Today’s Times – Saturday August 1st – reports that proof readers have been hired by West London Free School to check reports before they are sent home. Toby Young, the school’s founder and Chief Executive is reported as saying: “Spelling and grammar mistakes made by younger teachers are common because many have not been properly taught.” …
Teachers at a free school incapable of writing accurately Read More »
Mountains of misery around the world, and particularly in the Middle East as millions of refugees flee persecution at home. Not only are healthy young adults leaving their homes to find a better life, but we regularly see the old and the very young who are struggling simply to stay alive. When will the UN start to rein in …
Millions flee their countries but the UN takes on parents who smack their children. Read More »
Yesterday Justice Secretary Michael Gove announced that prisoners who make an effort to earn educational qualifications or learn useful skills will be released early. Perhaps he has been reading back-numbers of The Times. December 7th 2010. Dear Sir, In all the discussion and speculation about the Criminal Justice Bill and prison populations there is no radical thought about …
In the past all three parties have failed to keep promises to hold a referendum on our membership of the EU; now, it would seem, the Tories are to allow one. Suddenly it is suggested that the votes of sixteen and seventeen year-olds, like younger voters recruited in Scotland before the independence referendum there, should …
Boris Johnson’s suggestion that we should reject the EU in a first referendum in order better to negotiate changes that would benefit the whole Union makes a lot of sense. The present debate about our continuing membership of the EU suggests that we would simply leave the Union if voters chose not to remain. This requires …
In a recent letter to “The Observer,” Jeremy Hayes wrote: “I’m an accountant and I simply cannot support membership of an organisation whose accounts have not been signed off for 19 consecutive years. For many years I chaired the finance committee of my parish council and if the district auditor had failed to sign off …
How can voters support membership of the EU unless we can see the accounts? Read More »
“Ofsted is ditching 1,200 school and college inspectors after assessing them as not good enough to judge schools.” BBC Saturday, June 20th. So, many Ofsted inspectors are incapable of reporting on schools. a number are not even qualified as teachers and the standard of English in their reports is said to be poor. So, their numbers …
How dare anyone assume or pretend that opponents of the European Union, or those who would like its powers and influence brought under closer, more democratic control, are anti-European? Anti – is a powerful and very negative prefix which can suggest spite and prejudice; it is used by those who have very little to argue …
Parliamentarians should not wriggle out of the responsibility for setting for themselves fair salaries, allowances and expenses. With some MPs wanting to accept the recommendations of IPSA, the independent body established to set their wages, and others determined not to accept them, the result is clearly a bugger’s muddle. The problem with the old system was that MPs …
Twelve years ago Randal Plunket was a student of mine in Switzerland where I taught him English. Now he is a film producer – Dunsany Films – and together we are working on a film script for dunno, a novel I wrote while teaching him. dunno tells of the struggles of a disaffected teenage boy …
