Archive for February, 2008
Not exactly a cultural revolution
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 13/02/2008
School children are to be mandated 5 hours of ‘culture’ a week by the latest government initiative. This hour-per-school-day prescription seems to be the government’s answer to every education issue, as it defines more and more of every state school schedule through Whitehall guidance. This follows on from the five hours of mandated sport a week designed, in part, to tackle obesity. Bureaucrats should be careful not to overdo this wheeze. After all, secondary schools still have to cope with teaching maths and English to pupils who didn’t manage to pick up those basic skills during their …err… compulsory numeracy and literacy hours at primary school!
To Where our Well-Intentioned but Naïve Legislative Creep is Leading Us
Posted by David Conway in Social Cohesion on 12/02/2008
Forgive me for returning to the claim made last week by the Archbishop of Canterbury that it is now unavoidable in the interests of social cohesion that certain elements of sharia become recognised by or incorporated within British law.
Despite having been gone over so well by now, his remarks raise such an important issue concerning the future direction of this country that they are well worth revisiting. For, despite all the attention his remarks have received, there are certain dangers in what the Archbishop is calling for that have yet to be sufficiently spelled out.
Continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.
‘Very good value for money’ not good enough for the DH
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 07/02/2008
When the DH slashed the second wave of independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) last year, it reasoned ‘they were unlikely to provide acceptable value for money’. This was based on capacity assessments by the new Director General of the Commercial Directorate, Chan Wheeler.
But now it appears a separate, independent, review concluded exactly the opposite. Nick Timmins, writing in the FT, reveals how the DH actually suppressed the findings of an independent assessment – conducted as part of the ‘gateway’ process – which rated the project’s chance of success as ‘green’, described the planned ISTCs as ‘well-matched to the [NHS’s] requirement’ and described the programme as ‘suitably tailored to regional needs’. Key stakeholders, such as strategic health authorities (SHAs), in fact told the review the deals were ‘appropriate and very welcome’. Strange indeed, then, that most are not going ahead.
Criminals use the database state too
Posted by Nick Cowen in Civil Liberty, Crime on 06/02/2008
A terrorised pensioner died of a heart attack during an attack on his home in a dispute over a parking space at a supermarket. What makes this story especially worrying is that a policeman (and friend of the defendants) traced the 79-year-old by his car registration number, using the police national computer database. There is no word in the news on what legal action the policeman will face, which is strange considering that accessory to manslaughter would be appropriate.
The MP, the Terror Suspect and the Prison Bug
Posted by David Conway in Civil Liberty on 05/02/2008
Should MPs’ be exempt from police bugging when conversing with terrorist suspects being held in detention and awaiting extradition?
Forget, for a moment, whether any laws or protocols were broken when police recorded the conversations between Labour MP for Tooting Sadiq Khan and his childhood friend and constituent the Islamist terror-suspect Babar Ahmed.
What laws should govern cases of this kind?