Gogwit's Blog

(satire – barely)

The government has announced a package of measures to boost the economy and reduce unemployment by making it easier for employers to kill and maim their staff.

The coalition is hoping by scrapping health and safety regulations more job opportunities will be created for the long-term unemployed by making it easier for employers to get rid of their existing workers by killing or seriously injuring them, in what the Government is calling a ‘blitz on blood-red tape.’

From April 2013, new binding rules on both the Health & Safety Executive and on local authorities, will exempt thousands of businesses from making sure their employees don’t lose parts of their bodies while at work.

Business Minister Michael Fallon said:

Today’s announcement injects fresh impetus into our drive to cut through the red tape preventing employers from maiming their staff. We have identified the parts of people’s bodies we…

The text below is the Workers’ Educational Association’s response to the Richard Review of Apprenticeships

Firstly the WEA welcomes the opportunity to consider feedback to government on the future of the apprenticeship programme.  It is very important that all who are involved in policy delivery have a clear and shared vision of the role of the modern apprenticeship programme in our education system, our economy and society.

Apprenticeships can benefit all sections of society and many occupational groups have newly adopted the apprenticeship scheme as a means of developing the skills we need for the future.  However participation in apprenticeships is very unequal whether you look at gender, ethnicity age or disability.

There are some gaps between supply and demand.  To address some of these gaps the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) strongly supports the emphasis on integrating wider learning into the workplace and the recognition of lifelong learning processes outlined…

Forget second hand furniture – the British Heart Foundation is the place to go if you want to understand the reality of workfare. I popped along to my local store this afternoon in the hope of speaking with someone about their experience of workfare. The policy director of the BHF had announced that every store had people on work placements from the government’s various schemes and so this seemed like a good place to start. Speaking with the manager, she looked around the room and counted those on Mandatory Work Activity, ‘1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 today’ she informed me, adding ‘we do have pure volunteers as well’. I certainly had come to the right place to witness workfare at work. Three men were at the back of the room hammering at a wardrobe, a young woman was answering the phone and arranging for donations to be collected by the van, another woman was…

It was announced in an article in the Birmingham Post earlier this month that the education scrutiny committee at Birmingham City Council will begin an inquiry into academies. Councillor Brigid Jones confirmed the plans today in a television interview for BBC Midlands Today. (Also reported were Birmingham City Council’s plans to develop a co-operative model that will bring together schools and academies in the city, there is more on this in an earlier post here).

The inquiry will be launched in September and will be headed by Councillor Anita Ward. The Birmingham Post reports that the inquiry will not be about whether the Council is for or against academies, but rather how they should deal with them.

The draft Inquiry Outline cites the key question as;

In the light of schools in Birmingham becoming academies what role should the council play to support all schools and children. New strategic…

You must have heard about the theory of 6 Degrees of Separation – you know the idea that everyone in the world is personally connected to anyone else on Earth by on average only six people.

There was even a Hollywood film and a game – Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon – in which everyone in Hollywood is given a ‘Bacon Number’ depending on whether they have worked on a film directly with the actor Kevin Bacon (Bacon Number 1) or has worked with someone else who has (Bacon Number 2) or worked with someone who has worked with someone who has worked on a film with him (Bacon Number 3) etc etc etc.

So what’s Kevin Bacon got to do with politics you may be wondering?

Well I’m old enough to remember the rise of the far-right National Front in the 1970s and its subsequent decline in the 1980s –…

This is a guest blog by Ruth Spellman, the WEA’s General Secretary

My vote for educational influencers would probably go to RH Tawney for all the reasons why I applied to become General Secretary of the WEA, and why I have had a lifetime’s commitment to improving access to learning.One of my favourite quotes from Tawney;“The purpose of the association is to provide for men and women who want to take their bearings on the world, opportunities of co-operative study, in congenial company, with a leader who knows enough of his business to be not only a leader but a fellow student.”

The quote has huge resonance today as more and more of our language and discourse is dominated by the need to re-examine short term returns, short term profits, short term gratification for the consumer, short term windfalls and bonuses.  Education (as Tawney reminds us) is a longer term investment enabling us to participate in and benefit from…

Grassroots Gauge is a Labour Left initiative to ascertain the views of the public on current affairs. A new question is posed every week, and this week’s question is about education, academies and free schools, so please click the link and let them know what you think.