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...a blog by Richard Flowers

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Day 2352: Lost in Translation

Sunday:


Mr Frown seems eager to usher in a whole NEW ERA of the Cult of Spin, er, not being dead at all, actually…

The day was going SO WELL for my beloved SARAH TEATHER with lots of lovely news coverage and lots of opportunities for her to pop up on telly and talk about the latest people to say that the Labour’s obsession with testing, testing, testing was doing for education, education, education what their Middle East policy has done for peace, peace, peace.

The General Teaching Council have put out a statement saying that we do too many tests on school children, and because it is a whole new test every year, then we cannot compare one year with the next or the last. Lovely Sarah has been saying this since last year, and the General Teaching Council are saying she is RIGHT!

Well, the government wasn’t happy with THAT. So it was time to deploy their own miniaturised storm-trooper: the Minister for the Representation of Bullying Cardinals, Mr Ruth Kelly, with a mission to derail.

Irritatingly, it worked too.

A few SEEMINGLY ill-chosen words on the BBC’s the Politics Show about Councils providing essential translation services so that people can UNDERSTAND the help that’s available to them, and suddenly there’s a whole DIFFERENT agenda leading the news. Out with fluffy, liberal ideas about not testing kiddies to destruction, in with hard-edged right-wing suspicion of people who are different, “…coming over here and not taking our language, harroom, harrumph”.

Honestly, at the very least someone should have reminded the Minister that the services provided by local councils are FOR THE LOCAL COUNCIL TO DECIDE.


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