Hey Posh Boy, Leave Our Kids Alone

Rarely has there been a better example of one rule for them and another for the rest of us than Michael Gove’s latest plan to slash school holidays.

Gove wants the UK to be more like China and is intent of wringing every last scrap of joy from the lives of anyone who isn’t rich.  Now the Summer holidays are in his sights as his fake concern for children masks a desire to cut childcare costs and make it easier for bosses to exploit parents.

The Education Secretary has previously claimed that children suffer a ‘learning loss’ over the Summer holiday.  Yet children at private schools, like the one he went to, are barely ever required to turn up.

Eton College closes for the Summer this year at 1pm on Friday 28th June.  Students will not return until the 3rd of September.  The children are groomed for the gruelling life of being a posh twat by swanning off on holiday for just under an astonishing 10 weeks.

Then come Christmas they’re off again, breaking up on the 10th December and not returning until the 8th January, around twice the length of the holiday those at state schools receive.

Yet Gove wants to turn schools for working class children into Chinese-style education camps, with kids forced to sit in stuffy classrooms for months on end learning strings of pointless facts about dead toffs.

No doubt he hopes this will indoctrinate children for the miserable lives of ever increasing work for ever decreasing money that Gove and his neo-liberal vampires are attempting to inflict on the rest of us.  Gove’s new workfare schools show the real direction this Government is travelling.

Both main teaching unions are set to strike over this year over working hours.  They should be backed by every decent parent who doesn’t see childhood as merely a holding period before people are turned into profit making stock for the rich.

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Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children

The NUT are set to strike in Nottingham over plans to cut the school Summer holiday and lengthen the working day.  In a resounding 90% vote members will take industrial action over plans to cut the Summer Holiday to four weeks and split the year into five separate terms.  Other education Unions in the city may yet join them.

Nottingham Council have threatened to sack any teachers who oppose the move and offer them re-employment under the new conditions.  An all too familiar tactic for Councils imposing brutal cuts on pay and conditions.

Michael Gove has said he supports cutting the Summer holiday.  The man who destroyed the educational chances of a generation now wants to strip any last remaining joy from their childhood as well. He claims that children suffer ‘learning loss’, during the six week break.  As if working class children are too stupid to have a holiday.  Most private schools, like the one Gove went to, have ten week Summer breaks.  The double standard is as clear as ever.  This is nothing to do with the educational needs of our children.  This is about squeezing yet more labour, for less money, from the people who actually do the real work in this country.

Growing up in the 80s, teacher’s strikes were a common occurrence.  The NUT were heroes to Thatcher’s generation, not just because we hated the old witch, but because we got a day off.  No-one normal liked school.  Most people got out at the first opportunity when they reached 16 and many of us before then as schools practiced informal policies of exclusion after the age of about 14.  Truancy was an acceptable solution for both kids and schools alike.  We didn’t want to be there and the feeling was mutual.

The Summer holidays are often the good bits we all remember about childhood.  Dicking about with our mates for days on end.  It didn’t matter if some parents worked.  The more of them out of the way the better to be honest.

But these long carefree days are set to come to an end as this Government set out to remove any possible pleasure from the lives of everyone but the rich.  If you want a vision of the future imagine a human being stacking shelves in Tesco forever – for no pay.

The NUT have said that cutting school holidays is about saving money on childcare costs.  It will no doubt also be used as cover for yet more DWP bullying of single parents who are not in work.  Teachers are rightly resisting this attempt to lengthen their working hours for no extra pay.  No-one, it appears, has thought to ask the kids what they think.

The people who fought out on the streets the hardest during the student protests in 2010 were by and large not university students or rock star’s kids.  They were the EMA kids from the ‘slums of London’.  A year later they really began to show their teeth.  Their resistance may have been far from perfect.  Burning working class people out of there homes is not on.  Lessons must be learnt, and not in the classroom. But the riots didn’t reveal a generation happy with the future being inflicted on them.  Even in my day everyone wanted Nike trainers.  But we didn’t do that.

Social mobility, much like the benefits system, have both been an effective sticking plaster for working class rage.  Let a few make it, usually in the world of sports or pop music, and the illusion of fairness is flimsily maintained.  Work hard and you too could be Alan Sugar.  In fact you’ve got more chance of winning the lottery.  Chuck about a few middle class public sector jobs to bright and obedient working class kids and everyone thinks they might be Obama one day. Except now the people who ran the youth clubs and wrote ‘diversity strategies’ are stood in the dole queue along with the youth.

Pay people just about enough so they can keep a roof over their head and they might not murder you in your sleep.  Giving elderly and disabled people decent benefits and healthcare means their children may not burn down police stations.  Pay single parents a pittance and their kids might not go out and fight, burgle or mug yuppies for food.

These sticking plasters are now being ripped away by this Government of toffs.  Naked class war lies beneath.

School’s Out Forever

Well for a day at least.

The sub-Standard are reporting that up to 500o schools are likely to close or be affected due to the strike by the NUT planned fot tomorrow. Despite the sub-Standard’s hectoring tone a recent survey showed that most parents support the Union’s actions, the four year old here certainly does.

More impressive though is the story of the 150 schoolkids who walked out of school in Wales earlier this in week in protest at redundancies amongst the teaching staff. Three kids were arrested after leaving their lessons and blocking the road outside the Pontllanfraith Comprehensive school in South Wales.

Three pupils held in teacher redundancy protest

At the other end of the age-scale normally genteel bowls players in Gloucestershire were shocked when 7 cops turned up with sirens blazing to stop an illegal bowls match.

The local bowling club in Bradley Stoke have been in a long running dispute with the Council who want to increase rental fees by some 50%.

Club members say many of them are on pensions and cannot afford the price hike.

So after some crafty scamp removed the padlock and chain locking the Green it seems the bowling team decided to recalaim the green and hold a match to protest at the Council’s decision.

As ever the police response was heavy-handed and over-proportionate.

Margaret Thompson, secretary of North Avon Bowls Club, said: “Within 10 minutes two policemen arrived, followed swiftly by five more police with sirens wailing.

“There was a total of seven police and four cars. They originally charged us with criminal damage and threatened arrest but after discussions they decided it was a civil matter and as it was a peaceful protest, we then left the green.”

more info at http://www.bradleystokejournal.co.uk/

There are pockets of resistance growing in the unlikeliest places.