Striking Teachers Describe Lack of Resources and Underfunding

Last week Britain’s teachers joined the other workers in taking strike action over decades of poor pay and increasingly deteriorating conditions. And naturally, the right-wing media and YouTubers sneered and complained. One berk who phoned up Mike Graham on LBC radio claimed to have been married to a teacher, but that they were actually well-paid with plenty of spare time and holidays. This was pounced on immediately by various left-wing YouTubers, who pointed out that teachers don’t have plenty of spare time, because they’re still required to work after the official end of the school day, on things like sports and so on. Plus they have to take the kids’ schoolwork home for marking. This means that in practice they’re working much longer than their official hours. I know, as my mother was one. Another pratt appeared on GB News or some other right-wing internet news channel to claim that they were being selfish and should put up with low wages like others were doing. But, he said, he would have been prepared to support them if they had been striking over the poor conditions and state of Britain’s schools. Michael Walker of Novara Media pulled that one to shreds, stating that teachers couldn’t actually do that by law. Current British legislation states that workers can only strike over pay and conditions, not over anything else.

But the state of Britain’s schools has always been a major concern to teachers aside from their own personal interests. It was one of the reasons behind the teachers’ strike when Thatcher was in power in the 1980s, and it’s a major cause of their discontent now. I also found a video on YouTube, in which they describe how underfunded schools are and the shortages of necessary teaching equipment and resources this causes. I can’t put it up here, as I’ve since lost it unfortunately, but I hope you’ll accept what I’m saying.

Schools have been underfunded and teachers poorly paid for a very long time, because Thatcherite ideology doesn’t like state education. Hence the transition of schools from the state sector, run by the local authority, to academies, managed by private companies. The companies owning them are often in tax havens, and these schools are frequently no better than the state management they replace. In fact many were so dreadful themselves that the chains running them collapsed and they had to be taken back into state management. But this hasn’t deterred the Tories. A few years ago, mad-eyed Nikki Morgan wanted to bring back grammar schools and but that was quashed. The idea is still out there, however, floating around on the right.

The point here is that teachers aren’t just striking for themselves, but because they are acutely aware of how poorly the state education sector is being treated by decades of Thatcherite mismanagement, cuts and underfunding. They aren’t striking because they want to harm the education of the children they teach by stopping work, but to force the government into treating schools fairly.

There’s also a class element there as well. Private school fees have rocketed while funding of state schools has remained level. This means that the rich are receiving a much more expensive, and presumably better education, than state pupils. This may allow them to position themselves as in a natural position to take up top jobs and social positions than all those pesky state students.

So when you hear the Tories whinge about teachers, remember: they want state schools and their staff to be poor, so that their pupils will always remain, compared to them, at the back of the class in terms of jobs and prospects.

Diane Abbott’s ‘Whites Like to Divide and Rule’ Comment

Discussing the ongoing riots between Muslims and Hindus in Leicester, I have said that I believe that part of the problem comes from politicians’ and anti-racist groups’ exclusive focus on White racism. This, I believe, was shown a few years ago during a Labour party gathering when an Asian man asked Diane Abbott if Labour would do more to tackle racism amongst ethnic communities. Abbott refused, stating that Whites would use it to divide and rule. Searching through YouTube for this exchange, I regret that I’ve been unable to find it. But I did discover other occasions where she stated that Whites liked to divide and rule.

She seems to have first uttered it in 2012 during a twitter exchange with another Black woman about the sentencing of the accused in the Stephen Lawrence murder. The other lady objected to statements about the Black community, as if they were all a monolithic group. Abbott replied that she understood that, but that ‘Whites like to divide and rule’. She was challenged on that statement by various Tories in parliament, who called her racist and demanded that she should resign. Andrew Neil also tackled her about it, in the company of Michael Portillo and an Asian guest, on his programme. Abbott tried to excuse it by saying that she was really talking about 19th century colonialism, but she was unable to state this precisely because of the 140-word limit on Twitter. But as Neil pointed out, did she didn’t put it in the past tense. She used the present. And she continued to repeat it. She stated that Black people need to unite, because the races with the greatest cohesion succeed while Whites like to divide and rule. And two years ago, she repeated the same statement when calling for all of Britain’s ethnic minorities to unite against White racism.

Here’s a video from ‘Bin the Labour Party’ of Abbott making her racist statement. I definitely do not endorse the channel or its sentiments, but this video is very useful for what it shows about Abbott’s racial attitudes in this regard.

While I can see the logic behind her statement, I still believe very strongly that Abbott’s exclusive focus on White racism against Blacks, Asians and other ethnic minorities, and those of anti-racist activists like her, have brought Britain to the current climate of racial tension today. Nothing was done about the ideologies entering Britain’s ethnic communities, such as Islamism and the Hindutva fascism of Modi’s Indian BJP and others. It didn’t suit their purpose. And the result is that gangs of Muslims and Hindu youths – not the entire communities, as the mayor of Leicester also said on GB News – are tearing each other apart on Leicester’s streets.

As an aside, one of the interviewers on GB News – I think it may have been Mike Graham – in the interview with the Mayor of Leicester claimed that half the people arrested during the riots were foreigners. No, said the good mayor, ‘they came from Birmingham’. Graham thought that some of the trouble came from Gujeratis who had entered the country through Portugal and had Portuguese passports. One of the commenters on that exchange on YouTube knew some of the Asians Graham was talking about. They were Christian Goans, who spoke Portuguese. And as Christians, they weren’t going to join either side in the fighting.

Mitch Benn’s Satirical Song about Piers Moron’s Return to Television

Mitch Benn’s a YouTuber who specialises in satirical songs and monologues making very pointed comments about contemporary issues, including Brexit and the utter incompetence, self-interest and sheer contempt for the poor of the Tory party. In this video he takes aim squarely at the advert popping up trying to get us to watch Piers Morgan, former editor of the Mirror during the ‘City Slickers’ share-ramping scandal, breakfast television host and right-wing pundit. Benn makes the point that, contrary to what Moron’s supporters and the Tory media say, he very definitely isn’t a lone voice standing up against the left and political correctness or wokism, or whatever. Rather, Moron is just one of a slew of right-wing pundits, personalities and blowhards, including Mike Graham, Jeremy Clarkson and Julia Hartley-Brewer, among too many others. And opposite him, representing the left, is, er, James O’Brien on LBC. Here’s the video.

Novara Media Discuss Mike Graham Telling Listeners Concrete Grows

Last week LBC’s right-wing mouthpiece, Mike Graham, provided the British public with some unintentional hilarity when he solemnly informed the world that concrete grows. Graham was interviewing a young man from Insulate Britain. He started off with a barbed comment, asking the chap what he was glued to. The man calmly replied that it was just his screen at the moment. Graham then asked him what he did for a living. As Zelo Street has already commented, Graham was clearly hoping the man was unemployed so he could give him a rant about getting off his backside and getting a job. This failed, because the chap did have a job: he was a carpenter, which uses wood, a sustainable material. Graham claimed that it wasn’t, because the trees were cut down. The carpenter replied that people planted more trees, which grew. Unlike other materials like concrete. It was at this point that common sense finally abandoned Graham’s skull, and he declared that concrete did, indeed, grow. This ended the interview, as the Insulate Britain man remained silent except for a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of the head. Graham then abruptly ended the interview, saying goodbye to him.

I realise that this bizarre incident has been covered several times elsewhere, such as on Zelo Street, but I thought my esteemed readers would want to see it for themselves. Here it is being discussed by Novara Media’s Michael Walker and Dalia Gebreal, whose minds are well and truly boggled by Graham’s ignorance. So boggled, in fact, that they play the clip of the short interview twice. Even more astonishing, LBC put the clip up on their Twitter page as an example of an Insulate Britain fail. Graham and LBC made monumental fools of themselves, and didn’t realise it! In fact, Zelo Street reported that Graham had gone on to another show to make the same stupid claim about concrete growing.

Now I’ve read SF stories in which buildings are grown using self-replicating nanomachines, but that’s far beyond our abilities at the moment. Not that I think Graham reads much SF. And concrete doesn’t grow at all.

But I think the main take-away lesson from this is what it shows about the level of knowledge of the people telling you that climate change isn’t happening.

Tory MP Faces Calls to Pay Reparations for Slavery on Family Plantation in Barbados

I put up a piece a few days ago commenting on a video put up on YouTube by Talk Radio. This featured host Mike Graham and Rod Liddle discussing the compilation of a Dictionary of British Slave Traders by Lancaster and Manchester Universities and University College London under Professor Pettigree. As you could probably guess, this pair of right-wingers definitely weren’t in favour of it. They called it ‘self-flagellating’ and the obsession with slavery ‘imbecilic’. They were of the opinion that it was a move to attack White Englishmen, with Graham fearing that it would lead to perfectly decent people vilified and hounded out of their jobs because one of their ancestors invested all of £5 in the slave trade 300 years ago.

Unfortunately, as I said in my blog piece, this is a real danger. When I was working at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum I was faced with just this problem. I found material that suggested that the ancestors of someone I knew were involved in the slave trade. I was strongly advised against telling them for the reason that they personally were very strongly anti-racist and the news would upset them. I took the advice. I can see real, bitter outrage and anger erupting if someone starts pressing ordinary people, who may themselves be struggling, to pay reparations. Especially if the person demanding the money are richer.

But I also felt that behind Graham’s and Liddle’s outrage was the fear that wealthier individuals may be faced with demands for reparations. And it seems I was right about the very rich facing them. Or at least one member of the very rich. According to today’s Groan, the Tory MP for south Dorset, Richard Drax, has indeed been called upon to pay reparations for the enslaved workers his family owned on their plantation, Drax Hall, in Barbados, between 1640 and 1836. Drax has just inherited the estate and added it to the registry of members’ interests. He is the wealthiest landowner in the Commons worth £150 million. Caricom,the Caribbean Community Reparations Committee has called on Drax to acknowledge the wealth his family made from slavery and pay reparations. The chair of the Commission and vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary Beckles, said “If Richard Drax was in front of me now, I would say: ‘Mr Drax, the people of Barbados and Jamaica are entitled to reparatory justice… Black life mattered only to make millionaires of English enslavers and the Drax family did it longer than any other elite family.” The Barbadian ambassador to Caricom, David Comissiong, also said  “This was a crime against humanity and we impose upon him [Mr Drax] and his family a moral responsibility to contribute to the effort to repair the damage.”

See: Reparations row MP adds plantation to his register of members’ interests | Slavery | The Guardian

Prof. Beckles is a very respected historian of slavery. I came across his work way back when I was at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum, and can recommend his work, though they may be a little too academic for some readers. This story does suggest that while Graham and Liddle presented the Dictionary of British Slave Traders as a danger to ordinary White English Brits, the White English Brits they’re really afraid for are the extremely rich. Like Tory MP Drax. And while I’m afraid that the obsession with exposing past British slavers will lead to the demonisation and embarrassment of ordinary people for events over 180 years and more in the past, I have absolutely got no problem with the rich facing demands for reparations. I do wonder, however, at some of the practicalities. To whom and how can you make reparations for centuries of enslavement and exploitation?

Conservative Hack Helen Dale Smears Labour with Fake Connection to ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’

The right-wing media just can’t resist pushing the anti-Semitism smears any way they can. But yesterday this reached a new low on Mike Graham’s programme on LBC. Graham was talking to Ozzie Conservative Helen Dale about Suzanne Moore’s departure from the Guardian, and a piece the veteran feminist had written in retaliation. Moore’s crime was that she had written a piece stating that she did not regard transwomen as real women. This is obviously intensely controversial and the subject of much acrimonious debate and horrendous, personal abuse. J.K. Rowling has been vilely accused of hatred and wishing to harm transwomen simply for stating this view, even though she said so in a tweet that wished transfolk to live the best lives they could, dress however they want and sleep with anyone who would have them. At the heart of the controversy is the issue of what defines womanhood and who has access to women’s spaces.

Dale and Graham clearly found it ironic that someone from the censorious left should find herself censored in turn. Dale went on to say how surprising it was for her to share a view with Moore in this, as Dale herself is a Conservative and not a feminist. She then went on to say that she found the whole notion of the patriarchy problematic, as it sounded like a conspiracy. And her she made the smear about the Protocol of Elders of Zion. Because feminists’ idea of the patriarchy was similar to the bogus piece of conspiracy literature, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This nasty forgery, concocted by the monk Nilus in the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, in order to encourage Nicholas II to be even more persecutory in his treatment of Russian Jews, has been the inspiration for countless Fascist and anti-Semitic movements. And according to Dale, it was behind the anti-Semitism in the Labour party.

She says this in a video of her interview with Graham put up yesterday, ‘Young people believe being called a slur is the same as physical assault,’ says Helen Dale, at around 1.42 or so in.

No! The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were definitely not part of the anti-Semitism controversy in Labour.

I’ve said again and again that Corbyn and his supporters were anti-racists, and opponents of anti-Semitism, just as they opposed all forms of fascism. And they included plenty of Jews, such as the good peeps of Jewdas and Jewish Voice for Labour. Jackie Walker, who is one of the victims of the smear campaign, is both of a woman colour and Jew by birth and faith, as well as a veteran anti-racism campaigner. Marc Wadsworth, another victim of the smear campaign, is also a longstanding anti-racism campaigner. He’s Black, and in the 1980s worked with the Board of Deputies to bring in legislation to stamp out genuine anti-Semitic attacks made by members of the NF and/or BNP in London. Neither of them, like so many of Corbyn’s other supporters, should ever have been accused of anti-Semitism. And as for the wretched Protocols, it may well be very likely that they’ve been the victims of people whose view of Jews has been poisoned by it.

They certainly haven’t been influenced by it themselves.

But it is true that the anti-Semitism smears were made by the self-proclaimed British Jewish establishment, the Board, Chief Rabbinate and other organisations, as a way of deflecting criticism away from Israel for its oppression of the indigenous Arabs. This has been the standard tactic of the Israel lobby since the 1980s. They obviously can’t defend Israel’s actions, so the only way they can nullify such criticism is to claim that those, who stand up for the Palestinians like Corbyn, must be anti-Semites.

This is despite the fact that many of the opponents of Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians are self-respecting Jews.

The vilification of Corbyn’s gentile supporters is vile enough, but the smearing and abuse of his Jewish supporters has been particularly so. Many of them have been the victims of real anti-Semitic abuse and violence, as have their gentile friends and allies. But these people have been reviled as ‘self-hating’. And the accusation that they are anti-Semitic is particularly noxious and harmful given Jews’ centuries of persecution.

I am absolutely sure that the vast majority of Corbyn’s supporters heartily loath the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They know what it is, and the immense pain and suffering it has caused. And for Dale to claim that they were the inspiration for anti-Semitism in the Labour party is a new low. Though I note that she was very careful not to say Corbyn or any single individual was inspired by them. Obviously she didn’t want m’learned friends to get involved, and get sued for libel.

Starmer’s now in power in the Labour party, but the right-wing media and political establishment are still terrified of Corbyn and his supporters in the party. Hence the use of this lie to smear them. Which shows how desperate and utterly ideologically bankrupt they are. Thatcher’s precious neoliberalism is zombie economics. It should have ended decades ago, and the Tories know it.

And the only way they can stop people realising this is to distract them with poisonous lies about Labour anti-Semitism.

Julia Hartley-Brewer Sneers as Greta Thunberg Visits Bristol

Yesterday, Norwegian schoolgirl eco-warrior and global phenomenon Greta Thunberg visited my hometown, the fair city of Bristol. She was due to speak at College Green by City Hall in Bristol, before leading a march through town to the Tobacco Factory. This was exactly what it’s called, but the tobacco industry has just about vanished from Bristol, and it is now a theatre. Many of the city’s schools gave their pupils the day off so that they could join her. Her visit was naturally the main focus of the local news yesterday. Thousands went to see her, and it was a real family event. Parents and grandparents also went, and took their children and grandchildren. The teenage organisers, who had invited her, were interviewed. They were intelligent and articulate. One of them, a young man, was given the opportunity by the local TV crew to appear again promoting another, different, but equally important issue. The lad had said that he wished there was the same kind of crowds and interest for combating knife crime. He’s absolutely right, as this is a plague claiming and wrecking young people’s lives up and down the country. So the crew told him to wait a moment while they found someone he could talk to about this. With luck this should lead to positive developments so that in a few months’ time or however long, he should be back with us organising a mass campaign against that issue.

Thunberg’s visit was an historic occasion for the city. The people going enjoyed it, and it will doubtless have delighted Mayor Marvin and the other members of the council, who are trying to turn Bristol into one of the world’s leading Green cities. I didn’t go, as I still have this stinking cold, though I didn’t really feel like attending anyway. But I’m glad for the people, who did.

One person, who definitely didn’t approve of Thunberg’s visit was TalkRadio right-wing mouthpiece and howling snob, Julia Hartley-Brewer. According to Zelo Street, Hartley-Dooda got very sneering about the whole affair on Twitter. First she retweeted Mike Graham, another right-wing TalkRadio entity calling Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a ‘plank’, because he was in Bristol with his sister and family to support the demo. Dooda herself then issue the following Tweet explaining why she wouldn’t let her daughter go on the march:

“If my child wanted to join a school #ClimateStrike I’d expect her to: 1. Know enough to pass a test on climate change facts 2. Agree to give up fashion, all lifts home & all holiday flights 3. Even if she did both 1 & 2, I still wouldn’t let her bunk off school”.

She had to sneer at the Beeb’s coverage of pro-Brexit demonstrations, stating

“‘At least 30,000 people.’ Or, if it was the same size crowd at a pro-Brexit rally in a BBC report, ‘hundreds of people’”.

She then sneered at the people, who did attend, with this tweet

“There’s something about the people attending this #climatestrike by #BristolYS4C with #Greta that I can’t quite put my finger on… Gosh, now what *is* it? I wonder if [Jon Snow] or a BBC reporter could help out?” This was followed by “Nope, I still can’t work out what it is. It’s on the tip of my tongue but…”

This was accompanied by photos of the crowd. If she’s trying to imply that they were somewhat lacking in charisma or shoddily dressed or whatever, she’s seriously missed the mark. They don’t look like anything to me except severely normal people with their hoods and anoraks on getting soaked.

She then retweeted a piece by someone called Ben Pile, who completely denies the existence of global warming and who had attacked George Monbiot:  “George invents victims of climate change in Bangladesh and Ethiopia … Both countries have in fact boomed over the last two decades”.

She then followed this by retweeting Darren Grimes, who was in turn responding to Guido Fawkes and their endorsement of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which, you will not be surprised, also denies the existence of global warming. Grimes was moaning that, thanks to environmental concerns, Britain couldn’t build an additional airport even though with contribute less than 1% to global emissions.

The Sage of Crewe concludes of her rather mean-spirited behaviour

‘But seriously, this is a sad show of inconsiderate selfishness by someone who is regularly given a platform by major broadcasters. Just because Ms Hartley Dooda wants to carry on with her long-haul jollies doesn’t invalidate the scale of the climate crisis. And the only reason she seems concerned about the Coronavirus is because that, too, could prevent her jetting off to embark on another exhibition of conspicuous consumption.

Julia Hartley Dooda cares. But only about Herself Personally Now.’

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/02/julia-hartley-dooda-spooked-by-teenager.html

In fact, the event seems to have been positively received by very many teachers and educationalists. Many of the group that organised it, a group of youth climate strike activists, came from Chew Valley school. Chew Valley is the name of one of the neighbouring villages outside the city. The school said that they had been given time off for the pupils to go. One of the girls involved, a 17-year old, was given an honorary doctorate by Bristol University for her work researching birds and working for their preservation. Another teacher, who was going with his pupils, said that they were incorporating the visit into the curriculum. This apparently covers the environment and ecology. Thunberg’s visit was also important to the citizenship part of the curriculum as well, because it is an example of the right to protest.

But as a right-wing Murdoch hack, Dooda doesn’t believe in global warming or cares about the environment, because doing so gets in the way of those all-important corporate profits. It’s an attitude obviously shared by Grimes and the Paul Staines’ collective. Pile pointing to Bangladesh and Ethiopia experiencing significant economic growth is, as Zelo Streets points out, a piece of misdirection. Climate change doesn’t necessarily prevent it. But it does mean a deterioration in the environment and living conditions for those countries hit by it. Bangladesh may well be experiencing a boom at the same time it’s threatened by rising sea levels.

As for organisations like the Global Warming Policy Foundation, they are very definitely in the minority. The vast majority of scientists believe that global warming is an established fact. Groups like the Foundation, on the other hand, tend to be the pet scientists set up and funded by big business in order to protect themselves and their profits. The Koch brothers set up a number of fake ‘astroturf’ right-wing grassroots organisations and research groups denying climate change, in order to protect their companies in the fossil fuel industry.  I dare say the GWPF is a similar organisation, whose findings should be taken with the same scepticism given to the pronouncements of the various medical research groups funded by the tobacco industry, which told everyone that there was no link between ciggies and cancer.

And just looking through one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham a few weeks ago, I came across an academic book about environmental decline and the effects of global warming. The information supporting its existence is out there, if Hartley-Brewer cares to look.

But she won’t. Because that might show her that unrestrained capitalism isn’t completely good and benign, and that she herself might have to change her behaviour to save the planet. Like stop jetting around to exclusive, exotic resorts to show how much wealthier she is than the rest of us.

Everybody in Bristol seems to have had a great time yesterday, despite Dooda’s determination to sneer at it all. I hope the world pays attention to them, than hacks like her. Which will not only annoy Dooda herself, but her master, Murdoch. And that, like fighting climate change, is itself a noble goal.