Is David Cameron talking out of his own back passage?

[tiredemma]

On BBC 1 now- talking about how the Conservative Party will sort this country out once and for all.

Well, will they?? or is it all hot air?

Im undecided about my vote- Im a Labour voter normally but have become disenchanted by that party- but remain sceptical about the Tories.

Im unsure about DC and his crew.

The current Labour government should be hung drawn and quartered.

People amaze me with their broad brush approach of looking at history and judging the future based on that. I am sure a fair few hardcore Labourites are turning in their grave at what has become of the Labour party.

Life changes, people change and saying the conservatives will be just like the 80's shows ingnorance on a grand scale.

Lets look closely at the achievments of the Labour Party...

They have saddled us with a debt that will cripple whoever gets in next time and the time after.

They have saturated the country through unrestricted immigration. Those saturday jobs that students used to get are all gone.

The have made it impossible to employ someone part-time - to offer someone an opportunity to get into a job and grow with it as it is not cost effective due to tax credits. This has created a generation of people trapped by the state. I know, I tried to employ someone and couldn't!

The have allowed the public sector to run riot with wild job creation for job creation sake.

They have removed any incentive for a small business owner to grow their business by insane red tape and tax.

They have created panic and stress in education with league tables and testing.

They have taken us into an illegal war and another that we cannot win.

They have lied through their teeth time and time again.

The unions again have us over a barrel with the railways etc.

The NHS nearly killed me with their sodding target system. Intensive care and three months in hospital taught me things about the NHS that would make your hair stand on end.

If you are currently 16-24 I feel so sorry for you but equally if you are a man aged 46 with two kids and out of work for a year... Having to be told that the civil service will take the younger ages to bring those figures down is pretty galling.

The 10p in the pound is shocking and the fact that people have forgotten beggars belief

I could go on and on...

Are the conservatives any better? To be honest it couldn?t get any flipping worse and why not try something else because Labour isn?t working!

I really believe in the Labour ideal and what they have done makes me feel physically sick.

hahaimawitch nearly all my key stage four and five students have Saturday jobs. I am not saying there are not problems but that is a gross exaggeration.

League tables come from the Tories, although Labour could have abolished them that is a fair point. As a teacher and a parent I am not stressed or in a panic about them.

I can't bear tax credits so I am not going to argue with you. On the plus though they have helped lower income families into work. I agree with the tories capping them for middle income families.

I am for the first time ever a floating voter and that is saying something as I have been a labour activist since 18.

Wastwinset that is really good to hear re your students. Where I live it is a really serious issue.

I agree the League tables were a tory idea but Labour has had so much time to step in and sort it. Three terms is significant.

I am well aware that for low income families tax credits are a lifesaver but the flip side is the gap beween being able to afford to work v not and it isn't working well enough.

I run a small business and needed to expand. I couldn't afford the cost of a full time person but it appears that a part time person can't afford to work for me either!

sadly the whole political arena has become more of a personality race. I don't care for Cameron's sleekness ( personally I do not trust him)but labour have made a mess of things and lost their way as the ladies above have wisely mentioned. I don't think people can really trust Cameron because he is simply playing the Mr Right game and as for poor unappealing Gordon well...sadly people are disiliisuioned and feel of the two none is the better or worse. So will people actualyl vote thsi time round or just shrug their shoulders fatalistically and leave it to a minority to choose for us all?What kind of a democracy is this when you don't really have much choice anyways? You can technically only have a Labour or a Conservative PM . Even if we wanted the libdems for some reason to "adminster" us and maybe see some difefrent style( yeah right)they can't have a PM and they are just savouring the publicity these days and being in the limelight because of this "hung parliament" issue which the media is trumpeting day in and day out ad nauseum.

Lily, you're right in a way, but it wasn't meant to be patronising exactly -- I really thought you considered Carol Vorderman of enormous importance and how nice that you don't.

You are lucky to have such a great school. But yours are not the only children in Britain, and permission to continue and extend the return to a more traditional educational approach will, I believe, help many children who are very poorly served at the moment.

I find it hilarious to have a thread title with DC and back passage. No wonder the conventional media gets all sniffy about MN the new media.

probonbon - the significant thing about Carol Vorderman in my eyes is that it shows up a desire for 'gloss' rather than an education policy based on children's need.

My kids' school is a really interesting one - it gets 'satisfactory' Ofsteds, comes halfway up the league tables, but turns out children who are interested in a whole lot more than the requirements of the Y6 Sats results. Which is one of the reasons we chose it. We had the choice of that school or one which came top of the league tables NATIONALLY, and always gets outstanding in Ofsted, but we preferred the ethos of this school.

I totally understand that some children are being let down by schools. I don't see how this leads to a need to 'return to traditional methods' per se. There just doesn't seem to have been any examination of the problems that cause under-achievement in schools, or evaluation of what might be the best solution. My own feeling is that forcing teachers to teach an ever-narrowing curriculum in an ever-narrowing style is going to stifle the fantastic teachers there are, not encourage potential great teachers into the field, and encourage a 'one size fits all' which doesn't work - a teacher needs to vary their methods according to the needs of their class, and Whitehall simply can't know what's going to work and what isn't.

Lily - parenting and poverty causes under achievement in schools imo and ime.

As for 'forcing teachers to teach an ever-narrowing curriculum in an ever-narrowing style' we have to do that already, and we do vary our methods according to the needs of the class - dur! How else do we think we teach?

Whitehall doesn't know what works as exemplified by the total hash Labour (with the exception of Charles Clarke) have made of education.

Have a look at the new RE GCSE syllabus for example - all the bits that made it RE have gone to be replaced by lessons on government action to promote community cohesion in the UK.

I still want to cry each time I look at the new syllabus.

Happymumofone - if they DID scrap tax credits it would not be worth my while working pure and simple. My son has ASD and I had to reduce my work hours to meet his needs. Tax credits are NOT going thankfully but if they did I would resign tomorrow and live off the tax payer. Okay?

It really pisses me off when people fortunate enough (evidently) NOT to need tax credits think that those of us getting them are somehow receiving "benefits" and should be working extra hours in order not to need them. If you have a nice life and healthy children with no extra needs then great but don't begrudge those of us NOT in that enviable position and prattling off ill informed opinions. Open your eyes and take a good look around you at how some of us HAVE to live before passing judgements.

Rant over.

The answer to your question is "yes, he is talking out of his backside". Now let me go and read what it was about on this occasion.

scaryteacher - not having a go at teachers! But do you really think having a requirement to have your pupils sitting in rows reciting kings and queens of england is going to solve those problems?

How you seat your students is down to you - I use rows when I want them to do a written lesson, especially at GCSE where there is not enough lesson time given; and sometimes the desks are in pairs, and sometimes in a U shape. Depends on the class really.

Reciting hasn't happened for a long time, and that wasn't what Gove was advocating. He was talking about teaching history as a narrative/continuum, which I agree with, rather than dotting all over the place. The UK (and England) has a rich and varied history, and it deserves to be taught. 20th century history is covered in year 9 and if the students continue to GCSE they deepen their knowledge of it. Looking at when people lived can hook the interest for later...I did A level history in Tudors and Stuarts, and would have been happy had it all been on Plantagenets and Tudors as that period fascinates me, entirely due to an inspiring history teacher at A level who made sure we learned the names and dates of the Kings and Queens of England from 1461-1660. This was also useful when I was teaching KS3 history and could just whip through the list off the top of my head when asked.

I really don't think the Tories will be micro managing to the extent that they proscribe how the kids are seated. However, they may release the curriculum from it's current straitjacket and inject some breadth into what we teach. Hopefully, they'll make Edexcel rewrite the GCSE RE syllabus as well.

To actually give an answer to what the OP was asking;

"On BBC 1 now- talking about how the Conservative Party will sort this country out once and for all.

Well, will they?? or is it all hot air? "

in the original post because I don't believe I did, I got caught up in other bits, the answer is No, he's not talking out of his behind and yes, the conservatives will sort the country out (maybe not once and for all because labour might get in again at some point and bankrupt us again) they did it last time when labour near bankrupted us and they will do it this time now that labour have spent all the money the conservatives left in the pot and the 1.3 trillion bill we have to pay off because they couldn't stop spending.

I find it hard to believe that Gove has any idea about education and the real issues facing schools today. I have much more faith in Ed Balls.

gosh i have no faith in Ed Balls at all, none at all

"gosh i have no faith in Ed Balls at all, none at all "

Me either, his name says it all really.

Still, on the bright side Balls is in a marginal seat and from what's being said they don't think he'll be back after the election.

Gove has a very good handle on the bigger picture - ie the problems facing us as a nation as a result of the failure of Labour's education policy.

not with regard to Education. I think Ed Balls has much more understanding.

gosh Cornsilk, why ever would you think that?

"I think Ed Balls has much more understanding."

I don't understand how you can think that given his track record, teaching children to google and twitter is not more important than teaching them the basics, he's just done another u-turn, this time on sex-ed for infants (thanks to Gove), his 'happiness' classes are a joke.

He's also been forced to drop the 'teaching licences' by Gove, along with other measures like changing history and geography into 'areas of learning'.

Gove wins 2 sets to love me thinks.

What exactly do they mean by teaching them the basics? Their manifesto is so woolly. I don't think they know themselves what they actually intend to do. They are telling voters what they want to hear.

Just marking a place so I can keep track of the thread, interesting reading.