No, I am not saying bring back Guy Fawkes, all is forgiven.

And I do not write this an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War. I am not saying abolish democracy. I am saying, make it work. Give a little power back to the people and to their elected representatives. I don’t often agree with Tony Benn, but this is what he has been saying too.

In Death of a Nightingale I sometimes found it quite useful to use my characters to put into the public domain thoughts and ideas buzzing around in my own brain. Here I will not use intermediaries. This is directly from me to you.

There is an old adage. “If it ain’t broke, don’t mend it.” But what if it is broke? What if it is badly broke? You don’t believe me? Watch BBC Parliament on TV.

The scandal of MPs expenses is just the tip of the iceberg.

It is the symptom of a much deeper malaise. MPs on their own admission, if you watch as I have done their own debates on their own future, are no more than lobby fodder without the power to challenge the Executive on behalf of their constituents.

See all too often the acres of green and red leather largely uninhabited by any living being. A better analogy, see the oceans of green and red leather with the odd piece of driftwood floating on the surface. Then suddenly two big whales appear, blowing their blowholes for half an hour every Wednesday, and the sea suddenly heaves with little minnows.

Prime Minister’s Question time. What a waste of time!

Just what does it ever achieve? Proving that Democracy is alive and well? Or, that it is half dead and sick?

Then there are the Select Committees.

Potentially they are the best part of our democracy when they sit in Westminster Hall. But currently they are constructed to be part of the System, not a counterbalance to it. Their composition is controlled by the party machines. Their members are then so deferential that they wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And there are plenty of geese around these days. They never press home the really difficult questions. Congressional committees are much more abrasive in the States.

Take the “Credit crunch” for instance.

They all lament the fact that the banks and the regulatory authorities allowed the excessive growth of debt in the economy, but they never ask why they allowed the excessive growth of bad debt, toxic debt, billions and billions of it. Did the printers serving their super computers have to print it out in red to draw this to someone’s attention? That is where the real problem lay. My late mother who ran the offices in a multi-million pound furnishing company thought that bad debt was bad business. That’s why I do too.

The right question to put to leading on both sides of the Atlantic is not whether there was “due diligence” but whether there was any diligence.

Remember there are three simple truths when it comes to economics:

1. Every conman needs at least one mug.

2. People will be greedy if politicians let them.

3. Politicians will let them if there is something in it for them.

Once you understand that you understand everything! In particular you will understand why the “Dot-com” Bubble was succeeded by the collapse of Enron, and the collapse of Enron succeeded by the Credit Crunch – and all within a decade. Think about that when you are told that the Credit Crunch was just a global crisis no-one could anticipate.

Iraq.

They ask why Tony Blair took the country to war in March 2003. Much more important, they never ask on what conditions the Cabinet allowed the army to be moved to the Middle East in the first place. In October 2002 the US Congress passed a Joint Resolution to authorise the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. That is when there should have been a clear decision as to when and if the army could be used in war. It was all too late to ask this question just before the battle started. What alternative did the Attorney General have then but to say that it was legal? Could he possibly say a war was illegal at the moment America was about to start it and the British army stood alongside them? Get real.

And now we have a phoney war.

Should cuts to our £170bn budget deficit start now with the Tories or later with Labour. And will front lines services be threatened? But the cuts have started already, and front line services are already being affected.

Only yesterday I watched on BBC Parliament a live debate in the House of Lords on Higher and Further Education.

£1bn cuts have already been imposed. What happened to “Education, Education, Education”? It was quite a commentary on our Parliamentary system that while Higher and Further Education come within Lord Mandelson’s province, he was notable by his absence. He was not present to listen to and answer the debate relating to his own Department. The cuts will deny over 200,000 young people access to Universities, and probably the ones least able to afford it will be hurt the most. It will affect further education on Teesside where those who have lost their jobs after the mothballing of the Corus Steel plant will most need it. Meanwhile Estelle Morris, a former Labour Minister of Education, now Baroness Morris of Yardley, advocates that Universities deal with these cuts by, amongst other things, introducing two year degree courses. All comment is superfluous.

Cuts already threaten front line services in the NHS too.

In today’s Newcastle Journal I read that the Government has just issued a new national operating plan for the NHS. This, according to the Journal, already threatens the closure of 100 beds in highly rated Q.E Hospital in Gateshead and other sites. Will they never learn? The last Conservative Government, to save money, encouraged hospital trusts to aim at 100 per cent bed usage, closing wards and hospitals in the process. This did not provide for winter epidemics, but it did provide a breeding ground for MRSA and Clostridium Difficile superbugs as beds were overused without pause and without any provision for isolation wards as in the Netherlands. What was designed to save money ended up costing it.

In the same paper I read that a £7.5bn plan for the overhaul of the East Coast Main Line to replace the ageing Intercity 125 fleet which date back to the 1970′s has been postponed.

Capital expenditure promised to pick up the slack in employment is clearly a mirage.

Death of a Nightingale, if you read it, tells the same tale of financial ineptitude in relation to Special Educational Needs.

Back in the 1980′s and 1990′s the Conservative Government turned to accountants, Coopers & Lybrand, and asked them to advise how to save money on special education. They saw that three per cent of children with special needs were costing the Exchequer eight per cent of the total spend on education. Cut the number of statements. Close special schools. Hey presto, there will be savings. No calculation was made as to the capital and revenue cost of doing this. No-one anticipated that it would be necessary to recruit over 100,000 non-teaching care assistants at say £15k a time to help mainstream schools cope with the influx of children deprived of the choice of mainstream or special school.

Read the book and my website and weep! And please don’t excuse the shortcomings of the policy because of lack of money. That won’t wash now. It certainly won’t wash in the years ahead.

The truth is that neither the Conservative Party nor the Labour Party have a particularly good track record when it comes to making cuts. For the Conservatives, at times their hearts are in the wrong place. For the Labour Party, sometimes their brains are.

I quote in my book a memory going back to 1961 at the Liberal Party conference in Edinburgh. The then Leader of the Party, Jo Grimond, said of Harold Macmillan and his government at the time “They couldn’t run a sweetie shop in the Lothian Road.”

The fact is that the same thing, at one time or another could have been said of every succeeding administration, Labour or Conservative.

The problem is not basically with the political parties; it is with the system of government itself.

It is confrontational when issues should be debated on their merits not on the basis political in-fighting and short term political gain that ends up as long term national loss.

There could not be a better time than this to institute major change in Westminster.

After Maastricht more and more laws are now made in Brussels by the European Commission. Meanwhile power has moved the other way too. Decision making has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament and to a lesser extent to government in Cardiff and Belfast.

Meanwhile there is increasing disenchantment with Westminster with 35 per cent of voters (22 per cent of the electorate) electing 55 per cent of the MPs who gain what they euphemistically say is a mandate to govern.

There is a renewed call for a change to the voting system to try to make individual votes count, not just in marginal constituencies; to give voters MPs that they can personally identify with and support, and actually worth giving a good living wage to.

Sure, the political parties don’t like “hung parliaments”. They like to get things all their own way if they can. But should they? Good for them? Maybe. Good for us? Maybe not. When one is bad, the other is worse. Maybe they shouldn’t get it all their own way. Maybe they should have to argue their policies out in a broadly based forum more truly representative of opinion in the country. Might we not then get better government? It happens in most other European countries that work multi-party democracies.

The UK is the odd man out.

And if this forum held the executive properly to account and if, right through the system, those who cocked things up were not moved sideways in the jobs, but fired, maybe the public would be better served.

My solution is very simple. Make the Houses of Parliament a museum.

It would make a truly great museum. We are very good at making museums. Commission Madame Tussauds to recreate the Narvik Debate in its debating chamber. That is recognised as a high point in British Parliamentary history. In May 1940 backbench MPs, some dressed in military uniform, rebelled against Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and paved the way for Churchill to take his place. Let the world see one man/one woman one vote at its best. It would be a gift to posterity, and of much more lasting benefit than the First Emperor of China’s Terracotta Army.

Something “British” would be really be the best in the world – the best tourist attraction in the world. The benefit would be much more long lasting than Olympics in 2012.

And wouldn’t it be a better way to sell democracy to the world than the bible and the bullet?

Meanwhile, a different forum should be constructed right for 21st Century, as many are in Europe today, a half circle; opposing forces shouldn’t just glower and yell at each other; it is a bit out of date to make the distance between the government and opposition benches 3.96 metres, said to be equivalent to two swords’ length. They should talk to each other not at each other. Design it so that the elected representatives of the people and the best brains around vet new legislation and hold overweening civil servants to account, people like James Harrington the mandarin in Death of a Nightingale.

The essence of good governance is to trust professionals to get on with their jobs at every level of society, but pull the mat out from underneath them when they fail. That is not the way of it in Britain today. It should be the basis of a new compact with the civil service Unions.

You know something. The Party that offered this at the next General Election I confidently predict would win by a landslide.

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I am sure that Joan Errington, the English teacher at Brighouse School in Death of a Nightingale, would approve if I borrow the words that Shakespeare used to describe the 7th age of man to describe one of the things wrong with UK plc today.

The Mid Staffordshire Hospital Scandal is just the latest example.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

As Shakespeare traces the seven ages of man, those are the famous closing lines of ‘all the world’s a stage’ in”As You Like It”. His characters are still around today, appearances a little different, natures very much the same and the parody unsurpassable.

If you want to know why civil servants get it wrong so often, keep wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money, give bad advice to government – or fail to give good advice – create or perpetuate jobs that do little more than bolster unemployment figures – and it matters not one jot which political party is in power – then let me use Shakespeare’s words lamenting life’s closing days, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste sans everything” to describe all those who serve on bodies whose remit it is to provide accountability in the system, but very rarely do. In particular, “sans teeth”.

Read on. You will see that the same is true of the NHS. You will understand why the Government refuses a public enquiry into the Mid Staffs hospital scandal.

In my last post I wrote of the mandarin, James Harrington, in Death of a Nightingale ” … you would not expect to see him on the Clapham Omnibus. The person exercising authority does not need to be reasonable; effective and competent, yes and, in a much better world than ours, accountable … “

In this post, I want to pick up the proposition that mandarins should be accountable. A news item in the Times last Tuesday, 18 February is still fresh in my mind. You will find it on page 18.

Baroness Young of Old Scone told the Times that she had decided to resign as chairman of the Care and Quality Commission, the newly formed “super regulator of health and social care”. She said that “her notion of what was required of an independent regulator sat uneasily with the Department of Health… Rugged independence is not what they are looking for; they are looking for something much more emollient and collaborative.” In short, sans teeth …. Pity she didn’t stick it out, but that’s another matter.

No wonder the Mid Staffordshire Hospital scandal. And there are many more scandals where that came from.

By way of another illustration, a doctor I know with a serious heart problem realised, as most patients would not, that a hospital nurse dispensing warfarin to him was giving him the wrong coloured pills indicating an excessive dose. He was able to correct her.

The Baroness, IF ONLY SHE HAD STUCK IT OUT, might properly have asserted the need for two nurses always to be involved in dispensing medication as a core discipline. No wonder so many patients claim damages against the NHS and many who don’t!

Official Figures

In 2008/09, 6,080 claims of clinical negligence and 3,743 claims of non-clinical negligence against NHS bodies were received by the Authority, up from 5,470 claims of clinical negligence and 3,380 claims of non-clinical negligence in 2007/08.

£769 million was paid in connection with clinical negligence claims during 2008/09, up from £633 million in 2007/08.

The Independent

Sunday, 13 July 2008

NHS: 60,000 medication blunders in 18 months. Every year, 24 patients die as a result of being given the wrong drug or the wrong dose.

By Brian Brady and Nina Lakhani

Never mind the cost. What about the suffering?

Mid Staffordshire hospital is not alone to get it wrong.

Does “a better world than ours exists anywhere in the world”? Whether it does or not, that is not to say that it ought not to. The absence of accountability may be the same the world over, but in a country like China there will be absolutely no need for a time wasting and costly charade to make it seem as though it does.

Here is an illustration from the Global Edition of the New York Times on January 11. Thomas L.Friedman writes “We applied for a US Department of Energy loan for a 92 megawatt project in New Mexico and in less time than it took them to do stage 1 of the application review, China signs, approves, and is read to begin construction this year on a 20 times bigger project!” It’s worth reading the whole article on page 7 headed “Who’s sleeping now?”

Just think about this. The one thing that ought to give Western democracies their cutting edge over authoritarian regimes should be the accountability of the system. Instead Western democracies waste so much time trying to pretend that it exists when it doesn’t, that they actually put themselves at a disadvantage.

Why do Governments continue to allow this? It’s very simple. Every four or five years they are held to account. They are answerable to the public for the mistakes that are made, and therefore it is best that voters do not know too much about them. MPs protect their seats. Civil servants protect their jobs. There is a name for this – symbiosis, more colloquially, “I’ll watch your back if you’ll watch mine.” In short – the cover-up.

In the UK here are just a few public bodies that are supposed to provide the checks and balances in the system; there is OFSTED, the Local Government Ombudsman, the Audit Commission, and all those Commissions of Enquiry. There are also Parliamentary Select Committees, hand-picked by the Party Whips. And MPs themselves should have a role here. And there is now the Care & Quality Commission.

There is no shortage of velvet gloves, but no sign of an iron fist in any of them, or steel in the backbone for that matter.

Oh for a permanent Paxman fist in even one of them!

If you want to understand read Death of a Nightingale and see a case in point. Special Educational Needs is now a disaster zone for many children with special educational needs. Some academics who advocated Inclusion as dogma in the 1990′s would have you believe otherwise but, if you don’t believe me, read the growing evidence of it at the end of the opening page of this website.

And read for your light entertainment “Alice in Blunderland” a parody that I include in post 15 here. See it all in virtual reality and in surreal reality too. Once you know the way in which the system operates, the world is never quite the same again.

Let me put this argument another way. Visit Breaking the Magician’s Code: Secret of Knife throwing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHCyNkixqs4. When you know why the magician doesn’t run out of beautiful models, the illusion is no more, never to return. The world is never the same again.

The following extracts from Death of a Nightingale may destroy some of your illusions. Mine were destroyed a long time ago and I am much the better for it.

Act One Scene 3

James Harrington, the mandarin from London, has just arrived at the regional office of the Department for Education. He is explaining to Judy Fotheringham in charge there how the system works.

JAMES HARRINGTON You really mustn’t allow yourself to be upset by the media. Whenever this arose my father – he was a wise old bird if ever there was one – he always said that the Pharaohs weren’t put off their grand design for the Pyramids by carping criticism in the Alexandria Times. I’ll tell you something else. Have you heard the Latin tag “Audi alteram partem”?

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM My Latin’s not very good these days. Doesn’t it mean something like “You have to listen to both sides of the argument”?

JAMES HARRINGTON Pity you didn’t have a classical education. In the civil service manual, “Audi alteram partem” is translated to mean that “you can drive your car on the wrong side of the road. ” Politicians watch our backs and we watch theirs. They provide the safety valve for the system. If we get it very badly wrong, they lose their seats. It works. Mistakes self-correct … in time.

David Harding, the Director of Education for Westborough, later explains how the system works to Margaret Williamson, head teacher of Brighouse School.

Act One Scene 8

This is the scene where David Harding, the Director of Education for Westborough, persuades Margaret Williamson to argue the case for the closure of her school to its parents.

DAVID HARDING It’s what we have to do. OFSTED will be on our backs if we don’t.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I thought OFSTED was interested in standards and wouldn’t like what you are suggesting.

DAVID HARDING You misread it. They’ll turn a blind eye to it. They won’t put a black mark against you or your school while this is going on. And when they inspect us they’re only interested in whether we are delivering government policy and meeting government targets. That’s the way that things get done.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON And people get done, David.

OFSTED by the way is an acronym for Office for Standards in Education.

You can see the consequences in the final scene of the play.

Act Two Scene 6

Eileen Winterton, chair of governors, Margaret Williamson, head teacher, and Anwar Fawzi, a parent, look on as Brighouse School is demolished.

EILEEN WINTERTON Margaret, the problem’s not just here. It’s everywhere. Remember Enron when that big American energy company went bust and people lost billions. In Enron they had another name for it. They called it “rank or yank”. You were “ranked” if you played ball with them, “yanked”, sacked, if you didn’t.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON It probably explains why no-one blue the whistle on our credit crunch. Someone must have known about all that mountain of unpaid mortgages. They must have.

EILEEN WINTERTON There’s always a cover-up, every single time. That’s why they play “pass the parcel” with our complaints – you know pass the buck. Nobody’s held accountable when they boob. They make sure of that. That’s the real trouble

ANWAR FAWZI You’re right there. And they play games with us, those people. They play charades when it comes to consultation – they don’t really consult – they just want to make it look as though they do.

(Bulldozer noises continue in the background until the end of the scene.)

It is not as though no-one has seen the problem. It’s just that no-one ever does anything about it. Hence Baroness Young of Scone feels that she has to resign only five months after the Care and Quality Commission has started work.

Prologue

The recent Power Report pointed to “the weakening of effective dialogue between governed and governors” and “the rise of quiet authoritarianism within government.” …Sad to say, the report has already been allowed to gather dust as reports of this kind invariably do, and everything goes on as before.

The Power Inquiry was set up by the Joseph Rowntree Trust in 2004 to mark its centenary. It established a Commission under the chair of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, to investigate why the decline in popular participation and involvement in formal politics has occurred, to provide concrete and innovative proposals to reverse the trend and to explore how public participation and involvement can be increased and deepened.

I flag this up even though the flag is at half mast.

You may or may not like Rudi Giuliani, but read his book on Leadership and you will see that he spotted the problem and he at least tried to do something about it. Not living in New York I wouldn’t know how far he succeeded.

Notes & Quotes

From Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani

The New York City school system was never really going to improve until its purpose, its core mission, was made clear. What the system should have been about was educating its million children as well as possible.

Instead, it existed to provide jobs for the people who worked in it, and to preserve those jobs regardless of performance. That’s not to say that there weren’t committed professionals at every level within the system. There were, and that’s the shame of it. Those with their hearts in the right place were the ones who suffered most.

Until I could get everyone involved to sit together and agree that the system existed to educate children, fixing little bits of it was symbolic at best. Band-Aid solutions can do more harm than good.

Does this sound all too familiar?

To conclude this post and to paraphrase Shakespeare – Something’s rotten in State of Western Democracy. The scandal of MPs expenses in the UK is a sign of it. It is, however, the least of it.

I’d cast my vote at the forthcoming general election for any of the three main political parties that looked as though it was seriously going to tackle it, not just pay lipservice to tackling it.

Termites, of course, not a chance.

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If you are not a lawyer, you may be unfamiliar with Clapham and its famous Omnibus. Lawyers, you see, say that a reasonable person is “the man on the Clapham Omnibus.” Not a woman, you will note! Ah well, there’s some lawyers for you.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century Clapham was a part of South London favoured by the wealthier merchant classes. Samuel Pepys lived there. Later evangelical Anglicans and social reformers lived around the Common, especially those like William Wilberforce campaigning for the abolition of slavery and child labour and prison reform. Later still, in the twentieth century, it was a commuter suburb, and out of favour with the upper classes. It was then that a reasonable man was spotted on a ‘bus there.

In Death of a Nightingale there is one character who I say quite specifically you would not expect to see on that ‘bus. He is the mandarin from the Department for Education and Skills, James Harrington.

This is how I describe him:

He exudes quiet authority, and he smiles through cold teeth. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. His father was a district commissioner in the Punjab during the Raj. He watches his own back very carefully, as well as the backs of others. His job is to deliver policy as quickly as possible. Nothing happens otherwise. Hence ends justify means sort of person. His suit, shirt and tie, Savile Row. You would not expect to see him on the Clapham Omnibus. Not the ordinary man in the street.

And this is how I introduce him

Act One Scene 3

Regional officer Judy Fotheringham is joined by a civil servant from London, James Harrington. The Westborough City Council’s Director of Education, David Harding, and its head of Special Needs Gerry Thompson arrive soon after. They discuss the closure of Brighouse School. It has been thwarted by strong campaign by parents to keep it open. Over 15,000 reasoned objections persuaded the Minister to reject plan to close the school.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM (on the telephone) Yes, I did listen to the repeat of “Yes Minister”. I do admire Sir Humphrey.

James Harrington knocks and enters

JAMES HARRINGTON Are you talking about me?

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM (still on the ‘phone) God has just walked in. I’ll ring you back later. Bye (To James) Hello, good to see you again.

JAMES HARRINGTON Nobody’s ever said I had a divine presence before. Mind you they thought my father had when he was a District Commissioner in the Punjab. But people do turn to me for the occasional miracle. I don’t object to being called Sir Humphrey, but I do have to correct you about Yes Minister. We only like to think we’re wise and knowledgeable. I am not sure we always are.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM Last night’s programme was really cruel. Did you see it?

JAMES No, I missed it.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM It was all about the Dome and Government waste, not the waste of £800m so much as the public view of it. Hacker said the problem was not so much its viability as its visibility.

JAMES HARRINGTON I don’t disagree with him. We paid a terrible price at the time.

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM And, Hadrian didn’t say that twelve million people would visit his Wall in the year of its completion, and that that venture was a good deal more ambitious than the Dome.

JAMES HARRINGTON You really mustn’t allow yourself to be upset by the media. Whenever this arose my father – he was a wise old bird if ever there was one – he always said that the Pharaohs weren’t put off their grand design for the Pyramids by carping criticism in the Alexandria Times. I’ll tell you something else. Have you heard the Latin tag “Audi alteram partem”?

JUDY FOTHERINGHAM My Latin’s not very good these days. Doesn’t it mean something like “You have to listen to both sides of the argument”?

JAMES HARRINGTON Pity you didn’t have a classical education. In the civil service manual, “Audi alteram partem” is translated to mean that “you can drive your car on the wrong side of the road. ” Politicians watch our backs and we watch theirs. They provide the safety valve for the system. If we get it very badly wrong, they lose their seats. It works. Mistakes self-correct … in time.

As I have said, you would not expect to see him on the Clapham Omnibus. The person exercising authority does not need to be reasonable; effective and competent, yes and, in a much better world than ours, accountable, but reasonable? No. We should have no expectation there.If reasonableness is there, it is a bonus.

But that is not to say that there are no characters that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see on the Clapham Omnibus.

And, it doesn’t have to be a man. I am very comfortable nominating a woman for that role. In Death of a Nightingale the English teacher and school governor, Joan Errington, the partner and confidant of the head teacher Margaret Williamson fills it perfectly.

In the words of the old saying, she has the serenity to accept the things she cannot change, the courage to change the things she can, and the wisdom to know the difference. She listens. She thinks. She is well balanced. And she cares. She makes a major contribution to the ethos of Brighouse School. I am sure that there are many like her dedicated to teaching children with special needs.

This is how I describe her:

In her thirties, very committed to her job and to the School. She takes a personal interest in some of the pupils and takes them to local theatres. She sees her work as a vocation. She loves and respects the head teacher. She prefers to appear studious with spectacles, rather than attractive with contact lenses.

Early on we learn that she took Tracy, a pupil at Brighouse School, to the RSC and gave her a love of drama. Although all my characters are fictitious, I know two people not totally dissimilar in real life.

I now set out three extracts from the stage version of the play. By the time you have read all three, you will get to know her as well as I do.

Act One Scene 10

Margaret Williamson, head teacher, is distraught. She has been pressurised by the Local Education Authority to commend the planned closure of her school to its parents. She shares her distress with her partner, Joan Errington.

(They snuggle up together on the couch)

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I think I know the answer.

JOAN ERRINGTON What?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I’ll resign.

JOAN ERRINGTON That’s a silly thing to do.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON No, it’s not. It’s the only thing to do.

JOAN ERRINGTON Just put that idea right out of your head.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Don’t you understand. I’m pig sick of this job. And I’m pig sick of the world we’re living in. Every damn thing is a cynical charade, and I’m now given a lead role.

JOAN ERRINGTON If everyone who didn’t like their job resigned, there’d be a hell of a lot of vacancies.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON (Begins to cry) Don’t you understand, I just can’t do it any longer. I can’t look kids in the face. I can’t look my staff in the face, or the governors. And, what’s more, I can’t look myself in the face either.

JOAN ERRINGTON You must.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I can’t.

JOAN ERRINGTON What about us?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON What about us? It won’t make any difference if I’m not here.

JOAN ERRINGTON Of course it will make a difference. But anyway it’s a waste. You’re a wonderful teacher and a wonderful head. You can’t give all that up. What about your pension? What are you going to live on? What will you do with yourself?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I’ll find something. I won’t be the first teacher to throw in the towel. Now will I?

JOAN ERRINGTON Look, whoever takes your place will do what you’ve said you’d do, and probably without any conscience at all. What on earth are you going to gain?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON My conscience. My sanity.

JOAN ERRINGTON Oh, come on. That’s self indulgence.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Self Indulgence. Self Indulgence. Oh my god. How can you say that to me? You of all peo ple. What a horrid thing to say. I don’t think you understand me at all. I want out. I want out altogether. Out, out, out.

JOAN ERRINGTON You’re just trying to make a martyr of yourself.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON If that’s the best thing you can say you’d better go.

JOAN ERRINGTON Oh, be sensible.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Go … Please go.

JOAN ERRINGTON I just hope and pray you’ll come to your senses. In a year’s time all this will be a bad dream.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Just leave me alone. Leave me alone.

It is of course Joan Errington who, 24 hours later, finds Margaret Williamson comatose having taken an overdose.

In the second Act Joan slowly fully understands why.

Act Two Scene 3

Eileen Winterton, chair of governors at Brighouse School, meets up with Joan to try to understand why Margaret has tried to take her own life.

JOAN ERRINGTON Well, just say she’s a casualty of the world we are living in. That’s certainly where you have to start.

EILEEN WINTERTON I do worry about that. Especially this bit of it.

JOAN ERRINGTON So do I. You’ve read 1984?

EILEEN WINTERTON Yes, but it’s not as bad as that, surely?

JOAN ERRINGTON It is, and it isn’t… what is a free society these days?

EILEEN WINTERTON We’re not living in a dictatorship. We’re a long way from that.

JOAN ERRINGTON I’m saying something different. What I am saying is that in one sense you are free, in one sense you are not. If you want some of the goodies today you have got to accept Big Brother.

EILEEN WINTERTON Who is Big Brother? The PM?

JOAN ERRINGTON Whoever is the PM. It’s the System. We live in a dependent society. We depend upon each other. There’s nothing wrong in that. But we also depend upon the State, and far too many people are totally dependent on it.

EILEEN WINTERTON That’s very true.

JOAN ERRINGTON People at the top of the pile can be every bit as dependent on the State as people at the bottom – probably more so. More to lose, or to win. And the price you pay for the State being kind to you, you obey it or you comply with it. You toe the party line, or you keep your head down, right down below the parapet. You cooperate. You do what’s expected of you.

EILEEN WINTERTON I suppose that is a bit Orwellian.

JOAN ERRINGTON It is the way it’s going. Then there’s “Spin”. What is “Spin” if it’s not another word for “New Speak”? Can you believe anything you are told these days? Take the words ‘”parental choice” or “parental preference”. When parents can’t, mustn’t, to talk to a school where their children might go, or when the schools they are supposed to choose from don’t exist, – they have been shut, democratically of course, but shut all the same – you might as well say “parental rhubarb”.

EILEEN WINTERTON I’m afraid you’re right.

JOAN ERRINGTON And there’s far, far too much politics in education full stop.

EILEEN WINTERTON It has to be. The State provides the money.

JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, but it keeps meddling. It should demand standards, but it shouldn’t keep meddling and trying to control us all the time, and it’s all this social engineering I can’t stand, and I don’t think Margaret could stand it either.

EILEEN WINTERTON I am curious, Joan, would you like to be a Head Teacher one day?

JOAN ERRINGTON I would not. Too much pressure from too many sides. I wouldn’t have wanted Margaret’s job for all the money in the world.

EILEEN WINTERTON We do get it wrong, if that’s the case. Teachers like you have so much to give.

JOAN ERRINGTON It makes me so sick at times, especially now. When terrible things like this happen – you know I’m very, very close to Margaret – you really start to think. I’ll give you a strange thought. The word ‘Equality’ is a lot of the problem. It’s mucked up,fucked up education for years. We are not all equal.

EILEEN WINTERTON No, that’s heresy. Surely there’s got to be equality of opportunity?

JOAN ERRINGTON What does that actually mean? What does it mean? Don’t you see? All kids are different, very different, our kids especially, and they need different kinds of opportunity. Fair play is what they all want, not equality. The needs of gifted and talented youngsters are every bit as important as the needs of kids in our school, from the country’s point of view maybe even more important. Those that trumpet equality don’t begin to understand that. If kids are not given the opportunity that’s right for them – and they’re all different – they’ll never meet the challenge of the times.

EILEEN WINTERTON Then, of course, they’ll never be included in it.

JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, and this country needs them to be.

EILEEN WINTERTON I’ve always thought that another word for Equality is mediocrity.

JOAN ERRINGTON And what’s even worse, for many people the quest for Equality is simply built on envy.

EILEEN WINTERTON Or guilt. Well, the opposite of envy is ambition. Envy somehow diminishes you. Ambition enlarges you.

JOAN ERRINGTON Interesting you should put it that way. Emma – she’s for ever quoting the Bible — she keeps saying there’s no sin in ownin’, but there is a sin in covetin’.

EILEEN WINTERTON It’s not surprising that, a lot of kids have lost their way.

JOAN ERRINGTON They’ve never been shown it, Eileen. – you know, the way to live that’s right for them – that’s what education should be about. What these kids want is not equality ofopportunity. It’s just, well, opportunity.

………

JOAN ERRINGTON (Stands up to leave) …….You know, I’ve just really seen it. It wasn’t the pills that kept her going. It wasn’t me either. It was the kids, and she did so worry about the world they’d have to grow up in. She knew, you see, she knew. In those twenty four long hours she suddenly realised that whatever she did, do the bidding of the LEA or resign, whatever she did, she’d lost everything that made her life worthwhile.

While Harriet Harman makes much of gender inequality in her Equality Bill – too much in my view, all-women short lists for parliamentary candidates, for example, from which I understand her husband is exempted – her Government presides over more inequality than I can ever recall – MPs expenses, banker bonuses, public sector pensions, State power against the citizen, for example in Tribunals (Visit Post 44) job security in the public as against the private sector. It is not just an unequal Society. It is an unfair Society too. Sorry, there’s me ranting again. If you want to read more visit Posts 4 and 5 of this Blog.

Back to Joan Errington and the play.

Act Two Scene 5

Margaret Williamson seeks to find peace within herself by confessing to the governors that she had succumbed to pressure and agreed to betray the school by siding with the Local Authority’s plan to close it. She has invited Eileen Winterton, chair of governors, Frank Jones, chair of finance who has resigned in protest, and Joan Errington to her home.

JOAN ERRINGTON I knew, of course. Margaret told me, before it all happened. She said she felt like a little lump of plasticine in the hands of the LEA.

FRANK JONES But you didn’t want to say.

JOAN ERRINGTON I couldn’t say, could I? And anyway, I am still not sure what we can now achieve by starting up the fight all over again. I really can’t see it helping the school and the kids. I think that NHS bod, John…

EILEEN WINTERTON Lavers?

JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, John Lavers was probably right. We should draw a line. All I really want to do is to teach. Can’t we get back to that simple idea? I will let you into a secret, when I was at school my first love was politics and sociology. The trouble is that these subjects make me angry, and you can’t teach in a permanent state of anger, hot or cold. It’s not good for you and it is certainly not good for the kids.

FRANK JONES You made the right decision. But why English?

JOAN ERRINGTON Three reasons. First of all I love it. Secondly, I think that every generation has a responsibility to pass on its heritage to the next. That’s what teaching is about. Finally, I think we all take our own heritage for granted. We shouldn’t. We’ve given over half the world English.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I bet the Romans didn’t appreciate what a wonderful gift Latin of all l languages was going to be to the world either.

JOAN ERRINGTON I bet they didn’t. Anyway I, connect with politics and sociology at the same time, and without the aggro. Just think of the great tragedies, Hamlet.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Yes, indeed (sadly) “To be or not to be”.

JOAN ERRINGTON Your winter of discontent, Margaret? Think of Othello.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Poor, poor Desdemona (feeling sorry for herself again)

EILEEN WINTERTON I could name one or two Iagos today.

FRANK JONES I’m beginning to see what you mean.

JOAN ERRINGTON I’ll give you one or two more. “The best of times and the worst of times”.

EILEEN WINTERTON Tale of two cities?

JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, Charles Dickens. Fiction and fact aren’t all that far apart.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON There’s poetry too, Joan isn’t there? “I wandered lonely as a cloud”.William Wordsworth.

JOAN ERRINGTON Oh dear. (A look of real sadness)

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Sorry Joan, but it’s been like that recently. How about then (ironically),Cat on a hot tin roof?

JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, we mustn’t forget great American writers who had their own way with English.

FRANK JONES I thought the Americans didn’t do English any favours?

JOAN ERRINGTON No, not at all, Frank. Just get the poems of Emily Dickenson out of the library,and start there. And after that come back home and read the poems by Rupert Brooke. You know he was one of the lost generation, died during the First World War.

“… thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.”

Ah me, once upon a time. You see politics, sociology and the human story are never far away from teaching English. I can very easily keep my early interest going with our wonderful English language, and without any torment. That’s what I want to give to our kids. And it’s for life, not just for exams.

EILEEN WINTERTON More strength to you. Look, I don’t want any teacher to martyr themselves. It’s not worth it. You are all much too valuable. I think we are going to have to accept the inevitable if they carry parents with them. Joan, you just keep teaching. And Margaret, don’t feel the need to share your thoughts with anyone else. You’ve got a career to start up again. Don’t sight of that, for heaven’s sake.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I’m grateful for that. Joan, one thing I must ask you. Have you forgiven me?

JOAN ERRINGTON Well, almost.

MARGARET Only almost? Oh dear.

JOAN ERRINGTON I wish you hadn’t asked me. It’s the way it is, for you and for me I think.

Why do I choose this moment to write this pen portrait of Joan Errington?

In a few months time there will be a General Election in the UK. The city of Westborough, where Brighouse School is located and where Joan Errington lives, is an unusual constituency. It is a three way marginal.

Joan Errington is not wedded to any political party. I am sure that she is quite undecided which way to vote. She is tempted not to vote at all, but she knows that she should. She is one of many; a floating voter feeling that any moment she is about to drown!

Are any of the three main political parties wired into her worries and her needs? Do they even begin to understand them? I wonder.

(more…)

Let me explain.

Newcastle University is currently presenting a number of public lectures in the Curtis Auditorium under the banner of INSIGHTS. Sir Martin Harris gave the first of them this week on “Excellence and Inclusion in Higher Education.” He is to be followed shortly by Bonnie Briar, General Dannat and Baroness Shirley Williams.

In other words Sir Martin is a heavyweight. Amongst other things formerly Manchester University vice chancellor and then vice chancellor of the University of Salford, but here as the Director of Fair Access to Higher Education.

Interestingly in 2004 this is what Times Higher Education wrote about his appointment:

“Highlighting continuing tensions over access, Mr Clarke delivered a stinging rebuke to Chris Patten, Oxford University chancellor, over claims that universities were being “forced” to admit more working-class students.

Mr Clarke said that he was disappointed by “silly flutters from one or two Oxford people” and dismissed claims that the Government would use quotas and fines to socially engineer admissions.

Mr Patten had said the Government’s plans to interfere in admissions amounted to “appalling” social engineering and a threat to a free society.

Mr Clarke said: “I don’t think Chris has taken the trouble to understand what we are proposing, he’s been rather lazy about it. I think he’s rather let himself down in the way that he’s going about it. He’s gone back to being a party politician.”

There was a lot about Sir Martin’s lecture that I liked, that I applauded. He espoused the pursuit of excellence. He endorsed meritocracy. He drew a distinction between excellence which he favoured and elitism which he disapproved of. He assured his audience that Universities had to remain 100% in charge of admissions. Not a teeny weeny bit of pressure to admit more students from working class backgrounds? No positive discrimination in favour of some that becomes actual discrimination against others, such as all-women MP shortlists under Harriet Harman’s banner of Equality? – My interpretation of what he was saying. – No, just its encouragement by the provision of bursaries. The cost of being a student should be no obstacle to students.

Of course he saw his remit as the pursuit of equality of opportunity.

I will come shortly to the reason why I am writing this post, but I must observe here that I take a different stance in my play about equality of opportunity that you will see when you read the following extract:

Act Two, Scene 3

Eileen Winterton, chair of governors, is trying to understand why the head teacher, Margaret Williamson, has tried to take her own life. Joan Errington, her partner, and the English teacher at Brighouse School is trying to explain.

JOAN ERRINGTON We certainly do know how you get it wrong. It makes me feel so sick at times, especially now. You know when terrible things like this happen – you know I’m very, very close to Margaret – you really start to think. I’ll give you a strange thought. The word ‘Equality’ is at the root of a lot of our trouble. It’s mucked up education for years. We are not all equal.

EILEEN WINTERTON No, that’s heresy. Surely there’s got to be equality of opportunity?

JOAN ERRINGTON What does that actually mean? Don’t you see? All kids are different, very different, and they need different kinds of opportunity. Fair play is what they all want, not equality. If kids are not given the opportunity that’s right for them, especially ours, they won’t be equipped to meet the challenge of the times. They won’t be included in this cut throat world that’s coming in fast. And this country needs them to be. That’s what education should be about. Above all else, giving them that opportunity.

EILEEN WINTERTON It certainly is a rat race these days and a different kind of rat race from any before.

JOAN ERRINGTON But a rat race you can’t run away from. And it has got a good side to it, if you know where to find it. I’m sure none of this sadness would have happened to Margaret if people realised like we do that all kids have very different needs.

EILEEN WINTERTON Well, I’m afraid our old friend Karl Marx is still around in education. People are looking for that elusive level playing field, and with the proviso that no-one actually competes on it.

JOAN ERRINGTON I agree. They are looking for solutions to the world’s problems in the libraries of their minds, not in the classrooms of the real world.

EILEEN WINTERTON Of course it’s not just Karl Marx you know. The Achilles’ heel of the Liberal is naivete. And, when you don’t know you’re naive, well it’s highly dangerous.

JOAN ERRINGTON Insanity. King Lear.

In short, equality of opportunity is and always will be a mirage. Education should be about “opportunity in a fair society”, not equal, not the same, and not just to get into University, but real.

And this applies to children with special educational needs as much as to anyone else.

I underline this in the Prologue in Death of a Nightingale:

Prologue

Social reformers have not always grasped this. I fully appreciate that an international consensus set the wheels in motion, but I suspect that many have looked at this simplistically, seeing it as essentially society’s difficulty not an individual’s and, with the very best of intentions, projecting what they felt in their gut they would want for themselves for everyone else, a not uncommon mistake.

I set out the argument in some detail in Posts 4 and 5 of this Blog. Essentially Equality promotes mediocrity and undermines meritocracy. Equity, fair play, promotes excellence and endorses meritocracy.

I am sorry Sir Martin, you cannot have it both ways.

But this is not where I cross swords with him and his lecture, even though that is clearly what he is trying to do.

What was quite startling to me was that in a fifty minute lecture on a subject with the word “Inclusion” in its title, from first to last he never once mentioned Inclusion for children with special educational needs.
It is interesting when you come to think about it – I have read a lot about Inclusion of children with special needs into mainstream schools over the years – I have seen nothing that I can recall about its provision in Higher Education. Not once.

You would have thought that someone who was a Director of Fair Access to Universities would have this within his remit. Apparently not.

This is where Inclusion ought really to click in for those who have survived the bullying – or avoided it – overcome their learning difficulties and started to embark on their adult lives.

This is where I fully endorse it, but where the educational establishment and academia would appear totally to ignore it. Ah well. Maybe they thought, quite mistakenly as it happens, that Inclusion would save money, but here they knew it would cost money in terms of access and support. Perhaps they didn’t even acknowledge that there would be some children with special needs that would aspire to higher education. Perhaps it was providing them with unequal support.

***

By strange coincidence this is part of a BBC report today: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8495290.stm)

Disabled students wait for specialist equipment grants
Almost 12,500 students in England are still waiting for grants to pay for specialist equipment, figures from the Student Loans Company show.

The statistics reveal two thirds of students with a disability or special needs are still waiting for money.

***

And here’s another sad news item that has just come my way, hot from the press too:

Angry statement from the NDCS (National Deaf Children’s Society) – unfairness for deaf students in exams

In a debate on the Equality Bill in the House of Lords on 27th January, the Government refused to take action that would help ensure a fair and equitable exam system for disabled students. NDCS is deeply concerned that the current drafting of the Bill will allow exam bodies to discriminate against disabled students. Jo Campion, Head of Campaigns at NDCS, said:

The Equality Bill was meant to remove all traces of discrimination in exams, but instead maintains a system which is unfairly loaded against disabled students. It now enables a range of unnecessary get-out clauses for exam bodies to avoid having to make exams genuinely accessible.

Government figures show that deaf children are already under achieving at school. These new laws will make it even harder for deaf children to get the qualifications they need to be independent and successful in life. Deaf students and their parents will be expressing anger and disappointment today that the Government has sided with exam bodies rather than disabled students. (My underlining)

In 2005, the exams regulator withdrew support available to disabled candidates. NDCS successfully fought to get this support reinstated for deaf students, however NDCS continues to receive complaints from deaf students and parents highlighting that this support is not being provided.
NDCS is calling on the Government to urgently reconsider its position and ensure the Equality Bill provides genuine access to examinations for disabled students. Deaf students currently experience the following examples of discrimination in exams:
§ Failure to provide written transcripts for video or radio recordings
§ Failure to provide extra time to lip-read instructions
§ Being asked questions which are inappropriate for a deaf young person to answer. For example, a deaf student was asked in an English exam to describe how it felt to be a fan of a music band. The examining body refused to accept that the question would disadvantage a student who has no experience of listening to music.

***

Isn’t it ironic that this issue arises under the Equality Bill? It all goes to show how unfair Equality can be at times. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, to coin a phrase.

I am glad that all this affords me a rare opportunity to change camps here, and join the ranks of the Inclusionists.

I left my card with Sir Martin and with the vice chancellor of Newcastle University. I indicated that I would welcome a dialogue. I have also recently written to Professor Wedgwood at my old college at Oxford, Merton saying the same.

I had to observe to the Warden of Merton recently that the nice question today is whether some in academia live in ivory towers or cardboard castles. A few may even live in sandcastles or in a castle in the air!

Ah well, when I say the things I do, it is not surprising that the drawbridge is pulled up fast and the moat is filled with water.

(more…)