http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXTBGcyNuc
N.B. Some knowledge of taxonomy is vital. Even then, your head may hurt, mine certainly did.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Sunday, 25 May 2008
Atheists aboard the Milibandwagon!
Following the disastrous (for the Labour Party at least) Crewe bye-election, there has been open speculation on the future of our Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Will the Torys win the next General Election? Will Brown survive as leader until the next General Election? Who will succeed Brown as Labour leader and Prime Minister?
Naturally that has been the order of speculation, with attention now turning to the third. Polically minded people across Britain are now eyeing up Brown's cabinet to see who would make a half decent Prime Minister. And so the Times has turned its attention to the young (42) David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs - a job he has held since the June 28th 2007 reshuffle. Miliband has apparently declared that he is willing to "save New Labour".
I don't know about anyone else, but I seem to recall that this is what Brown was supposed to do? Back in June 2007, weren't we told that Gordon would rid the party and the government of the worst excesses of the Blair years? That it would be the end of spin, the end of sofa government? Admittedly, Brown has been more a victim of circumstance than anything else. Current economic problems are global (or so i am led to believe). Nevertheless, it is the government which must carry the can when finances go tits up.
For the sake of argument, leds imagine that the Labour Party has, en masse, called for Gordon Brown to resign. Gracefully, though not to pleased about it, he does so. Then what? Numerous names have been thrown in the air, other than that of Miliband, are Jack Straw, Alan Johnson and James Purnell. Naturally no one will currently admit wanting the job:
Alan Johnson on the chances of him leading Labour into the next election: "None whatsoever, absolutely none".
David Milliband: "I'm not in the market for any job other than the one I've got at the moment"
Douglas Alexander on Brown: "I don't think there's anybody better qualified "
Ed Miliband on Brown: "He's the right man for the times" Naturally things may change.
To quote the Times "Among the ministers said to be ready to desert Brown are Alan Johnson, the health secretary, Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, John Hutton, the business secretary, Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, and Tessa Jowell, the Olympics" and "Brown is also losing the support of Alistair Darling, the chancellor." That would leave quite an empty cabinet one would imagine, seemingly made up of Harriet Harman, the Miliband Brothers, Balls and Cooper, Denham, Hoon, Alexander, Browne, Benn, Woodward and Murphy, as well as a lot of hastily promoted backbenchers.
"I'll get my coat" Assuming the Times' prediction is correct, and that Brown has just left Number 10 (possibly taking notable Brownites such as Harman, Darling and Balls with him). Is it possible to imagine a leadership contest? For the first time in 11 years, the Party hasn't had a leader in waiting. No one potential Prime Minister looms out over any other. Let's suppose the ballot of Labour Party members has opened and the choice is between either David Miliband or Jack Straw.
All other issues aside, I'm actually quite fond of one of these candidates. Miliband is an Atheist like myself. While the Daily Mail naturally sees this as a bad thing (Godless PM! Shock Horror!!) I feel it could only be a good thing for Britain. The UK needs an Atheist government, secularism needs to be strongly defended against constant attack. If the recent debate over abortion has taught us anything, it's that right wing christian fanatacism is on the rise. Across the country, there are people who will argue that discrimination is ok if it's based on faith.
Once PM Miliband has sorted out our economic problems (perhaps with a little help from Chancellor Byrne?) there are a few areas of national policy i'd like to see him sort out:
-End any privalege accorded to minority groups on the basis of religion
-Close down ALL faith schools, be they Christian, Muslim or whatever
-Ban religious dress in schools -End worship in schools -Force schools to teach evolution in science classes
-Enforce a decent standard of sex education in schools
-Kick the 26 unelected bishops out of the House of Lords -Enable police forces to seriously investigate hate crimes and incitement from religious groups
-Protect the right to criticise religion
-Block all attempts to lower the abortian time limit
-Bring in tough anti-homophobia laws
-Legalise marriage for homosexual couples
-Maintain the equality of all citizens under the law (No to sharia).
The Rt Hon. David Miliband, PM?I can only hope that as a Prime Minister, David Miliband would be as openly proud of his Atheism as Brown has been of his Presbytarianism and Blair is of his new Catholicism. I should probably point out that Jack Straw has been almost as committed to secularism, having at one time asked Muslim women in his constituency to remove their veils when talking to him - before being forced to back down by a party that depends quite heavily on the muslim vote in its inner city constituencies. As long as Ruth Kelly doesn't get the job, there's enough homophobic right wing nutters in the Tory party, we don't need one in charge of Labour.
All said and done, I sincerely hope that Brown survives the current blip in the polls. But should the writing really be on the wall for the Brown era, I'll be there on the sidelines cheering on fellow godless heathen, David Wright Miliband.
'Ciderite'
"The summers seemed to last forever"
Apparently the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested that the traditional long summer holiday be cut, since apparently "pupils' reading and maths abilities regressed because the summer break was too long."
Um.... whats wrong with getting the little sods to read over the summer??
Am I missing something here? When i was in school, 6 weeks off was a joy, it enabled me to devour countless books. Every trip to the library i'd load up with 7 or 8 thick hardbacks, then spend hours of the day just reading, the more liberal 'bed time' over the holidays meant i'd stay up till gone 11pm (!) trying to finish 'just one more chapter'.
Um.... whats wrong with getting the little sods to read over the summer??
Am I missing something here? When i was in school, 6 weeks off was a joy, it enabled me to devour countless books. Every trip to the library i'd load up with 7 or 8 thick hardbacks, then spend hours of the day just reading, the more liberal 'bed time' over the holidays meant i'd stay up till gone 11pm (!) trying to finish 'just one more chapter'.
Now call me an intellectual snob (I see it as a compliment), but i believe that anyone who chooses not to read for pleasure, or believes that reading is 'boring' deserves to be thick.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Knowledge Brings Fear
Like many politically minded people of all parties, I have also been watching the progress of the Human Embryology Bill. Believing as I do in autonomous liberation, I have thus far refrained from commenting (one cannot put of revision forever). That said, I cannot help bringing up something which has been heard a lot as this Bill has progressed through the parliamentary process. It is a basic untruth which does an enormous amount of harm to everyone’s reproductive rights, and not just those of women. It is that young women treat abortion as: “just another form of contraception.”
This lie is one which is constantly spouted by the anti-choice lobby. It assumes that couples simply don’t bother taking precautions during sex because “hey, if something goes wrong, you can just get rid of it right?” This assumption is an insult to those millions of women who need to take a difficult decision under what almost certainly aren’t circumstances of their choice. At least consider those women who don’t even have a choice about having sex. If I were to be devoid of all humanity, I’d go so far as to say that abortions don’t even sound that convenient, (what with the 2 signatures and the jumping though hoops to prove need…), I’m not a women so I don’t know, but I’d assume that taking a pill daily, or using a condom is far more efficient and infinitely less stressful.
But abortion isn’t the issue I want to discuss. The issue with me is the root of the ridiculous statement above. The Daily Mail and other tabloid newspapers, so keen to support the 20 week limit, are also very keen on publishing stories on ‘Britain’s record teen pregnancy’. Said tabloids are also very fond of expressing ‘moral’ outrage whenever plans are revealed for sex education in schools. It’s usually some utter rubbish, suggesting that telling pupils about sex will ‘only encourage them to be promiscuous’. This conclusion is usually based on the faulty logic that if one, for example, hears a beautiful piece of music; one will want to learn to play for oneself. The suggestion is that it is obviously the same with learning about sex.
Usually the letters will flood in from indignant parents (‘My daughter is only 14, she’s far to young to learn about sex’, etc, ad nauseam). Always the conclusion is the same; better sex education = promiscuous teenagers = higher teen pregnancy rates.
Firstly, this conclusion is utterly incorrect. In fact, it is so absurd I can assume most of our readers are intelligent enough not to need it pointed out to them. Secondly, levels of sex education in this country are appalling.
Now admittedly I’m only speaking from anecdotal evidence, but quite often that is scary enough to suggest that something needs to change. Personally through my schooling, the standard from a biological point of view was quite good, even if parents were allowed to remove their children from the class for those lessons (‘well we can’t have our child actually learning anything’), at least we were told the mechanics. For the social side of things we were kept mostly in the dark with no time officially allocated for teaching, and no specialists. In fact, I’m told our old headmaster actually prevented the school nurse from supplying free condoms (“teenage boys actually having sex?? Not my pupils!”).
That said, I’m quite sure I got the better part of the deal. While I went to a middle class suburban comprehensive (though this came with problems of its own), inner city schools are obviously in a much worse state for sex ed, not even having adequate resources to spare on it. All manner of myths surround sex when you are a teenager, no matter how much the ‘moral’ right would like to keep us in the dark. What bothers me is not that young people won’t know anything about sex, its that they won’t be in possession of the facts or the accurate information. When you hear a 16 year old girl (physically kept by her parents from knowing or learning anything about sex) ask if it’s possible to get pregnant from oral sex, you have to ask if we as a country are doing enough through education.
Supposedly ‘moral’ parents (often the hardcore conservative Christian variety in my experience, but one doesn’t like to generalize) would love to stop their children being taught any of the facts of life –presumably under the misguided impression that what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Yes it will. You aren’t keeping them innocent, you’re keeping them vulnerable. After all, would you avoid teaching them about road safety, because it might tempt them to cross the road? Basic health and safety in the workplace anyone? No, anyone who falls off a ladder obviously had it coming to them.
The point I’m trying to make is that, chances are, a girl who knows how contraception works, where to get it from and how to use it, is probably less likely to end up needing an abortion than a girl who believes (or is led to believe) that you ‘can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up with your socks on when it’s a full moon’. That is why I despise the right wing lobby that is both anti-choice and anti-sex-ed. Call me cynical, but it seems to me that if this lobby really believed in ‘the rights of the unborn’, it would surely give full support to a decent and fully funded program of compulsory sex education in all UK schools and thereby help to reduce the number of unplanned and accidental pregnancies.
This lie is one which is constantly spouted by the anti-choice lobby. It assumes that couples simply don’t bother taking precautions during sex because “hey, if something goes wrong, you can just get rid of it right?” This assumption is an insult to those millions of women who need to take a difficult decision under what almost certainly aren’t circumstances of their choice. At least consider those women who don’t even have a choice about having sex. If I were to be devoid of all humanity, I’d go so far as to say that abortions don’t even sound that convenient, (what with the 2 signatures and the jumping though hoops to prove need…), I’m not a women so I don’t know, but I’d assume that taking a pill daily, or using a condom is far more efficient and infinitely less stressful.
But abortion isn’t the issue I want to discuss. The issue with me is the root of the ridiculous statement above. The Daily Mail and other tabloid newspapers, so keen to support the 20 week limit, are also very keen on publishing stories on ‘Britain’s record teen pregnancy’. Said tabloids are also very fond of expressing ‘moral’ outrage whenever plans are revealed for sex education in schools. It’s usually some utter rubbish, suggesting that telling pupils about sex will ‘only encourage them to be promiscuous’. This conclusion is usually based on the faulty logic that if one, for example, hears a beautiful piece of music; one will want to learn to play for oneself. The suggestion is that it is obviously the same with learning about sex.
Usually the letters will flood in from indignant parents (‘My daughter is only 14, she’s far to young to learn about sex’, etc, ad nauseam). Always the conclusion is the same; better sex education = promiscuous teenagers = higher teen pregnancy rates.
Firstly, this conclusion is utterly incorrect. In fact, it is so absurd I can assume most of our readers are intelligent enough not to need it pointed out to them. Secondly, levels of sex education in this country are appalling.
Now admittedly I’m only speaking from anecdotal evidence, but quite often that is scary enough to suggest that something needs to change. Personally through my schooling, the standard from a biological point of view was quite good, even if parents were allowed to remove their children from the class for those lessons (‘well we can’t have our child actually learning anything’), at least we were told the mechanics. For the social side of things we were kept mostly in the dark with no time officially allocated for teaching, and no specialists. In fact, I’m told our old headmaster actually prevented the school nurse from supplying free condoms (“teenage boys actually having sex?? Not my pupils!”).
That said, I’m quite sure I got the better part of the deal. While I went to a middle class suburban comprehensive (though this came with problems of its own), inner city schools are obviously in a much worse state for sex ed, not even having adequate resources to spare on it. All manner of myths surround sex when you are a teenager, no matter how much the ‘moral’ right would like to keep us in the dark. What bothers me is not that young people won’t know anything about sex, its that they won’t be in possession of the facts or the accurate information. When you hear a 16 year old girl (physically kept by her parents from knowing or learning anything about sex) ask if it’s possible to get pregnant from oral sex, you have to ask if we as a country are doing enough through education.
Supposedly ‘moral’ parents (often the hardcore conservative Christian variety in my experience, but one doesn’t like to generalize) would love to stop their children being taught any of the facts of life –presumably under the misguided impression that what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Yes it will. You aren’t keeping them innocent, you’re keeping them vulnerable. After all, would you avoid teaching them about road safety, because it might tempt them to cross the road? Basic health and safety in the workplace anyone? No, anyone who falls off a ladder obviously had it coming to them.
The point I’m trying to make is that, chances are, a girl who knows how contraception works, where to get it from and how to use it, is probably less likely to end up needing an abortion than a girl who believes (or is led to believe) that you ‘can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up with your socks on when it’s a full moon’. That is why I despise the right wing lobby that is both anti-choice and anti-sex-ed. Call me cynical, but it seems to me that if this lobby really believed in ‘the rights of the unborn’, it would surely give full support to a decent and fully funded program of compulsory sex education in all UK schools and thereby help to reduce the number of unplanned and accidental pregnancies.
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