Educated Guess

Remember Michael Gove’s ‘experts’? The economic experts on all shores of the political quagmire that typifies this general election run-up have been crunching the numbers. Now, if there was any reliable way to slice up the financial cake in such a way that everybody got what they considered a fair deal surely these experts would generally agree. Not completely, obviously; some would favour a bit of top-down redistribution, others might go for a more laissez-faire, free market. But, on balance, if there was a way to conjure up the necessary funding to buy your votes you would think they would all stumble across much the same wheezes.

But no. Not only do these experts not agree, they outright refute each other’s projections. But it’s worse than that; if the competence of the experts is in doubt, what about the competence of the general public to understand the policies proposed? I’m guessing that if you go to work, pay taxes and spend all that is left to enable you to continue going to work you will be reasonably well-equipped to see beyond the Labour promises to pull financial rabbits from hats. On the other hand, if you have absorbed the lessons of comprehensive schooling you will believe that everybody can be rich by simply printing money.

State education is intended to produce reliable citizens, who can contribute something to society, not compliant voters, eager to cast their ballot in favour of the party promising free stuff. Those doing the promising seem to have so little regard for the recipients of the message that they are appearing in the media, making gaffe after gaffe and fluffing their prepared lines in the face of the mildest scrutiny. Their contempt it showing and they can’t even see it. If only they’d had a better education...

Enter more free stuff: Labour will renationalise railways, the Royal Mail and the energy industry. Free for all? Free-for-all, more like. All this, they reckon, will be paid for by increasing corporation tax, reversing inheritance tax cuts and, er, I’m guessing they will just borrow the other £trillion-per-annum. They will want to nationalise the already nationalised education system. They want to meddle even more directly in the manipulation of young minds, paying for this by taxing private education – that is a LOT of tax. I wonder what they have in mind for the history books?

Can you see how they did it?

Of course class sizes should de under 30. Ideally, they should be under 20. But they should also be taught by teachers with a genuine vocation and ability to get the best out of them, not driven by a need to churn out ‘cookie-cutter’ social justice warriors. Qualifications do not ensure competence; this is true in teaching as much as it is in any other arena – this brief Spectator article on MBAs is enlightening and rings oh so true. But as long as the educationalists are riddled with left-wing ideology, actually educating children will take a back seat to programming them and the costs of doing so will forever spiral, like the NHS, out of reach. Corbyn’s Labour manifesto wasn’t leaked – it  just escaped from the loony bin.