Comic cuts

Slow news day. Some freaky pop bloke has kicked the bucket. Details on all media channels whether you care or not.

Iran revolution? No idea. I'm listening to WATO whose editors think Wacko is much more important than Balls abolishing a flagship Labour policy** and making Crapita's eyes water as he hacks off one of their limbs, allegedly worth £100 million. Not that Crapita will feel much pain given that the taxpayer Gord puts £2 BILLION p.a. their way.

**Abolishing the literacy and numeracy teaching programmes 'delivered' by Crapita. Ah, me. I remember when teachers 'delivered' education and with better results than we have now. I speak as one who has, despairingly, interviewed countless school leavers seeking the jobs for which their 'teachers' had assured them they were 'qualified'.

Funny, that, though. Nothing to do with the fact that many teachers are warming to the Gover. No pressure, Balls.

I predict that this is the first of many Labour cuts we'll see before the election. But what shall we call it? 'A reallocation of essential investment'? Yeah, that'll do. I can hear it now. 'This is not a cut! FFS - what do you think we are? Tories? Under Labour, expenditure will rise and rise and rise...' Yep, whatever. You're finished anyway, Ed. Get used to it.

What's that noise? Ah yes. The teaching unions cheering as they finally get their way in something.

Tsk. Now, what's THAT noise? Ah, yes, the election clock ticking...

Teachers’ tendency to vote Labour is of recent origin, and may not last.

In the run-up to the 1979 election that brought Margaret Thatcher to victory, most teachers told pollsters they intended to vote Conservative. When in 1987 they defected, disillusioned by low spending on schools, they turned first to the Liberal-SDP Alliance, the third party, before coming round to the charms of Tony Blair. In 1997 59% intended to vote Labour, nearly four times more than fancied the Tories. But fewer have voted Labour in each subsequent election. In 2008 the Times Education Supplement, a trade newspaper, found overwhelming disapproval among teachers of Labour’s school policies and a shift in voting intentions (albeit towards the Liberal Democrats rather than the Tories). The Economist

The TES’s survey of 5,832 teachers - carried out to coincide with this year’s conference season - involved a “blind taste” test of the three main parties’ education policies which indicates that the Liberal Democrats are most in tune with the profession’s thinking. The Conservatives came next, with the Government trailing a long way behind. - TES

More fun to come, then.