Civitas Blog

Kelly’s problem is that doing what Tony tells her is not popular with the rest of the class, for the bullies on the backbenches have been heckling her and saying all sorts of horrid things. I’ve complained a lot about the government’s education policy, but it’s going in vaguely the right direction by seeking to remove power from teaching unions and LEAs by creating more independent state schools (bizarrely what the Conservatives called grant maintained schools until they were abolished by New Labour, but still) and bringing private sector providers into the education market. All of which is hated by Old Labour stalwarts. And the problem is there are still too many regulations that hamper start-up schools, well, starting, despite the white paper’s talk of getting rid of red tape; catchment areas remain; and selection is still taboo. At the moment ‘independent’ is little more than rhetoric – Kelly will be crying her eyes out soon enough. I don’t usually think much of what she writes, but there was a good piece by Alice Thompson in The Times yesterday about how grammars were the best engines of social mobility. Raising people from poverty and exclusion will need something similar.

As for Hewitt, watching her troubles is nearly as satisfying as seeing the class geek get caught for smoking behind the bike sheds – only this one hates smokers. Which is why she and Johnny Reid have had such a falling out. Okay, so the health lobby have won the argument about smoking, that it’s bad for you, like drinking too much, eating too much, or extreme sports. (Incidentally, for those who go on about costs, twelve million people smoke in the UK at an estimated cost to the NHS of 1.7 billion a year; but the Treasury receives around £8 billion in tax from tobacco sales.) Many continue to smoke because it’s fun, so Reid, the Scottish bruiser, promised in the election manifesto to ban smoking in pubs that serve food but allow it elsewhere. Hewitt wants an outright ban on smoking in all public places and members clubs, which is pretty draconian. So the same government that talks about choice in education wants to deny it in public life by micromanaging behaviour. Anyway, so bad has been the tiff in the Cabinet that the Bill looks set to be shelved. Wouldn’t it be easier to control if there was, as The Times suggests, a licensing system that permits some pubs, with or without food, to be smoking establishments, meaning that customers would know in advance what kind of air they’ll be breathing?

And then there’s old Baroness Scotland and the incitement to religious hatred bill. She’s tried, oh she’s tried, and so have all her cronies in government, but this is a glorious debacle of New Labour’s own making. A backhand promise to the Muslim kids annoyed about Iraq – as if they were the only ones – has turned into a mess. Well, The Times reports today that the Lords have scuppered the bill’s chances of going through in its present ramshackle form. Baroness Scotland has promised to go away and do her homework properly this time. This government has seemed impervious to criticism about the importance of the freedom to criticise, but at last the message seems to be getting through. You promote tolerance through freedom of expression. You outlaw sticks and stones, but not words. Now it looks like the Religious Hatred Bill might not end up being an extension of the 1986 Public Order Act, but a new schedule requiring that the prosecution prove that the defendant acted with criminal intent, and adding in a provision that allows for the right to ridicule, insult or abuse religions or their adherents, and to allow proselytising. This is a good thing.