Cutting Bureaucratic Red Tape

June 7th 2007 | Posted by Chris Palmer

Within days of the current Conservative-led group taking control of Bath and North-East Somerset council, the Student Liaison Committee was unceremoniously scrapped without any supposed consultation.

The local Bath Lib Dems also immediately began complaining that because the ruling Conservative group reduced the number of executive members from eleven to five and renamed it the Cabinet, this was a massive recentralisation of power away from local people – which of course is utter rubbish.

I think firstly, if we take the point about centralisation. Looking just over the border, in Somerset, the County Council run by (yes, you guessed it) the Liberal Democrats is trying to force a massively centralised Unitary authority upon all, which involves abolishing all the District councils and creating one massive super-council for the whole area. The Labour Government is in full support and only a high turnout in a referendum on the matter may dissuade them.

Elsewhere, the real centralisation of power is that in both Westminster and Brussels – the latter of which the Liberal Democrats and Labour staunchly support with unflinching resolve. Anyone see the hypocrisy of claiming you are against what your own side has been doing on a far, far greater scale for years? But then that is the deceitful, two-faced and duplicitous nature of the Liberal Democrats for you. Their sort will do and say absolutely anything to obtain office, even if it means completely contradicting what they are saying elsewhere or have said previously.

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Filed in Bath, Education, Lib Dems | 1 Comment »

Grammar Correction

May 19th 2007 | Posted by Chris Palmer

There has been some recent discussion on David Cameron’s policy to rescind Conservative party support for further Grammar schools. Mr Cameron says the Conservatives will ‘never be taken seriously by parents’ so long as the party backs selection.

There have been a number of justifiably angry squawks from the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, and an equally numerous number of whinges from Mr Cameron and his supporters who believe that majority of Conservatives should just back down on this issue.

Team Cameron think that because they, along with some unaccountable and nefarious policy group, in their infinite wisdom dreamt up the new policy, they are automatically right and we should not dare to question their judgement.

The Conservative party, which is supposed to be meritocratic, but whose Shadow Cabinet and associated periphery is curiously stuffed full of old Etonians, are effectively denying the academically bright to fulfil their potential and the less able a helping hand. Having said that, Mrs Thatcher, a Grammar school striver of the past, was, along with her previous Conservative governments, one of the main instigators in the decline of the two-tier system – so in part, David Cameron’s policy is merely a continuation of a gradual trend.

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Filed in David Cameron, Education, Britain | 4 Comments »

Admission Impossible?

December 9th 2006 | Posted by Chris Palmer

As some students in Bath may have noticed way back in October, there was a small Student march called Admission Impossible that took place in London near the Houses of Parliament which was promoted and run by the NUS (National Union of Students – reads National Union of Socialists.) The aim of the march was to highlight the supposed unfairness of the £3,000 ‘top-up’ University tuition fees that apparently make it impossible for many people to attend higher education.

Attendance of the event by students from Bath University was, from what I am told, pretty dismal compared with the size of the whole campus and general Bath student population. Participants included those from the NUS, the usual assortment of lefties, rebellious students prepared to go on any march simply because it was a protest, a couple of Labour youth party members (yes, there are some apparently,) the snivelling young Limp Dims, and also those who had absolutely no interest in going on the march and just wanted a cheap ticket to London for the day.

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