I know, I know, I should stop reading articles in the Daily Telegraph. It would be good for my blood pressure.
But, in an article entitled Tough luck if you're not Scottish in that organ today, Alice Thompson reminds us of Neil Kinnock's speech in 1983 when he said that if Thatcher was re-elected: "I warn you not to be young - I warn you not to grow old."
Alice Thompson remarks:
Margaret Thatcher was a sweetie to the young and the old compared to what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have done to them.
She then goes on to list some examples to demonstrate her point. I have found fatal flaws with the first two examples and then gave up, as my blood pressure was getting too high:
Now the results are showing. Blair's babies are actually worse off than Thatcher's children. Not only are they now the most over-tested, stressed and unhappy children in the world, but according to new figures they are also saddled with far more debt than Thatcher's brood were when they left university.
According to reports in this week's Daily Telegraph, children spend the first 18 years of their life being examined, starting as babies, when they have to show they can shake a rattle. As toddlers, they must prove they can integrate with their peers; by seven they are sitting formal national tests.
Hang on. The SATs, the 'formal national tests' to which seven year olds are subjected, were introduced by the Conservatives - not Gordon and Tony, Alice old thing! And this stuff about toddlers having to 'prove they can integrate with their peers'...our child was recently a toddler. I think Thompson may be somewhat over-egging the pudding regarding toddlers. That's putting it mildly.
Their teens are spent in their bedrooms cramming for GCSEs, AS-levels and A-levels. All to get to university where, according to the National Union of Students, they now leave with vast debts.
Instead of being able to buy their first flat, they are paying off the tutors who taught them geography or golf management. The average degree course now costs £42,000, and then they have to think about a mortgage.
Hello? Unless David Cameron has done another U turn on this since January, the Conservatives actually support tuition fees!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hah! Cramming for GCSEs A-levels and ASs, you must be joking. the only thing wrong with them isn't that they push you too hard (the AS/A split actually makes things far more flexible and easy) but rather the sheer annoyance of people getting the equivalent of a C in international baccalaureates and that being counted as 3 As at A level by the unis! If she really is saying what i think shes saying though, our policies have far more in common with her views than any of Thatchers!
ReplyDelete