Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

last time labour was in power in London under a tory government at westminster, the latter abolished the GLC.

There's a common thread running through all of this and he did his best to derail the Khan campaign this time around. I just can't imagine Khan running London is such a boneheaded, obviously self-destructive way as Livingstone did.

It'll be weird having a mayor who isn't a self-promoting arsehole, actually.

Ooft http://twitter.com/Jemima_Khan/status/728650886050922496

Who is she? Why has she named herself Goldsmith and Khan?

she's Zac's sister and ex wife of Imran.

As the result became clear, Conservatives turned on Goldsmith’s campaign. Former Conservative party chairman, Lady Warsi described it as an “appalling dog whistle campaign” and said it “lost us the election, our reputation and credibility on issues of race and religion”.

Roger Evans, the outgoing deputy mayor, said Goldsmith’s “very foolish” campaign left a “negative legacy which we in London are going to have to clear up long after the people who ran Zac Goldsmith’s campaign have gone on their way”.

It would have been a bit more meaningful to criticise him at the time rather than post-getting his sorry arse whupped.

In fairness, Warsi has been vocally critical for quite some time.

This is, above all else, a genuinely significant historical moment.Has any European capital had a Muslim mayor before?

sarajevo

Constantinople

the prefectural capital bradfordabad, wilayat bradfordistan, people's republic of south yorkshire

Letterkenny

Muslim mayors of Europe is my new band

(west yorkhire) xps

http://zeri.info/uploads/images/2015/February/16/auto_ahmeti_vllasaliu11424085997.jpg

http://www.kosovapress.com/public/uploads/image/520x320/aaaa-shpend-ahmeti-dhe-gold-ag.jpg

Shpend A. Ahmeti (born 18 April 1978) is a prominent politician of Kosovo. He was leader of the New Spirit Party, which has since been merged into Vetëvendosje!, of which he is vice chairman. He is currently the Mayor-elect of Pristina. Ahmeti ended 15 years of LDK tenure in the capital of Kosovo. Ahmeti lectured public policy at the American University in Kosovo until he became mayor.[2][3][4]

In the first round of elections on 3 November 2013, Ahmeti was some 8,000 votes behind Isa Mustafa, but in the second round on 1 December 2013 he won by some 2,500 votes. Mustafa accused Ahmeti of fraud.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]

can we get confirmation that Dick Whittington was radicalised whilst trading in Yemen?

He was turned around, yes.

And so it begins https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/728974667852201984

stoked for the chilcot madness on july 6

wonder if this will keep the blairites quiet for the summer or not

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-stern-weiner-norman-finkelstein/american-jewish-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scanda

Is this fair about Shah and Livingstone?

It's Norman Finkelstein. Enough said?

Linked that on the anti-semitism thread - mostly otm.

Because I have nothing better to do I looked at the Euro 2016 fixture list and it appears that England will have two opportunities to get themselves knocked out of the tournament before the Brexit referendum. If they win their group they could exit the tournament the day before the referendum itself.

Considering that, Glastonbury, and the fact that hundreds of thousands of students could be between constituencies at the time, it feels like the very worst date to have chosen if you were hoping to secure an In vote.

England getting knocked out means people are more likely to vote Brexit, I suppose? Friend of mine prefers the more accurate Ukexit btw.

I suspect most people will have made up their mind by then, but England getting knocked out in controversial circumstances would be a gift to the Out campaign. Maybe there are enough morons out there to make a difference - on the other hand most of those people would probably end up voting Out anyway.

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/stop-after-test-parties-nicky-morgan-tells-primaries

she is such a traet

I'm obvs no fan of her but can absolutely guarantee that had she taken the opposite position you'd be seeing headlines along the lines of 'childhood-snatcher tells schools to bribe kids with parties to accept tests that are destroying their education' or 'Morgan admits tests are so traumatic children need parties to recover'.

lol :/

there's some sense in what she says but part of being a politician is figuring out how to say stuff without sounding like a cartoon villain

That story is from last November.

haha lol. when you read the URL instead of the article.

building 'breaking-news' into the url seems a little short-sighted

lol, well, it's always going to be breaking news to somebody.

I did read the article but missed that, which is worrying.

My interest in the article wasn't so much in Morgan (Morrigan? Morgana le Fey?) as a wicked witch ... more that as a non-parent, non-teacher, I had no idea they were testing so much at KS1, and no idea that such things as after test parties for kids that young existed

I didn't know test parties existed full stop.

I wasn't aware and tbh they sound stupid - I think there are schools and teachers who have at least made the testing situation worse than it need be thru their own overhyping

Y6 sats finished yesterday (not sure about the KS1 sats) so I'm guessing this is getting reshared today because of that - our lad's school isn't having a party exactly, but they all got to watch harry potter instead of having lessons this morning.

NV otm

The NUT and AFT have set their stall quite firmly against having national testing of any description and their most effective way of combating it at the moment seems to be playing on parental fears in the hope that they'll either withdraw kids ahead of the test in protest or put enough pressure on the government to stop it. Inevitably, hyping it as a terrifying experience is going to add extra stress to the children.

It's a shame that there can't be a more measured discussion of whether assessment is required and what kind of testing is appropriate without it being polarised between the Telegraph's 'it'll toughed the little bastards up' and Guardian / Washington Post pandering to the anti-assessment factions.

The NUT and AFT have set their stall quite firmly against having national testing of any description

And quite right too.

The main problem seems to be that these tests aren't really an assessment of the kids, but of the schools. So the right approach would be to just drop it in as a no-big-deal thing to do one afternoon, except the schools are (perhaps understandably) too jumpy about them to do that, and instead spend months prepping the kids for them. And then when the time comes, they push out a lot of "hey, don't worry about these, it's nothing serious, just do your best" stuff. So the kids get a heavily mixed message and don't know what to make of it.

I'm sure there are some better schools who do the second part of that without the first (and some worse who do the first without the second) but then you're talking about better/worse in terms of what's good for the pupils, and no doubt the better/worse axis in terms of league tables or whatever ends up being the exact inverse of that.

And yes just dropping them altogether would be the best solution all round.

And quite right too.

That's one perspective, though not shared by the NCAAP in the US, for example. Having benchmark tests to measure achievement and progress are fine as long as the metrics are appropriate and the data isn't decontextualised and used as a stick to beat teachers with.

There's also an argument that low-stakes testing early in life reduces stress levels when kids take more serious exams later on. If the first time you take a formal exam is your GCSEs, idk if that is helpful.

I mean from what I read the impression I get is basically, Nicky Morgan likes tests because it 'holds schools to account', in other words our old friend the taxpayer is financing these schools, so they'd better get used to jumping up and down for any fivers that might be held over them, constant testing of the kids will demonstrate 'value for money' for the taxpayer

Which I think is prob the missing link in the testing debate - people who care about kids and education could probably come up with two good systems, one with and one without testing, but there's a political reason why Morgan wants it to be testing testing testing

at the risk of mutual backslapping Shari is right: testing can be a perfectly valid element of an educational program. definitely a valid element in the kind of educational programs we run in this country. I'm pretty sure that the teachers' unions aren't advocating for an education system tailored to individual self-exploration so this "never test" line looks like dogmatic cobblers tbh

I guess it's no surprise but at age 10 I really made a hash of my sats, just thr most basic exam practice totally eluded all of us. I did quite well in maths (i think, who remembers sats results?) which was straightforward enough, but otherwise we all ran out of time, impulsively tried different things, realised our efforts were unrepresentative and looked on our results with a mixture of bemusement and indifference

you could do anonymous tests if you just wanted to test the school and be honest about it being of no benefit to pupils