For Labour, long time backer J K Rowling (who surely could match the Ashcroft money and hardly notice it had gone, if the mood took her) is joined by David Tennant. He must be a worry for Labour – Tennant’s support may lose Gordon the Dalek vote his only-slighty-too-authoritarian government seem to have spent the last 13 years attracting.
The Conservatives meanwhile have Carol Vorderman, Kirstie Allsopp* and Trevor ‘bong’ MacDonald. Older readers will remember Carol …
The Conservatives think they can improve education in this country by making the teaching profession “brazenly elitist” but it looks like they haven’t done their homework. David Cameron’s latest wheeze would actually exclude Carol Vorderman, the Tories’ own Maths Taskforce chief.
David Cameron made a speech today at a south London school, outlining Conservative pledges:
The Tory leader said he wanted to make teaching the “noble profession” and would bar students with a poor degree from taking government cash to train for the classroom.
And in what was almost certainly a conscious echo of Labour rhetoric, Mr Cameron said: “Good education is the right of the many not the privileged few.”
Michael Gove, the Shadow Education Secretary, went further in confronting head on claims that the Conservatives’ policies favour the better off.
An incoming Conservative government would be guided by a “moral purpose” to make opportunity more equal, he said, adding that it was a ‘scandal’ only 79 boys in receipt of free school meals achieved three ‘A’s at A-level nationwide compared with 175 pupils from Eton alone.
“It’s a scar on our conscience and we are pledged to reverse it,” said Mr Gove.
However, “breaking open the supply of education” won’t be achieved by discouraging graduates with lower classes of degree.
Good morning, and thank you for trudging through the snow and ice to Daily View. It’s Christmas Eve, and the staff at LDV Towers are expecting a half-day holiday if they get through all their work.
Across Europe, it’s today (rather than tomorrow) that many continental children receive their visit from Santa. Is that enough date-related trivia? Hell no! Carol Vorderman, Caroline Aherne and Barry Chuckle were all Christmas babies and are celebrating birthdays today.
Literary giants Harold Pinter and William Makepeace Thackery both died on Christmas eve, albeit 145 years apart.
And in events on Christmas eve: in 1946, the French Fourth Republic was founded; and in 1968 the crew of Apollo 8 were the first humans to escape the Earth’s gravity, and the first to broadcast the bible from space.
An eventful day! But click on to find what’s happening today.
Fiona As someone who has a lot of professional interactions with developers, I think it's correct that they'll use targets as an excuse to further reduce the quality ...
Chris Moore It's a target; it's an expression of intent. And that as a country we must do better on housing.
The fact it'd be very difficult to meet is precisely the po...
Nonconformistradical "I notice that the argument against targets was that these hadn’t been met in the past."
I voted against Amendment 1 because I really could not see how, wi...
Peter Martin 'Britain’s “new towns” programme of the 1940s and 1950s had been successful because development corporations could buy vast tracts of land at agricul...
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