April 13, 2006
Leisure Connection and Lambeth
I used to swim at Clapham Leisure Centre, where I had a membership for about four years. Recently the pool closed, first for a week, and then for about two months, "for repairs".
On reopening I was irritated to see that far from refunding me on my standing order, the company concerned Leisure Connection, offered me a free swim for a friend. I cancelled my membership and joined Courtney's who run pools across Chelsea and Westminster.
This article goes a little way to explaining why the pool at Clapham has become quite so dilapidated and run down.
Posted by Mark at 5:08 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2006
London schools and the illiterate
A group of parents in Lambeth have clubbed together to stand for election on May 4th. They have had the sense to blog about it. Good luck to them. We live over the boundary in Southwark, but the calamitous state of schools in central London affects us all equally.
The rot is deep indeed. I have previously blogged about the amazing growth in Office for Standards in Education, which has accompanied - step for step - a vigorous decline in standards. (One example can stand for many: calculus is no longer a compulsory part of the A-level maths curriculum.) The standard of the inspections done by these people can be seen from this report, done by Laura Henry, on the Bishop's House Early Years centre in Kennington Park Place, London.
Here are a couple of extracts:
"What has improved since the last inspection?
At the last inspection, the provider agreed to:
make sure that any persons who has not been vetted [sic] is not left alone with children;"
"COMMUNICATION, LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
Judgement: Very Good
Children make very good progress in communication, language and literacy. They
communicate well and are supported by a range of easily accessible materials that
enable them to communicate verbally and in purposeful writing and mark making."
If the inspector can't write correct, grammatical English, in an official report, what hope is there for the children? And what on earth is meant by "purposeful writing". The report is illiterate drivel, with long sections on making sure that children are given positive images of gender and disability, and nothing concrete on actually teaching them useful skills or knowledge.
How can an education system that costs so much deliver such poor results? Read and learn.
Posted by Mark at 8:20 AM | Comments (0)
April 5, 2006
Eriksson and Mazher Mahmood (pictured)
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about the News of the World's Mazher Mahmood. I didn't publish it. Despite the FA agreeing that Eriksson had permission to talk to other employers and had therefore not broken his contract by his discussions with Mahmood, the England manager was quickly forced to resign. The publication of Mazher Mahmood's photo and the legal kerfufflte about it makes me think I should publish both the photo and the original blog post, written on 21st January.
Mazher Mahmood, aka Pervez Khan, aka Fake Sheikh
The original post:
Why are the News of the World tormenting Sven Goran Eriksson? Here is the man who has the greatest opportunity in a generation of leading England to the World Cup, something which the News of the World would claim to want. He has a squad of players - Lampard, Beckham, Rooney, Ferdinand - who are capable of living with the best in the world. The world cup - importantly - is in Europe and so the climate will be friendlier than last time in Japan and Korea.
Perhaps the News of World's journalist Mazher Mahmood is an Al Quaeda operative, commanded by Bin Laden to infiltrate his way into the most influential echelons of British life (working for a popular newspaper) and then to wreak the maximum possible disruptions on English life and values by attacking the few decent and honourable public figures we possess.
And Eriksson is a decent and honourable man. He has not said in private very much that he would not say in public. He was more direct about Rooney, Ferdinand and Owen than he would have been. All the negative things he said were reported, all the positive ones omitted. He asked for confidentiality from his interlocutors and they ignored this. He has said he would consider another job - after the world cup. It is widely assumed that if he fails to win that trophy, the FA would wish to replace him anyway.
Eriksson is not married to Nancy dell'Oglio and so the affairs that the newspapers have triumphantly revealed are not adulterous. Eriksson is a man trying to do his job. I note that the newspapers are now pretending that it is Eriksson's recourse to law (suing the News of the World for breach of confidence) which "hangs over" the world cup, rather than the News of the World's trivial and traitorous provocation.
In the same week a football manager - Clive Holloway - reported to the FA's "compliance unit" that he had been offered financial inducements during transfer proceedings. The FA's brave officials declined to take any action on this, saying that there was no written evidence. They requested that anyone with such evidence should come forward. Perhaps the News of the World would like to investigate this. It is, after all, an illegal activity which is a public scandal. But no - that would be too public spirited for them. Instead they try to sow dissension amongst the national manager and his most talented players.
In Homer there is a character called Sinon - a cheat, a tell-tale, a snitch. When I was nine I thought that characters like Sinon were too hideous to be true. They must be, I thought, a fictional conceit. They are not. In Britain the Sinons run things. Mazher Mahmood's the walking proof.
Posted by Mark at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack