Mrs May swept into the chamber of the House of Commons today to do battle with her arch-enemy across the dispatch-box. It's Wednesday so it must be PMQs.
I didn't see all of it but I do think that Mr Corbyn is sounding much more assured than he did before the Summer break. He spoke loudly and clearly and with conviction.
Mrs May on the other hand fancied having a go at stand-up. Well why not? She hadn't a clue how to be Home Secretary and doesn't seem to have a clue about how to be a decisive Prime Minister so why not have a go at a complete change of careers. Mind you I'm not sure it was wise to make her debut live on national television. Most wannabe comedians start off with open mic nights at a local pub or club, see how it goes and then work from there.
But then there is one thing you can never accuse a Conservative politician of, and that is humility. No group of individuals anywhere in the world is less humile than Conservatives although it is a close run thing whether bankers or politicians are more arrogant. I would plump for politicians on the grounds that part of their job, as they see it, is to tell you and me what to do. Bankers on the other hand shun the light because they don't want too many oiks finding out exactly how it is that they make so much money. In any other walk of life it would be considered theft but they call it service charge and other weasel names and pretend that it is all above board while they play roulette with other people's money. In what other job do you get to spend the day gambling with somebody else's money and then have the nerve to charge them for doing it, even if you cock it up completely?
Anyway to return to the hilarious (sic) Mrs May she managed to shoehorn two jokes into her replies to what seemed to me to be serious questions, but then what would I know. Nanny knows best. The two jokes concerned Mr Corbyn sitting on the floor of train, which is scarcely topical anymore, but someone had obviously gone to the trouble of giving it to her so she shoved it in anyway. The other was about how 'don't know' was more popular than Jeremy Corbyn when it came to being Prime Minister. The problem with that joke was that the source appears to be a tweet by a particularly unpleasant individual who tweets under the name Lewis Collins. If anybody had bothered to read any of his other tweets they might have been less eager to use this one. If Bernard Manning were still alive she could employ him as her gag writer. Maybe she still could. Get the Ouija board out Dorothy, I need a couple of jokes for tomorrow.
Anyway it is good to see her carrying on the great tradition of Thatcher and Cameron and refusing to answer the question, preferring instead to score personal points. This is of course an example of the worst kind of impoliteness. Cameron learned to be a bully at Eton. She presumably learned at her girls' grammar school. How she must have hated it when it became a comprehensive during her time there.
And talking of schools what on earth is going on in Margate? The goings on at Hartsdown Academy are a sorry reflection of the state of our education system. Academies are of course wonderful, the solution to all our educational woes. The government gives schools to private companies and they run them free from all the constraints of the Local Education Authority. Calling them academies makes them sound somehow superior, but I doubt they are as many were failing before being given away. This creeping privatisation of our education system is just plain wrong, but what has happened in Margate beggars belief. The new headmaster, one Matthew Tate has decided that before a child can learn anything he or she has to be dressed properly. Now there is definitely an argument that a child should be dressed appropriately for school, spandex and lycra are probably not appropriate but the wrong sort of trousers or a lack of a blazer? What is even more bizarre is that offending children were sent home. Now forgive me if I have got this wrong but as I understand it once a child has arrived at school he or she is the responsibility of the school. To send them away again is a gross dereliction of the duty of care. If anything were to happen to one of these children who would be responsible? I don't know and I don't want to find out.
For some of the children sent home on Tuesday it was their first day at a new school. Welcome to your new school, we hope you will be very happy here, but we will not teach you anything until you are correctly dressed so bugger off and don't come back until you are. As an ex-teacher (not very good but who's counting) I am appalled by this approach. It is not right to punish the children in this way. A letter home would have sufficed, with a threat of exclusion if that's what floats Mr Tate's boat, but in my experience exclusion is something which most schools strive to avoid at all costs. If an individual continues to transgress then he of she should be dealt with on an ad hoc basis. Blanket punishments are rarely justified.
Anyway it seems that he might have suffered what is known as a backlash. Actually backlash is a technical term used to describe the amount of play between two intermeshed gears, but it is so onomatopoeic that it has been hijacked by journalists and given a totally different meaning. This backlash (modern meaning) has taken the form of a small rebellion among some pupils who, it is reported turned up to school today wearing skin tight clothing and tracksuits. It would be nice to think that this represents a demonstration of solidarity by others with those sent home yesterday. However I doubt this is the case. I suspect, thought I have no proof, that certain pupils who don't really want to be at school at all have worked out that if they transgress in this manner then they will be sent home. Voila. No school for us. This would seem to be an example of the law of unforeseen consequences. Well done Mr Tate.
After all what hope has a child got if they are not properly dressed? How can they ever hope to learn unless they are cowed into submission by draconian rules. I'm sure at the Battle of the Somme the soldiers sent over the top felt so much better knowing they had newly shined buttons. What a brave new world.
Bring back capital punishment in schools I say. Hang the buggers, it's all they deserve...
Sorry, got a bit carried away there.
I'm sure Mr Tate knows what he is doing (no I'm not) but if we make a school a place which is fundamentally unwelcoming, children will not want to go. Or is that the plan. Push up standards by weeding out the chavs and troublemakers?
It makes me want to weep. But then so does so much of what is happening at the moment.
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