23/04/2017

LET'S ALL GO ON HOLIDAY


So, let’s get this right.
A Labour government would seek to create four new UK-wide bank holidays, according to the Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Those holidays would be on each nation's patron saint day - St David's Day on 1 March, St Patrick's Day on 17 March, St George's Day on 23 April and St Andrew's Day on 30 November.

According to the statement he made this morning on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Mr Corbyn believes the move would "celebrate the national cultures of our proud nations".

If that policy had been in place this year (2017) that would mean that St David’s Day (1st March) would have been a Wednesday, St Patrick’s Day (17th March) would have been a Friday, St Georges Day, (23rd April) would be today, Sunday and St Andrew’s Day (30th November) would fall on a Thursday!

Not very convenient for shops and businesses to close down and stop production mid-week. So invariably the days would be shunted around to different dates and tagged on to the nearest weekend! – Making a mockery of “celebrating the national cultures of our proud nations”, as Jeremy puts it!

Now, as a man who never lets an opportunity go by to criticize the current educational policies of opportunities for all, one would assume that the Labour leader would be emphasising the importance of regular education and the effects of a child ‘missing school’ may have on their future successes.

According to the Department for Education, they are adamant that: "It is irresponsible to take a child out of school without good reason. Every extra day of school missed can affect a pupil's chance of gaining good GCSEs, which has a lasting effect on their life chances. Following our reforms there are now 200,000 fewer pupils regularly missing school compared with five years ago."

In fact, as it stands, parents who defy the law and take their children off on holiday or allow day’s off can, and frequently are, fined by their local authorities.

Department for Education figures show councils dished out 157,879 fixed penalty notices in 2015/16, and 151,125 the year before for unauthorized term-time absences (so not just holidays).

But now, with an election on the near horizon, Jeremy is desperately looking to the popular vote by promising them anything!

Suddenly, children’s education is flexible and taking another 4 days off their schooling really takes second place to getting his feet through the door of No10!

If he really wanted to put the education of our children back on the right track he should start by creating policies that prevent the ability to fire useless teachers and the inability to exclude seriously disruptive students. We all know of schools where teaching is first and foremost an exercise in crowd control.

Freedom of choice for the schools and the especially the parents is what is needed.

So it begins, weeks of concocting half-baked ideas and yielding, for the sake of popularity, to the selfish emotions, passions, and greed of sectional groups, that, together with Labour’s crackpot Marxist economics would bankrupt the economy.

Chris Leslie, the former Labour shadow chancellor, said of John McDonnell’s economic policy: “It’s the magic money tree that will make all our dreams come true. You’d have to double income tax, double National Insurance, double council tax and you’d have to double VAT as well.”

And that comes from someone in his own party!

God help us if this chap ever the key’s to Downing Street.