It's better than dangling your Lansleys in the faces of the sick and dying.

Mintball wrote:Anyway, talking of royal boats ... ok,so i'm not exactly a royalist ('off with their heads' & 'Vive la Revolution' etc) but the Diamond Jubilee warrants something a bit special so if I were a uk taxpayer I wouldn't begrudge chipping in for such an important occasion... well done Liz

Mintball wrote:Anyway, talking of royal boats ... ok,so i'm not exactly a royalist ('off with their heads' & 'Vive la Revolution' etc) but the Diamond Jubilee warrants something a bit special so if I were a uk taxpayer I wouldn't begrudge chipping in for such an important occasion... well done Liz

By Gove, he's got it.



I sent Jove an email saying I'll be glad to chip in on one condition, that is I get to have a go in it one day a year.

He hasn't replied yet, which I find a bit off, frankly.

Don't let geography stop you.

Out of the current Cabinet I actually think Gove is the most pure "ideology" politician. I would say he was like Thatcher, in that you know where you stand with him, he doesn't try to hedge his bets or be all things to all people, he has his ideological views and he states them, and I think he is totally convinced that his right wing ideology is the best for the poor as well as the rich.

In education I like the fact that he is big on a core curriculum of sciences, maths, languages and history, and is wanting to try and enforce that the schools in less well off areas make their kids do that core curriculum rather than being given 'soft options'. He is quite into comparative evidence from other education systems and in the better performing ones in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, the kids in the less well off areas are being made to do the same traditional academic subjects as the ones in the posh schools rather than being shunted off into low value 'vocational' courses that aren't valued in those vocations. I know some people say "academics aren't for everyone" and so on but the social mobility is better for kids from lower income backgrounds that have done traditional subjects.

However I would be worried if Gove became Foreign Secretary. His foreign affairs ideology appears to be aligned with neo-con US republicans, he's from the school that Western market capitalism liberal democracy is the best ideology for the world and it should be spread, and Islam is a threat and we need to do more to counter Islam.

that's ok - our lad is working in the uk and so will be contributing to the Jubilee fund ......

whether he likes it or not !

He certainly shares the asset of not being troubled by doubt.
I'm wary of people who don't doubt.


The "better performing ones" in Sweden are not as "better performing" as he once thought.
In fact a licence for one of them is up for sale on the Swedish version of eBay.


He has no doubt he's right.

Maybe "Gove" shouldn't be pronounced gove but gee-oh-vah

His model is based on the Free Schools idea in Sweden. This is a system that has resulted in 2011 Swedish students dropping to 19th place out of 57 countries for literacy, to 24th in maths, and to 28th in science. This compared with 9th, 17th and 16th in studies done in 2000, 2003 and 2006 respectively.

There is also blatant segregation occurring in Sweden where the best schools with the best teachers are over subscribed and the poorer schools pick up the pieces. The idea you put forward that because he wants all kids to study core subjects in all schools that this will deliver social mobility is incredibly naive as Sweden shows.

If he is into evidence then he would drop the idea immediately. He won't because he is as idealogical driven on this as anything else and the ideology is essentially a kind privatisation of schools where the state has little control, the schools are run by private companies or organisations such as the C of E but they still get tax payers funds.



You should be be worried about having him where he is. He will wreck education just as much as Lansey will wreck the NHS. These are IMO the two most important departments in government and we have extreme right wing nutters in charge of both. Gove may well cherry pick his "evidence" to try an come across as some sort of thoughtful education secretary but he is on as much of a neo-con mission in education as he would be in the FCO.