Our mad school system

C Powell

I agree that there are 2 stories here but they relate to the same theme, namely, that where the State sees itself as in charge of everything and everyone then the inevitable results are rationing (i.e. not enough good schools and absurd processes to limit demand for them), people taking whatever steps they can to avoid the consequences of such rationing (e.g. lying about addresses because they are desperate to give their children a good education) and the state spying on its citizens because it does not trust, indeed cannot trust them to behave as it wants them to, as a result of its own idiotic policies. The reason the comments (including mine) have focused on the spying is because it exemplifies all our fears about Labour's surveillance state and this is one of the first examples which we ordinary people can all relate to. How would you feel if your wife and child were being spied on as they went about their daily business? It's repellent and that it is being carried out by public servants, who fail to provide us with the quality services we are entitled to expect given the amount of tax we pay and whose wages and pensions are being paid for by us, only adds insult to injury. Don't criticise the commentators, for heaven's sake, criticise the Government which has brought this situation about.

jameshigham

It's rather the sheer lunacy of a school system in which catchment areas and bureaucratic diktat matter and which entails such checks.

Precisely

Christopher

The comment you quote was mine. The point I was making, perhaps a little too succinctly, was that the local authority was not using powers the Govt intended to be used for catching terrorists or whatever, it was using powers it had to snoop on citizens anyway. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (note the name), which the Telegraph referred to, was intended to stop the frivolous or oppressive use of those powers. Clearly it isn't working, which should be a cause for concern in itself.

However, I do appreciate this has no particular relevance to the stupidity of our education system.

Jimmy Mac

Again the point is made that no regime is ever so odious that it fails because it is unable to recruit the functionaries to carry out its diktats.

Lee Jakeman

Yes - but you're advocating CHOICE - which is against every socialist's religion ....