I was intrigued by an article in School Week that was out yesterday. Asd they noted:
School leaders have slammed the government's “sham” anti-strike consultation which forces respondents to pick a preferred proposal and limits comments to just 150 characters.
They added:
The Department for Education today published proposals for new minimum service levels in schools which would severely limit the number of staff who could strike.
But it has since emerged the DfE's own consultation does not allow respondents to progress unless they choose a “preferred” MSL proposal – with those that don't unable to complete the survey.
Respondents are also invited to leave comments in addition to their responses. But some are limited to just 150 characters – and respondents are unable to progress with the survey unless they meet this requirement.
I checked. The claim is correct.
Basically, this consultation is framed so that objecting to minimum service level agreements is very hard.
And, as noted, reasoned argument is not permitted.
This is a sham, and not a consultation. But that reflects the government's own refusal to recognise a quite fundamental fact. As I tweeted last night:
Of course, professionals in the NHS, education and other public services want to deliver minimum service levels. But the simple fact is that it is austerity that is not making that possible, which we now know from the Autumn Statement is something that is going to get very much worse over coming years. But this obvious fact is ignored by the so-called consultation, which is just another government whitewash.
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That survey sounds like a lot of tory MPs on Facebook. If you don’t agree with them they do not allow you to comment on their facebook pages.
I think both nurses and teachers have said that minimum service levels are better than they are when they are not on strike, so yes please. As said, all they want is the funding to supply them.
Public service minimum service levels are contingent on them being adequately funded by government. They’re not.
The Covid Inquiry hearings already provide a text book for public understanding of how outdated, operationally inadequate, ill-equipped and subject to gross failure the organisation and delivery of Government has become for the 21st century. Fundamentally, the long-standing constitutional arrangements for the executive administration of Government have grossly failed the people. These arrangements have been, for too long grossly overestimated in their wisdom, coherence or effectiveness and have been allowed to perpetuate. carried along on a mixture of inflated reputation, custom and probably above all; Party advantage, from the perspective of vested interests, whose calim to authority is the claim itself.
Where the hearings do not help us with our understanding of executive Government (for understandable reasons; it is a carefully defined and designed legal enquiry into Covid); is the degree to which executive administration of Government has essentially become secondary in the order of Government, Cabinet and Prime Ministerial priorities, to the politics of Party and Party (or personal political) advantage for Ministers as politicians; supported now by teams of Special Advisors; to ensure Government and its administration is principally a matter of Party Political purposes; as Gove and others testimony has tellingly revealed. The interests of the people have become secondary to the interests of Government and Party.
The good thing about the enquiry is that ordinary people are finding out how incompetent this government was at the time of the pandemic and still is.
Savid Javid has said that Johnson wasn’t in charge of his own government and that Cummings was because of inexperience of cabinet. That will be headlines tomorrow.
You have to ask why though the electorate have allowed matters to reach this horrible state of affairs and somehow for me it’s the prevalence of a something for nothing mentality. Unscrupulous politicians realise they can literally get away with murder because voters won’t get engaged in a level of how things are really working. The whole false narrative of how the monetary system really works clearly indicates this. For those who do get engaged they must accept A] they must get engaged with others to understand the above and B] it will be a long slog!
I think most of us have only a superficial understanding of most things. I knew nothing of MMT until about 2 years ago, thought the BBC was as neutral as it claimed, and that butter was a bad as others claimed.
With any luck I have tried to respond without giving approval to any of the proposals. Here is my response.
https://consult.education.gov.uk/industrial-action/minimum-service-levels-mls-in-education/consultation/my_response?user_id=ANON-K79Z-489M-7&key=098d5753e51fbe338284d8c0b4ed3460bcab1578
It’s a mighty step forward to fascism. Use the rhetoric of consultation, claim agreement, cut freedoms all the while claiming they’re the party of Freedom. Along with all the other restrictions, for instance on protests, that are being introduced, and the blatant lying presented as truth, for instance that they have a mandate for this, it presents the very real spectre of Trumpian politics. They demonstrated their aim to make our democracy a sham one (think attacks on the Court of Appeal). It doesn’t take much. Meanwhile they are trashing the economy and lying about that too.
In my teaching experience, which started Jan 1975 and continues to this day, I have never encountered a more lily-livered, feeble-minded bunch than teachers today. Most have absolutely no clue about the why and wherefore of industrial action, quite a few vote Tory, and when we held a meeting to discuss strike action, 4 people turned up, one of them to resign from her union. The same pattern was repeated across about 50% of the local schools.
40 years of Thatcherite policies, increasingly blatant bias in the media and school curriculum, and the Huxleyian ‘soma’ of entertainment and disconnection from reality has had its effect.
However, the seeds of change are beginning to sprout – I just hope the fascist right don’t capture the day.
Wrong end of the country?
Teachers went on strike up in County Durham.
I remember in the early 80s a head taking all NAS members to one side individually and telling us that if any of us went on strike the parents would know and it would look bad for us. That was in Hampshire. He was NUT.
In Peterborough the deputy head was our rep. He took us all to the pub at lunch time on a work to rule, then called union meetings when we got back to school, so our classes had to double up with those who were not in the union. The union had a few converts then!