Ed Balls up education

I was delighted to read yesterday that Prince Charles has stopped talking to plants in order to tell that fool Ed Balls that it's a really, really bloody stupid idea to stop teaching children useful things when they're at school.

Traditional subjects such as history and geography are to be sidelined in the biggest shake-up of primary education for 20 years.
Ed Balls vowed to press ahead with changing the curriculum to more general themes and topics...Under the Children's Secretary's plans, 13 stand-alone subjects will be merged into six 'areas of learning'. For example, history, geography and citizenship will be put together into 'historical, geographical and social understanding'.
Teachers will no longer have to cover certain periods of history such as the Tudors, or choose between the Victorians or the Second World War.

The thing with history, maths and geography is that not a lot of children study them in their spare time as they're out stabbing each other or, shock, playing computer games.

Children go to school mainly so parents can go to work and thus not have to spend all day with their ghastly offspring but also to learn about things that might not be that interesting but are quite important. History, culture, being able to work out what 10% of the bill is, how to write a letter or get from one part of the country to the other.

It also helps them find out what things they're good at and what they enjoy so they can develop in certain areas for future studying or even interesting days out for their parents to put on.

I hadn't the first clue about blogging or html before I sat down in my spare time and decided to learn and if I could have done it in my 20s then a child can do it much quicker than me!

Does this also mean that they won't learn foreign languages and once again Britain will lag behind other countries with only the few being able to travel abroad without having to shout 'sausage, egg and chips' to the waiter?

This government is ruining this country and ruining the lives of the children in this country and it's not just them of course but the cosy global consensus where they'll have to learn how great the EU is and how climate change is all the fault of your mum and your pet hamster, whizzy, because he farts too much.

'This is a huge step forward.' said Vernon Coaker

If 'forward' actually means 'backwards' then yes, I suppose it is. A huge step forward for our children and for education would be to revoke Baker's 1986 law on corporal punishment so they actually learn about discipline and sit down in a class room and listen to what they're being taught.

It's another classic Balls up from this foolish, elitest bean counter who needs to lose his seat and quickly.

But no matter how outraged we get at the torrent of incompetence which floods our daily lives, what will we actually do about it?

Tut, laugh when it's mocked by professional comedians on satirical news quizzes but fundamentally what we, the voters, will do is fuck all. We put them there. We put them all there and at the next General Election we'll put another bunch of the same but with blue ties in charge.

So we'll get more of the same.

The same QUANGOS, interference, high taxes and incompetent health care with the word 'choice' possibly thrown around a bit more. Yes, I agree that generally speaking choice is a good thing but wouldn't it be nice to hear some decent options to choose from? I suspect that what ill people want is to see a doctor who will do something within a reasonable time rather than choose between two hospitals they have a preference for dying in.

No one's perfect but are we so obsequeious that we think that people who think Max Clifford has the answer are the right people to govern Britain?

Take your pick of fuck ups: PSCOs instead of police men on the streets, Lisbon Constitution with no referendum, expenses, HIPS, the civil contingencies act, the closure of miles and miles of railway lines in rural areas causing our modern day traffic jams, the removal of liberties of muslim women who live in Britain so not to offend those who choose to deny them a modern standard of living, VAT, John Birt, Defence Estates, the abolition of corporal punishment in schools despite the view, now proven, that this would lead to a breakdown in juvenile respect for adults and a determination to actually fucking learn something rather than give teachers a hard time trying to improve their lives. For their parents who take no responsibility and don't work anyway because they're allowed not to at our expense.

They all are policies of Labour AND Tories so how will one side definitely be better thatn the other and correct the ills when history shows the only thing people in positions of power to is fuck things up royally. Unless we are at war?

And people who stick to their usuals, as if voting were a quick sherbet in the local after a tough day in the office, are to blame. People who make Endemol men rich. People like Peter Bazalgette Who brought us Big Brother and Changing Rooms and Charlie Dimmock's bra less mammories desperately making a bid for freedom over the water feature. Of course his great-great grandfather brought London decent sewerage system. As Stephen Fry so eloquently put it, Sir Joseph Bazelgette did enormous works to clean up London's streets whilst his great great grandson has managed to pump it back into people's homes.

We watch it, we buy the papers with some orange slag with nothing to say on the front. We vote for the person with the suitable wife and the snazzy soundbites. We get excited about MPs expenses more than we do the erosion of our own liberties.

We are, we are to blame. They just take advantage of what we're giving them without thing or chosing to find out who they are and what they really stand for.

And they'll tinker at the edges but they or their successors wion't change because they won't have to change unless we demand wholesale reform and stick to those reforms rather than not bothering because Coro-fucking-nation street is on. A programme I have never watched because it's the bad side of diazepam in screen format and it stops our country actually being a decent place to live. Others might be worse but can we reach for the stars instead of making do with the lowest common denominator?