They're all the same to Ken
The Times reports today that Ken Livingston, who has stridently supported Sheik Qaradawi against all criticism of extremism (the evidence indicates that Qaradawi is not exactly al Qa’ida but hardly moderate either: he supports suicide bombing in Israel, is anti-Semitic and anti-gay), has restated his opinion in interesting terms. Not only, he says, is the Muslim figurehead a leading Islamic scholar calling for Islam to engage with the world and accept the changing role of women, but he is a reformer on the scale of the late Pope John XXIII. It’s difficult to see what is gained by making such a comparison. It is not to the benefit of Ken’s crony and it has already caused outrage within the Catholic community. This is precisely the kind of foolish cant that the debate about religion in our society can do without.
Smell's like team spirit
It might not stop people becoming suicide bombers, but the frenzy about the Ashes, including yesterday’s parade through the capital, just like the carnival after winning the rugby world cup, is a reminder of the civic value of sport. However mannered and dignified we are in defeat, the Brits love winning, and although the PM capitalised in on their success by inviting them over, his government has chronically underinvested in sport in this country. It maybe because the overpaid brats in the England team can’t net us any wins that football participation has been plummeting, but it’s likely that selling off school playing fields hasn’t helped either. The government has to realise that sport, especially team sport, acts as a social glue, binding people in a microcosm of healthy social networks and, and that at this time of concern about cohesion it could be worth investing. Cricket (which keeps idlers off the streets for a very long time) could have a significant impact on crime levels in deprived areas.
The traitor is within the gates
The sun is setting on the comprehensive schooling project. The gradual undermining of comprehensives in the Blair administration is finally gathering pace. As The Times reported yesterday, Blair has now stated that there is a need for ‘genuinely independent non-feepaying state schools’ so that children will be able to ‘escape the straitjacket of the traditional comprehensive school’. Notwithstanding the fact that the rhetoric of independence does not chime with the lack of freedom for his academies to select, or to break out of the catchment area, this represents a damning critique of leftwing ideology from the inside. A thoughtful comment in The Sunday Times by Chris Woodhead, referencing Francis Gilbert’s recent Teacher on the Run: True Tales of Classroom Chaos, laments that Blair will not reintroduce selection: ‘Caught between the Scylla of the “bog standard comprehensive”, which he knows has failed, and the Charybdis of backbenchers apoplectic in their hatred of the “elitist” 11-plus, he can only struggle manfully to square an impossible circle... Sad, isn't it?’