A Tragic Mistake. Another One.

MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2008

A Tragic Mistake. Another One.

Government has been a tragic mistake

You need to sit down for this. You really do.

Out in Beijing, the Dear Leader praised Shanaze Reade, the 19-year-old BMX rider who lost out on an Olympic medal last week after crashing in sight of the winning line:

"She was not happy settling for a silver. She went full throttle for gold.

That is the spirit we want to encourage in our schools, not the medals for all culture we have seen in previous years, but more competition.

It was wrong because it didn't work. It was a tragic mistake in reducing the competitive element in sport. In sport, you get better by challenging yourself against other people. The competitive aspect in sport is crucial for success."

A Tragic Mistake.

You hardly know where to start.

It was socialist commissars just like Brown who forced our state schools to abandon competitive sports back in the sixties and seventies. It was socialist commissars just like him who then denied they'd done so. And it was socialist commissars just like him who ignored the fact that independent schools - which retained competition - have routinely provided around half our medallists, even though they only educate 7% of our children.

When it comes to Tragic Mistakes, you simply can't beat a socialist commissar. From the Great Famines caused by crackpot agricultural policies, to tens of millions of deaths caused by Great Leaps Backwards, to whole generations dragged down by social engineering experiments in schools, the commissars are in a brutal dogmatic incompetent league of their own (see this blog for further discussion).

So having finally confessed the error of his ways* on competitive sport, will Brown now draw the much more general conclusion? Will he now recognise the central importance of competition right across our education system? Will he accept that government has no place in education, other than funding poor kids?

Somehow it seems unlikely. The continuing tragedy of state education looks safe in his hands.

But at least the Tories are now promising real change in schools, with the adoption of the Swedish model. Let's hope they mean what they say.

*Footnote. So does Brown actually accept he's one of the people responsible for the abolition of competition in school sports? We haven't seen his full speech but there's more than a hint that he blames nameless zealots further down the "chain of command" - he and the other top commissars never intended their brilliant ideas for a better world should be interpreted in such a hopeless and destructive manner. Which is of course the David Irving defence - the Fuhrer never ordered the Holocaust, and could hardly be held responsible for the madness of those below him. Cf Tesco government, where the buck always stops with the top guy.

Crime In The Hood

As you may know, the Met Police have just launched their new interactive crime mapping for London. The idea is that you can go online, check out just how crime ridden your hood actually is, and decide where you should move to.

Well, no, actually crime mapping has been copied from the States, where it was a key component in the highly successful policing revolution launched in New York in the early 90s. Over there it proved a vital tool in the direction of police resources to crime hotspots, and in focusing public pressure for action. In other words, it's something we desperately need here.

So congrats to Sir Ian for introducing it.

And in a spirit of thanks and celebration, we asked our man on the Hill to test drive it. Does it correspond to his perception of crime down his own particularly mean streets?

Straightway he was puzzled. On the Met's crime map, Primrose Hill is coloured blue, which means it's a "below average" crime area. But how could that possibly be? Below average crime for an area that's so scary the residents have to hire private security guards?

So he clicked the link to the underlying stats. And here's what he found (the first three columns relate to the 12 months to June 2008, and the second three to the 12 months to June 2007):

Now, can you by any chance spot the jump-off-the-page-and-smack-you-in-the-gob pattern?

Yes, correct. For both 2007 and 2008, his hood (Camden Town with Primrose Hill) had a much higher crime rate than both Camden generally, and the Met as a whole, FOR EVERY SINGLE CATEGORY OF CRIME. Every single one.

So... er... on what basis has the Met categorised the Hill as a below average crime area? And what must the above average crime areas be like?

Sheer blithering incompetence or outright lies?

Frankly, it makes little difference.

But how much longer must we tolerate bungling Blair?

Crock Of Lies

Your taxes still supporting King Kev

Remember all those official assurances about how our £100bn would be safe with the Crock? The huge deluge of "comfort" from our rulers and betters that the guarantees would cost us nothing?

No?

Well, here's a reminder (and see all previous Crock blogs gathered here):

• FSA - "We believe [Northern Rock] is solvent, meets all capital requirements, and has a good quality loan book." (FSA chairman Callum McCarthy 17.9.07)
• Darling - "Bank of England lending is secured against Northern Rock's assets such as high quality mortgages, assessed by the Financial Services Authority as being of good quality" (21.01.08)
• Brown - "Most people agree that Northern Rock has a quite high-quality loan book and I can assure you that our aim in all of this is to secure the best deal for the British taxpayer." (20.01.08)
• Cooper (Yvette, not Tommy... or was it the other way round?) - the guarantees "have not been called upon, so they've not actually created any cost for the taxpayer"(18.2.08)

Wellwaddyaknow?

Now we hear that their advisors, Goldman Sachs, told them months ago, and well before February's formal nationalisation:

"that in a “base case scenario” the Treasury would be left with a “net subsidy” to the bank of some £1.28 billion."

And from the sound of it, that base case did not envisage a recession - now inevitable - and did not envisage anything like a 25% house price crash - now pretty well the consensus view. So £1.28bn will just be the down-payment.

In truth, nobody sensible ever believed those official assurances in the first place. But we now have confirmation that ministers were not just naive and incompetent - they lied through their teeth.

The wonder is that 25% of voters still seem to think these lying tossers are fit to rule us.