Gove as the Justice Secretary

[sunnydayinmay]

Remind me what the Justice Secretary does?

Well, to be fair, he won't be able to do a worse job than Grayling.

I agree that Grayling was truly dreadful at the job, but it is entirely possible for Gove to take dreadfulness to a whole new level. Anyone who thinks it appropriate to scrap the Human Rights Act and who wants to bring back hanging is capable of taking us back 100 years.

Fennybridges, I'm not sure that the Conservatives plan on coming out of the European Convention on Human Rights. Given that we were responsible for it and Churchill was a major force in bringing it into being, that would be an extremely radical step and I doubt that it's one the Tories want to take.

Ha ha ha …. So many questions, including ” How the fuck has he still got a job?! What does he know about Cameron?!!”

Well it was a relatively new job description in 2007 and yet another Blair/Brown ‘it weren’t broke but lets fix it’ reforms, arguably less damaging than Brown’s financial services reforms forming the FSA, that led to the over leveraged balance sheet of our banks.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_Justice

”Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Justice is a senior position in the cabinet of the United Kingdom, held in conjunction with the office of Lord Chancellor since it was created in 2007, replacing the former post of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. On 9 May 2007, the Department for Constitutional Affairs was abolished, and a Ministry of Justice was created in its place. The Ministry of Justice is also responsible for certain functions transferred from the Home Office.”

”The then Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, was appointed to the post of Secretary of State for Justice on the abolition of his position as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. The Home Secretary, John Reid, told Parliament that future Secretaries of State for Justice would be MPs rather than peers."

So the first person to hold it was Labour’s Lord Falconer who used to sleep with Tony Blair and knew all his dirty laundry (when they shared a flat together lol) – and how competent was he;

”Blair's reforming reshuffle”
• Job of lord chancellor abolished after 1,400 years
•Law lords to be replaced by US-style supreme court
•Falconer gets new post amid claims of botch-up
•Blair's reshuffle sets a reforming style
www.theguardian.com/society/2003/jun/13/publicservices.constitution

With claims of Falconer’s new post “botch-up”, no doubt he would have been one of the ‘legal eagles’ advising Blair’s ‘sofa government’ on the legalities of the Iraqi War, the need for UN Resolutions - and the putting together of Labour’s dodgy dossiers on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction to both justify their actions and get parliamentary support.
www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/10/alastair-campbell-iraq-dossier-inquiry

So when comparing Labour’s Lord Falconer and the rest of their legal team with Gove, and least under Gove ‘no one died’ yet – something no one can say on his predecessors back then, and even now as an Iraq in constant turmoil looks to sort out the Labour/Blair legacy, the body count continues.

Gove will be as big a disaster in this role as he was at Education. He has an arrogance about him that is completely unjustified. He believes that he knows best and if you dared to disagree with him then you were accused of being against change or raising standards.

He has a habit of ignoring professionals, such is his arrogance and so, given that he is not a lawyer, I fully expect him to pxss off the legal profession royally.

As regards the Iraq war, have you read any of his writings about Iraq? He was and still remains a massive supporter of it (as it appears he is of any war - read his ramblings about the First World War and his hatred of Blackadder Goes Forth!). So judging by your comment, he'll fit right in there!!

Hmmmm... I guess we'll have to agree to disagree that UK education was going so well before Gove; 580,000 unemployed 16-24 year olds early 2004, 710,000 unemployed before the financial crash and well over 900,000 before the 2010 General Election - spot the (upward) trend when a Labour government found work for 2-3 million net, new citizens, ragging about the record numbers employed?

In the private sector and a business with those numbers, especially with the budget having been doubled - if 'the professionals' in charge were telling you changes weren't needed - they'd join the 16-24 years old the State failed, down the job centre.

Re the deflection of Gove luvs wars and his arrogance, I'll give you arrogance, that Alastair Campbell the man who provided a 'dodgy dossier' of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction that the intelligence services used AND was instrumental in Labour getting MP's support for war with Iraq - was still within Labour's sofa leadership, up to 2-weeks ago, speaking on their behalf.

Although its not as if lives were lost due to Campbells arrogance, wait, there was and still is. Large stones in honking large Labour 'arrogance' glass houses?

Ahhh, the beloved stats from isitmebut and randomly chosen to make a point, the point being I assume that youth unemployment is because of Labour's education record. What an over simplistic view of the reasons for unemployment amongst youth and surely even you don't actually believe that. However I'm not bothering to get drawn into the reasons for youth unemployment because that diverts away from the point of this thread ie Gove.

I also note the nice try to again divert away from Gove to Alistair Campbell rather than address the issue.

It would be refreshing to see you post something in defence of Gove and where he has raised standards in education.

Sweden which has had free schools for over 20 years and which is the held up by Gove as being amazing with regard to education and is the model for free schools in the UK but performs worse than the UK. Quoting directly from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which reviews the extent to which students have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies. In 2012, PISA focused on examining students’ reading ability, skills in maths and level in sciences, as research shows that these skills are more reliable predictors of economic and social well-being than the number of years spent in school. The average student in Sweden scored 482 in reading literacy, maths and sciences, below the OECD average of 497. Whilst in the UK, The average student scored 502 in reading literacy, maths and sciences, higher than the OECD average of 497. Also, in 2014 the global survey of education systems, the UK education system was 6th whilst the Swedish education system dropped 3 places from 21st to 24th.

Election .... I'm "diverting away from the point of this thread i.e. Gove" am I? Look at your opening line of your previous post, fool.

You don't have to "get drawn away from the reasons for youth employment" as you can't defend the indefensible and you can take it from Tristram Hunt, not me, those entirely educated under Labour were failed by the State.
www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/labour-admits-great-crime-on-education-tristram-hunt-says-his-party-encouraged-schools-to-aim-too-low--and-pupils-paid-the-price-9053693.html

You look at the Swedish education system, I look at the rest of the world we compete with and how we equip our children for the workplace within a globally competitive work force - especially Europe

“England’s young adults trail the world in literacy and maths”.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24433320

”Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.”

”A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts.”

”England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10631728/Pupils-cannot-count-out-change-due-to-poor-maths-skills.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9322525/School-leavers-unable-to-function-in-the-workplace.html

And maybe things are looking up, as they could not have got much worse under Labour e.g. 24th was the bottom.

*“Poor pupils narrow achievement gap, league tables show”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30413263

“More disadvantaged pupils in England's primary schools are moving on to secondary school able to read, write and add up, official data shows.”

“Two-thirds of pupils (67%) on free school meals gained a Level 4 in reading, writing and maths this year - up four percentage points on 2013.”

“This compares with 83% for non-disadvantaged pupils, reducing the attainment gap to 16 percentage points.”

“The data is based on tests taken by 11-year-olds in 16,000 schools.”

Isitmebut I didn't take you for a Mr T fan...................... but even if you are, your opening line is bewildering.

It is a thread about Mr Gove and his ability to be a competent minister.
It isn't a discussion on the education standards in the UK which can always do with improving (although there are also many reasons why students underachieve regardless of the standard of education - a different thread entirely).

I see you didn't reference where Sweden came in the OECD study. In case you forgot, significantly lower than the UK and that is after 20 odd years of free schools. Yes, free schools - the panacea for all education ills according to the messiah Gove.

I am disputing his ability to be a competent minister and make good decisions for the country based on his time spent at education.

Hold on - Michael, is that you??????

Election .... Of course I’m a fan of the T. Hunt, or any politician who admits their administration madea dogs breakfast of anything; I call him ‘Trist’, he calls me ‘Shout’, and we make music together.

FYI re Sweden, I wasn’t aware Mr Blair or Mr Gove and the academies/free schools were looking to exactly follow the Swedish education model, or what percentage of the UK schools rated by the OECD as internationally shite under Labour’s watch were such schools – but education in this country had to change.

Now as to the subject of the thread, the competence of Mr Gove or any other 2010 coalition, or 2015, minister.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Labour would have passed over any department ‘fit for purpose’ in 2010?

Budget Deficit; nope, despite valiant efforts by Darling to address it, Brown in denial.

Welfare/Benefits; nah, ballooned and unaffordable, yet frightened to make over due reforms they kept threatening.

NHS; sacrosanct , more than doubled budget, massive PFI debt, fewer NHS beds than the late 1990's, no reforms on the top heavy structure for 13-years.

Education; happy as pigs in shit, left wing government, left wing teaching establishment with a public sector trade union against any change from mediocrity - and had the front to strike with their end product.

Are you seeing this trend here Election, all the Ministers that took over responsibility for those 2010 failing stacks of shit from Labour ministers, were vilified over 5-years for their reforms Labour were too cowardly and intellectually stunted to attempt – orchestrated by those mostly still in the Shadow Cabinet, rather than tell their leader he was taking them in the wrong 2015 direction.

So don’t worry about intellectual big hitter Gove, worth any five Shadow Labour idiots who still failed over 13 unbroken years with huge resources/debt to implement their policies - given responsibility to bring in a British Bill of Rights, to replace the terrorists friend and confusingly interpreted Human Rights Act brought in by Blair in 1998 – overseen by judges of dubious quality within the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg.

No one in the UK can argue with the original purpose of the Human Rights Act, but cases show that it doesn’t always work for Britain by favouring the perpetrators of crime over the victims, and needs to be reformed.

Mr Gove is a controversialist. I would not take much of what he says literally. But I suppose he may run for the Tory leadership one day And that may be what his current stirring is about.