Politics at Westminster | BREAKING: UKIP

I generally have a fair bit of time for Gove and having worked in a Ministerial office, am sympathetic to the sheer amount of vitriol politicians and, in particular, government Ministers get every time they make any kind of statement on anything at all. That said, I think it's a bit of a funny battle they've gone for on this one. If his complaint was that teachers place an over-reliance on pop culture materials that focus heavily on satire and less on an objective account, then I think that's a fair point to make around how these types of tools are best utilised around more traditional teaching methods. However he seems to be approaching this from an angle that these types of programmes misleadingly change the whole narrative around conflicts such as WW1, for which I think there's little evidence.

In my view, the risk of over reliance on these types of materials is that pupils walk away with a rather glib view of the sufferings of that conflict and won't learn the skills they need to write articulately about the issues. I don't think there's a particular risk however that the narrative and understanding of WW1 becomes completely transformed with a generation somehow growing up viewing Blackadder as historically accurate. I think pupils and teachers can be trusted to view Blackadder for what it is, a very good piece of satirical comedy with a cultural value of its own that has some value in the classroom if used correctly.
 
Agent Red said:
I generally have a fair bit of time for Gove and having worked in a Ministerial office, am sympathetic to the sheer amount of vitriol politicians and, in particular, government Ministers get every time they make any kind of statement on anything at all. That said, I think it's a bit of a funny battle they've gone for on this one. If his complaint was that teachers place an over-reliance on pop culture materials that focus heavily on satire and less on an objective account, then I think that's a fair point to make around how these types of tools are best utilised around more traditional teaching methods. However he seems to be approaching this from an angle that these types of programmes misleadingly change the whole narrative around conflicts such as WW1, for which I think there's little evidence.

In my view, the risk of over reliance on these types of materials is that pupils walk away with a rather glib view of the sufferings of that conflict and won't learn the skills they need to write articulately about the issues. I don't think there's a particular risk however that the narrative and understanding of WW1 becomes completely transformed with a generation somehow growing up viewing Blackadder as historically accurate. I think pupils and teachers can be trusted to view Blackadder for what it is, a very good piece of satirical comedy with a cultural value of its own that has some value in the classroom if used correctly.
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That's a well written post with which I don't entirely agree but it was good to read.
 
Has anyone been watching Benefit Street by the way?

I for one will be taking it as representative of the entirety of the UK and imagine that it's a true reflection of all of Birmingham's residents.
 
How oddly coincidental that a program about benefits cheats crops up on national television at around the same time Osborne starts going on about cutting more money from poor people.
 
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noodlehair said:
How oddly coincidental that a program about benefits cheats crops up on national television at around the same time Osborne starts going on about cutting more money from poor people.
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I don't get Channel 4. It's basically run by lefties but they seem to chase viewing figures by doing endless programmes about benefit cheats.
 
It was a bit disappointing by C4, if mainly for the aching predictability of the responses on social media which they obviously courted with a snappy name and an onscreen hashtag.

People were always going to see what they wanted to in it though. There was actually only one guy who was plausibly scumbaggish. His mate was clearly a vulnerable loser rather than a malicious scrounger. So if people saw one dodgy guy as the representative thing to focus on rather than white Dee and the 50p man (both of whom came across as admirable) it says a lot more about them IMO.
 
alastair said:
I don't get Channel 4. It's basically run by lefties but they seem to chase viewing figures by doing endless programmes about benefit cheats.
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They aren't "lefties" as such, they are no different to Blair imo. Besides, its fun nowadays to create nasty, ideological driven programmes that target the working classes, "underclasses", disabled, unemployed etc, because that's what the government needs to justify its policies to the people. I've never seen a good documentary about people on benefits.
 
There aren't any lefties running anything here anymore. Other countries in Europe have right wing parties who are less right wing than our left wing parties.
 
Well here's time for a post that won't be looked upon well because it's so difficult to make it sound nice.

I think the government has every right to do what it's doing and is actually morally justified in its actions. Here's why:

My view is that reliance upon the state should be the absolute last resort. It should not be the first port of call. Now, obviously people who are unemployed or who are elderly require it. Some people who are in work still require it. The list is endless. My issue is not with these needy people, it's with those who make the policies that render these people needy.

What Labour did was ensure that people were connected to the state in some way. They gave out free bus passes to 'elderly' people, gave EMA to kids who lived five minutes walk from their school, threw money at public services that no-one used and so forth. Obviously this was unsustainable. They taxed poor people and then gave it back to them in benefits, just to create a link between your average citizen and the state. Clearly, the Tories just had to cut this right back.

I believe that the right thing to do is not to end 'benefits culture' or whatever it's called, but to end the culture of the citizen being entwined with the state. I'm all in favour of personal responsibility first, then community and charity, then the government. My personal view is that local support groups and charities are much more caring and efficient than the state in general.

Now as I say, there are some people who will still need the state to help, and that's fine, but Cameron and Osborne are right that we need to do everything we can to rid ourselves of the idea that the majority of our citizens need some kind of state help. They don't. My one annoyance is that they don't do anywhere near enough with pensioners.
 
alastair said:
Wonder why that is. Check out France.
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What a strange example to give, considering they've had 2 socialist presidents in the 5th republic, ruling for a total of 15 years out of a total 54....
 
alastair said:
I don't get Channel 4. It's basically run by lefties but they seem to chase viewing figures by doing endless programmes about benefit cheats.
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Run by lefties? Isn't it all just re-runs of terrible American sitcoms?
 
alastair said:
My point was that they've just elected a socialist who has the worst polls of any French president ever.
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But you seem to be suggesting that the reason no lefties run anything in the UK anymore is because the lefties in France have messed things up so much.....

When the whole of Europe is fecked and was fecked by a mixture of leftist and right politicians
 
africanspur said:
But you seem to be suggesting that the reason no lefties run anything in the UK anymore is because the lefties in France have messed things up so much.....

When the whole of Europe is fecked and was fecked by a mixture of leftist and right politicians
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I didn't mean for that to be my inference at all.

I think there's been a general trend in Europe away from left wing politics towards more centre-right views.

Even if you don't think of it in terms of left and right, there's clearly a general acceptance across the Eurozone that cuts have to be made to budgets and England has identified that it cannot maintain the level of spending on welfare.
 
alastair said:
Well here's time for a post that won't be looked upon well because it's so difficult to make it sound nice.

I think the government has every right to do what it's doing and is actually morally justified in its actions. Here's why:

My view is that reliance upon the state should be the absolute last resort. It should not be the first port of call. Now, obviously people who are unemployed or who are elderly require it. Some people who are in work still require it. The list is endless. My issue is not with these needy people, it's with those who make the policies that render these people needy.

What Labour did was ensure that people were connected to the state in some way. They gave out free bus passes to 'elderly' people, gave EMA to kids who lived five minutes walk from their school, threw money at public services that no-one used and so forth. Obviously this was unsustainable. They taxed poor people and then gave it back to them in benefits, just to create a link between your average citizen and the state. Clearly, the Tories just had to cut this right back.

I believe that the right thing to do is not to end 'benefits culture' or whatever it's called, but to end the culture of the citizen being entwined with the state. I'm all in favour of personal responsibility first, then community and charity, then the government. My personal view is that local support groups and charities are much more caring and efficient than the state in general.


Now as I say, there are some people who will still need the state to help, and that's fine, but Cameron and Osborne are right that we need to do everything we can to rid ourselves of the idea that the majority of our citizens need some kind of state help. They don't. My one annoyance is that they don't do anywhere near enough with pensioners.
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Putting himself in the shoes of someone who's middle class for a change I see al.
 
Mortgage interest tax relief. Terrible lefty, get everyone reliant on the govt scheme that was. Or the current govts policy on mortgage subsidy, shocking attempt to turn the whole of the UK into govt dependent robots.

 
Whether you viewed the various individuals on Benefits Street as sympathetic or not, it did basically all surmount towards the need for reform. The difference is in whether you'd cut that money outright, or whether you'd try to re-distribute. The problem now is that a lot of the people facing a loss of income as a result of a cut in their benefits are vulnerable, and so the obvious counter argument is that their benefits shouldn't be cut as they are already vulnerable and putting them in financial hardship will exacerbate the issues associated with their various conditions.

That said, that not's the point of the benefits in place. Housing benefit is designed to help meet the cost of your social housing, disability benefit to meet the extra costs as a result of disability etc. so whilst no restrictions are set on how they're spent, they're not they're not designed to be just a part of a general lifestyle pot. Whilst the programme clearly isn't entirely representative, we know already know that many people living in the lowest income brackets may be more exposed to addiction and hence the added costs of regular drug, cigarette or alcohol use. Increasing someone's housing benefit by a fiver a week won't help those issues, so arguably the money would be better spent trying to improve the education and health outcomes for the majority to stop individuals ever getting into these circumstances in the first place, or improving their chances of kicking addiction once they have received advice/help. Increasing their benefits doesn't address any of the underlying issues and is merely a plaster to hope that they won't go out and try to plug the gulf in income through crime.
 
africanspur said:
What a strange example to give, considering they've had 2 socialist presidents in the 5th republic, ruling for a total of 15 years out of a total 54....
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Considering also that the Front National is regularly the third main party in presidential elections ffs :lol:
 
Ah, those were the days. EMA. I never got it, I was always well jealous of those that did. I had a job at weekends. Ah EMA.
 
Tough Young Teachers on BBC3. 20 minutes in and we have one teacher who can't spell photosynthesis because she's dyslexic, and another who doesn't like books who's teaching English.

Seems positive.
 
BBC3 documentaries are awful though. Did anyone catch the one on payday loans with the guy who would use a loan to buy new clothes because he couldn't wait until he got paid? Totally ignored the stories of people who were genuinely stuck with nowhere else to turn.
 
MJLD said:
BBC3 documentaries are awful though. Did anyone catch the one on payday loans with the guy who would use a loan to buy new clothes because he couldn't wait until he got paid? Totally ignored the stories of people who were genuinely stuck with nowhere else to turn.
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:lol: Really? I hate documentaries like that. Without going all Owen Jones, they're just so unrepresentative.
 
Definitely is. You are in the fence-sitting demographic, for example.
 
I don't know which party this is, but they're clearly morons of the highest order.

We reject the "climate change" theory which holds that all western nations need to be stripped of their manufacturing base and pay untold billions to the Third World to build up their industries.
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I got 75% Green and 25% Labour.
 
BNP.

UKIP are only slightly less mental:
"Establish a Royal Commission under a High Court judge that will allow scientists to reach a conclusion about the facts and economic implications of global warming."
 
Ubik said:
80% Green, 20% Labour. My constituency results were somewhat surprising, one of the safest tory seats in the country where Greens don't even bother to stand, but Labour and Greens were both top with 21%. Suppose that's the younger demographic.
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50% Green, 25 % Lib Dem and Labour, though to be fair, some of the policies of Labour and Green (I think it was labour) go pretty much hand in hand with me, but oh well.
 
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