Archive for July, 2008
If you have nothing to hide…
Posted by Nick Cowen in Political Correctness on 09/07/2008
… you still have plenty to fear, especially if your name is a popular one in Britain. The state has rewarded one Amanda Hodgson’s willingness to volunteer to help at a local school by branding her an alcoholic thug and heroin addict. Rather than receiving an apology for the obvious errors, she has been told to supply even more information, including her fingerprints, in order to prove she is innocent of the crimes that her name and date of birth have convicted her. If she doesn’t, Lancashire Education Authority will revoke her license to hug.
Related today: Esther Rantzen acknowledges some of the more pernicious aspects of the new culture of child (over)protection.
Toddlers Are Now to be Told Not to Mind Their Peas and Cucumbers
Posted by David Conway in Political Correctness on 08/07/2008
Newly published guidance for play leaders and nursery teachers instructs them to be on the look-out for and to reprimand racist attitudes evinced by toddlers.
“No racist incident should be ignored. When there is a clear racist incident, it is necessary to be specific in condemning the action”, they are reportedly instructed.
Among potentially racist behaviour of toddlers for which nursery teachers are instructed to be on guard and ready to take them to task is their saying “yuk” when presented with unfamiliar foreign food. The guidance warns: ‘Children [might] react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying “yuk”.’
Bureaucracy: the new psychiatric illness
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 04/07/2008
It was a theme that ran throughout Lord Darzi’s final report, published earlier this week. ‘High quality care cannot be mandated from the centre – it requires the unlocking of the talents of frontline staff….where change is led by clinicians and based on evidence of improved quality of care, staff who work in the NHS are energised by it and patients and the public more likely to support it’, he wrote. Never a truer word.
But this is precisely what the system doesn’t like to countenance.
The TWADDLE that was WDWTWA has now mercifully become TWTWTW
Posted by David Conway in Social Cohesion on 01/07/2008
For those sufficiently fortunate never to have needed to know, WDWTWA stands for ‘Who Do We Think We Are Week?’ For those still none the wiser, according to the proud boast of the Department of Children Schools and Families, ‘WDWTWA is a new, DCSF-funded education project, designed to engage primary and secondary school teachers in the exploration of identity, diversity and citizenship with their pupils.’
TWTWTW stands for ‘That Was the Week That Was’, a sixties satirical tv show that brought the likes of Bernard Levin and David Frost to fame. Since it supposedly took place last week, WDWTWA has now mercifully become TWTWTW. I say “mercifully” because of the awful twaddle it well and truly was.