We are causing Earth's 'sixth great extinction event'

A review, published in the journal Conservation Biology, shows that human activity in one way shape or form is driving species to extinction in the Southern Hemisphere.

Richard Kingsford, at the University of New South Wales says, "Much of it [natural environment] is being destroyed before our eyes. Species are being threatened by habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, climate change, over-exploitation, pollution, and wildlife disease".

Proof if any were needed that we need to urgent action to reduce carbon emissions and pollution, as well as limiting land clearing, logging, and mining; restricting deliberate introduction of invasive species; and limiting fisheries.

It is demand in the Northern Hemisphere, and in particular the industrialised countries that drives these destructive activities.

We must counter all the naysayers and climate "sceptics" soon otherwise there will not be much of a planet left for our grandchildren to inherit.

Curriculum tsar vows to make school more 'business friendly'

Those words in today's Independent sent a chill down my spine. Education is not supposed to provide foot-soldiers for business.

I believe that the job of schools and education in general, is best expounded by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in "Emile", namely that all children are perfectly designed organisms, ready to learn from their surroundings so as to grow into virtuous adults.

I really can't take the words of Andrew Hall, the new head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency that seriously, given that he apparently rejected a teaching career for accountancy.

What you need is MORE people in education who love, respect, and cherish children rather than be worried about double entry book-keeping.

Maybe I should send him a copy of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed?

Why is Jeremy Clarkson such an obnoxious little oik?

For once I actually don't have an answer, I genuinely, truly, madly, deeply want to know.

He (Jeremy Clarkson) epitomises ALL that is wrong with modern Britain, the incivility, the bullying, the thuggery, the total idiocy masquerading as blunt-speaking.

Whatever, one thinks of Gordon Brown, and I certainly am not a fan, to call him the c-word in public, is an insult too far.

Please Auntie starve this gobby sub-golf club wiseacre of the oxygen of publicity, however much money he brings in in overseas sales.

Privit Edukashen - III

A report by Alan Milburn (Unleashing Aspiration) released today says that top professions like medicine and law are increasingly being closed off to all but the most AFFLUENT families.

Note, the most affluent, not the brightest and the best, but the wealthiest.

We must work to close the gap between talent and privilege, we need a far fairer society where everyone gets an opportunity to contribute to the best of their abilities and is not excluded because of an accident of birth.

The full report is available from the Cabinet Office website as a PDF file (http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/227102/fair-access.pdf), well worth the reading.

'never had it so good'?

Fifty years back Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told us we'd never had it so good, and in crude economic terms the trend has continued.

However, one question still remains, "why does health within a population get progressively worse further down the socio-economic scale?"A cracking book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (The Spirit Level), not only tries to answer this question, but comes up with even more profound findings, namely that in countries where there is a big gap between the incomes of rich and poor, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity, and teenage pregnancy are more common, the homicide rate is higher, life expectancy is shorter, and children's educational performance and literacy scores are worse.

Where incomes are relatively equal, there are high levels of trust, people feel secure, and see others as co-operative. In unequal societies, the rich suffer from fear of the poor, while the poor look upon the rich with bitterness and on themselves with shame.

Sadly, over the past dozen years the Labour government has only maintained inequality at the level at which it inherited it.

Credit where credit is due, there have been some moves for the better at the bottom income levels for pensioners and young families, but the problem is at the other end. Remember Mandy saying, "We're relaxed about people getting filthy rich"?

We Lib Dems believe in freedom, fairness, and trust.

Privit edukashen - II

I appreciate that some of you reading the previous post may have seen it as a bit of a rant, and for that I apologise.

I really shouldn't post late at night, however the central premise I still hold, namely that private education seeks merely to entrench and widen privilege based on class and wealth.

Now I readily admit that there are some benefits to those who go through, but at what price and at what cost to whom?
Indeed, some of my best friends have had a private education, and don't seem the worse for it, as indeed has my party leader.
I re-iterate I want the BEST education for ALL of our children.
The figures speak for themselves, just 7% of the population are educated at a private school, they then go on to provide half of the intake at Oxford and Cambridge universities.
From there it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to the heart of the establishment.

Nearly three quarters of judges, about a third of FTSE 100 chief executives, half of all senior journalists, and a third of MPs are privately schooled.

Of course ALL of us want the best for our children, in education, in health, and in life in general, but NEVER at the expense of another child's life chances.

Only when the state education system is so good that the accepted wisdom is: "You were educated privately? What a shame. State schools are SO much better!" can we be satisfied.

Privit edukashen, a waist of munny?

Private schools cheat the taxpayer out of millions of pounds under the guise of being charities, though what good they do society at large has forever escaped me.

The Tory front-bench is famously full of privately-educated bods, as is Boris Johnson the Mayor of London, though it is sometimes difficult to see what good it's done them apart from providing with a social cachet and the ability to spot each other at fifty paces.

Look at the sentence below from the Mayor's warning on business rates. Boris says: "Watching the hoards stream over London Bridge..."Oh dear! Oh dear! Johnson see the beak after class for substandard work.

A hoard is a hidden or secret supply or fund, and in archaeology a cache of valuable objects or artefacts; as in treasure trove. A horde, however, is a wandering tribe of nomadic people (originally Tatars as in the Golden Horde) migrating for the sake of plunder. Generally nowadays used to mean a large number of people.
I suppose we should be grateful he didn't use another homophone, whored.

If I was Boris's dad, I'd ask Eton to return his tuition fees.

There is something fundamentally un-British about private education something grubby where daddy's ill-gotten wealth is used to push junior to the front of the queue.

It's just not cricket!

I am passionate about the best education for ALL our children, not educational apartheid and division based on wealth, faith, or perceived academic ability at age 11.