A prescription for the UK

It has been a week since thousands of mostly young people across London decided it was time to steal, destroy, assault, abuse and ultimately murder others, in a decadent frenzy of Anthony Burgess style amorality.  The responses have been extremely varied, but the overwhelming one has been concern about the need to restore law and order.  Two main concerns have driven the discussion, one has been the importance of adequate policing, the other has been discussions as to "why".

Once one takes away the vile ambulance chasing point scoring of many on the left (and the Green Party in NZ has disgustingly decided to take advantage of the suffering of others to advance its own agenda of "give 'em more money and make some jobs for 'em"), and the undertones of racist anti-immigration and calls for serious violent intervention from some on the right, there must be an acknowledgement of a whole series of government policies which can be said to have failed to address the creation of what is at best, a feral, parasitical underclass of people with no hope, little aspiration beyond hedonistic whim worshipping and with substantial "chips on their shoulders".

The ridiculous argument that this was about racism is shown up for its absurdity in the overwhelming diversity of those arrested and filmed participating.   However, there is certainly an element of distrust of police in areas dominated by, in particular, the Afro-Caribbean community.   Yet the same is true of the "chavtowns" filled with neanderthals.

The link with poverty has more substance, but it is not real poverty in the sense of starvation, homelessness or no access to education or healthcare, but poverty of aspiration, concentration and determination.   However, this doesn't answer why the roll call of people turning up in courts are from backgrounds of being in middle class employment, or university graduates, or even upper class schoolkids.  These "individual examples you can pick out" as one leftwing commentator claimed, are inconvenient, for they don't fit the race-poverty classification that fits the philosophy.

So what should be done?  As I wrote before, I naturally resist "throwing money at the problem", the idea that more government welfare and manufactured government jobs (which takes money from others who create jobs) is a solution is simply absurd, for there has never been this much welfare, and making people less independent and less successful by making them clients of the state even more, is not going to change attitudes of esteem and expecting others to solve their problems.

Furthermore, simply adopting an authoritarian kneejerk approach to policing, including the notion that the state should shut down social networks at times of crisis, is simply too late, as well as sacrificing the freedom of the law abiding on a grand scale, to address the criminality of a small number. 

So my approach is to look at the stages of life of a typical member of the underclass, and to pinpoint the failures of public policy in all of them.  The key is that the government is not the solution, but changes in public policy should make a difference.  However, there is no quick fix unless one wants to take an authoritarian eliminationist approach that would permanently deprive any criminals of freedom, and have the state police parenting on a terrifying scale.  That could eliminate a feral underclass by creating a feral police state. 

The areas that matter are, in summary:

- Welfare policy should not reward breeding by people unable or otherwise unwilling to be parents;

- Welfare policy should not remove responsibility for raising children or paying for children from both parents;

- Welfare policy should not reward additional breeding by people already on welfare;

- State and council owned Corbusier style hothouses for crime demolished and the land sold.  One of the grimmest failures of social engineers has been putting large numbers of underachievers together in close proximity;

- People on low incomes should not pay income tax;

- Parents, teachers, police and others in loco parentis should not fear disciplining their children using reasonable force for restraint or to protect themselves, others or their property;

- Serious violent and sexual criminals should never be permitted to reside in the same household as anyone under the age of 16;

- Schools should no longer be funded based on politically specified criteria, but on whether parents send their children to a school (or do not);

- Governance of schools, including curriculum, rules and philosophy of education should be driven by those with the greatest vested interest in its success, parents of children at the school;

- Schools should have freedom to pay good teachers what it takes to attract and retain them, and the means to incentivise better performance by poor teachers, or remove them;

- The criminal justice system should be focused on protecting the public from the acts of criminals, particularly recividists;

- The criminal justice system should offer one chance for rehabilitation for first time offenders that are not a danger to the public;

- Parents of underage offenders should be presumed to have civil liability for the acts of their offspring, and criminal liability for incitement to commit crimes;

- The justice system should not spend time and money on victimless crimes;

- The state should not fund culture, music, television or other media that may be implicated in promoting a sub-culture of violence, hate and misogyny;

-  Tax and economic policy should allow people to keep the fruits of their efforts, and not be seeking taxpayer money;

-  Laws and regulations should positively support private property rights and welcome entrepreneurship that respects this, and not welcome those who seek to restrain such rights to protect their own businesses and homes from competition;

-  Laws and regulations should not make it difficult to hire people at pay and terms and conditions they are willing to accept, nor to remove them if they fail to meet the terms and conditions of the contract;

-  Politicians and bureaucrats founds guilty of theft from taxpayers or corruption should be subject to the full force of the criminal justice system;

- The state should not bail out businesses that fail, nor those who invest in them.

None of that is detailed, but it is in recognition that decades of welfarism and "we know best" interventions by politicians have failed.  They have nurtured an underclass that is willing to attack and destroy those that pay for its very existence.  They have nurtured an education system on the wistful hope that everyone will be equal, but which rewards poor quality teachers and starves funding to pay excellent teachers well.  They have promoted a culture of entitlement and dependency whereby large numbers of people expect they have "a right" to the money of others, and fear having to fend for themselves.  They have promoted a culture of blame and bigotry by the underclasses towards anyone but themselves.  Never blame those who didn't study at school, never blame those who bred with little thought of the consequences, never blame those who don't turn up to job interviews, never blame those who vandalise, steal and assault, always blame those who set up businesses and "didn't put anything back into the community" (one excuse I heard in the past week), always blame "the rich", the so-called "lucky", the "racists", the police, the council, the government.

For decades now, the Western world has been beset by this corrosive philosophy of:

- You have rights, you should always assert rights, many of those rights are over other people to give you what you demand;

- You can't get anywhere unless other people "give you opportunities", you're implicitly unable to take care of yourself without the government, the council or other people giving you "respect";

- You have a right to express yourself, however you wish, to whoever you like, and they have to give you that right, and after you've abused them, and even vandalised their property, they STILL should give you a job, paying you what you want, to work when you want, how you want, dressing how you like, turning up when you feel like at, because "it's your right";

- It isn't your fault if you do anything wrong, it's because of "society" or "the government" or any other group you care to feel aggrieved by;

- You're not responsible for your life, other people are responsible for giving you what you need to stop you attacking them;

- If you do something wrong, it's ok, because "everyone else does it" and because "some people don't respect you" and because "the system doesn't fit people like you".  

It is ALL that.  That is why there were riots in the UK, it is why some parts of the UK are feral no-go areas for anyone who look half respectable.  It is why a significant minority of children leave school functionally illiterate, innumerate and socially inept, and then go on to do the one thing humans are good at, breeding, because they get rewarded for it.   It is the culture and philosophy of post-modernist, moral relativism, it has a Marxist thread running through it, and it is de riguer in universities, local authorities, teachers' training colleges and all left wing political parties, and more than a few in right wing parties.

It is bankrupt, and the vast bulk of the population knows it is so.  The empty calls for "more jobs", and "understanding" are wrapped in demands to effectively pay protection money for those who have failed.

The road out of this cesspool is going to be long.  It requires fundamental welfare, housing and education reform at the root and branch.  It requires a change of approach to the criminal justice system.  However, more than anything it requires a long term cultural and philosophical change in attitudes towards the family, communities and the individual.

I'll write more about these policy areas in due course, and the fundamental philosophical changes that are needed.  This is not a call to go back to times when women were treated as second class citizens, or when one set of religious teachings were to be imposed on all, nor to return to the patronising bigotry towards people because of race, sex or sexuality, but it is about recognising an age when people did respect others, had consideration for the lives and property of others, and took responsibility for their own lives and actions.

It is, most of all, about removing the state funded safety blanket for anyone whenever they do anything harmful to themselves or others, bearing in mind that nothing stops people choosing to provide whatever they want to others on whatever terms they wish.

Idiot Savant wrong about London student protest

I’m fascinated about the authority Idiot Savant claims to talk about a protest in a city he wasn’t in, based on media coverage he was selective at looking at.  From his post you’d get quite a distorted picture of what happened, but then he couldn’t possibly know.  Not even the Guardian and Independent articles he quotes support his distorted propagandist view of what happened.

He’s either stupid, lying or just wilfully blind.   You see I actually am IN London and SAW the protests.

Let’s start. 

He said “The UK government is currently trying to balance its budget by shifting costs onto the young, through a trebling of university fees. This will prevent many kids from poor families from going to university”.  Bearing in mind this is shifting costs from future unborn taxpayers to current students.  However, he is wrong about it preventing kids from poor families going to university as they can get student loans to pay for fees, that they do not have to start paying back until after they earn the average wage.   A barrier to poor students?  Hardly.  In fact, the threshold to repay the loans is being increased as well, but that fact spoils the tale the socialists are stringing out to justify their protests.   That’s just him swallowing the spin of the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Then he claims that the protest was kettled (when the Police surround a group and confine them) and THEN the students rioted in response.

No.  Quite where he got this from is curious, as none of the major media reported this either.

In Whitehall a group descended on an unused Police van and vandalised it, others vandalising bus shelters and ticket machines, Transport for London reported objects had been thrown at buses carrying passengers at Trafalgar Square, smashing windows.   Buses were diverted away to avoid further incidents.  Some spray painted slogans on buildings.  To be fair a handful of schoolgirls who were skiving off school tried to stop some of this, but to no avail.

The kettling happened after this as the group descended on Parliament.  The Police responded appropriately to protect property and the public, and it isn’t surprising why.  There are reasonable grounds for opposing kettling, but to keep a protest contained when it has become violent is quite acceptable.  However, Idiot Savant is painting a picture of students surrounded, kept confined and THEN lashing out - which is completely wrong.  He should know better, but he isn't driven by reporting the facts, but by his own socialist agenda.

You see he completely ignores what happened on the last protest, when students ran amok, vandalised the Conservative Party headquarters, occupied the roof and one threw a fire extinguishers onto the Police below narrowly missing them (that person has since been charged).   Does he really think the Police should stand by and let private property be destroyed and peaceful citizens be threatened and intimidated by a mob?

No.  He wasn’t there.  I have seen both protest marches and the aftermath.   I know what the policy is (and I didn’t vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat) and it isn’t keeping the poor out of university education.  This is largely a group of naïve middle class students who are bemoaning the fact that when they start earning above average incomes, partly due to their education, they might have to pay the majority of the costs of that education.   These protests are hijacked by violent criminals (anarchists who don't recognise property rights).  The Police acted appropriately.  

Maybe Idiot Savant should concentrate on protests on cities where he is actually there, or maybe he should either report what actually happened rather than undertake a Gramscian reworking of the facts to fit his political agenda.

Oh and if students want something to protest about, how about that university education in Scotland has no fees, that this is funded from Westminster and on top of that the European Union demands Scotland offer the same education to students from any OTHER EU Member State.  That does NOT include England, because England is deemed to be in the same Member State as Scotland (which is true).

So English taxpayers subsidise free Scottish tertiary education so that Bulgarians, Romanians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Poles, Finns, Swedes, Danes, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Austrians, Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Cypriots, Maltese, Portuguese, French, Belgians, Luxembourgians, Dutch and the Irish can get a free tertiary education - but they can't.


That's a serious reason to be pissed off with the European Union, the Scottish government and the whole devolution experiment.   However, socialists love the European Union because they think it can help make everything "free".

Marxist thuggery takes over London protest

The UK government faces a chronic budget deficit and so one of its policies has been to significantly increase university tuition fees so students pay a far higher proportion of tertiary education costs.  Given the benefits of university education are carried almost exclusively by the people getting the education, it is hardly unfair.   The state student loan scheme even allows students to borrow their fees and not have to pay back the loans until they earn over £27,050 a year.   So it hardly forms a barrier to anyone, unless they fear their education isn't worth it once they start earning the average annual income. 

Of course to the socialist National Union of Students (voluntary membership in the UK by the way, but universities fund it directly), it's unfair.  They moan that current generations of politicians got a free university education - back in the days when a far smaller fraction of people went into tertiary education and the welfare state wasn't draining taxpayers of so much money.  

This attitude that the world owes them an education, that the budget deficit isn't their problem (presumably they don't think they should pay more tax to cover the debt Gordon Brown threw their way) and that other people should pay for their choices means they are obviously disrespectful of property rights.   It shows too.

A bunch of them marched to Conservative Party headquarters, smashed it up, invaded it and one even threw a fire extinguisher off the roof at police officers below.

In other words, if you don't give us what we want, we'll take it and do violence.

and the Labour Leader of the Opposition is silent...

The Green view of freedom is eerily Leninist

It is hardly surprising that the Greens oppose voluntary student union membership. After all, such organisations are the training grounds for all too many leftwing political activists, and having such undisciplined access to power and money is a great entree into how the state works.

The great ideological myth around student unions has its direct parallels with the Rousseau view of the "general will" taken to its logical end by Marxism-Leninism.

It goes like this:
- Students are an identifiable collective body of people with a common set of interests. As they are deemed to lack power, having a representative body is in their interests to put the "student view" to the university and more widely to government.
- Student unions can provide that representation, and as such embody the "general will" of students. As long as they are elected, regardless of turnout, the student union can perform this task.
- The "general will" is comprised of the interests of students. Those who disagree with the student union are against the interests of students. As the media, government and universities listen to student unions, this proves they are seen to be representative;
- Students who disagree with the student union are a minority. Their views would only be legitimate if they were carried by the union. If it isn't the view of the union it doesn't represent the 'general will" of students, and could possibly be against it;
- The strength of students is dependent on the strength of the student union. Allowing anyone to opt out of the union would be seen as weakening the expression of the general will of the students. It is an attack on students.
- Students collectively can decide to allow for opting out of membership of their unions, but if they choose not to allow that, then students can't complain. It is the general will of students whether or not they want voluntary student membership.
- Those who wish to contradict this are "anti student" even if they are students.

That twisted perverse logic is what Gareth Hughes is expressing.

He claims making all student unions voluntary somehow takes away the right for students to choose because to him students have a "collective brain".

It's complete snake oil and quite disgusting. If students want to be represented by a student's union they should feel free to set one up by choice or join one, by choice. If they don't then let it be.

It is a diversion to claim universities would charge the same money and fund the association itself. Universities shouldn't do that either.

It's so simple. If students don't want student unions (and their services) then they fail.

Most importantly, if any individual student does not want a union to represent her or him, then the student union should get the hell out of the way.

and the unreformed Leninist merchants of Orwellian collectivism should not get in the way of this!

Useless university research: men and porn

"All men watch porn" says the headline referring to a University of Montreal study.

Apparently the "study" investigated 20 something men, who appeared to all be university students, presumably in Montreal. Wow, cutting edge stuff, such diversity of men!

Furthermore:

Single men watched pornography for an average of 40 minutes, three times a week, while those in relationships watched it 1.7 times a week for around 20 minutes.

1.7 times? "Sorry dear it wasn't a "full" time, it was only 0.7 of a "watch"". Don't let your imagination go too far in figuring out what an "incomplete" watch might represent.

The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful.

Surely not?!!?? Who'd have thought?

So was it "bad" for them?

“Not one subject had a pathological sexuality,” he said. “In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional.

“Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship, which they all want to be as harmonious and fulfilling as possible,” he added."

Or perhaps they told you this, the sample was woefully small, none would admit to liking bestiality, dp, bdsm, urophilia and other kinks, or all the before mentioned is conventional in Montreal.

Maybe a better measure is to consider how highly ranked certain particularly kinky sites are on Alexa, how many are reporting addiction to pornography, how many relationships deteriorate as a result.

Indeed, the study that appears not to have been undertaken is what it is doing to teenagers, as increasing numbers take what are illegal photos of themselves and share them with each other, and it then ends up getting widely distributed. It is change that is profound, likely to disturb many parents, and may well change views on what censorship should be. After all, what do you do when the vast majority of what is defined as child pornography producers, are the subjects of the images themselves?

Green brainwashing knows no ends

Australia's Daily Telegraph writes "Tots as young as three have sent letters to Kevin Rudd about their passion for green living and asked companies to reduce their packaging"

At one time the secular left would damn Christians for frightening children with the awful scary stories from the Bible, teaching them that if they sinned they'd go to hell. Now small children are being taught the world is coming to an end, and one of their key responsibilities is to "do something" about it, not unlike the Leninist form of brainwashing of children at schools to support the socialist state and fight the "imperialists".

Young children should NOT be worrying about the world, their chief concerns should be their own life, about school, family, friends and their possessions. To get small children to write to a Prime Minister about the environment is grotesque propagandising.

Imagine if a school got young children to write to the Prime Minister demanding taxes be cut, or that the government expand the armed forces or cut spending so they don't face a huge debt when they start working. The green left would be outraged, but its own scaremongering and politics are treated as "fact".

The Green Party in NZ embraces this as its education policy explicitly states:

"Incorporate environmental education (including energy efficiency and conservation) into the core curriculum at all levels and ensure that teacher education and training programmes allocate significant time for environmental education." and

"# Establish permanent environmental education regional advisory positions and encourage the further development of national resources to develop ecological thinking across the curriculum.
# Expand ERO reporting to include environmental education."

Of course if you want your children to be taught about this, then good luck to you. I'd let schools teach as they see fit, but it should NOT be part of the curriculum of every school. I'd argue strongly it would be far preferable to teach children personal autonomy, so they respect each others' rights to control their property and bodies - something children should learn in relation to each other. Frightening little children to think the world is going to end serves only one purpose, and it isn't the interests of the children.

(Hat Tip: Tim Blair)

British government funds Islamist schools

So whilst the Police chase up grandmothers who don't like gay pride marches, £113,411 was paid by taxpayers to an education foundation run by Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir according to the Sunday Telegraph.

Hizb ut-Tahrir believes democracy is corrupt, that Muslims should be separate from non-believers and promotes a global Islamist state. It presents several faces to the public. It condemned the July 2005 bombings, but has published anti-semitic literature, and been banned in Germany as a result.

The schools teach Arabic from age three, and promote a strictly Islamist view of history and education.

Whilst it is all very well promoting diversity in education, the Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation runs three schools and it is not exactly teaching respect for the constitutional arrangements or fundamental freedoms of British society:

"At least three of the four trustees are Hizb members or activists, including Farah Ahmed, the head teacher of the Slough school, who has written in a Hizb journal condemning the "corrupt Western concepts of materialism and freedom".

On their website, the schools say their "ultimate goal" and "foremost work" is the creation of an "Islamic personality" in children The creation of an "Islamic personality" is a key tenet of Hizb's ideology."

The Centre for Social Cohesion is concerned, indeed whilst much attention is paid to the destructive nature of the BNP, Hizb ut-Tahrir should be at least as disconcerting. It is releasing a report next week outlining its concerns.

"Hizb is a fringe group but it is being given a public platform, legitimacy and funding by the very institutions it wishes to destroy," said Houriya Ahmed, one of the authors of the report.

Whilst most British Muslims do not align themselves with Hizb ut-Tahrir's views, this sort of direct state support for an organisation that is completely contrary to the British political system, effectively producing recruits to hate liberal democratic capitalist free society SHOULD frighten.

For it is exactly this sort of activity, and mainstream political absence of criticism, that leaves the BNP room for a constituency. Indeed, both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats do not deserve their respective names if they wont raise questions about this.

Delahunty scared of education freedom

To say Catherine Delahunty has said something crazy is to state the bleedingly obvious.

So here we go again. On Frogblog she said:

"It wasn’t much fun waking up this morning to the news that the Ministry of Education will no longer be providing advice to primary schools on arts, science, technology, or physical education – nothing in fact, except the “three Rs”: reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. This latest assault on the public education system by the National Government is just plain stupid.

It also heralds the undoing of a robust curriculum. There is no educational justification for such a narrow focus, when all the evidence points to the importance of a holistic educational experience at primary school level"

Horror of horrors no more ADVICE to schools on certain subjects. What will they do? How will they cope? How can anyone teach anything without advice from the Ministry of Education?

What this means is that central government will no longer be directing how arts, science, technology and PE will be taught. It is a devolution of power to schools to make their OWN decisions. They wont get central government assistance on those subjects, they will need to figure it out for themselves or get together with other schools (or whoever they wish).

It is clear that the subjects will NOT stop being taught. Principals claim it might make those subjects a lower priority, which of course should be up to each school.

This move is a GOOD thing.

It is only a BAD thing if you believe education should be centrally dictated, that all schools should teach the same and use the same techniques. Schools MIGHT take it as a chance to be innovative, to think for themselves and deliver education in those subjects for what parents want.

Delahunty is spinning it as being the end of education in those subjects, which is nonsense.

In fact, the more central government abandons directing schools the better. Schools should be driven by parents, NOT bureaucrats, as to how and what they teach.

However, I can see why the Greens really are upset:

"Through this same cut, we have now lost all the Sustainability Advisors"

In other words, propagandists for the Green perspective on science, philosophy and history. No more taxpayer funded brainwashing of children to suit one certain agenda.

Another step forward would be for all schools to simply be funded on a per pupil basis and let the school innovate, decide what to teach and how, and then parents choose what school to send their children too. No centrally dictated curriculum (but schools could collaborate and share information and develop their own ones).

Now that really would frighten those who fear education being driven by what suppliers think consumers (parents) would like. Including, of course, the National Party.

Nazi murders vs communist murderers

Given the all too appropriate anger at this story, can anyone explain why similar worshipping of a hammer and sickle, or image of Marx, Lenin, or Stalin, or Che Guevara, or Castro would not cause any outrage at all?

How many brainless gits do you see every day walking around with pictures of Che Guevara on their chests, or Marx or the like?

Oh and you might get the standard Marxist reply "oh that wasn't really Marxism", because the USSR got it wrong. However, it wasn't just the USSR was it? It was also:

- Mongolia
- China
- Afghanistan
- Cuba
- Albania
- Yugoslavia
- Romania
- Bulgaria
- Czechoslovakia
- Poland
- East Germany
- Vietnam
- Laos
- Cambodia
- North Korea
- Angola
- Benin
- Congo (Brazzaville)
- Ethiopia
- Hungary
- Grenada
- Mozambique
- Somalia
- Yemen
- Burma

Imagine if a school had a communism party? Would the media bother saying this is an outrage to everyone who suffered under such tyranny?

You might think the 60 or so million Mao killed directly or by starvation using insane economic policies, and the 30 million Stalin killed directly or through war or starvation, might give as much reason to be offended.

Fun Police: #2 Don't let them eat cake

Olivia Morris turned 9. Her great grandma baked her a cake to take to school. It was put on display at morning assembly, and everyone sang "Happy Birthday", then she blew out the candles.

Then the cake was left to be.

Why?

Because it doesn't comply with the school's new healthy eating rules.

Her school is Rockingham Junior and Infant School in Rotherham, England. It is well known, if only because it is the school Jamie Oliver launched his campaign for healthier eating at schools.

Head Teacher Heather Green said it would be a "mixed message" if cakes were brought in whilst the school promotes healthy eating. Joyless bint.

The story is in the Daily Telegraph.

Of course this silly little do-gooder forgets that denying children ANY "unhealthy" food simply raises the desire to have it, it makes it forbidden, which of course makes anything far more attractive and interesting. Kids are more likely to secretly covet such food, binge on it, and then show themselves as healthy openly.

Olivia and her friends didn't miss out though. You see AFTER school she took the cake, and celebrated her birthday with her friends outside school, where they shared cake - away from the tentacles of Heather Green and zee Rockingham Junior Re-Edukation Kamp. Just to show how distant education gets from the needs of parents when it is bureaucrats and schools doing what they see is best, not those who pay for it.

Olivia doesn't YET live in a world where such puritanical nonsense is compulsory everywhere.

Get rid of the colon in this headline

I don't think providing a training ground for future candidates and Labour MPs is a benefit everyone else should be forced to pay for. Do you?

Give Maryan Street a laugh with this line though "The problem with voluntary membership was that those benefits were not apparent to students attending university for the first time and they may not believe they provided value."

But we'll take their money, make them join and tell the world that we represent the views of students anyway. All for one and one for all right?

If the Nats fail to take this to where it should go, it will show how utterly bereft of any principle the National Party is, that it will keep privileging organisations that support National's opponents. For that is what student unions are - training grounds for the left. Training grounds for those who want to keep National out of power. If you can't put them on the basis that students wont be forced to join them or pay for them, then what can you possibly call yourself?

Don't hit girls but...

All sounds good that. Apparently a national strategy on domestic violence includes teaching primary school kids that hitting girls or women is wrong, according to this Daily Telegraph report. Of course it's wrong, initiating force IS wrong.

However there are two rather important issues with this.

1. Why just girls? Isn’t a message that you shouldn’t hit girls going to imply you should hit boys? Or is the quite right agenda against domestic violence, led by a feminist blindness to boys or men being victims of violence? Young men are the most likely victims of assault. Why not simply say it is wrong to first hit anyone?

2. What of self-defence? In some cases it IS appropriate to hit, that is if someone ignore the rule in the first place. Flight or fight are legitimate approaches, but children need to know that if they are hit, they should be able to retaliate appropriately.

So wouldn’t it preferably just to say kids that using force to get your own way with someone else is wrong? Get them to find examples of when that is done. In fact, get them to find cases where people want to use force to get their own way, or get others to use force for them. Most political parties do, for example.

Greens think parental choice is a myth

Yes, I am sufficiently annoyed by the Soviet style brainlessness of the Greens again to post.

Catherine Delahunty, who has long demonstrated a belief in mysticism and passionate embrace of the violent state, has made a rather banal post in Frogblog about educational choice. If anything it should simply harden attitudes against the likes of her and her friends holding their hands at the windpipe of the education sector.

She sees parental choice as a “myth”. Apparently if it is not important to Catherine, it shouldn’t be to other parents. Parents making choices means they are outside her control, and they may make choices she doesn’t approve of. Maybe sending children to Montessori school, or Catholic school. I doubt she would embrace either. She describes vouchers as a failed idea. It’s not my favourite idea, but in Sweden it has been a roaring success – it has seen umpteen private schools open – commercially run ones too (yes, the horror) AND there remains universal education, as every child gets an education voucher.

It is such a failure that the only political party in Sweden to still oppose it is the Left Party, formerly the Communists, who once supported the Soviet crackdown in Hungary in 1956. Take from that as you wish.

Delahunty quotes another person with similar intellectual rigour as herself, Liz Gordon (who famously said “there is only so much freedom to go around”), who apparently has critiqued ACT policy (although this does not appear anywhere online). The concern appears to be that the real agenda is to commercialise schools, which of course can only be bad.

Then she goes off on one of her typical non-sequiturs, because she talks about a school she likes, which is state owned. Fine. However, whilst examples of good state schools and teachers exist, there are also poor ones. Does she give a way to deliver good ones? No.

She says “quality public education” should be available everywhere, not just where there are “well resourced” parents. Which of course is a subtle use of language that tells you where she is coming from.

First, it should be public education. Why? She wont say. It’s as ideological as my commitment to getting the state out of education, but it’s something she doesn’t want to go on about.

Second, “well resourced parents”. Who resources them? Oh, maybe they got their own resources themselves, through their own efforts. Ah, but that upsets Catherine’s ideology that the world is a big bad capitalist place where fat cat men “allocate resources” unfairly, instead of to those who she loves. Not rather that people get resources through their own efforts, intelligence and convincing people that what they do is worthwhile.

So in conclusion she wants to “demand more for all children”, demand from whom Catherine? Oh, the parents who you don’t think need choice. Taxpayers without children, who are imposing the lowest “environmental footprint” as a result. Yes, take more from them to pay for those who do breed.

The mindlessness of it all tragically encapsulates the empty headed vacuous nature of the Green Party. Private education is “bad” because it just is, “commercialisation” of education is “bad” because it is (even though there is no indication ACT believes in this). Public education is “good” because it just is. School vouchers have “failed” without a shred of evidence, and parental choice is a “myth”, even though tens of thousands of parents choose now with their own money, also paying taxes to educate their children. As long as private schools exist there will be choice, but it is denied parents who cannot afford to pay twice for their kids’ education.

The Greens want everyone to have “quality public education”. Who defines quality? Well they do, since they want the state to provide it, and parents to have no choice. So what does this mean? The embracing of an education model that is little different from that seen in the former communist bloc. State education for all, providing the same “quality” (defined by politicians, bureaucrats and the monopoly suppliers of labour – teachers’ unions), meaning all children get the same start.

Oh and those parents wanting choice? Just fuck off you selfish “well resourced” commercialising “freedom” junkies. You just want to take from poor children, and not have to pay for the education of other kids. You want schools to be run as businesses where kids are brainwashed with your ideology, instead of our ideology. You don’t care do you? (time to cry).

I'll conclude with a statement from a former Swedish Minister of Education, Per Unckel “Education is so important that you can’t just leave it to one producer,”. Indeed you might even go to the biggest provider of private education in Sweden and see what you think.

After all, how long do you continue with the system you have before deciding how badly it performs?

Greens should pay for fruit in schools

It's such a simple basic concept, that socialists generally can't get to grips with.

If you want something to happen, do it yourself, with your own time or your own money, by your own choice - don't moan and whinge to get someone to make everyone else do it for you.

So it's hardly a surprise that the Greens, led by chief cheerleader for compulsion Sue Kedgley are demanding that you be made to pay for fruit to be provided to kids in schools for free.

Do you see Sue Kedgley wandering down to a low decile school donating some fruit herself? No. Do you see the Green party organising a collection or a charity to do it? No. That would mean doing more than a press release. Far better to demand that nanny state pinch a bit more tax from everyone else, to make them pay for it, push the money through bureaucracies (IRD, Treasury, Ministry of Education) and have the warm embracing state feed people's kids for them. Simpler than taking responsibility yourself isn't it Sue?

So if the "Fruit in Schools" programme is to cease getting taxvictim funding, then maybe Kedgley could start coughing up her own money to help out, perhaps some of the tax cut she opposed. Indeed why don't all Green MPs do that, and Green party members too?

Or, to use Kedgley's rhetoric, does the fact that she does nothing besides shout for the "government" to act, prove that she doesn't care at all about the nutritional needs of children in low decile schools? Does it not prove that the Greens only believe things can get done if everyone is forced to pay for them, and that Green MPs would rather bark on about taxpayers paying for something that none of them will voluntarily pay for themselves?

Wanaka's National Front school?

Seriously, is Mt. Aspiring College the least worldly most naive high school in the country? Or a secret hot bed of neo-Nazi knuckle draggers?

Wanaka is such a beautiful location, does it just mean people there don't read, watch TV or read history?

Does it mean the school curriculum is so utterly devoid of history that so many of the staff and students are just plain ignorant?

Someone better find out - I bet the semi-evolved grunts in the National Front will be getting their tiny penises (they are 90% "men") all excited about how they need to have their conference in Wanaka as a result of this story.

Life in Wanaka is clearly far too mundane because the Southland Times reports

"many students have already got their costumes organised after depleting all the stocks of white coveralls from Wanaka's Mitre 10 hardware store. Manager Mark Watson said he had no idea the $7.98 clothing item had been so popular when contacted last night, but after a quick check of his database confirmed he had only large sizes of the boilersuit-type clothing left."

Only the slim to average sized stupid and racist students are going. Although one report does suggest a bit of mischief making:

"Last year they went on sale two weeks earlier and this year it was only a few days before. They were hiding them until the last minute. "Those kids are not as dumb as the principal is making out."" says "angry mother".

Bloody hell! Parents of Wanaka. Airfares to Australia are NOT expensive, probably cheaper than to Auckland if you scoot to Queenstown. Take your kids at least to Aussie (well Sydney and/or Melbourne anyway) at least twice before they are 13.

Buy them books.

Show them where the news channels on Sky are.

and most of all, show them images of white supremacists in their natural environment (above).

(Credit to Stuff for the image)

State predatory pricing kills business

and that means private schools.

Cactus Kate points out that if private schools fail because parents can't afford to pay for a private education, then the state sector couldn't handle the numbers.

She's right, but the solution is not to fix the state sector. The solution is to end the unfair competition of state schools, which everyone is forced to pay for, against private schools which get funding only from those using them. State schools are the French farms of the education sector, bloated, inefficient, heavily subsidised, and their output has guaranteed markets because of protectionism.

Parents sending their kids to private school pay twice. The PPTA socialists don't give a damn about that. They are ideologically opposed to competition in education, and opposed to their members ever being accountable for their performance. The PPTA would only be happy if there were monopoly state schools everywhere, centrally managed and perpetual pay increases for teachers above inflation. The PPTA thinks what parents want is not as important, after all the workers always know what's best for the consumer don't they? Lockwood Smith's biggest political mistake was not to confront this bullying labour cartel when he had the chance, and remove decisions on teacher salaries from central bargaining.

So the appropriate solution to save private schools is NOT a "bail out", but something more sophisticated than that. End paying twice for education. It can be done different ways. I'd say just give parents back their education taxes and let them spend it. That's Libertarianz policy. In fact, just letting them opt out of taxpayer funded education would do the job. They could always pay directly for a state school if they change their minds.

However, there are other approaches:
- Parents who choose private education could simply have the proportion of their income tax taken for education refunded;
- A standard amount could be refunded to reflecting the average cost of a state secondary education per student; or
- ACT's policy of allowing funding to follow the student. Private schools then get the same funding as state schools.

Whatever it is, it is crying out for radical reform. The Nats wont want to be seen to be propping up private schools, but having either a tax credit or letting funding follow students would make a positive difference to schools.

After all, education is the sector most desperately in need of reform so that those paying for it actually can exercise the power of consumers, and those wanting to provide it can make their own decisions.

Expect the left to fight it tooth and nail though, after all, without the teaching labour cartels, the Labour Party would lose a key source of funding, membership and candidates, and the Greens, who sometimes fight monopolies, embrace them when Nanny State is in charge.

What the hell is wrong with school choice?

If you're a parent, and your local state school doesn't deliver the education you want, and of course, you're a taxpayer, why is it unreasonable to expect that you should be able to send your child to another school - and for your taxes to follow where you send your child?

Now I'd argue that the parent should get the money back and pay the fees. Many would say "what if it isn't enough", which becomes another argument. I would say that YOU should help that family if you are so concerned, but also that private schools elsewhere often provide scholarships for kids from poorer backgrounds to attend. In the UK some private schools have up to 20% of pupils attending with fees part paid by such scholarships - and that is without anyone getting their taxes back. Imagine if parents had their taxes back, could choose the schools and those who could not afford would be helped by those schools, charities and their families. Yes, that's where Libertarianz aim for things to be.

Far too much for the Nats to contemplate, which is understandable - it couldn't convince people that most are quit generous.

However, there are steps along that path. ACT advocates school choice through vouchers, similar to what Sweden has implemented. The vouchers aren't actual pieces of paper, but each child has taxpayer funding that follows him or her, and the school receives that money, whether the school be state or private. The private schools can even be profit making (I know, and they don't even use the children for slave labour or their organs!).

It would be a simple step forward, schools would need to be attractive to parents - which is predicated on parents knowing what's best for their kids. Schools that succeeded would be funded on a per student basis, those that didn't would need to change or fail or face takeover.

National once had this policy, in 1987. Ancient history now. Parents choosing, schools accountable? Not any more.

A very modest step forward would be bulk funding. Schools funded on a per student basis, but only state schools. At least some accountability for performance. No. National can't even argue that schools should get money per student.

It's going to "plan talks on zoning", you know the law that means schools can only target students from local areas, with some exceptions. According to The Press, Education spokeswoman Anne Tolley said that "zoning "certainly won't go altogether" under National, but "I think there is some tweaking we can do"." So glad your political career is ambitious Anne.

PPTA President Robin Duff, (the PPTA being defenders of the right of teachers to get unified pay increases without any measure of performance or accountability), said "If you juggle things around with zoning, there are winner and loser schools". There already are.

The PPTA has long fought the right of funding to follow pupils, it has long fought teachers being paid according to performance, it fought vouchers and bulk funding. Nothing substantive will change in education until this bastion of old fashioned union monopoly dominance is smashed.

It is time for education to be about what parents want, not what teachers think is good for them.

National's ambitions for education are woeful. It is depressing that it can't even argue for funding for students to go to the school parents choose. Centrally planned education funded Soviet style is the status quo - and that's the education system you will keep getting under National.

Unless you are wealthy and can afford to opt out - which is perhaps why plenty of Nats don't care, why should they give a damn about children from middle class homes?

More education choice? not under National

Lindsay Mitchell blogs about the success of education vouchers in that paragon of New Right neo-liberal Business Roundtable capitalist exploitation of the proletariat - Sweden.

National wont of course. Giving parents more choice, schools running at a profit. It was National policy in 1987 believe it or not, when Education Shadow Minister (as they were called then) was Ruth Richardson. The Nats could have got away with it at 1990, but Lockwood Smith proved then to be a useless inert nothing, incapable of standing up to the bloody minded self-interested Marxists of the teachers' unions.

The time has come to tell parents that National will let funding follow pupils to whatever schools their parents want to send them to. It is a small step, but it unlocks funding from central government control, gives parents more options and starts to present real competition for state schools. The tired rhetoric that "all schools should be as good as each other" is a fantasyland the same as saying "all teachers should be as good as each other" or all restaurants or all houses. It is anti-reason, it denies reality and most of all it is an excuse for centrally planned tolerance of mediocrity.

Nothing is more important to change than education, and it is telling that virtually nobody in NZ will engage on the success of the Swedish model - an approach that only the ex.communist party opposes in the Swedish parliament. So you can see where Labour (and National's) education policies have a spiritual ally!

Deregulating education becomes Tory policy

Well at least a move towards the Swedish model, which the left in the UK, US and NZ all remain willfully blind about. The Spectator describes it in some detail. It was discussed, wholly positively, on the BBC today. In summary in Sweden:

- Anyone can set up a school, a charity, church, private trust or private company. It can operate for profit.

- The school must demonstrate it meets certain conditions for registration (committing to a bare curriculum), but can then teach whatever it wishes and however it wishes beyond the state defined minimum.

- Parents choose the school, and funding follows the student. Parents can change schools and funding follows.

In Sweden it is a roaring success, so successful that all political parties in Parliament support the policy, except the communists. It means that consumers (parents) have the power, the schools have to be attractive to parents and pupils, and that decisions on how teachers are paid and how schools operate are made at the school level (you can see how scared teachers' unions get when central bargaining gets undermined). Some government schools have folded as a result, some local authorities have sold schools - and the sky hasn't fallen in.

It would be a great step forward if this policy came to pass in the UK, it would be too much to ask for the New Zealand National Party to actually be so bold as to consider this. Wouldn't it?

Survey on political blogging

Other blogs have linked to it, so pardon me if you've seen it before.

University of Auckland MA (Pols) student Andrew Cushen is conducting an online survey about political blogging, with the survey here for those who wish to complete it. It is professional and I wish Andrew the best as the results could be very interesting. Particularly as it is election year it would be interesting to see the footprint of those reading political blogs.

So go on, help a student do something new and interesting.