Milburn wanted to trash standards to give the poor a legup.
Tories traditionally raise standards, not level them down
“Maybe the only solution is grab the pitchforks and march on Westminster”.
David Cameron and the ConDem alliance are apparently about to recruit former Labour MP Alan Milburn to help them with inequality policy. This is a travesty, not only for us voters, but mainly for the poor unfortunates who have been victimised by the Labour Party’s counter-productive policies, which of course level down, not the other way around.
They failed miserably before, but David Cameron, we are led to believe, wants to carry on with them. Doesn’t Cameron know that Tories traditionally seek to help people by leveling standards up? Labour always does the reverse. It is great at ensuring equality of opportunity by insuring that it is garbage for all.
When Milburn published his report a year ago he was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. The bare-faced chutzpah of Alan Milburn was matched only by the incompetence of the BBC interviewer.
Milburn blathered on about how the gap between rich and poor in Britain had widened, not narrowed. The report for Prime Minister Gordon Brown found that opportunities for the poor had worsened to the point where the middle classes were increasingly dominating jobs in the professions like doctors, lawyers and business.
Something must be done, said Milburn, to stop this outrage, and BBC Radio 4 Today Programme interviewer Sarah Montague just took all this at face value. She asked respectful questions about how this might be done, but ignored the bleeding obvious.
The questions should have gone something like this.
“Surely, if this scenario is true, this is the result of 12 years of Labour government is it not? If the system is failing, surely it is down to you, and all you can suggest is a repeat of these failed policies? Grammar schools might have been brutal in weeding out the bright from the dumb, but at least this meant that some of the talented poor were able to win a world-class education. Surely, instead of cutting off this escape route for the poor it would have been better to increase the number of grammar schools and raise standards in the rest, not dumb them down for all as the Labour party insists on doing?”
“But it is true, isn’t it Mr Milburn, that all this talk in the Labour Party about equality simply means forcing everyone down to the lowest common denominator until we all receive equally crap education or health care or whatever. Isn’t it true that instead of the improvements in education you claim, the Labour party has presided over a shameful trashing of exam standards which is acknowledged by experts not in the pay of your failed government?”
“Is it not a surprise that the poor are being excluded from higher education if you introduce huge charges which mean that any one graduating without their own family funds to pay the bills will face working life with a massive debt mountain to pay off? Has this helped to persuade the poor into higher education?”
“And then you insult us with the final, demented idea. You patronise the poor by forcing universities to lower their standards, rather than seeking to improve education from the ground up.”
I don’t know why Ms Montague didn’t attack Milburn for his bare-faced effrontery. Sadly, there are only two reasons that I can think of. She was too dumb to ask them. Or, as a card-carrying leftie, she was too corrupt to ask.
Isn’t it tragic that with Labour’s failed policies harming the very people it exists to help, the Tories have also dumped the grammar school route (that’s why I resigned from the party).
If this report about Cameron embracing Milburn is true, this is another in a long line of reasons why sensible voters in Britain will insist that this coalition is dumped, and Cameron is replaced at the head of the Tory party by er a Tory. Unfortunately, the governance of Britain is deteriorating to such a degree that there is simply no intelligent way to vote any more. Maybe the only solution is grab the pitchforks and march on Westminster.
No comments yet.