SHOCKER!!!!! Senior Tories to attend Tory fund raising dinner

The implication that all MPs are on the fiddle all the time is really becoming boring and damaging.

The Telegraph and Evening Standard ran with a story that implied a cash for access arrangement at the Conservative part conference with the papers talking about "business leaders" being offered the chance to pay £1,000 to meet senior ministers.

Upon reading the coverage it turns out that the story is actually about the Gala Dinner (I hate that term) that is held every year at the Conservative party conference where conference attendees get to have a very smart dinner, at a very smart hotel and donate to the party at the same time. It is hardly unreasonable to expect that there would be Conservative MPs on the tables and even cabinet ministers on the "top" tables and while there will be "business leaders" there will also be people from a range of people from other backgrounds, just like at party conference as a whole.

So when you look at the detail of the story it turns out that a range of people (some of whom are business people) are attending a fundraising dinner with a range of MPs (some of whom are ministers) at the Conservative party conference. Wow!!!!!!

Even Cuba sees the need for spending restraint

Even in Castro run, communist Cuba the government sees the need to reduce public spending. According to the BBC the Cuban government is cutting the cigarette subsidy to the over 55s as part of a wider move away from government subsidies.

Funny that Ed Balls, and his new best mate Ken Livingstone, cannot see what even the hard line communists in the Cuban government can see.

Should we just scrap all exams and be done with it?

Last week it was the A levels and this week the GCSEs, part two of the grade inflation debate.

Much of the debate centres around the question of whether the exams are harder or easier than they were in the past, I think that that narrow debate misses two, more significant, questions. Are the exams now "better" than they were in the past and do the results give an accurate assessment of a child's attainment?

I suspect that I will open up a can of worms with the idea of one set of exams being better than another set but it is worth exploring how exams work and what exactly they test. When was the last time that you were asked to do a piece of work completely alone, with no input from your work colleagues, no reference material and with a claustrophobic tight deadline? I'm guessing never. Yet this is often the situation we create when we ask children to sit exams.

If you regard yourself as a people person, a team player, a decisive person, clever, good at research and problem solving but not with a great memory, how well would you expect to get on in a traditional two hour written exam?

The point that I am making is that for some disciplines the high pressure, short duration environment of a traditional exam may be the most appropriate but for many it is artificial to the point of meaninglessness.

The next big question is about using exam as a way of assessing and grading children against each other. While the "all must have prizes" brigade hate the idea of academic stratification it would be impossible recruit to universities or to jobs without it. This is currently being made difficult by the trend for results to be increasingly clustered at the upper end of the grade spectrum. If we compare this year's results with previous years there are only three things which could explain this change. 1. Exams are getting easier, 2. Children are getting inherently brighter, 3. Teachers/teaching methods are getting better.

I don't know and it doesn't matter if all or any of the above are true because if I was an admissions tutor or employer I wouldn't be comparing this year's applicants with those from ten years ago, I'd be comparing them to the other applicants from this year.

When I took my O and A levels (that ages me) I was under the impression that grades were given on a bell curve meaning that an A grade put your result in the to 10%, a B grade in the next 15% etc. You were assessed against your peers rather than an arbitrary or historical base line. A bell curve result makes argument about easier or harder exams irrelevant.

So in answer to my own question, I don't believe that we should scrap exams. There needs to be an exam regime created which tests all the aptitudes and skills a young person may need to succeed including understanding of the subject, non written communications, team working, project working, reasoning and critical thinking not just a two hour memory test. Secondly I believe that grades should be scrapped and results should be given by which decile they fall into, if you see an application from someone whose result was in the top 10% of all results that year you know what you've got. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.

The A level debate time of year

A level exam results are out today and once again the percentage of students getting the top grade has increased, there will, as always, be a debate about whether there has been real improvement or just grade inflation.

This year there will almost certainly be fewer university places than there are young people who want to go to university, indeed there may be as many as 100,000 disappointed applicants. I believe that there has been serious grade inflation and the people who suffer most are the students themselves.

When the proportion of top graded students has almost trebled since 1980 it is harder for admissions tutors to asses students just on their academic aptitude. A levels no longer provide a scale of achievement, they have become a binary assessment, either you got straight As or you didn't.

When every applicant to a university course has straight As assessors have to look for other things, extra curricular activities, other areas of achievement etc. It is often the case that private schools give more focus and have more facilities to support these extra activities so it is little wonder that students with top grades from state schools are disadvantaged at selections.

Having devalued both skills training and non-academic achievement we have created not just an "all must have prizes" mindset but an "all must have the same prizes" mindset.

I'm sure that there will be the usual rush to condemn those who feel that grade inflation has happened, accusations that we're undermining the hard working young people who got the top grades. The truth is that by grading work as A grade when in the past it would have been a B grade you are undermining the students who genuinely worked hard enough (and were bright enough) to get a proper A grade.

Also let's remember that a B grade is still a bloody good grade and shouldn't been seen as some kind of failure, which is what is happening by the bloating of the A grade band.

P.S. I wonder if I'll get in trouble for saying bloody?

Causing a stir on a quiet news day?

It seems my use of the word "dick" has rather overshadowed the point I was trying to make in my last post. I suspect that after a number of decades in front line politics Simon Hughes has developed a thick enough skin to deal with my comments, but if I have genuinely caused offence, I apologise.

To be fair name calling is a bit childish.

However I stand by the broader point that I was making. Simon Hughes' recent pronouncements seem to undermine the coalition and by extension demonstrate a degree of disloyalty to Nick Clegg, his own party leader. By demanding a veto for Lib Dem MPs Hughes is implying that Clegg isn't doing a proper job of fighting the Lib Dem's corner with David Cameron.

Part of Hughes' role as Deputy Leader should be maintaining the link between the Lib Dem front bench and the wider party. I rather suspect that by saying what he has said he is achieving the opposite.

Oh do shut up Simon

We may be coalition partners but it doesn't stop me thinking that Simon Hughes is a dick.

Simon Hughes clearly feels that he is the "real" voice of the Lib Dems, he isn't. He may well reflect the views of a number of Lib Dem MPs who haven't reconciled themselves to the fact that coalition means compromise. But, as I have said before, a Lib Dem who isn't prepared to enter a coalition with anyone except Labour isn't a Lib Dem. They're Labour.

Hughes' latest bone-headed idea is for back-bench Lib Dem MPs to have a veto on the coalition government's policies. Fool.

There is a process by which backbench MPs can oppose the Government's policies, it's called a division. Backbenchers from the party of government have never had a veto on the government's business, why should the Lib Dem's be afforded that luxury?

It seems that most Lib Dems understand that there is a tricky balance to be struck, that there is important work to be done and, while this isn't the best position for each of the coalition parties, we need to dig in and work together. If Hughes feels it impossible to work with the Conservatives and his own front bench Lib Dem colleagues why not just bugger off to Labour and let the serious politicians get on with it?

Graduate tax, we shouldn't tax things we want to encourage

I'll lay my cards on the table, I am at heart a low tax Tory but I recognise that there does need to be taxation and public spending. My contention is that where possible taxation should be orientated towards things that we want to discourage and reduced in areas we want to encourage and stimulate.

We are in an increasingly competitive economic environment and we a commercial sector which can stand up to the fast growth economies of the world, we need entrepreneurs, business creators and highly skilled employees. I cannot see that any of these would be encouraged by a graduate tax.

Our university sector is struggling to make the books balance, the massive increase in the sector made the grant funded model I grew up with untenable. There is no doubt that the fear of significant debt will put some bright and talented young people off of going to university while children from wealthy families can have their places subsidised by the parents. I would hate think that we have created a system where university selection is at some level dictated by wealth rather than aptitude.

We push so many people towards university because we still have not created a valued and effective technical /vocational educational stream. Over the last few decades we have pushed more and more young people to a university education whether appropriate or not and then charged them for the privilege.

When I joined the army it was felt that "proper" officers went straight to Sandhurst and did the non-graduate "Long Course". This was a non-university vocational course yet still carried with it a huge amount of kudos and opened doors when you left the forces. You also got paid while you were there. Now it is almost unheard of for army officers to be non-graduates, somehow we have completely devalued non-university education no matter how excellent it was, that is a retrograde step.

I'm not even sure how a graduate tax would work. If the tax payments end once the cost of the course has been covered then it is the same as a student loan, if it continues throughout the graduate's working life then it is just another income tax. Indeed an income tax focused on the very pool of people we should be encouraging and supporting and reinforcing the impression that graduates are different and somehow better or more valuable than everyone else.

How do we square this particular circle? I recommend that we have a smaller and more focused and better funded university sector which produced graduates who are genuinely world class. Running in parallel to this we also need a vocational education system that is respected, taken seriously and supported by the industries that will benefit from its graduates.

Richard Barnbrook resigns the BNP whip

Which is a good trick considering that he is/was the only BNP member on the Assembly, there isn't / wasn't a group whip. To whom did he resign the whip?

I don't know the details but there seems to have been some internal BNP friction and having lost the bulk of their local government representation they have now lost all their representation at City Hall.

Am I the only one who is thinking "People's Front of Judea / Judean People's Front"?

My most read blog posts

I've been having a play around with Google analytics and was having a look at my most read blog posts, there is an interesting mix.

1. I would never apply for a constituency that had an all ethnic shortlist
2. James Cleverly AM
3. And what is your concern about Boris?
4. Doreen Lawrence's remarks are unfair and unjustified
5. Could Brown have handled this any worse?
6. Boris' near death experience
7. Does prison work?
8. What British soldiers in Iraq do
9. New Deal, well intentioned failure
10. Tube union has Livingstone by the balls

The top two are very introspective, three are about Boris, one about Brown and a couple about national politics and one each about Livingstone and the Army.

Some of the comments streams are very interesting, feel free to add to them if you want to but I have moderation on older posts so your comments won't appear immediately.

Fat cat Bob Crow

I know plenty of people on the left of politics who aren't hypocrites, but for some reason they don't seem to get on as quickly or rise as high as those that are. Bob Crow has got on pretty quickly and risen pretty high!

Bob Crow hasn't been backwards in attacking "fat cat" pay rises in the past yet has taken a 12% pay rise himself, £133,000 a year to bring try to bring London to its' knees. Nice work if you can get it.

6,500 pages of Met guidelines

Over the last few weeks I have been campaigning to get the volume of police guidelines cut.

The list of standard operating procedures, guidelines and "best practice" notes runs to almost 6,500 pages and has been described by Sir Paul Stephenson, Met Commissioner, as "War and Peace".

The gargantuan tome covers things like how to use handcuffs, how to dismount a bicycle safely, says officer should be careful when smashing a window to gain entry to a house and advises that when deal with mob violence at cricket matches “missile throwing could certainly constitute threatening behaviour”. While I have no doubt that some of the notes are genuinely useful many are insultingly obvious.

There is however a serious point to this campaign. I have been told by many police officers that these guidelines have become so restrictive that they stifle initiative and creates an "if the book doesn't cover it, I won't do it" mentality. This negatively effects the ability of police officers to be flexible and use the judgement.

The second problem is the cost of creating, updating, disseminating and checking compliance with this mountain of paper. When looking for officers who could and should be spending more time on front line duties I can think of a good place to start looking.

At the last MPA meeting Sir Paul agreed that the guidance had gone too far and I pledged to support any attempts to cut them. Rather than attempting to cover every possible eventuality, the police should operate within the law and have a set of guiding principles within which they use their judgment. Recruit the right people, train them well and then let them to get on with the job.