The idea is a fairly populist one which fits into the present narrative of benefit-bashing, though Shelbrooke certainly isn’t the first one to suggest it. Here’s what he proposes:

Mr Shelbrooke has drafted a Bill that would change the law to allow welfare payments to be made on a new “welfare cash card” whose use could be restricted by the Government.

“Introducing a welfare cash card on which benefits will be paid, claimants will only be able to make priority payments such as food, clothing, energy, travel and housing. The purchase of luxury goods such as cigarettes, alcohol, Sky television and gambling will be prohibited,” Mr Shelbrooke told MPs.

Given that Shelbrooke makes no recommendations concerning the amount, frequency or any other aspect of the welfare or employment system, this means the only purpose of the cards is to allow the government to make sweeping moral and subjective decisions on what a poor person should and should not be allowed to purchase in a shop. It’s about saying: these are nice things, and you’re not allowed to have them.

I notice, mind you, that Mr Shelbrooke makes no comment on whether it is OK for middle-class mothers to spend their child benefit on gin.

Contrary to what stupid Tory MPs would have you believe the great majority of people on benefits would rather not be receiving this kind of assistance. It is not, despite occasional scandals or examples that may suggest otherwise, an especially comfortable or dignified way of living.

Alex Massie – Is this the nastiest Conservative MP in Britain?

Along with the various reasons why this idea is simplistic and unhelpful, it also creates a huge amount of stigma and a significant new black-market overnight, as £100 cards are traded for £80 in cash and various other methods of getting around the system are quickly devised. It might also help put smaller shops out of business and would create a significant administrative overhead for the government.

As Kate points out, there are a multitude of areas where cash payments are required, particularly in emergencies. Additionally, it needs to be said that people with addictions do not simply cease consumption of their substance should financial support be removed. For example, somewhere between a quarter and a half of all acquisitive crime is currently illegal drug-related.

Shelbrooke also forgets that this isn’t the first time a credit-based welfare system has been attempted. Between 1999 and 2002 the Immigration and Asylum Act introduced a policy whereby asylum seekers were given vouchers which could be exchanged for groceries in supermarkets, before the policy was abandoned following protests from refugee charities and due to general dissatisfaction with the expense and inefficiencies with the system. The key aim of the voucher system was to discourage “undesirables” from coming to the UK, just as Shellbrooke’s proposals aim to dissuade people from claiming welfare payments by facilitating stigma, exclusion and emphasising the differences between welfare claimants and other citizens.

Putting aside the populist tabloid appeal of the proposals, there is one other big hurdle to their acceptance by the general public and that is the concept of contribution. If someone has been paying their national insurance contributions over many years, on the understanding that they could call upon the welfare system should they fall on hard times, why should the government have any say whatsoever in how benefit payments are spent.

If this weren’t all bad enough, Shelbrooke then references the commonly-held myth that “is not uncommon for families to have third-generation benefit claimants, who have never made these insurance contributions”, yet as we have seen with the release of a new report by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, this is little more than fabrication.

Despite dogged searching in localities with high rates of worklessness across decades we were unable to locate any families in which there were three generations in which no-one had ever worked.

Are ‘Cultures of Worklessness” passed down the generations?

These basic factual, moral and practical failures have been completely overlooked by someone who really should know better. The welfare card would give birth to a system in which the poor are further stigmatised, othered and designated as second class citizens, making an already difficult life even harder to live.

Overall, Shelbrooke strikes me as someone trying to further his own media profile and protect his thin parliamentary majority with poorly devised headline-grabbing nonsense. I sincerely hope the voters of Elmet and Rothwell have enough sense to show him the door in 2015.

Senior leaders within the EU are overjoyed with the decision and avid supporters of the union are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief. Council President, Herman Van Rompuy, said the award recognized the EU’s work as “the biggest peacemaker in history,” and Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso said that it was “a tremendous honour.”

Though there’s a problem. The awarding of the Nobel Peace prize to an organisation rather than an individual is not unique but it seems as though this decision is out of step with the average European citizen.

To speak frankly, to suggest the last sixty years across Europe have been decades of peace and harmony is simply wrong. Did the awarding committee forget about the violent breaking up of the former Yugoslavia or about the decades of violence which threatened to bring Northern Ireland to its knees? How about the stand off between Greece and Turkey on the island of Cyprus or the vast social unrest which marches through European capitals in the modern day?

Believing that the EU can take the plaudits for peace, should you be able to ignore the lack of peace, owes everything to the creation of NATO and the Marshall Plan. The advancement of human rights is based solely on the European Convention of Human Rights which was first introduced in 1950, 43 years before the EU was founded.

Strictly speaking, the EU has only been in existence since 1993 and its predecessor, the European Economic Community was set up twelve years after the end of World War II as a trading organisation.

The EU is not by any means a bad thing for the United Kingdom. As a country we’re far better off economically in rather than out and there’s no doubt that the EU has had a positive influence on policy areas such as agriculture and economic migration.

We’ll never really know how the awarding committee came to the decision to recognise the EU but the award itself is beginning to become tainted. Days into his presidency of the USA, Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize even though he commanded the world’s largest army fighting two wars and publicly advocates the use of drone strikes.

Public trust in the EU, according to a study carried out by Eurobarometer for the European Commission, is at an all time low. UKIP leader, Nigel Farage said that the award “goes to show that the Norwegians really do have a sense of humour,” and the UK Foreign Office released a lukewarm statement which urged the EU to “preserve and strengthen” its achievements. On Sunday (14th October), the UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove reportedly told friends that he’s ready to threaten to leave the EU.

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, called for the EU to be given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and since 2009, he has been chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding committee. In 2005, while Prime Minister of Norway, he wrote a book entitled ‘My European Dream’ and argued that his country should join the EU.

In short, the pro-EU chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding committee, who happens to be the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, has seen his four year old call for the EU to be given the Nobel Peace Prize realised. There are many who see these coincidences as a little fishy.

During an interview with the BBC, Jose Manuel Barroso said he believed “it is justified for the EU to see its work for peace recognised, not only in the unification of the continent, but also outside of Europe.” It seems a little odd for the Commission President to talk about unity when relations between Greece and Germany are in the toilet, Britain vetoed a treaty to the praise of its people and capital cities across the region have burned with protest.

Thorbjorn Jagland pointed to the economic problems which dogged EU member states but said the awarding committee wanted to focus on the EU’s work in advancing “peace and reconciliation…” It seems as though Thorbjorn Jagland is very much aware of the elephant in the room but just doesn’t want to talk about it.

Sixty years of peace, compared to World War II at least, is something to celebrate, as is the advancement of human rights but it is not right for the EU to claim the credit. As with almost everything connected to the EU, things are a little more complicated than they first seem.

“Being confronted by an intruder in your own home is terrifying, and the public should be in no doubt that the law is on their side. That is why I am strengthening the current law.

Householders who act instinctively and honestly in self-defence are victims of crime and and should be treated that way. We need to dispel doubts in this area once and for all, and I am very pleased to be today delivering on the pledge that we made in opposition.”

- Chris Grayling

Now, this might sound like great news to your average bloke on the street, but some of us have heard this story before. Look, here’s Tony Blair’s government in 2005:

Householders can kill intruders in self defence, police and prosecutors say today. Anyone confronted in their home can use a weapon such as a bat, knife or even a gun. And they are entitled to strike first.

People defending themselves or their property will not face criminal charges, however badly the burglar is hurt, as long as they feel under threat and act “honestly and instinctively” in the heat of the moment. The official advice comes after complaints that the law was weighted in favour of criminals.

Tony Blair this afternoon spelled out the message. He said: “Don’t be in any doubt, you are entitled to defend yourself. And it is only in the most extreme set of circumstances that anyone is going to get prosecuted for attacking or killing a burglar in their own home.”

Evening Standard - 01 February 2005

In 2008, Jack Straw issued a clarification to say that:

…people would be protected legally if they defended themselves “instinctively”, they feared for their own safety or that of others, and the level of force used was not excessive or disproportionate.

And look, here’s Gordon Brown in 2010, saying much the same thing again:

“I strongly support the right of law-abiding people to defend themselves, their families and their properties – and to do so with reasonable force. As a country, all our instincts and sympathies rightly lie with law-abiding citizens. Society sides with the victims of crime, so too should the system. And I am determined that will.

“It is a long-standing principle of our laws and liberties that it is for the courts, not politicians, to pronounce on this in any individual case. But I am clear, once due process has been followed, if the courts show a proper degree of understanding, and mercy, for the situation the victim found themselves in, then that seems to me to wholly reasonable and sensible.”

Gordon Brown – 23 January 2010

With the newspapers regularly packed full of articles on the crime of burglary (for example, the Daily Mail website lists 1300 such stories) the threat of being sent to prison for protecting your own home seems to weigh unnecessarily heavily on the minds of tabloid readers. This of course explains why Grayling chose to include it in his speech. It remains a shallow vote winner on an issue which doesn’t really exist, which is why Brown and Blair were also so keen to make political hay with it.

However, as George Eaton points out in the New Statesman today, the law is already fairly clear on this:

The current law, which allows householders to use “reasonable force”, supports them provided that:

- they acted instinctively;
- they feared for their safety or that of others, and acted based on their perception of the threat faced and the scale of that threat;
- they acted to effect a lawful arrest or to prevent the escape of a person lawfully detained; and
- the level of force used was not excessive or disproportionate in the circumstances as they viewed them.

George Eaton: Has Chris Grayling actually read the law on household defence?

Importantly, as the Director of Public Prosecutions Kier Starmer noted whilst rejecting calls to change the law in 2009:

There are many cases, some involving death, where no prosecutions are brought. We would only ever bring a prosecution where we thought that the degree of force was unreasonable in such a way that the jury would realistically convict. So these are very rare cases and history tells us that the current test works very well.

- Kier Starmer

Much of the tabloid hysteria appears to be driven by heavily-publicised cases such as those of Peter Flanagan, who was briefly arrested on suspicion of murder last year after stabbing a burglar to death, before being released without charge. It should seem to be a perfectly reasonable precaution to arrest someone in the immediate aftermath of a death (as for instance, we aren’t instantly aware of whether the deceased was lured there intentionally) but each time this unfortunate scenario occurs it seems to re-ignite the same tired-old debate.

Instead, we should see Grayling’s latest comments for what they are, an announcement of rights which you already possess, in order to dishonestly win votes by appearing tough on crime, whilst simultaneously encouraging a dangerous vigilante mindset in both home-owners and potential burglars, who might now be tempted to arm themselves further, leading to an escalation of violence.

So, in the famous internet tradition of Fisking (a point-by-point criticism which highlights errors) I’ve decided to delve further into the murky world of David William Donald Cameron.

This week, politics starts again for the autumn – and I profoundly believe we can face Britain’s challenges with confidence.

Yes, growth has been disappointing – but in the past two years we’ve also seen more than 900,000 jobs created in the private sector. Yes, turning around our schools is tough – but hundreds of new Free Schools and Academies are opening every year. Yes, tackling welfare dependency is difficult – but there are more people in work now than at the last Election. This is a Government with fighting spirit for our future.

Yes Dave, some private sector jobs have been created, but a rather similar number of public sector jobs are being cut, and let us not forget that much of the work being created is temporary, precarious and part-time. There also appears to be a trend to encourage those out of work to declare themselves as self-employed, to help bring the unemployment figures down.

Because the Olympics and Paralympics have taught us a valuable lesson: if you have  a vision and pursue it with enough rigour and drive, you can achieve it. And my vision for this country is clear.

Quite an odd comparison he makes here. “Did you like the Olympics and Paralympics? Well you should totally like Dave too, because he’s just like them, kinda.” Except he isn’t really. Alongside “vision” you also need some talent and the skill to pull it off.

It’s a Britain that is more competitive, dynamic, creative – that is linked up with the fastest-growing parts of the world.

It’s a Britain where we have real social mobility, where people can rise from the bottom to the top and no one knows their place. It’s a society where we build up the doers, the creators, the life-affirmers – whether that’s the person who starts a business or works for a better neighbourhood.

Ah, meritocracy. That old chestnut. Britain is not meritocratic by any means, and there is high wealth inequality. Kate Pickett writes of the conclusions to her book The Spirit Level that: “unequal societies have lower levels of trust, higher levels of mental illness, worse physical health, more obesity, their children do less well in schools, there are more teenage births, more violence, [..] a greater percentage of the population is in prison and social mobility is lower as well”. All of which affects our ability to move between the different social classes, no matter how hard we may try.

The real appeal of Cameron’s call to meritocracy is it’s focus on personal responsibility, it allows those who subscribe to it a means to justify poverty as a personal failure in life. If you aren’t a millionaire, well, you just didn’t work hard enough.

However, the cutting of the 50p tax rate, the financial crisis and Cameron’s defence of the banking sector have shown to many people in Britain that you can be rewarded for failure, and you might not necessarily earn that six-figure salary on merit alone.

And all of this means a nation where we talk about the values that matter: that families are vital; that we each have responsibilities to fulfil; that doing an honest day’s work is a moral good that should be rewarded. 

As Ellie-Mae O’Hagan wrote recently: “The level of value we place upon paid work has often baffled me. I’ve never understood why it is so readily championed as the route to dignity, self-worth and financial security when for so many people, work is undignified, demoralising and underpaid.” Cameron also seems to overlook the incredible amount of work done by those who stay at home to look after their children, or care for a friend or loved one. Do they not deserve the same recognition and dignity for their unpaid work?

Additionally, many welfare payments (something I’ll come on to later) are paid out to those who are in paid employment. If a full-time job fails to pay the rent and leaves you relying on debt and welfare, then you know something is wrong with our concept of work. Cameron says he backs the ‘workers’ over the ‘shirkers’. I’d love to hear his definition of what constitutes membership of these groups.

The truth is we’re too far away from that country today. There is a lot to do – to help our businesses be more successful, our young people more hopeful,  our society more aspirational.

But Britain’s Olympians and Paralympians have taught us another lesson: graft equals success. You don’t get to the podium without making huge sacrifices and really wanting to win. That lesson can be applied to our country. It will be a hard road to success – but that’s the road we must take.

Another pointless reference to the Olympics. Not much substance here on how he plans to help out the 1 million unemployed young people.

We’re on a hard road to balancing Britain’s books. I know that people look at our growth figures, hit by the eurozone crisis and the fallout from the financial crisis, and ask: is this worth it?

But we have to remember the fundamental truth at the heart of this debate: you cannot borrow your way out of a debt crisis. Countries across Europe have found there’s a tipping point where piling on more debt isn’t just counter-productive, it is lethal – because you slam the brakes on growth.

We are pulling Britain out of that trap. When I became Prime Minister our market interest rates were the same as Spain’s. Ours are now less than two per cent; theirs more than six per cent. Why?

Because we threw a lifeline around the British economy and pulled it back from the cliff edge.

We’ve cut the deficit by a quarter already, and we are sticking to this course: rejecting the easy path; restoring sanity to our finances; keeping Britain safe.

I’m not even sure where to begin here. Almost all of the experienced economists who backed Osborne’s original economic plan have since renounced their views, yet none of this seems to make a difference to Cameron. The government is now borrowing more money than at any time under the Labour government, we’re back in recession and the latest economic outlook shows that we’re not coming out of it any time soon. Consumer confidence is rock-bottom and even Osborne’s feeble attempts at a “stimulus which doesn’t really look like a stimulus” are doomed to fail because they remain backed up by the rhetoric of a bankruptcy lawyer.

We’re on a hard road, too, to fix the underlying problems in our economy. The crisis in the eurozone has made things more difficult, but it was never going to be easy to rebalance away from unsustainable financial services, public spending and immigration. What we need is a bigger private sector; wealth spread more widely across the country; more emphasis on the industries of the future, such as green technology and advanced manufacturing.

We’re seeing progress – for the first time since the Seventies Britain is a net seller of cars – but there is a long way to go.

Can’t that statistic also imply something else though. That perhaps British people are buying fewer cars, because we’re all skint in a double-dip recession? Note a lack of figures to back up this vague assertion.

A key part of recovery is building the houses our people need, but a familiar cry goes up: ‘Yes, we want more housing; but no to every development – and not in my back yard.’

The nations we’re competing against don’t stand for this kind of paralysis and neither must we.

Frankly, I am frustrated by the hoops you have to jump through to get anything done – and I come back to Parliament more determined than ever to cut through the dither that holds this country back.

So with a newfound focus on home-building, are we starting to see a Plan B by stealth? Cameron’s tinkering seems to matter little. As long as the rhetoric from the government remains stuck at belt-tightening, we’re unlikely to see much in the way of consumer confidence to boost growth.

That’s why I wasn’t prepared to allow the debate on House of Lords reform to crowd out the parliamentary timetable. Instead, we will return this week with new Government Bills for economic development.

Slightly disingenuous there, Dave. You dropped Lords reform because of a rebellion in your own party which you couldn’t control and disagreements with the Lib Dems. You were quite happy to let a similarly unimportant topic (boundary reform) crowd out the parliamentary timetable.

And nowhere will the road ahead be harder than on increasing opportunity. The easy road on education is to cave in to the unions who want to keep inflating the GCSE and A-level grades and pretend that standards are rising each year.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the grade inflation was caused by the private companies who compete to provide the exam papers to schools. This is the free-market of which so many economic right-wingers are obsessed with, until the results aren’t quite what they’d expected, as in this instance.

What the unions were upset about was something different entirely. The NUT were frustrated that the grading criteria was amended half-way through the school year, meaning that young people’s predicted grades turned out to be inaccurate, through no fault of their own, affecting their chances of moving into higher education.

The easy road on welfare is to spend more money, push people a pound or two over the official poverty line and pretend you’ve cracked the problem. But it’s these easy options that have betrayed millions. 

I’m just going to lets the statistics speak for themselves here:

• 42% of overall welfare spending is on pensioners.
• 20% is on housing benefit (and one in five claimants are in work).
• 15% goes to child benefit and child tax credit.
• 8% spent on disability living allowance, which helps those both in and out of work.
• 4% goes on sickness and disability benefits.

That’s 89% of payments. Referring to welfare as the “easy road” ignores the fact that almost all of us rely on welfare spending in one way or another. Two more statistics:

• Jobseekers allowance accounts for just 3% of welfare payments.
• Fraud fell under the Labour government. The overall fraud rate for the welfare system is currently 0.7% and a similar amount to this is overpaid due to admin errors.

Welfare is a huge subject. To skirt around the edges making vague promises is nothing but showboating for the tabloids obsessed with ‘scroungers’ and the ‘workshy’.

So this Government is being braver. In schools, there will be no more excuses for failure; no more soft exams and soft discipline. We saw that change in the exam results this year. When the grades went down a predictable cry went up: that we were hurting the prospects of these children.

I’ve talked a little about this before, but Cameron really should read this Economist piece which looks at the problem of unruly youth through a historical lens. The fabled golden age where children were all well-behaved, polite, high-achievers never existed and Cameron should take off his rose-tinted spectacles.

To that we must be very clear: what hurts them is dumbing down their education so that their potential is never reached and no one wants to employ them. ‘All must have prizes’ is not just patronising, it is cruel – and with us it is over.

I’m not sure where the ‘all must have prizes’ rhetoric comes from to be honest. I’ve seen Conservatives try to pin the blame for this on Labour, but to be fair I’ve never come across a speech from a Labour minister where this (or anything like it) has been said.

From the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard it doesn’t seem to be a major problem outside of the tabloids, who love a good politically-correct, ‘elf and safety story when they’re low on headlines.

In welfare, too, we are restoring rigour. We’ve capped benefits. We’ve said to people that  if they want Jobseeker’s Allowance, they’ve got to actively seek a job.

Above all, we have brought in dynamic charities and companies to support  people back into work. The result? In the past two years the number of homes where no one works has fallen by nearly a quarter of a million.

You hear that folks: he said ‘dynamic charities and companies’.

Notice that he doesn’t name them. I wonder why.

A4E, a company used by both Labour and the Conservatives in an arms-length, half-arsed attempt to ‘get people back to work’, have been accused by systemic fraud as part of a multi-billion-pound scandal. According to the Mail, A4e spent £45million of public money securing just 4,000 permanent jobs, whilst their chairman paid herself £8.6m.

And all these goals aren’t tick-boxes on some Government spreadsheet. They’re all linked into one vision. 

Whether it’s giving our children a world-class education; putting work back at the heart of our welfare system; helping to create good, high-skilled jobs across our country; curbing immigration so that we get more British people into those jobs, or building more houses so that those who work long hours can afford a home for their family, the thread running through our plans is this: building a Britain where those who want to work hard and do the right thing can get on in life.

And these ambitions show something else: that this is a historically radical Government. No previous Government has been bold enough to go to Europe and say no to a treaty that wasn’t in Britain’s interests.

No previous Government dared to reform university finance in such a fundamental way.

No previous Government has been brave enough to take on genuine reform of our public sector pension system and cut  in half the long-term cost to the taxpayer.

At every turn we are taking the hard road over the easy path – and we are doing so because we have a clear destination in mind: a truly great Britain; equal to the challenges of the 21st Century; a country we are proud to call home not just for this golden month of the Olympics and Paralympics but in every month, all the time.

I’m confident we’re making progress. And I’m more ready than ever for the challenge ahead.

Following the riots of August 2011, the Economist writer Bagehot produced a fabulous article demonstrating that the crisis over wayward youth was one which had reoccurred in almost every generation in recorded memory. The piece, which tapped into Stanley Cohen’s theories of moral panic, demolished the knee-jerk view that this sort of public disorder was in any way a recent phenomenon.

Bagehot produced some enlightening quotations from throughout history, for example: the Daily Express of 1981 wrote how “over the past twenty years or so, there has been a revulsion from authority and discipline”, a court in 1951 concluded that “parents at this time, unfortunately, do not take sufficient care in bringing up their children, they expect someone else to be responsible” and the Times of 1892 warned that “our streets are actually not as safe as they were in the days of our grandfathers. We have slipped back to a state of affairs that would be intolerable even in Naples”.

I was reminded of Bagehot’s work whilst reading of Michael Gove’s proposals to reintroduce the O-level exams which were scrapped by the Thatcher government in the mid-80s. This policy leak (which – by the way – is the latest in a series of leaks which break the rules set out in paragraph 9.1 of the ministerial code) was accompanied by a flurry of discussion on the failures of the present educational system, how exams had gotten easier and that perhaps our “less-gifted” students might be better off accepting their fate in a two-tier system which marks them as lifetime under-achievers at a very early age. All of which I’m sure was of great comfort to those currently taking their GCSE exams after a lengthy period of revision, who generally have to wait until their results are released to be subjected to this level of condescension.

Gove’s rhetoric harks right back to the 1950s, which for a sizeable proportion of the population represents some sort of golden age in British society. It appeals particularly to older voters with a rather rose-tinted view of history. Gove also benefits from opinion polls which show that Labour have between a 25% and 47% lead over the Conservatives in the 18-24 demographic, so he can rest assured that those students whose academic record he is tarnishing are highly unlikely to have ever voted for him in the first place.

One of the most controversial aspects of the reform is the splitting of the exam system by ability. The Financial Times’ Christopher Cook is one educational expert highly critical of this move:

The GCSE’s strength is that it is a full-spectrum exam, measuring low to high ability. It includes questions designed to distinguish candidates that should get a G from candidates than deserve an F, as well as questions to filter A* candidates from those getting an A.

This is also its greatest PR weakness: it gets attacked by people citing the low-level questions. The Mail approvingly notes: “questions like ‘Would you look at the Moon with a microscope or a telescope?’ from science GCSEs will be a thing of the past.”

The benefit of this system is that you get comparable qualifications, and there is no need for schools to attempt to sift children, guessing who will finish up with less than a C. The GCSE exams themselves do that work for them.

O-levels and social mobility – FT

Perhaps the biggest impact of this change would be on social mobility. As Cook writes “the CSE will tend to be an exam for poorer children” with the effect of lowering aspirations amongst those selected to take the test, with the potential for many to simply give up on education at this stage. This regime would also provide a significant challenge for schools, who would be trusted to segregate the children correctly by ability.

As with Bagehot’s analysis of youths behaving badly, we must similarly ask whether concern over falling student attainment has also been viewed through a distorted lens of history. The Times Education Supplement published a fascinating piece in 2010 asking just that, and coming up with similar findings:

Cambridge Assessment’s archive shows that in 1858, when its ancestor body first set an exam, for a group of less than 100 school-leavers, the markers found they demonstrated “little indication of an acquaintance with the best elementary mathematics works”.

This trend continues across the twentieth century into the age of O-levels, which also didn’t fare too well during the time they were in-use, echoing much of the criticism of GCSEs we see today:

In 1984, The TES reported that “poor spelling dogs O-level English”, quoting Geoff Earnshaw, assistant secretary of the Associated Examining Board, who blamed “modern teaching methods” and the fact that pupils “watch television and listen to far more pop music”.

Yet TV, along with women’s magazines and cheap novelettes, was also blamed by examiners for the low standards in English O-level in 1955. Then they complained that “the meaning of paragraphs is unknown to many; the semi- colon has virtually disappeared and commas are scattered at random”.

For his book State Schools Since the 1950s, former headteacher Adrian Elliott found dozens of similar examples from examiners’ reports during that supposed golden era. Pupils kept using “of” instead of “have” in sentences such as “he should of done it” (O-level English, 1955); made spelling mistakes such as “deffinate”, “Brittain”, “polytitions” and “fivety” (O-level general paper, 1958); and, too often, “had no understanding of the subject matter of most questions” (A-level maths, 1960).

Amusing exam mistakes were often passed on by teachers to The TES. A collection of “exam howlers” printed in 1962 include, from biology O- level, “The dustbin is the place for refuge” and from English A-level, “The Friar preferred the company of baremaids”.

Times Education Supplement – The Test of Time

One other interesting aspect of the proposed changes is the implicitly acknowledged failure of competition in the exam board system, where six exam boards set papers and supposedly compete with each other to devise the easiest exam. This is to be replaced by a system in which one company has a monopoly over an individual test paper. For a capitalist political party who regularly espouse the benefits of regulation by the invisible hand of the free-market, this is a startling admission from the Government.

Whilst this failure of competition may be somewhat to blame for the increasing grades we see year-on-year, there are various other explanations which we need to take into account in order to see the full picture.

Some of the discrepancy – and perhaps why GCSEs are percieved to be less valuable – is down to the differences in the way the grades are awarded. As Francis Gilbert notes, O-levels are norm-referenced qualifications which means that “only a certain percentage will achieve an A grade, another given percentage a B grade and so on, regardless of the standards achieved by the pupils”. This is unlike GCSEs, where the grade is awarded based on the percentage scored and little else.

Additionally, we cannot discount the real possibility that students have become smarter in some ways, that teachers have become better at teaching the curriculum and that those taking part are now better prepared for their exams. As a basic analogy for this theory, consider that clear reasons exist as to why Olympic athletes continually break 100m sprint records and that this has nothing whatsoever to do with a redefinition of what measurement constitutes a meter.

Moreover, if the government is searching for an exam which more closely resembles the O-level, they need look no further than the iGCSE, which is already in use and has been developed in conjunction with universities to test the areas of knowledge formerly covered by the O-level examination. All of which convinces me that yesterday’s announcement is nothing more than a populist, crowd-pleasing name change with no real educational reform to back it up.

As Kenneth Durham of the HMC (which represents many of the leading private schools) makes clear, the Government should be incredibly cautious about any plans to reform secondary education:

A knee-jerk return to a nostalgic ‘golden age’ of O levels run by a state monopoly examination board is naïve and will suit nobody.

Kenneth Durham, chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference

The question now is whether this leaked policy will be watered down over the next few months to placate the early critics, or whether it will go the way of Gove’s other eccentric ideas such as free bibles, the teaching of Roman numerals and the publicly-funded purchase of a new Royal yacht.

Given the chorus of opposition from across the political spectrum we have seen in the last 24 hours, including from the Liberal Democrats and even some in his own party, to get this policy through in its current form he will most certainly have a fight on his hands.

As the disciples of Eurozone austerity are unceremoniously booted out of office, now might be a good time for us to discuss whether the backlash against British austerity, which has been growing since the formation of the coalition, has the potential to expand and provoke yet another government to fall.

The announcement of Britain’s slide back into recession is the result of a collapse of confidence. Put simply: nobody wants to spend at a time when their jobs and homes are at risk, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of economic stagnation. The issue is not necessarily a shortage of cash, more a reluctance to spend on the part of those holding it. As has been observed elsewhere, British businesses are currently sitting on reserves of over £600bn, though are presently choosing not to invest it. The banks too have been criticised recently for their reluctance to lend, particularly to small and medium-sized businesses.

It’s no secret that the Conservative party loathes big government. It should therefore come as little surprise that our Prime Minister has used the pretext of “paying down the debt” and the rather worn-out ”cleaning up Labour’s mess” as an excuse to drive down wages, weaken employment rules, reduce funding to local authorities and make large cuts to the welfare bill.

For me, this is the biggest tactical error Cameron made. He saw austerity not as a reliable strategy for reducing the deficit, but as a lackadaisical shortcut for his long-term aim of reducing the size of the state. He remains steadfastly wedded to a failed ideology, with little room for manoeuvre and little concern for how the effects of the policy would play out over the short-term.

As 2012 has trundled on, the IMF (formerly a huge cheerleader for the coalition plan) have begun to warn against the dangers of austerity and even some of the more right-wing British newspapers have published pieces calling for some form of stimulus or a slowing in the pace of cuts in the face of ever-shrinking demand and rising unemployment. Whilst I was deeply unimpressed with Labour’s rather vague acceptance of “some” cuts, their sound-bite of “too far, too fast” does appear to have gained increasing credibility in political debate over the course of this year.

The Financial Times this weekend, whilst reviewing a new book by the patron saint of austerity critics, the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, had this to say on his predictions of two years ago, that all of this “belt-tightening” would inevitably fail and that large-scale fiscal stimulus was the most reliable strategy to encourage growth in the aftermath of the crisis.

You can argue otherwise, and some economists do, but most evidence from the last few years suggests that Krugman is basically right.

End this Depression Now! – reviewed by Robin Harding

As someone who has stressed the faults of austerity since the birth of the coalition, watching a crisis of the markets being somehow transformed into a crisis of government spending, the debate taking place in Europe at the moment is music to my ears. However, there are still many problems to overcome if Britain is to escape from the ideological kamikaze mission that Cameron and Osborne have set us on.

A promise to reduce the deficit faster than Labour was – although somewhat lacking in detail – a key focus of the Conservative’s 2010 election campaign. The first hint that they may be abandoning their chosen strategy would represent a substantial humiliation. Suggestions of a Plan B are dismissed immediately by Osborne and others in the cabinet. It must also be said that the Tories are boosted here by the lack of a clear and costed economic alternative from the opposition.

Labour, which has increased its lead in the polls following the “omnishambles” budget, enjoyed considerable success at the local elections earlier this month. However, much of this appears to be due to a succession of mistakes made by the coalition, rather than it representing a specific endorsement for Ed Miliband and his economic policies. Or lack of them, as the case may be.

So what can Labour do to turn their local election success into widespread support by the time of the next election? In my opinion, they urgently need to take Krugman’s advice and run with it, promising short-term growth through fiscal stimulus. Whilst it is always important to plan for the future, if the short term economic outlook has us trapped in recession, we really needn’t concern ourselves too much with longer-term projections at this stage.

However, if confidence can be boosted by government spending (as economists like as Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz say it can) then unemployment will decrease and tax receipts will increase, with only a marginal impact on the deficit and a far better economic outlook from the OECD, IMF and others.

This would leave open to Labour the option of reducing the deficit, which is far from unprecedented in historical terms, “in good times” rather than through the self-defeating strategy of shedding jobs, public services and support for the vulnerable at the time it is needed most, a shock-doctrine which has now surely failed in its intended aim of deficit reduction.

As Ed Miliband quite correctly states, the double-dip is a “recession made in Downing Street”. With a brave (some might say uncharacteristic) stimulus strategy from Labour, perhaps the nation can claw its way out of crisis. Who knows, if Cameron and Osborne’s inept handling of the economy continues and Miliband can rebuild voters shattered confidence in Labour, he may very well find himself with the keys to Number 10 before 2015. Stranger things have happened.

Chávez was admittedly no stranger to coups d’état himself, having participated in a failed attempt at ousting President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. Pérez, who was deeply corrupt, was removed from office and imprisoned by the Supreme Court the following year, after the discovery that he had embezzled hundreds of millions of bolivars.

After his arrest, Chávez asked to be allowed to speak on television, in order to urge his fellow conspirators to surrender. According to Richard Gott, in his fantastic biography of Chávez, this short speech “converted him into someone perceived as the country’s potential saviour”, with one phrase in particular “por ahora” (or “for the moment”) acting as a rallying cry, a promise that he would soon return to lead the country to salvation.

Chávez was elected in 1998 on a platform which promised to tackle the poverty and corruption which had become so prevalent across Venezuelan society. Upon entering office he implemented a new constitution and created various social programmes to exploit the country’s vast oil wealth in an effort to benefit the poor through education, health and land reform, all of which provoked the ire of the old corporate and political elite, who had seen their political power deteriorate.

The dominant Venezuelan media, who remain fiercely anti-Chávez, immediately swung into action following the election. The new president was denounced by all sections of the corporate media as dangerous, fascist and totalitarian.  When violence broke out during pro and anti-Chávez political rallies on the 11th of April 2002, television footage was manipulated to make it appear as though supporters of the president had been firing on opposition protesters, when it fact they had been protecting themselves from the sniper fire of coup plotters.

Chávez refused to resign and was taken prisoner later that day, then flown to a remote naval base in Turinamo. Meanwhile the coup plotters, led by the new President Pedro Carmona (who was previously the president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce) took power, announcing the removal of the present government and the abolition of the constitution.

The sense of disappointment felt by those within the Barrios (slums) of the capital Caracas was palpable. The removal of a popular leader who had done so much to improve the quality of their lives proved just too much to take, they quickly decided to do something about it. An uprising took place. Hundreds of thousands flooded into the streets to demand the return of their leader. Faced with such overwhelming opposition, the army quickly switched sides and retook the Presidential Palace. None of this was covered by the Venezuelan media, who preferred to screen Disney cartoons, urging their viewers to stay indoors.

Just before midnight on the 13th of April, Chávez was returned to power. He was flown back into the Miraflores Palace by helicopter following an ultimatum given to Carmona by allies of Chávez, that he be returned to Caracas within 24 hours, or suffer the consequences. During the coup itself, the US had taken the side of the coup plotters, even exploiting the same lies peddled by the illegitimate business-led regime to justify its decision. It later emerged that the US had not only been pre-warned about the coup, but that they had backed and funded the opposition, via the National Endowment for Democracy. This mirrors the actions of the US in countries across the globe, where democratic principles are sidelined in favour of hegemony over others.

Of course, this is not to say that major problems do not remain in Venezuela with crime and corruption. Additionally, with no clear successor to Chávez in place and questions still surrounding his health, the continuation of his Bolivarian revolution is by no means assured.

However, what the citizens of Caracas achieved on that day a decade ago – and since then – cannot be underestimated. Their vocal defence of socialism, repeatedly standing up for the economic and social system which lifted them out of poverty, represents a new model for the fight against imperialism, one which may become increasingly useful as a template for others, as they resist the chains of neoliberalism and austerity within Europe and across the globe.

[Article Photo: quecomunismo, used under a Creative Commons licence.]

• Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution – Richard Gott
• The War on Democracy – John Pilger
• The Revolution Will Not be Televised 

The citizens of Manchester, like their counterparts in towns and cities across the UK are struggling to come to terms with huge reductions in local authority funding. The city council recently approved £61m of cuts for 2012/13 in addition to the £109m of front-loaded reductions which took effect over the previous twelve months. The local independent media project Manchester Mule reports that unemployment in Greater Manchester rose 13.5% last year and that repossessions are now the highest outside of London. Many within the city are not however prepared to accept this situation as an unavoidable consequence of the global financial crisis. Since the general election in 2010, a variety of different organisations have emerged to challenge austerity at a local level.

Manchester Coalition Against Cuts (MCAC) is one such group. Formed in January 2011 with help from the Manchester Trades Council, it acts as a central organising space to bring different groups together and provide advice and support. MCAC organised a march of three thousand people during the first round of budget cuts, in addition to supporting various anti-cuts groups in the city focused on saving specific services from closure.

Christina Purcell, joint secretary of MCAC, is clear about the role of local authorities: “Whilst it is central government that has reduced funding to local authorities, it is Manchester Council which is voting to cut services”, hence their focus on directly lobbying the meetings where these budget decisions are taken.

Purcell points to the precedent set by local authorities during the 1980s and stresses the urgency of the fight: “Labour councillors say that they have no choice but in the 1980s councils such Lambeth stood up against the Thatcher government and refused to set a cuts budget. If Manchester council made a similar stand it could mobilise Manchester residents and unions behind it in a militant struggle against the government. The alternative is that we wait for a general election by which time much of the damage to our communities will have been done”.

The network of loosely connected groups has chalked-up a number of significant victories during eighteen months of campaigning. Levenshulme Baths, initially earmarked for closure, was saved thanks to regular and persistent opposition by residents acting through groups such as Save our Baths. This astonishing u-turn culminated recently with the announcement of plans to create three new swimming facilities in the city.

Another substantial success occurred in February as part of a campaign to save services provided by the 39 local Sure Start centres, which the council were planning to significantly scale-back. Parents and activists staged a series of protests using various tactics, including a 300-strong rally in Albert Square. Such vocal and widespread opposition again proved invaluable in forcing the council to re-think many of their plans, particularly in wards where the Labour majority has been just several hundred votes.

Unfortunately, some struggles have not enjoyed a similar level of success. Despite the strenuous efforts of Access 2 Advice, Manchester Advice, which provided free assistance to 80,000 residents on matters such as housing support, debt management, mental health and domestic violence was reduced to a skeleton staff by the council last year, pending a further review this year.

Purcell is clear about the need for unions and anti-cuts activists to work together in opposition: “The danger is that by saving one service, other services will be hit harder, which is why we want to bring anti-cuts activists together to oppose to all cuts rather that just fighting their own corner”.

She also highlights the role of groups such as MCAC in supporting service users themselves. She points out that some groups “are not in a strong position to fight against cuts to services they rely on. For example, users of mental health services, or services for older persons. That’s why an organisation like MCAC is important, especially where the workers supplying these services feel unable to speak out, which, shockingly, we are finding is increasingly the case”.

Mark Krantz, a local campaigner and anti-cuts activist, also stresses the importance of the trade unions in fighting the closure of services and highlighting the impact of austerity at a local level. He suggests we may be entering the beginning of a “new and constructive organisation of the trade unions” particularly that given several are now openly questioning their support for the Labour party.

Krantz – who is running in the May local elections under the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition - argues that residents have “tended to vote for the best of a bad bunch” in recent times and that given the absence of an anti-cuts opposition he feels as though a political vacuum has now opened up. Anger at the destruction of public services, which will only grow as the cuts bite, increasingly has nowhere to turn to for an alternative, something which Krantz hopes his campaign proposing an end to cuts can provide to the residents of Chorlton just south of the city centre.

Interestingly, the response to the cuts can also be observed in the increasing drive to create radical social spaces. A previous space, The Basement on Oldham Street, was closed following fire damage in 2007 but another, the OKCafe, has operated from various squatted locations across the city since the late 1990s. More recently, plans have emerged for a new permanent social centre. Mark Haworth, a member of the group, describes their vision of a space “owned and run by the community” providing a venue to stage events, as well as “free internet access, a radical library, low cost healthy food” and “a place of our own to socialize and meet other like minded people”. Haworth also sees the centre as a place where local residents “will become exposed to new ideas” and get more involved in the grass-roots activities taking place. A much needed “hub” for the people of Manchester.

With so many pressing issues for campaigners to contend with it can sometimes be hard to know where to begin. A range of existing tactics have proved effective, yet campaigners must be prepared to adapt to a political narrative which is constantly evolving. The unions are beginning to recognise the need for lawful civil disobedience and are also initiating schemes to expand their support base, Unite’s community membership being a great example of this.

Noam Chomsky once wrote that isolated protest is not always enough to affect the status-quo. It can be absorbed by politicians without concession. However, what those in power are not so easily able to suppress are “organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time”.  The anti-cuts activists of Manchester are out to prove him right.

On the 19th of February, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey hopped on the bandwagon of a new petition launched by the Coalition for Marriage, a group formed to support what they define as traditional marriage (ie: that which involves one man and one woman), opposing any efforts – including those of Prime Minister David Cameron – to allow same sex-couples to wed. This follows on from criticism of Cameron’s party conference speech in October last year, where he originally unveiled his plans.

In his opinion piece for the Daily Mail, Carey argues that the planned changes are a “hostile strike” and would represent an act of “cultural and theological vandalism”. Carey freely admits that the church does not own the institution of marriage, yet sees no problem invoking his religious authority to pass judgement regardless.

Alongside the Catholic Church, the Church of England also opposes the reforms, seemingly forgetting that their church was originally founded in order to redefine the institution of marriage back in 1534.

Sadly, Carey’s views are somewhat representative of the UK as a whole. In August last year, a poll found that only 43% of Britons agreed that same-sex couples should be allowed to legally marry, although this number is gradually increasing. However, a different survey discovered a huge difference of opinion between the age groups, with 78% of those aged between 25 and 34 agreeing that same-sex marriage should be legalised, compared to just 37% for over 65s.

Much is written about the potential havoc that allowing same-sex marriage could wreak, but very little evidence is provided for this accusation. As Tom Chivers writes in the Telegraph:

There are lots of countries and states that have introduced gay marriage, and lots of people keen to show that it would be damaging. If there was the slightest indication from anywhere that legalising gay marriage reduced the rates of straight marriage, or of straight people staying together, or of kids growing up with fathers, then it would have shown up. [..] Gay marriage won’t destroy the nation, it won’t leave children without parents, it won’t sabotage straight marriage, it’ll just mean that gays get married.

It’s time to ditch ‘civil partnership’ and call it gay marriage: it’s love, not a joint mortgage application

Indeed, taking a real-life example: Cheers and Frasier star Kelsey Grammer has now been married four times over four decades. His co-star David Hyde Pierce has been with his partner in a same-sex relationship for thirty years. Whilst this single comparison is not necessarily representative of society at large, it is not difficult to guess which household would have been more likely to provide the stable family environment which critics of same-sex marriage argue is so important to the well-being of children.

If Britain’s 45% divorce rate shows us anything, it is that straight people have proven themselves to be pretty crap at marriage. There’s no doubt that this, combined with the high-profile celebrity divorce, has done far more to discredit and destroy the institution of marriage than any change to the existing rules could ever do. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult to conclude that opposition to same-sex marriage is motivated by anything other than homophobia.

Carey argues that marriage between one man and one woman has stood the test of time, implying that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (In the same way that defenders of slavery justified their efforts to fight its abolition.) However, as society has moved to accept same-sex relationships following the horrific treatment of LGBT people throughout recent history, supporting the right of same-sex couples to wed would be nothing more than a natural progression of this.

Each marriage affects only those two individuals stood at the front of the venue, reciting their vows. If you remain opposed to same-sex marriage there appears to be a very simple solution: don’t have one. Nobody is going to force you, but that doesn’t give you the right to stand in the way of other people’s happiness.

The number of qualifications regarded as equivalent to GCSEs will be reduced from 3,000 to just 125, with only 70 of those counting towards the main GCSE performance measure of five A* to C grades at GCSE.

The announcement followed a review of the current system carried out by public policy expert Professor Alison Wolf, who argued that, whilst vocational qualifications should indeed be included amongst the most respected school subjects, too many have “no real value” and, in some cases, were simply being used by schools to improve their rankings.

Some of the courses used to highlight the alleged problem where a BTEC in fish husbandry, a level 2 certificate in nail technology and a City and Guilds level 2 diploma in horse care – all of which will now be no longer considered as equivalent to several GCSEs.

Although schools will still be able to offer these courses, they will no longer be able to use them boost their position in league tables. Full-course GCSEs, established iGCSEs, AS levels and music exams at grade six and over will however still be counted.

Education secretary, Michael Gove believes that the changes will take time but that they will eventually “transform the lives of young people” suggesting that the current system had been devalued by trying to make all qualifications the same and that many young people had taken courses that had led nowhere.

Professor Alison Wolf’s report said that whilst vocational qualifications should still be included, too many have little value with pupils better served by acquiring “broad skills”.

Will students suffer?

Some education experts have hit back at the plans however, saying that students may now be put off taking vocational qualifications as well as leaving students who are currently studying the vocational qualifications in question feeling disheartened.

It is also feared that parents may now be put off vocational courses and could pressure their children into studying subjects unsuited to their children’s ability when a vocational course may have been more suitable.

Speaking in opposition to the proposed changes Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, was quoted by the BBC as saying:

Changes of this scale, in the absence of any detailed review of the courses are reckless. They will disenfranchise thousands of young people, remove qualifications employers value, narrow the school curriculum even more and lead to disaffection among pupils.

It’s not only students who may suffer due to the proposed changes either. Many vocational qualifications are in fact developed in partnership with businesses to provide students with real-world experience in order to prepare them for work.

A lower take up could therefore also see employers missing out on ‘work-ready’ employees who have traditionally been able to ‘hit the ground running’ with the skills they have gained.

Time will tell as to whether the decisions taken by the government will help to prevent schools from offering some exams simply to boost their league table position or whether the move will simply mean that schools simply stop offering such qualifications – a move that surely achieves nothing.

Surely if the problem is that the vocational subjects aren’t relevant to the real work, then the answer is to work harder to make these subjects relevant as opposed to just throwing them on the scrapheap.

That’s just one school of thought anyway. What do you think? Should we expect all students to verse themselves in the classical subjects? Or do vocational subject still have a part to play in our education system?

This guest post was contributed by Michael Smith from iTutorMaths.

[Photo Credit: comedynose on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons licence.]