Tuesday, May 16, 2006

YOU CAN WAIT WEEKS FOR A GOOD STORY...

...and then three come along all at once.

Journalists were spoilt for choice by a speech from the Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell yesterday. He decided to say so many controversial things all at once that many of us were left stunned, caught in the headlights of his unstoppable double-decker.

It was not enough to say that kids may have to be taught "British values" in school to counter the threat from suicide bombers. Universities are teaching impressionable young Muslim students an extremist version of Islam which "condones" terrorism, he added.
That would have been plenty to keep most hungry hacks fed.
But the minister decided to have a swipe at the politically correct notion that universities have to meet the every need of religious groups by providing prayer rooms and timetabling lectures to avoid their hours of worship. Such demands are "unreasonable", he said, and student religious groups should pull themselves together.

Treading on egg shells? He was ploughing a bus through the chicken farm.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-5823278,00.html

But well done, Bill, I say, for being bold enough to take on such a collection of incredibly difficult issues. He's certainly provoked a debate - and sensibly has not pretended to have all the answers.

Read the full speech here: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/speeches/index.cfm

Friday, May 12, 2006

WOULD THE REAL ALAN JOHNSON PLEASE STAND UP

So welcome aboard to Alan Johnson, international man of mystery.
We met when the new Education Secretary took his first tour of a couple of schools in the hot sunshine of Hackney on Thursday afternoon.
Disappointingly, he wasn't wearing those fetching shades, pictured on the front of The Times the day after Blair's reshuffle.
But he was no less enigmatic without the dark glasses.
The former postman and union boss was asked whether he was the first Education Secretary not to have a degree. He replied: "And I might be the only Secretary of State who was on free school meals."
Impeccable left-wing credentials, you see.
Yet a little later, he had a blunt message for those comrades at the eastern outposts of the Labour Party: he would not be watering down the Education Bill to please them.
In fact, he seemed more interested in keeping the Tories on side.
As if to prove the point Johnson went on to lavish praise on his Conservative counterpart, David Willetts. David, he said, is a "talented" politician with "bags of integrity". Many would no doubt agree.
But as for Johnson, he seems to be a man who might be able to appeal to the old left and the bright young things in the progressive centre of British politics at the same time.
Perhaps all those commentators tipping him for the highest office in the land may have had a point after all.