Balls in the dock?

Silent Hunter

Poor guy - as if being married to Yvette Cooper wasn't enough of a punishment. LOL

True Bred Pomponian

The intention to make all 16-18 year olds stay at school was always ill-conceived. This only reinforces it.

Nicholas

If ever one single entity represented the noisy empty vessel that is New Labour that entity is Balls. Balls the useless, incompetent, gobby, disingenuous, conniving sidekick of the disastrous student-politician Brown. The Igor to his Frankenstein, crabbing his furtive way, pop-eyed and blinking, around the socialist laboratory of Broken Britain as his deranged master creates more ghastly monsters to unleash on us.

They are beyond parody and it is simply time for them to go.

Mike, Brighton

The Spin:
"Britain can build on the investment of the last 10 years so that as we come through the world downturn we are best prepared for the future" .. or
"Real help now. Real hope for the future. Both are essential. Alone one will not be enough. Failure to do either, as some propose, would mean both a deeper downturn, and a weaker economy in the future."

The reality:
Cutting the budgets for Schools and colleges as young people flock in because there are no jobs.

Steve.W

Safe pair of hands? So was the bloke below!

Victor, NW Kent

Where can one buy tickets to kick Ed Balls?

Liz Brown

as always sowhat ballsupcooper will blame someone else - he has learned well from his subrpime mentor

Paul Round

Nothing "poor" about Balls and Cooper;they have had their snouts in the trough par excellence.Balls is yet another Public school educated champagne socialist bully who majors in incompetence, avoidance of responsibility, greed and delusions of adequacy

David Ossitt

Nicholas

I think we can take it that your not a big fan!

I would like to read your opinion of his mean lipped harpy?

Sir Graphus

After the many exam marking balls-up, Balls stated brazenly that he was responsible for policy, not implementation.

It was an outrageous statement of a man with a total misunderstanding of his own job description. However, no-one, either media or his boss, pulled him up about this, and he completely got away with it.

Fergus Pickering

Paul Round, what has public school education got to do with it? MacBroon was educated by the state (and so was I, come to that). Balls is how old? Surely his schooling is now irrelevant?

Don

Whenever see this idiot the word scrofulous springs to mind. Don't know why.

john miller

Yikes! Nicholas, I can recommend the screen cleaner from Boots to get rid of all that mess. That is if you can unclench your fists now...

Susan Hill

On aside note. Does anyone know what the proportions of the various ethnic groups in British secondary schools are ? I mean, the old pie chart... how big a slice are of white British, afro caribbean, asian-muslim, chinese, etc etc ? Clearly we need a national picture because there is such a wide difference between regions of the country. I ask because of this.
Has anyone watched a BBC 2 programme now showing called The Speaker ? It is a round by round competition to find the best public speaker among secondary school pupils. Judges include Jo Brand (who makes endless unpleasant remarks about children who are privately educated.) The standard has been quite high - students have to speak for only one minute on their chosen subject and there is an audience, presumably of parents and families, teachers etc. The rounds are in various large cities. The audience is overwhelmingly black and Asian - overwhelmingly. Hard to find a white - or indeed an oriental - face. The speakers are white British in a proportion of about 1 in 6. Those shortlisted and put through to the next round have been mainly black/asian. Now, before I get put in the stocks, my agenda is simply on the issue of fairness versus the old BBC bias. Hence, the need to know the proportions of ethnic backgrounds among school children. If the audience and the chosen speakers and those going through are representative of our secondary schools OVERALL, then that`s fine..
If black and asian children are better public speakers on any given occasion, that`s fine too.
If there political correctness, positive discrimination and bias are at work, that is not fine.

Tiberius

Vice, not dock - surely?

Wily Trout

I like the comment from the LSC today that the problem was due to an 'unforeseen rise in the number of pupils attending 6th form' when the DCSF had been ordering schools to recruit and signalling the rise of the compulsory leaving age for over a year. Didn't they foresee that the number of kids attending 6th form would increase, then? What no-one is mentioning is that 6th form funding for schools is retrospective. So when the LSC cuts the number of sixth-formers it is funding this March, that actually refers to sixth-formers who attended school in the 2007-8 academic year. And schools have already spent the money educating the kids. When our bursar rang to ask why this had happened, the local LSC just said 'it had to balance its books'. It has done so by cutting funding for 10 pupils from each 6th form across the country, as far as I can see: retrospectively. Doesn't give much cause for faith in funding for the raised leaving age. What a mess.

davidc

so now we no longer even have 'equality of access to mediocre education'

Fraser Nelson

Fergus, much as I agree with you it's important to remember that Brown had a highly selective state education picked out as a handful of bright kids - he would have more attention lavished on him in school than Cameron or Balls.

cityboozer

Balls, Harman, Purnell, etc all know that their chances in a leadership election would be killed stone dead by a resignation within 18 months of the poll (except perhaps if they were to resign for some reason of conscience and looking at the list above that seems utterly implausible).

That strengthens Brown's position but effectively prevents any of them from being held accountable, no matter how egregious their errors.

Ivy Eileen

Wowee ! ........... Nicholas, great stuff. But he speaks very highly of you.

Chris lancashire

Nicholas, Congratulations. You have precisely put into words my feelings on this repulsive character.

Nicholas

Ivy Eileen. And so he should.

Colin.

Re Susan Hill,
The information you require is not in the national interest.
This would be the answer from this government.
A new USA film of rock and roll 1960's states from a black teacher:
"If another white person joins us we will have to declare this area a suburb"
Today it was stated 500,000 Pakistani's in Britain visit Pakistan each year - you could not make it up.