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The Corporation

This film – on Youtube in an annoying 23 separate parts and interspersed with various pleas to donate some money – opens with reference to a very strange US Supreme Court ruling in ye olde times, in which a corporation was deemed to be  a person, and therefore was afforded the same rights as real citizens of the USA. The film reminds us that – in spite of the picture we are sometimes painted by people like Tea partiers – corporations were heavily regulated by states in days gone by. Their charters were given for certain periods of time and to perform certain functions deemed to be for the good of the public. Once these functions were met, the charter would be revoked and the corporation would disband.

However, corporate lawyers argued that such actions infringed upon the rights of corporations – which now considered people – had fundamental constitutional rights.

Throughout the film, our hopes of a capitalist economy being beneficial and benevolent are challenged, providing striking evidence of the selfish, damaging, self-interest of corporations in the USA. Contributions from such people as Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Milton Friedman, as well as numerous former top brass in business, add weight and personal views to the content of the film. It also provides further evidence for my own ongoing self-indulgent little research project for regarding the evils of the USA and why it can be blamed for just about everything, by providing further examples of the USA propping up foreign dictators provided they were good for the American economy.

Even when cutting through the obvious bias and the intention of the film to make us dislike corporations, it’s clear that the content of the film cannot be completely dismissed by even the most pro-marketeers. It provides strong evidence and arguments to show the damaging impact that unrestrained capitalism can have, highlighting that the pursuit of ever-increasing profits is not always compatible with the moral values most of us would take for granted. Most shocking is that fact that, for the first time, corporations have been allowed to patent life, paving the way for a truly corporate-dominated world in which everything, from water to creatures created or discovered  in a lab, are owned and used for profit.

Watch The Corporation >

Sicko

I’ve been a little bit of an anti NHS tirade recently. Partly because I’m just fed up of waiting for so long for treatment. I stopped counting how many months I have been waiting for treatment, and how many phone calls I had to make to get some progress, and how many conflicting things I had been told. I convinced myself that if we had a private system of healthcare, things would be better. The private system would need my custom; if they didn’t keep me content, I could take my custom elsewhere.

Sicko makes it clear that this isn’t always the case. It is in the interest of health insurance companies to avoid covering treatment on technicalities, because it won’t cost them money. Whilst I suspect that the US model works for many people, those for whom it does not work provide striking evidence of how depending upon money American healthcare can be.

Our NHS has plenty of problems, but its key strength is guaranteed care without the worry of payment or whether insurance covers the treatment or medicine. The UK needs to be looking to France and Italy, though. These countries have some of the best healthcare in the world – we need to see what they’re doing right and adopt the strengths of their systems.

And yes, being the soppy fop that I am, parts of the story of the 9/11 heroes brought tears to my eyes.

As I know you’re incredibly interested in updates on my medical progress, I had a phone call shortly before I published this article and am finally going to start treatment in January. The nice chap on the phone made up for all my waiting.

Watch Sicko >

Capitalism: A Love Story

Even in my most pro-free market periods, I’ve always found it odd that, in the most rich, developed, and sophisticated countries in the world, we have people living on the streets,  people in abject poverty, and most of the population earning tiny amounts of money in comparison to their employers. Despite there being real-terms consistent growth in the economy almost every year (recessions being the obvious exception), more and more wealth has become concentrated in the hands of the few, leading even the Financial Times to question a the absurd pay gaps between workers and their employers.

Michael Moore presents this anti-capitalist film, which – as you would expect – presents a negative view of the economic system. Evidence Moore provides for the damaging effect of capitalism including people being thrown out of their houses for being unable to make their payments. Conversely, it also provides some examples of the status quo being challenged with success, including a bread factory which all of its employees are paid on the amount of time they work, not their status in the company. This led to assembly-line workers being paid an average of $65,000, much higher than the usual payment for such work.

Polemic Michael Moore has helped me to understand more those out protesting. There is understandable sense of everyone suffering as result of what was predominantly the actions of banks and ineffectual regulation by Government, predominantly in the USA. I can understand the sense of injustice of a minority having so much wealth – and in the USA specifically – power. I’m not waving a red flag; I don’t see socialism as being an appealing system, but there seems to be a strong case for much greater control of the free markets and more social assistance for the workers who are so often overlooked and taken for granted.

Watch Capitalism: A Love Story >

The Oil Factor

The USA has a strong tradition of opposing evil dictators. It also has a strong history of supporting evil dicators. It all depends upon whether they’re pro-American or anti-American, pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist. If a dictator is good for the USA’s economy, they can continue to exist without opposition, they may even be propped up with support from the superpower, either overtly or covertly – whatever suits the US of A.

Whilst the US likes to present itself as a benevolent hawk in foreign policy, a more truthful metaphor would be a vulture. Selfish, powerful, dangerous. For years, the USA propped up and became powerful in Cuba whilst the dictatorial regime of Batista was in control. When he was replaced by Castro – a dictator no more evil than the previous (I would argue in many ways a more tolerable dictator to live under than his predecessor) – suddenly the USA decided it cared about human rights and freedom, and that this evil dictator needed to be removed. What the USA really cared about was its ability to trade with and power over Cuba. It didn’t care about the oppression of the people – it cared about its economy and its elite. It did not care about Castro’s treatment of the Cuban people, but the fact that him being in charge would be bad for the American economy and American influence, as well as making it look weak because it had permitted a country on its doorstep to do something other than fall at the feet of the United States and clean its boots.

Every US intervention in the affairs of other states in history is self-serving, at least to some extent. They locked Europe into being US allies for the benefit of control and continuing trade. In Chile, they poured money in to attempt to prevent Allende winning a democratic election, and the CIA tried to convince military chiefs to launch a coup. The US then had no qualms with supporting Pinochet, who seized power through a coup. He was anti-communist and good for American trade – that was all that mattered.

So what made us believe that US intervention in Iraq had noble intentions? This film puts forward the view that, aside from the usual practice of wanting a pro-American leader who is good for trade, the USA also had its eye on valuable oil resources in Iraq. One of my favourite little bits is the below quote from Lt Col. Karen Kwiatkowski:

“We’re not too worried about dictators as long as they’re on our side and do what we tell them. Democracy is not the reason we went in there [Iraq]. The main reason is geo-strategic regional dominance, which is the one that relates to energy supplies. Another reason for this invasion, occupation, at the time that we did it, had to do with the pressure to lift sanctions. There was huge pressure building to lift sanctions on Iraq. Had sanctions been lifted or partially lifted, Iraq could have been filled with European, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, all kinds of folks – no Americans or British folk – but we and the UK had been bombing Iraq for 12 years. Had sanctions been lifted with Saddham Hussein still in charge, we would have gotten no contracts and no opportunities to invest in Iraq.”

The view that oil played a role is backed up by Iraq having the second-largest amount of oil reserves in the world, and the trends of US oil production and importation:

Production reached its peak in the early 70s, and has since collapsed to 1950s levels. Meanwhile, demand is continuing to grow, meaning greater dependence upon countries in the middle east.

I think all American intervention comes back to a simple selfish pursuit of trade, or at very least it plays a key role in decisions to take action. The Iraq invasion seems to have been no exception, and the Oil Factor is just one interpretation of how the USA managed to put its own self interest into practice through its foreign policy.

Watch the Oil Factor >

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And after all that America-centric waffle, here’s something a little lighter and far more British:

Before you dismiss the article as Daily Mail exaggeration, it’s also on the First Post, mentioned on the Telegraph website, and a few local newspaper websites. Here is the letter the MP sent to his constituent in reply to their email:

Right, I’ll first declare that I am a former republican; I previously favoured the abolition of the monarchy and its replacement with an elected head of state. I did, however, change my mind. I believe the monarchy should remain in place as a traditional institution which represents British history and culture, and provides some stability in even the most tumultuous of times. However, I do not believe it is right that taxpayers have to fund the monarchy, since they are unelected and possess considerable personal wealth tied up in land and other assets.

There are – to some extent – humorous overtones overtones to his response, but that does not excuse the rude and simplistic dismissal of the legitimate concerns which the constituent raised.

Firstly, I’ll point out an odd contradiction: Russell highlights his belief that the current student protests have a damaging effect on the economy, yet then goes on to suggest that it’s great that the nation has an extra day off work, without seeming to note the irony in these statements. If he’s going down the route of condemning things which he feels are damaging to the economy, he ought also to condemn the bank holiday as unproductive. (I was going to say that Will Self thinks the impact on the economy will be £6bn, but then I remembered that no-one should bother listening to that oaf.)

Conversely, he’s at least consistent with his statist views. He was one of the rebels who voted against the new tuition fees plans (despite complaining in the above letter about the cost of the damage from the violent protesters), and by doing so made it clear that he supports the concept of expecting taxpayers to fund students who chose to go to Uni, in the same way he expects taxpayers to fund the royal wedding, feeling that getting a day off work should be enough to distract us from the cost.

Russell told the Daily Mail “I have helped paid-up Labour and Tory constituents but when I read this email questioning the cost of security and the royal wedding, I thought ‘No mate’. I knew this clown came from the republican, socialist wing of the Labour Party, so I let him have it with both barrels.”

Firstly, I’d suggest that an MP responding to someone using “both barrels”, ought to be an eloquent, polite response which attacks their argument and provides a strong counter-argument. I previously wrote to my MP Mark Prisk asking him to support an Early Day Motion which would ensure greater transparency in the monarchy. Whilst he didn’t commit to supporting the EDM, he gave me an eloquent response which explained why he wasn’t willing to do this, and gave me some food for thought. All of his response was polite and respectful. Russell, on the other hand, seems to have launched into cheap, petty, personal attacks. I haven’t seen the email from the constituent, but even if it was obnoxious and rude, I still feel it is the job of an MP to explain reasonably why they disagree with the views of their constituent, not to tell them to “get a life” and dismiss them as “a spoilsport”. This is the kind of aloof, arrogant correspondence which leads people to feel that all politicians are self-serving prats. Even if the constituent is a Labour party member, and/or a republican or socialist, it does not mean their views should be dismissed and ignored by the MP and responded to with insults.

The reasoning that he must be a Labour member from the socialist wing of the party because he doesn’t want to help fund the wedding (which I understand the Middleton family are paying only part of)  is completely false and simplistic. Especially in a time when VAT is rising; cut-backs are being made in funding for most Government departments; and local councils are also making cuts, I think it it perfectly reasonable for people all across the political spectrum to feel it’s a tad hypocritical for a lavish wedding, funded mostly by taxpayers, to be taking place. Russell is also wrong if he think it is only socialists who oppose this. Many libertarians (that’s proper libertarians, not modern Liberal Democrats) oppose the monarchy because – in the same way they feel opposed towards most Government spending and taxation – think it is wrong to expect them to fund the monarchy, and especially a wedding. I’ve seen commenters on both the Telegraph and Daily Mail website feeling that having their tax money fund the wedding is unfair; it’s certainly not just socialists.

So what have we learned today? If you’re an MP, be polite and reasonable in letters, or you’ll end up in the papers for all the wrong reasons, leading to busybodies like me writing about you on their blogs.

It would either require fixing the mistake of devolution, or just implementing the changes in England alone, leaving the other parts of the UK on whatever systems their devolved Assemblies, predominantly funded by tax revnue from England, decide to spend money on. (As a side note, the only aspect of the new tuition fees regime which I don’t like is the fact that it is only going to apply to English students, with Scotland having no fees, and the Welsh Assembly deciding to pay the higher costs for students. This riles me because most of the Scottish Parliament and Assembly are funded by block grants from general taxation, and most of that general taxation comes from England, specifically the more populous areas like London and the south. This unfair funding system of the Scottish Parliament allows it to spend a much larger amount per capita in every single spending area than the national average of regions in the UK as a whole. Among other things, Scotland spends: 6% more per capita on education, 7% more on welfare, and a massive 66% more per capita on ‘culture’.

I’ve climbed off my soapbox and am ready to begin.

Keep the leaving age at 16

The Schools White Paper (which I plan to assess the key points of in another article soon) is planning to raise the compulsory schooling age to 18 by 2015, which I think it a terrible idea.

If I had to pick out the main thing wrong with the state education system, it’s that we force all young people to go to school everyday. Some of them love it, some don’t mind, others hate it. The problem is that those who hate it are usually the mouthy and disruptive ones, and they make life difficult for teachers and other students. It flies in the face of logic to force teenagers, at the height of their hormonal rebellion, to keep going somewhere they despise day after day to learn subjects they don’t like in a way that they find boring. Sixth Form – and perhaps to a lesser extent, college – remains the last bastion of state education which gives those who want to learn the opportunity to do so, but doesn’t force those who don’t want to. It means that teachers have to spend less time dealing with behavioural issues, and more time doing what they’re paid to do. If the Government starts telling students they have to stay for two more years of compulsory education, we will just be populating our sixth forms and colleges with students who don’t want to be there, thereby lowering standards and increasing class sizes.

Oh, and I can’t let you blame the Coalition for this one; it was a Labour manifesto pledge too.

So the first thing I’d do isn’t a change at all, but the axing of a planned change. The UK’s education system and students themselves are far better off letting youngsters leave at 16.

Privatised schools, voucher systems. Leading to smaller class sizes and smaller schools

Before you start screeching at me that this would be unfair, hear me out. Government funding for pupils and schools would remain as it stands, rising at least with inflation each year. Each citizen, by right of birth, would have a Government-funded voucher which entitles them to and funds: pre-primary education, secondary education, and sixth form/college education. The voucher for sixth form/college may be used at any time during a person’s life: the state funding which the voucher guarantees would remain available to them for the rest of their life. This would mean, therefore, that a student could opt to leave school upon turning 16 and enter into the workplace. They may then decide later on in life that they want to continue their studies part-time at a college or sixth form for qualifications or for pleasure.

A policy which takes Goveism, multiplies it by ten Gove, adds 5 Gove, and scales it by a factor of Gove to the power 10 Gove.

The system of education vouchers would work in a similar way to funding for universities, but students would not be expected to repay the money through debt repayments. In the same way that university funding works, all schools who wish to receive Government funding will only be allowed to charge up to a certain amount. Schools may opt out of this system if they so wish, but will lose all Government funding. It is very rare in the university sector for a school to opt out of funding, but there are one or two universities which take this route, such as the University of Buckingham, which expects its students to pay the cost not covered by their government student loans.

The intention of reducing class and school sizes is one which I believe is key to more successful schools, and the only way to implement this is to have more schools and more teachers. The traditional route to achieving this – and the most obvious – would be for the Government to build more schools. However, this is not the route I want to take. Partly because of the large cost this would require at a time of cut-backs, but also because I am a subscriber to aspects of Goveism. Gove is leading the way to what the Government calls free schools – schools set up by groups of parents, teachers, charities, or religious groups, with the support of Government funding. A local example being a group planning to build a school in Woolmer Green. I noticed a Facebook group of angry Woolmer Greenians, entitled ‘We don’t want a massive new school in Woolmer Green’, and was tempted to make my own called ‘We do want a massive new school in Woolmer Green’, but resisted my desires; always loudly and obnoxiously taking the unpopular view on issues has its drawbacks. Gove’s policy allows these groups to either build a new school on land they’re bought or already own, or to convert existing buildings into a school – perhaps an unused hospital or a couple of floors of an office block – with the Government helping to provide funding for the construction or conversion.

Regarding existing state-run schools, they would all become academy schools with almost complete autonomy and freedom, and would be funded in the same way as the method for privately set-up schools outlined above.

The purpose behind all this is to stop Government micromanaging schools with centralised diktats and paperwork. The OECD statistics showed us that schools which have less government interference and bureaucracy perform better. I am also a believer in the free market, and that competition between schools is a good thing. If a student is unhappy at a school or feels it is performing poorly, they may easily move to another school due to a greater number being available and therefore a greater choice.

One of my more controversial intentions is to set up a system in which schools profit, but I do not want to impose a system in which the education of our young is dependent upon their parents’ ability to pay. I had considered implementing a system similar to the student university loans to cover the costs of attending private schools which charge up-front fees, but I consider that this would be unfair and would result in debts far too large, especially when added to university debts.

The purpose of allowing schools to make a profit is to make it attractive to business and entrepreneurs to teach and train the next generation. It’s an appealing prospect to business not only in that they can make a profit from education, but in that they can offer apprenticeships and employment in their company to the most skilled, bright, and hard-working students in their school. That’s good for the economy, good for the business, and good for the student. I understand that some claim that profit should have no place in education – and I would have agreed until a fairly short while ago – but I point out that exceptional service and products are provided by millions of companies. All of them run a profit and provide their services and goods to make money, but that doesn’t make the service or goods they provide shoddy nor does wanting to make money mean they are evil. So, how can I ensure schools can make a profit without allowing them to charge fees? Firstly, as mentioned above, there’s the prospect of spotting the rising stars of tomorrow, who could be employed by the company. There are also other ways to make a profit, such as: making money from the cafeteria and vending machines; selling supplies for school; selling advertising space on school walls; selling advertising space on the school website; charging older students for parking spaces on school; selling access to online teaching material; or more ingenious strategies: charging the public for the use of school facilities like the gym or tennis courts; building a car park on school grounds and making it open to the public at a cost. You may find this a little unsettling, but no-one is going to force you to send your child to a school which is run as a business. I believe it is a move for the greater good; having more schools means more choice for parents and pupils; schools competing to provide the best quality of education in order to attract students; smaller class sizes simply by virtue of there being more schools; the potential for schools to ensure more investment in pupils through using some of the profit made to improve education and facilities; and more opportunities for students through the chance at a guaranteed career in the company which runs the school.

Furthermore, these new schools – both those run as not for profit and those run for profit – will be able to choose an area of speciality of they so wish. A group may choose to set up a specialist sports school, or one which focuses upon vocational and hands-on subjects, or one which specialises in foreign languages. This is a process made much simpler by the abolition of the National Curriculum for secondary schools. (Brought up later in the article.) Doing this should give students and parents even greater choice, with the choice of attending a school which has a special focus on their area of interest of skill.

Something you may have been wondering about this section of my plan is that a greater number of schools means more Government spending on schools is needed. This is true. However, I can assure you that I am overloading with ideas of how to cut spending in other areas to allow me to do this, whilst running a surplus and beginning to cut taxes. It will be the subject of another article of the various swingeing cuts I would make in other sectors of spending. You probably won’t like them, though.

Freedom from paperwork

I asked my sister “What would make you a better teacher?”, she replied quickly and decisively “less paperwork“. (Of course, we then made fun at her expense by giving alternative answers: “Having some training” and “being competent”.)

Paperwork overload is cited as one of the top reasons for teachers leaving the profession, because they’re fed up with spending more time doing paperwork on top of the teaching they were trained to do. First and foremost, Almost all but the completely necessary health and safety documentation can be swept away with the privatisation of schools. I can’t give you examples because I haven’t looked into the various different bits of paperwork schools have to deal with; even for me, that would be a dull thing to do.

Options for disruptive pupils

Letting disengaged and disruptive students leave school early to do something which interests them and is of benefit is an important change which needs to be made.

I believe most pupils who are disruptive are like that because they just don’t like the concept of being forced to go to school and do work they don’t like in a style of learning they hate. I’m not making excuses for poor behaviour or pulling a wishy-washy ‘it’s not their fault’ act on you, but when students enjoy a subject or a lesson, behaviour issues seem to fade a bit. One of the key problems with our education system is that we force students who just aren’t cut out for school to carry on learning in an academic environment completely unsuited to them. Not only is it damaging to other students, whose quality of learning is hindered by distractions, an damaging teachers who have to deal with behavioural issues, but it is also damaging to the disruptive student themselves and society as a whole. Disruptive students are very rarely expelled – they will carry on in education, some get shoved off into another school because it has the false idea that it can set them straight. At the end of it, they’ll sit their GCSEs and get poor grades, if any passes at all. It is therefore damaging to the student because they will leave school being a flop, and it’s damaging to society because, having failed their exams (or if they turn 16 before taking them, leaving with no qualifications whatsoever) they leave school with a much-reduced chance of getting a job, potentially leaving them in a cycle of poverty and/or on taxpayer-funded benefits. We’re forcing disruptive students to waste about 5 years of their life doing something which has no benefit for anybody.

I therefore seek to fix this by allowing those students who are not cut out for academic education to opt – or be made to by their school – to leave and do vocational training or an apprenticeship of some kind. Everybody enjoys doing something, and it would therefore be far more sensible to have technical schools and apprenticeship opportunities which can cater to a more hands-on education. This could include all sorts of training, including a wide array of things like engineering, mechanics, art, sculpture, architecture, plumbing, electrical training, IT, and so on. The courses would be almost entirely practical-based, with the qualification being based upon the practical success or coursework of the student. At the end of it, the students will leave with qualifications equivalent to those of GCSE students, and can then choose whether to seek work or continue their education at college or one of the more vocational schools mentioned earlier in the article.

Ideally, these vocational qualifications would be provided by pre-existing colleges. However, the field will also be opened to the private sector in the same way as I outlined earlier for schools. This is potentially even more appealing to employers, as they can offer their most skilled students jobs at their company, or with other employers seeking to employ students who have passed the course well. For example, a car garage may seek to take on a 16 year old who has completed a basic car mechanics course. They can be employed at a lower wage than a more fully-trained applicant would be, performing smaller tasks until they become more qualified on the job to complete their role.

Exam papers in one place

One of my small annoyances with the Coalition Government is that they’re not pursuing the policy of putting all past exam papers in one official database online which would be freely accessible to anyone. This was in the Conservatives’ election manifesto, but it seems to have been completely overlooked and forgotten about after the Coalition was formed. (Labour called this proposal “a gimmick” at the time, probably because it would represent the unwashed masses being allowed to do something for themselves.) I don’t know whether Nick Clegg thought that putting past exam papers all in one place was against Exam Paper Rights, or if they just forgot about it, but it’s something that should be done.

This policy also involves one of my favourite things: crowd-sourcing and the Big Society. The kind of nice, quiet, middle-class Big Society – not the ruffians taking it upon themselves to riot in London. The public can upload past exam papers, either through scanning old papers into their PC and uploading the files, or sending PDF files. This allows a massive repository of exam papers potentially dating back decades, but at very least covering from about the year 2000.

Exam paper changes

Continuing on the theme of exam papers, there is a consistent accusation that exam papers have become easier in recent years. I am sceptical of this claim, and think a lot of these claims can be put down to two things: firstly, different syllabuses over time, and more sensible exams. The first refers to the fallacious argument that because a student finds an older exam paper harder, it must be harder. I think a good deal of this can be put down to syllabuses changing over time; if you gave me an exam paper from 15 years ago, I’d probably struggle. Not necessarily because the content is harder, but the content is different to what I have been taught. It is possible that syllabuses have been made easier over time – and that is certainly something to look into – but students finding older papers harder is not necessarily evidence that the paper is more difficult, just that the content of the paper is not the same as they have learned. Secondly, when I say “more sensible exams” I mean certain exams which include questions designed to allow even the weakest candidate to get a grade of some sort, perhaps an E. The easy questions are there to allow the weaker candidates to get a grade which reflects their ability, whilst there will be other questions which allow stronger students to get higher grades. The best examples of this are the GCSE Science papers, which come to the attention of the media for having pretty simple questions. Yes, there are some simple questions, but there are also ones which are bloody confusing.

Waffle aside, I would create a Royal Commission – or similar independent investigatory group – to research whether the standards of exam papers has declined. Its report and conclusions would be used to make alterations – if found necessary by the commission – to restore papers to their former levels difficulty.

Abolition of the National Curriculum for secondary schools

I had toyed with keeping this and simply making it more free and giving teachers more choice, but I concluded that it is pointless. In the senior and sixth form years, all schools will automatically teach to the syllabus of what is necessary for the exams their students will sit, whether this be GCSEs, A-Levels, the IB, or another exam/qualification. It is therefore pointless to prescribe to schools what they teach students in the earlier years. They will naturally choose syllabuses which are interesting, yet begin to guide students towards skills which will be needed for exams or coursework at later levels of education. Government currently prescribes that schools must teach x and y, but I would imagine that a far more sensible route is to allow schools to experiment: if a class doesn’t find a topic interesting, teachers can choose a different one next year. As it stands, teachers are locked into teaching things like the Battle of Hastings, the Renaissance, etc, etc, year after year after year. I think it would be a much better idea to let schools themselves to decide upon what they’re going to teach, rather than having Government decide upon their behalf what is best.

I do, however, think it is necessary to keep a national curriculum for primary schools. These are the formative years in which students learn key linguistic and numerical skills necessary for the future. I also think that teachers in secondary schools need to know that all new students each year have been taught the same topics, so they do not have to repeat things which are already known or plough too far ahead too soon. Having said that, there would be a full review of the curriculum, with greater input from teachers, students, and parents, as well as educational experts from home and abroad. This process would be done with the goal of ensuring that the primary school curriculum is interesting for students to learn and teachers to teach; allows room for flexibility whilst still ensuring the content is covered; and prepares pupils for the skills they will need at secondary school.

Replacing EMA

I receive Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), and it is with some sadness that I pragmatically support it being scrapped to reduce Government spending. I personally save all my EMA money, having not withdrawn from my account in ages. I am proudly a Scrooge-like figure all year around, and expenditure is kept to a minimum if not non-existent whilst I ferret around trying to find the best interest rate deals. I do, however, know of other students who spend their taxpayer-funded EMA on frivolities. (Bah. Humbug.) I have overheard someone say that they were waiting for this week’s EMA money so they could spend it on going out and getting drunk. I want to ensure the system which replaces EMA is beneficial to students, but prevents them wasting the money. I also seek to ensure that the system requires less government expenditure. Firstly, it would be renamed to Education Assistance Vouchers (EAV) to better reflect the new nature of the scheme. Students would no longer be provided with money, but discount vouchers. These would be deals struck with specific shops to provide the Government – at a discount due to the increases in custom the shop can expect – with vouchers for certain types of product. Similar deals could also be struck with online retailers like Amazon and the Book People, with vouchers supplied which give discounts to certain lines of products. These would then give students a discount on such things as books and stationary. Students may instead opt for travel vouchers, which would work in a similar way to give discount to bus or train fares.

Expenditure would first be saved through the aforementioned deals struck with companies to sell vouchers to the Government at a discount price, due to the knowledge of the additional custom they will enjoy and the chance at being the main retailer for students who receive the vouchers. To avoid the cost of printing and postage, the vouchers would be emailed on a weekly or monthly basis to the students. They would then print these vouchers or, if they’re using them online, simply type in the code at the online checkout. Similarly, there are also other money-spinning opportunities here. Other retailers can approach the Government with offers of paying for advertising and voucher space in the emails. For example, Pizza Hut may pay to include a voucher with the offer of a 20% discount for students on a meal for 2, similarly, other retailers may wish to pay for advertising space in the voucher emails. If the cost of buying the original discount vouchers is less than the original expenditure of purchasing the vouchers, the profit will be re-invested in education, partly because the profit from it would be unlikely to reach levels meaningful enough to reduce taxes.

All a bit underhand, Machiavellian, and corporatist, you may say. I say it’s pragmatism and unique thinking in difficult times. It’s the Bradley model of politics, and it’s unashamedly ruthless, cold, and callous.

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Yes! Over 4000 words later, I’m finished! If you don’t like my ideas, I suspect Gove now looks moderate to you. Clearly implementing all the above would make me the most popular politician to ever walk the face of the Earth… All the above is proposed with the best of intentions, mind you; I’m not evil.

“You’re very frugal, aren’t you, Bradley” remarked someone who saw me eating cheap Tesco crisps. It’s true. I spend my time turning off unused lights, telling my parents not to buy things, and have taken up a project for the new year of doing a yearly budget. If it weren’t for my parents, I would never spend anything, ever, because I just can’t bear parting with my money. (Except occasional charity donations, which I’m pointing out just so I don’t sound quite so cold hearted.)

So rather than demanding my Mum’s credit card to buy books for school, I try to read as many online as possible. Google Books seems to be one of the web’s best-kept secrets. It has loads of books, some which let you see only a few choice extracts; some which let you see certain chapters and parts; and some which let you view the whole book. Simply, it’s smashing, especially since you can search inside each book to find relevant parts, rather than grappling with an index or flicking through hundreds of pages. The site is a fantastic resource for students, teachers, and just anyone who likes reading or needs to research something.

I’ve been compiling three little libraries of books: Politics, mostly centring on books useful for the USA course of A2 politics; Cold War/international relations books for use with the History A2 course; and Roman Empire books useful for my coursework.

Because I’m so kind and giving, they’re available publicly, and I’m linking them here for your consumption. Most of the books I’ve listed are full-view, meaning you can read and search the entire text, but there are a few exceptions which will only let you see part of the book. There are even some which will let you download PDF copies so you can use them offline or print out bits you want a hard copy of.

• Politics

• Cold War & International Relations

• Roman Empire

Please note that they’re automatically listed in order of when I added them, so the ones at the top are the most recently added. There are multiple pages for each list except the Roman Empire one, for which I’ve found fewer books.

I hope these will be useful for fellow students, or just anyone who’s interested in these topics. I’ll seek to build up more libraries in future, and will add links here to them as and when I do.

Also, I just noticed the title said September, not November. That’s because I’m a moron. Fixed.

The Vice Guide to North Korea

The wonders of the North Korean regime. That little dot is the part of the country with electricity. Contrast with the ROK beneath it.

With the mysterious country recently hitting the headlines once again with Kim Jong Il expected to be replaced as leader of North Korea, I was reminded of a three-part documentary I’d previously watched in which two journalists manage to get into the country and do some filming. Having visited the demilitarised zone between North and South, the duo decided to try to get in proper, and once he does, he’s treated to a disturbing, weird, downright scary place. The explorers’ journey in the fortress country starts by staying in a 50-storey hotel which houses no-one but them and a banquet hall filled with food and no-one to eat it. Since it’s factual, there’s no point in my reviewing it, but it’s a fantastic watch: informative, entertaining, and bloody scary.

Episode one, two, and three.

1983: The Brink of Apocalypse

A chilling tale of just how close we came to nuclear annihilation. A series of events misunderstandings and a lack of communication between the USA and USSR pushed the Cold War to one of its most tense periods. Most interesting is the tale of Stanislav Petrov, the unsung hero who was faced with a choice of whether or not to report to his superiors that the satellite detection system had reported incoming missiles. His intuition warned him that it was a false positive, and fearing that the tense bunker-like atmosphere in the Kremlin would lead to them rashly firing a counter-attack, he chose not to report the warning to his superiors. By doing so, he potentially saved the world from nuclear fallout.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/1983-the-brink-of-apocalypse/4od#2917457

Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story

A shocking counter-argument to the fools like me who attempted to play down the UK Government’s debt. If you’re sceptical of the cuts, watch it. If you’re not, watch it. It’s especially worrying that some MPs don’t know the difference between debt and deficit. It also reminds us that, whilst it’s easy for us to be in favour of greater spending on things like the NHS and education, it always means the Government taking more of our money and deciding how to spend it on our behalf.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/britains-trillion-pound-horror-story/4od#3139408

JFK – the Making of Modern Politics

When did elections become so vacuous and based upon personality instead of policy? Andrew Marr makes the compelling case that it all began with John F. Kennedy, who tried to launch himself into the Presidency as a young, vibrant, exciting candidate who attracted voters on the basis of himself, and not his competence and policy. The parallels between Kennedy, Clinton, and Blair are numerous enough to be amusing. Just a little bit of history repeating, as Shirley Bassey might say. Personally, this documentary just makes me dislike Kennedy.

Since this one is on the BBC iPlayer – which only lets you keep downloaded files for a certain amount of time  before they stop working – I’ll give you some advice. You should absolutely not Google ‘iplayer downloader’. You should then not click the first result. It would be terrible if you were to click on the link on the page called ipdl.exe version 1.14. Under no circumstances should you then run the programme, and copy/paste the below link into the the application and click the ‘Download’ button. Heaven forbid you’d actually want to be allowed to keep a copy of the programme you’ve paid for through the License Fee.

Edit: The BBC, being absolute pricks as they are, have decided we shouldn’t be allowed to do this. We pay for their programmes through the license fee, yet they try to prevent us doing the equivalent of recording their programmes on tape or DVD.

Fine then BBC, I’ll just record all of your programmes on my DVD recorder which are worth watching (pretty few and far between, actually).

Rant over, it’s particularly useful for any A2 Politics students doing the USA course, since it relates to sections about elections and the media, and was conveniently broadcast whilst I’m writing an answer to a question about the media’s impact upon the presidential elections. Smashing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w8cjq/JFK_The_Making_of_Modern_Politics/

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I have two lengthy articles lined up for the next few days, but they need proofreading and tinkering with before I launch a combined 7000-odd words at you.

The first is that kids are horrible. Start releasing statistics about what qualifications teachers have, or how much they’re paid, or how much time they took off sick, and all hell could break loose. The chances are it won’t name which teachers have which qualifications, or who earns what, but children like games – including the guessing game. Imagine this scenario if you will. Students know all about these newly-released statistics. There’s a big long list of teachers with 1st degrees, 2.1s, and 2.2s. Then there’s one with a third. The guessing game begins. “Miiisss, what degree did you get?” “Sirrr, did you fail at Uni?” Perhaps I’m generalising, but you get the picture. If children are already acting like little numpties in a lesson, this just gives them more ammunition, a chance to start undermining the teacher, claiming they’re the one with the third on their degree, or the one who is paid less because they’re an NQT or “because you’re rubbish”. Of course, teachers don’t need to tell students they’re the one, but at some point these kinds of things are likely to come out, and that teacher who did get their third on his degree, or a D on one of his A-Levels gets worn down over time with the babble of students pondering whether they’ve got “Mr moron for maths”, or “English with the idiot next.” God help any teacher whose students find out they’re the one. “Why do we have to listen to you, sir? You failed your degree”.  “Why do you get paid so little?” etc. etc. Teachers will naturally want to defend themselves against such accusations if they fear they’re losing the respect of their students. If they refuse to answer, they’ll look like they’re not answering because they’re ashamed of the answer. The truth about the one is likely to come out eventually, leaving him embarrassed and with many classes which don’t respect him.

Even more embarrassing for teachers would be reference to their salaries. This would be especially dangerous if the information is published separately for the staff in each department, making it much easier for students to begin guessing who gets paid more and who is obviously a newbie at the bottom of the pay scale. Even if these awful visions of students wearing their teachers down by asking them about their qualifications, or their salary, or their time off sick don’t come to fruition, it still shifts the balance away from teachers towards students. It gives them a sense of power over the teacher, adding to this sense of entitlement and rights which seems to have become endemic. (I have fond memories of year 9 Geography with  a legendary teacher who once said: “You’re always being told about your rights. In this classroom, you have no rights.” A man of quiet genius and much experience. Oh, Mr M, come back to us.)

It’s not just the kids. I’m also pondering whether parents would begin to get concerned that their little angels are being taught by someone with a third. I can see them marching into the headmaster’s office, demanding to know who this teacher is so that their dear little Danny doesn’t have to be taught by this useless oaf. We seem to be looking at teaching the wrong way. Great teachers don’t necessarily have to have been top of their class at Uni. It’s not about sheer academic ability, but ability to communicate, to explain, to help, to be patient, to inspire, to impassion. Teachers can have  fantastic knowledge, passion, and flair for their subject without needing a piece of paper to prove it. Sometimes the people with the best academic qualifications just wouldn’t make good teachers; they may lack the ability to make a dull topic interesting, or the patience to keep explaining the same thing over and over until the struggling student understands it. We should not be putting the emphasis on degree qualifications. Make it all about blind academics, and we risk losing the passion, with teachers feeling that they can’t pursue the career for fear of being academically inferior to their colleagues. Schools may also become fearful of employing new teachers who are clearly skilled and driven, but whose academic qualifications do not match those of others. Currently, it’s not a big problem: the all-round strongest person for the job can be employed, but if parents begin to judge schools on a list of the qualifications of the staff, it’s quite possible schools will seek to employ only those with outstanding degrees, having to put it above the actual ability of teacher to teach in order to stand out from other schools.

I’m also failing to understand why it’s a good idea in any way shape or form to publish teachers salaries. I can at least see why the qualifications of teachers might be used by parents to judge a school’s quality, but in what way to salaries matter? Personally, I wouldn’t spend my afternoon comparing two schools on the criteria of “Which school offers the best value for money?”, and draw up some formula to calculate points on the basis of salary, qualifications, and time taken off sick. Perhaps that’s something Conservatives do in their spare time, but I don’t imagine it being useful for anyone for any reason except simply being nosey. Why do any parents need to know how long teachers take off in sick leave? If a student’s education is being disrupted by a teacher’s illness, then absolutely a parent is right to be concerned and make their concerns known, but if it’s an issue, they’ll know about it at the time – they won’t need to wait until the end of the year, see that someone took 4 weeks off sick, and then rush into school demanding that this teacher pull themselves together. This really does seem to be all about assessing teachers on the basis of value for money, but teaching is one of those rare jobs which can’t be assessed on productivity.

I’m also cynically wondering whether this is all intended to as a measure to get the public angry about the pay of teachers so it can be cut. Parents evening 2012, Mrs Whitehouse exclaims: “How dare you say that about Timmy! I’m paying your wages, don’t you know, and handsome wages they are too!” Conservative Conference 2012, David Cameron announces: “I met a black man once, and he told me he was concerned about a lack of efficiency in our schools. Teachers will now be paid on the basis of their efficiency – those with higher qualifications and who take less time off sick will be paid more. After all, we’re all in this together in the Big Society.” He’ll then end with a heartwarming tale of a little girl called Niamh who was shocked, shocked! by how much teachers in those awful, awful state schools are costing the Government, and she sent her toothfairy  money to help pay the bill. “Thank you, Niamh, he’ll say. But we don’t need you to do that anymore.” And the party conference audience will applaud and chortle and slap their knees, wishing their daughter was as dedicated to the Big Society as little Niamh.

(Based on a true story)

Anyway.

Another concern is that we put even more people off becoming teachers. Would you really want to go into teaching knowing you’re being judged on your qualifications by the parents of each new academic year’s intake? Doing something like this sends off all the wrong signals, seeming to treat the classroom like a company’s boardroom, evaluating the value-for-money of teachers as opposed to their teaching ability.

My sister is a teacher. I’ll be seeing her tomorrow when she comes around for din-dins. I’m sure she’ll have something to say about this. It may require some beeps to cover the profanities when I report back here.

All-in-all, there don’t actually seem to be any positives to this idea. I understand – and agree with – giving parents more choice and information – but these are just pointless statistics which devalue teachers and try to simplify their jobs into three numbers. If the Government wants to make education better, it should be looking at providing options for disruptive pupils who hate traditional academic education to go and do something more appropriate – like a college course or an apprenticeship – instead of forcing them to keep going somewhere they hate until they’re 16, doing nothing but disrupting everyone else. The education system will not suddenly become better by publishing a few meaningless numbers. If anything, it will damage student-teacher relations and teacher morale, and put good people off of the profession.

Despite having never studied economics and being mathematically inept, I’m very interested in the economy, and tend to view history and politics as being strongly influenced by the economy. Get the economy right, and people are happy, get it wrong – and as we’ve seen – people look for someone to hang.

The Tea Party has certainly got a point on the deficit and debt:

The graph above shows us the deficit/surplus of the USA from 1792-2009, with the areas in the red above the axis representing times when the Government was spending more than its income, and the areas in the green representing there being a Government income greater than expenditure. The deficit is currently the highest it has been in peacetime, with the sharp rise recently being due to the bank bailout and financial stimulus measures. The previous high points have been such events as World War Two – the huge increase in the 1940s – World War One, and the Civil War.  I have argued that, whilst I’d like to see deficit be eliminated in the UK, it is not as pressing as it may first seem because the UK’s proportion of debt is very small compared to its historical level of debt. I cannot make the same argument for the USA:

Holy hell that’s a lot of debt. This graph goes up to 2015 because official budgetary predictions are provided up to this point. It looks like even by 2015, the debt will still be increasing, but at a slower rate, so the prediction must be that by that point the USA will still be running a deficit and getting dangerously close to its huge debt after the Second World War. This debt will have to be paid off at some point, and it is therefore a fully understandable – and sensible – view from Tea Party supporters that they want the Government to start running a surplus now, as opposed to continuing to borrow, putting off the task until a later time, perhaps leaving it for children to pay off in future.

The over-riding message of the Te Party is a smaller Government – meaning less spending and less taxation, with some going as far as to say that taxation is theft. Most seem to accept a need for some taxation: a Government must at least provide police and pay for defence.

But what would this desire for small Government mean? If the Tea Party wants quick, sweeping action to ensure the Government would run a surplus again and pays off the debt, I don’t think moderate cutbacks and tax rises will be enough. Debt has simply gotten too high, and the consensus on the level of debt has rested at a much higher rate than it did in the pre-WWI years. An option is to reduce the role of the Federal Government and shift it to the states. However, this doesn’t solve the issue, but makes it someone else’s problem. This option would leave states shouldering the burden, leaving them with the same choice of reigning in spending or raising taxes. Given that many states already spend beyond their income – California for example has around $20bn (about £12 bn) of debt – this would not be a good idea.

Taxation as a % of GDP has risen over time, yet deficits have persisted and the Debt is now remarkably high:

The amount of money taken out of the economy by the Government to fund its endeavours saw a boom in the post-WWII years, and it’s never really decreased since then. It’s around about the 15% mark at the moment, expected to rise to about 19% in the coming years. What we can see from this graph is that when the Tea Party campaigners seek to Blame Obama for high taxation, they’re wrong. Even after the predicted rise to about 19%, only marginally higher than under former Republican President Reagan, who raised taxes in the later years of his Presidency, taking total Government income up to over 18%. This tax burden is made up mostly of income tax, followed by social insurance, then land tax, then business tax. The World Bank estimates that the total cost of the USA’s government activity in 2009 was about 25%, so we can see why taking only 15% of GDP as income is leaving a deficit.

So given that the Tea Party certainly doesn’t want to see tax rises being used to combat the deficit, I think they would need to start setting out an alternative vision for the USA, gaining support for their view of a small Government and a successful private sector. Selling off Government functions and giving duties to the private sector doesn’t have to be an evil, uncaring, callous thing. The group needs to espouse the positives that stopping swathes of Government expenditure would bring, namely lower taxes, leading to more money left in the pocket of ordinary people and businesses being able to hire more people and lead to strong economic growth, hopefully leaving everyone better off and with lower unemployment. Regarding privatising functions, the most obvious area would be healthcare, largely by following Ron Paul’s capitalist vision for healthcare, in which he envisions a capitalist, competitive market for health insurance, not the corporatist system with a lack of competition which exists at the moment. Spending on health accounts for about 6% of GDP of the 20% that the US Government spends, and it’s consistently risen in recent years due to such factors as the increasing cost of healthcare, the introduction of health benefits like Medicare and Medicaid, and ever-increasing lifespans.

Get a properly capitalist, competing health insurance sector which is properly regulated to prevent excessive unfair costs or refusal of coverage, and a great deal more people should be able to afford to pay for their own healthcare. Presuming the lower tax regime works the way it’s supposed to, there should also be a rise in the wealth of most people and less unemployment due to economic growth, ensuring that, over time, more people can afford to pay for their treatment and don’t require Government assistance.

Another area to fundamentally change the role of Government would be in welfare, with spending dramatically rising in the post-war years on pensions. There is an argument to be made for scrapping Government-funded pensions entirely, leaving it up to individuals to either put put money away for their retirement or invest in a private-sector pension scheme. Similarly, welfare schemes could be scaled back, providing minimal support to only the unemployed and disabled.

The Tea Party can’t overlook an area of big spending, and this is an area which shows the group’s hypocrisy: defence. This is one of the few spending areas which has had a long-term decline in the post-war years, but spending on defence is still much higher than it before the big spending boom in the post-war years, with now around 6% of GDP being taken by the Federal Government for the purpose of the defence budget. The ongoing military action in Iraq and the Afghanistan war are part of the reason costs are so high, but so is the overall desire of the USA to maintain their status as the policemen of the world. Tea Party supporters seem to generally be in support of high defence budgets and the military action in the Middle East, so it is unlikely that they will be willing to support cuts to this budget. Having said that, the Tea Party is not a homogenous group: it has a contingent of libertarians, though many seem to be feeling that the group is too socially conservative and Republican-dominated for them to continue to be active campaigners for the cause. Said libertarians are opposed to international interventionism, and would likely have few qualms with withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan at the nearest possible opportunity.

Speaking of which, there’s an amusing, very bias take on libertarian and Tea Party disagreement (video quality fixes itself after 10 seconds):

“He is a Nazi atheist Muslim” made me chuckle most.

This brings me along to another area: are the Tea Party right to support the Republicans? Contrary to the admiration Reagan receives from Tea Partiers, he ran a deficit throughout his Presidency and the debt therefore increased. The only President in recent times to leave the USA running  surplus was Clinton, a Democrat. Bush then became President and increased federal spending in such areas as education whilst cutting taxes, resulting in a budgetary deficit and increasing debt once again, so hardly fiscally conservative. As the graph displayed earlier showing taxation, there’s little to suggest that Republican presidents have sought any major tax cuts or reductions in spending. It’s a question of whether the Republican party has had a proper reform to became a party which believes in a small state, small tax, and fiscal conservatism; or whether it will continue with the trend of minor tax cuts and little other change. Though it might be convenient for the Tea Party to forget, but the bank bailout (formally known as ‘The Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act of 2008′) was signed into law in October 2008 by none other than George W. Bush. If the Republican party shared the group’s view of small spending and not interfering in the economy, surely a Republican President would not have signed the legislation? However, it is true that there were a number of Republicans who opposed the legislation and voted in the first House of Reps. vote against it 133 to 65. In the Senate it passed 74 to 25 votes, and upon the second vote in the House it passed 263 to 171, but still with a majority of Republicans voting against the legislation, albeit only slimly: 108 to 91. That means about 55% of Republicans in the House continued to vote against it in the final vote, whilst only about 27% of Democrats voted against. This suggests much greater support for laissez-faire economics and less Government spending amongst Republicans, though it’s only a slim majority. The proportion of small spending supporters in the party will likely have risen as a result of the election of such Tea Partiers as Rand Paul (the knock-off younger version of Ron Paul).

Obama is grateful for the advice of this moustachio'd, ripped man.

The Tea Party and libertarians really need to band together to publicly push their shared agenda of a small Government and lower taxes, putting aside their differences on social issues. If the group can gain enough support, or at least get the majority of Americans to not be fearful of a vision of a Government spends much less, the Republican presidential candidates may be willing to take a more strong small Government, small tax platform. If Ron Paul runs again – which doesn’t seem likely at this stage – he is well-placed to campaign for this, though his libertarian views on issues like the legalisation of drugs stands in opposition to many Tea Party members.

That brings me along to my final area to ramble about: social issues. Having written this article, I’ve proven to myself the hypocrisy in the Tea Party movement. It calls for small Government, yet doesn’t take small Government views on most social issues. Most Tea Partiers are against things like abortion, gay marriage, and the liberalisation of drugs laws. Most people in the group don’t really want small government at all: they want a conservative Government. One which is fiscally conservative – so spends and taxes less – but also socially conservative in terms of  upholding traditional moral values. They want laissez-faire economics, but a Government which restricts freedoms and liberties so long as it fits with their notions of moral righteousness. What they really want is a traditionally conservative Government, despite any attempts to dress it up as being about personal freedom, it’s really just about wanting lower taxes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It’s going to come down to whether enough Republican party voters will choose a Tea Party-style candidate for the Presidency in the primaries, and then there’s the little task of convincing the US electorate to elect him/her. I’m expecting a move towards more fiscal conservatism from the Republicans in the next Presidential election, but I doubt it will be enough to satisfy the Tea Party movement.

Stats from: usgovernmentspending.com and worldbank.org

He claimed to be Saddam Hussein, but the consensus was that he looked more like Che Guevara.

Flattering...

Dear person cut out of the photo: Don't be offended; I thought I should check before putting a photo of you on a public blog.

I pushed the boat out and had 1/2 a glass of wine. Shocking. You’re also clearly jealous of my handmade axe and mask.

Next year’s costume: Ed Miliband.

Hand to Mouth – George Michael, 1987

Whilst we all know him as that bloke who gets arrested for various reasons, it turns out George Michael finds time to make music in the periods which he’s not snorting cocaine, crashing his car, or having sex in public toilets. Seeing as I consider myself a George Michael fan, I was surprised that, when I heard it recently, I didn’t remember hearing it previously. Since I had nothing better to do, I googled the lyrics to find out what he was going on about, and it turns out that he was singing about Reagan’s America. Michael seems to have written a lonely, sad account of the people left behind by the economic growth-centric policies of former President Ronald Reagan, who was pretty much a male Thatcher. He sought economic growth by cutting taxes, in particular, cutting the top rate of tax from 70% to about 30%. He is seen by some – including me -as being a President who had the interests of the rich at heart and therefore ignored everyone else in pursuit of the trickle-down view of economics, making the poor slightly better off whilst the rich get much, much richer.

George tells us the story of people left behind by Reaganomics, with the chorus repeating that the Gods of America – the politicians – are uninterested in their plight.

The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Bob Dylan, 1964

It’s probably blasphemy to say so, but I don’t like Bob Dylan’s version. I grew up with Phil Collins singing it, so for me that’s the definitive version. The song was written in the 1960s, and it serves as a sort of anthem for the changes of the decade, reflecting the restlessness and the civil rights movement. There’s a committed, almost obnoxious, tone about it which calls on those who stand in the way of progress to move aside or be defeated by the tide of change.

Fast Car – Tracy Chapman, 1988

I don’t think anyone could have delivered this quite so well as Tracy Chapman. She tells the story of a life of being trapped in poverty, and her attempt at getting a better life. She sings of dragging herself and her partner to a better life, but being held back by the lack of commitment of the partner. For me, it’s a sad tale of the lengths people have to go to to get out of poverty, and though she beings to achieve the better life she dreamed of, it comes at a cost of her relationship being strained and ending as she asks him to drive away in the fast car which saved her.

Maggie’s Last Party – VIM, 1991

Margaret Thatcher singing about acid parties and remarkable records. I am easily amused.

Viva La Vida – Coldplay, 2008

I don’t like Coldplay – they seem to have set out with the intention of depressing everyone, with this song being the only exception. Even the front cover the album is politics-related, depicting the French revolution. The song covers a fall from wealth, power, or fame, using the collapse of the monarchy in France as a metaphor for his. “The old King is dead, long live the King” seems to be a bleak reference to the continuity of politics – we replace one leader with another, revolutions tend to just replace one kind of dictator with another (ie, Russian revolution.) That’s how I see it anyway, but I’m a moron.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World – Tears for Fears, 1985

Perhaps simply about the lust for power in all of us. We all sometimes think we can do a better job than our politicians. The band itself spoke of the song being about the vying for power between leaders, with them all seeking dominance, and the misery that this desire can cause in the form of conflict and war, which contrasts to the upbeat tone.

Eve of Destruction – Barry McGuire, 1965

Fond memories of listening to this during a GCSE history class. Like Dylan’s song above, a reflection of discontent of the 60s, most particularly the Vietnam War. The scratchy, rough vocals communicate genuine anger which adds to the protest of the song.

Another Day in Paradise – Phil Collins, 1989

I had to have Phil Collins on this list because he’s so fantastic. Luckily, this song is very appropriate for this list, since he seeks to highlight the plight of the homeless. I must admit I find it a bit patronising, since Collins has plenty of money with which to help the homeless if he wants to, but instead he decided to preach to the public.

I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me – Nik Kershaw, 1983

Despite the upbeat, happy tone of the song, it’s all about the Cold War and the threat of nuclear weapons being used.  I love how it reduces the conflict to two leaders determined not to be outmanoeuvred and be made to look weak. At its best, it simplifies the entire conflict as a question of “is he blue or his he red?”, highlighting the stupidity of an ideological conflict potentially resulting in the mass destruction of life.

Shopping – The Pet Shop Boys, 1987

This relates to Thatcher’s mass-privatisation of nationally-owned businesses like National Rail and  British Gas. The Pet Shop boys protest against this in the only way they know how – through synthesised music.

Money’s Too Tight (To Mention) – The Valentine Brothers, 1982

I always thought that Simply Red’s version (1985) was the original, but it turns out that these two chaps did it before him, and their version is much better. This song in particularly poignant at the moment: the Government claims money’s tight; for many people money is tight as a result of the recession; and it’s certainly going to be tight for students due to the fees hike. This song’s even got reference to Reaganomics – what more could you want?

For The Love Of Money – O’Jays, 1973

Needs little explanation – simply a reflection of an obsession with money. Very catchy.

Living for the City – Stevie Wonder, 1973

Wikipedia summarises this one better than I could: ” The song begins with Wonder describing the life of a boy born in “hard time Mississippi”. His family is poor, but his parents work hard and encourage him, in spite of the dreadful conditions they live in, which include lack of food and money, and racism. As the track progresses, the tension and anger build in Wonder’s voice, matching the growing frustrations of the subjects in the song.

A spoken interlude midway through the song has the young boy, now a young man, arriving in New York City for a new beginning. He is tricked into transporting drugs, arrested and sentenced to 10 years in jail. The tension in Wonder’s voice boils over at this point into an angry growl, but then subsides again as he ends the song on a positive note.”

This full-length version is much better than the cut-down one you’ll hear on the radio.

Things Can Only Get Better – D:Ream, 1993

Not political in nature, but it was famously used by the Labour party in their 1997 election campaign to highlight that things were so bad under the Tories, that things could only get better with a Labour government. Probably the best example of music being used in election campaigns. The video is absolutely atrocious.

Something Inside So Strong – Labi Siffre, 1987

I can’t believe I forgot to put this one in! Siffre is singing about the South African apartheid, challenging the notion of Black people being inferior, and reminding the oppressors that the oppressed with remain strong.

Shoot the Dog – George Micahel, 2002

A rallying cry against what George saw as Tony Blair, and therefore the UK, being George Bush’s political puppy, being willing to do whatever he asked. The video was made by the excellent people who made 2DTV. George Michael’s willingness to poke fun at himself throughout the video is wonderful, and him coming onto Cherie Blair is priceless.

We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel, 1989

No list of songs relating to politics would be complete without this one. A list of 120 events occurring from 1949 to 1989. It provides a great springboard for finding out more about the events mentioned, with the full list being available here.

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You may have noticed that most of these songs are from the 1980s. That wasn’t intentional, it just happened naturally because the 80s was so bloody brilliant for music. 80s music will never be surpassed.