LoneTory

LoneTory

77p

583 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Ben Bradley: Let's sto... · 1 reply · +1 points

Indeed I do. Until quite recently I worked as an English teacher and a sixth from tutor in a comprehensive school. I was actively involved every year in guiding students through the application process to university. The gulf between the Russell Group and the rest was wide and growing all the time as the 'new' universities made increasingly desperate attempts to attract enough students to justify their own existence.

To explain this in detail would require a book that I have no inclination to write, but basically the johnny-come-lately colleges never had the resourcing, the academic staff and the culture necessary to reproduce what still goes on the at the very best British universities. The feedback I got back from my students who went to them was depressing and sometimes a little heart-breaking - poor resources, limited contact with lecturers, often few lectures at all, minimal supervision of extended papers and endless accommodation worries. All so that Blair could claim half of all young people were going to "university".

The consequences are well-known. They include growing numbers of youngsters with degrees doing jobs they feel are beneath them because, well, they've got a degree... Court cases in which students are taking universities to law because they owe £50k in debt and cannot see what they got for it. Employers in the real world unable to find capable people to train in apprenticeships that would give them an excellent income for life because all the good kids were, and still are, being persuaded to to go to university.

Before I left I came to the conclusion that there are only two reasons to go to university - to join one of the professions or because one has a profound love of and interest in a subject. No one else should bother.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Ben Bradley: Let's sto... · 0 replies · +1 points

After 30 years teaching in secondary education up to A level, I completely agree with you.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Ben Bradley: Let's sto... · 3 replies · +1 points

"university courses which train minds, involve critical analysis of data and develop a capacity for reasoned judgements."

Have you the foggiest idea what is happening in the average "university" since Blair decided that any educational institution that wanted to be be one could be? I can assure you, it is not what you describe above!

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Iain Dale: No gloating... · 0 replies · +1 points

Yawn...

Now down to the offy to collect the champagne I ordered.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Welcome to Brexit Week · 0 replies · +1 points

Absolutely, one of my arguments all along. The trade imbalance with the EU is hugely in their favour - strip out finance and services and it is vastly so. They have far more to lose by being awkward over the future trading relationship than we do. Already every indicator such as the purchasing managers' indices is showing swings into the positive. Call their bluff - it will be over in a few weeks.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Does Johnson have the ... · 0 replies · +1 points

I live in the same area. What about pretend owners of the land? It is wrong to assume that most land is now owned by local farming families. Much is owned directly or indirectly by pension funds, insurance companies and other hidden financial institutions.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Scruton and the Tories... · 0 replies · +1 points

Others are better qualified to comment on his place among Conservative thinkers. I would say that he was often an exquisitely lucid and concise writer. May he rest in peace.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Does Downing Street wa... · 0 replies · +1 points

"But your team does it so it’s ok"

I believe you've finally got it, Rosie!

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Does Downing Street wa... · 1 reply · +1 points

Spot on, Harlow. End the licence fee, it's a dangerous anachronism and an appalling waste of money - how many BBC executives paid more than prime ministers?

I get no sense that they have learned - or are capable of learning - anything from recent events. Now they are sulking rather than reporting objectively, never mind looking forward with any positivity, and we'll have years of them hoping things go wrong so they can say "We told you so".

Put them and us out of our misery.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Ruth Edwards: The Iran... · 0 replies · +1 points

Well, I'm more concerned with helping matters in the wider world rather than the inward-looking Middle East. It's not as if we haven't spend a great deal of time and money already trying to sort them out, is it? I'm not in favour of further direct military intervention because they always end up hating the people trying to help them more than they hate each other.

If the Iranians were content with brutalising their own poor people , I'm afraid we'd have to let them get on with it, as they have been for decades, but they are not. They are intent on exporting their own brand of hate-filled, totalitarian fundamentalism; at that point, the western powers are duty-bound to take decisions to limit the damage to their own interests.