs to four pages on the Conservative Party website.  It is full of good sense.  But there is only one sentence in those four pages on the party’s big idea:  the opening up of the education market to allow parents and charities to create schools outside the stifling embrace of local education authorities.
Presumably that is to avoid accusations that the Tories don’t really care about the state sector:  all they care about are private schools.
Understandable but still a great pity.  The educational establishment - academics, teaching unions and theorists - are the people who have let children down.  They have been the groups that have, since the sixties, learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.  They have been at the forefront of every passing fad and craze.  The education system has fallen entirely under the control of the producers of education instead of the consumers - children - who should be the real focus. 
Parents, on the other hand, have not deviated one iota from a very simple view of education.  They want their children to be taught to read, write, spell, and add up; and to gain this knowledge in a formal institution where teachers teach and children listen and question politely. 
That has proven to be beyond the best minds that professional education can muster.  They have had their chance and abysmally failed their examination.  The future of education lies outside government control, in the creation of a thriving parent-led schools sector, focused not on excuses for poor results, but on aspirations for better standards.  Not only will those schools be successful:  they will act as a powerful example and challenge to the schools that remain in local authority hands.
That should be the Conservative’s number one educational priority.

Tuesday Jan 12th 2010

Road to ruin

Everyone’s bored of the snow, right?  But Salieri can’t resist one final observation on the irritating debate about householders clearing their pavements.  Not so much on whether one then becomes liable for accidents if pedestrians slip on the exposed surface, but on two other matters.  First, are we happy with a society where if an accident did happen, fallers would feel morally comfortable with the idea of suing people who were trying unselfishly to help them?  Second, what is it with lawyers that they would take on such a case?  On second thoughts, forget the lawyer question.  Nothing better about the legal profession has been said since Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher:  ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’ (Henry VI pt 2).
One is tempted to link all this to the general trend over the last fifty years for people to surrender more and more freedom of action to the state and its many employees: who purport to help us while in practice preventing positive action by others while doing nothing themselves.  But that would be tedious.  Let us just note that we live in a country where helping others is not a moral question but a legal and procedural one.