“…this is the legacy of the last administration, something we are working hard to reverse”.. Oh, no, wait, that the response to bad economic news, isn’t it?

Of course, if you take those on zero hours, waiting for the phone to ring out of the unemployment figures then they get lower. If you include the hundreds of thousands of near-slave immigrant workers that allow Tesco to pay b*gger all for agricultural produce into the employed figures then they go up.

Hurrah, pip pip and trebles all round!

I’ll show my hand. I work for a private company, but one which sells its products exclusively to the UK public sector.

On a day-to-day basis, what is preventing the public sector departments that I deal with from being as effective as they could be is the overwhelming number of ‘consultants’, internal and (increasingly) external, all with their own lucrative spanners in the works. There are business consultants, delivery consultants, even ‘consultancy management’ consultants. Everyone is a bleedin consultant, very few in any given building are actually doing anything in the way of the public service we all pay for, and those that do are getting laid off on a daily basis on the recommendation of these highly paid outsourced but embedded staff, to ‘save on costs’.

So no, it’s not people in sandals. They retired long ago. It’s the tw*ts who think they are on ‘The Apprentice’. In my darker moments I might call them ‘Thatcher’s Children’.

This is what I see every day at work, so forgive me if I am vociferous when I say you have the wrong target, JG.

One day I will write down what I know about Birmingham City Council and DC’s (and Bliar’s) outsourcing contractor of choice, Capita. That will, of course, be the day I retire (I will be given no option).

It’s because I recognise that none of us is necessarily instinctively perfect that I did that.

Until I can see how PISA arrived at all this information I’ll not comment on whether the OECD are wasting their time with it.

Which conclusion? If it’s the one about the nature of the current crop of successful politicians it is only an opinion – I have met David Cameron, and he had exactly the attitude I have seen a hundred times among the output of public schools (not an inevitable thing, but common among those desiring a career in politics). He is also very far from the brain of Britain 😉

I’d be interested in how you show my conclusion, or rather my opinion, to have no merit whatsoever. Not just false, but without merit? Is that applying Telegraph logic? “Makes statement. Person making it not right wing. Therefore: Statement has no merit whatsoever (no need to demonstrate falsehood)”.

Did you ever do formal logic at your good school?

To qualify the above – There is a variation on Maslow’ pyramid to do with child development between 1 and 5 that is still used to describe some aspects of parent-child interaction, and where it might go wrong. I know this because I have taken a personal interest in the development of my own children. For my kids I have even taken the time to go on a course that explains some of the theory and practice of early years education, and thus, by professional example, gives some help in avoiding the less obvious pitfalls at home. This is a course with genuine value, one that attempts to explain just what it is that teachers do when we entrust our kids to them and at the same time address the ‘It’s the parents, isn’t it?’ accusation. And it’s one that the Conservatives are trying to shut down.

Making every effort to get it right is not the same as throwing money at their education, while thinking that makes you a good parent. What can happen when you do is you produce a vacuous fool who looks and sounds plausible when delivering a soundbite, can win a debating society argument, and has the mental acuity of a teaspoon. They couldn’t run a drinking session in a brewery, but go a long way in British politics. It is these people being in charge that has got us where we are.

How about the voluminous skirts, dangling earings, beards and sandals? Is your use of 1980’s sitcom stereotypes in 2016 also deliberate self-mockery?

Maybe I shouldn’t take the p*ss too much – perhaps you have been in solitary confinement for a few decades, and are still catching up?

To help you – there has been a LOT of interference in education over the intervening years. NONE of it has anything to do with Maslow (who apparently died in 1970). Or skirt volume.

No, John. White Board. A board that is white. In colour. A white board. Not in the ‘language of the Left’, just in the language of the English.

http://www.viking-direct.co.uk/mb/browse.do?N=1288987

When exactly did you last work in education?

I try not to copy when I can work it out for myself. Blame that on my ‘educationalists’ (we called then teachers).

I also prefer primary sources to secondary ones. Blame that on my tertiary education.

As for whiteboards, what does it tell you, apart from it being the 21st Century and wipe-clean boards and marker pens being more practical than chalk? Or do you detect a left-wing conspiracy?

Whiteboards, John. That and touchscreens. Got to admit I didn’t read it, but I will if you point me at the one you mean. Do you mean this one (the most recent I could find a reference to)? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32608772

“I deliberately kept it neutral”..

“..suspicions held by the public and others, in connection with the interference by left wing educationalists in various syllabi”

Very neutral. Or did you stop unquestioningly parroting the Telegraph between those quotes?