Bumpy ride ahead for Gove

Education minister Michael Gove today announced a radical overhaul of the school system in England and Wales.
In a move designed to move teaching and learning back towards the basic principles upheld in the past, he has proposed the abolition of all current baseline testing for 5 and 11 year olds and the replacement of such tests with results based on phrenology.
The move, says Gove, has a firm basis in scientific research. “It will give a clear indication at an early age of what kinds of things learners in schools are likely to achieve. Naturally, we will be on the look out for students with eyes set too closely together or pronounced supraorbital ridges.”
Pupils whose skulls do indeed reveal criminal tendencies will go to ‘special’ schools. These schools will be compulsory and residential. ‘Inmates’ will not be expected to achieve gainful employment upon release at 18, but will be conditioned to feel gratification when helping others, thus helping the unemployed to form a willing cohort of the Big Society, rather than staying at home all day smoking skunk, watching Jeremy Kyle and overusing the word ‘isit’.
Mr Gove, when confronted by an angry parent who accused him of making an uninformed, swingeing decision on the basis of a discredited pseudoscience, was heard by onlookers to reply that it still had the word ‘science’ in the name and was therefore at least worth a go.
Teaching unions have opposed the move. The NASUWT issued a statement stating that teachers would not be willing to sign up to a system based on “reading the bumps on a child’s head”, although they conceded that it might make as much sense as policies such as the Free Schools programme or the currently incessant pressure designed to drive schools towards becoming academies.

Poem for Long Eaton Library

Wrote this a couple of years ago while booked for a morning working in the library writing poems to order. Seeing as it’s National Save Our Libraries day today…

Poem for Long Eaton Library

We read, not to contradict and refute
But to weigh and consider, as the sun,
Picking out words in lead, walks in beauty
across new pages. The day has begun
for the three muses, just in from shopping,
looking for something to take home. Fiction.
The air rings with the sound of their talking
As they idly finger the whole section.

This is what makes us who we are. The light
Breaking through the dark glass, celebrating
Municipality. Keeping it bright.
The muses stand by the counter, waiting.
Reading maketh a full man. One muse says,
“Is that John Grisham? I’ve read all of his.”

quandary

So, the quandary is like this. We (the band) got asked to play a gig in London three months ago by a promoter who was incredibly keen and promised to cover expenses. It was our first gig. We went and it was underwhelming – low turnout, poor publicity. He said he’d pay us the expenses within the next few days (alarm bells). He still hasn’t paid us. I’ve sent him several MySpace emails and he’s finally replied, saying that each night has to cover itself, that he doesn’t have the money (even though he’s promoting other gigs) and that we wanted too much anyway (£60 for four of us to London and back). It’s partly about the principle of somebody ripping us off, but it’s also about the money. What’s the best strategy? Start posting comments in the cyberworld? Appeal to his better nature? Compromise on the amount? Any suggestions welcome. I’m off to spit somewhere.