I'm sure there will be a lot of comment about the phone call between Gordon Brown and Mrs Janes which has been published today.
Having listened to the call, an uncomfortable experience, I actually think Gordon Brown handled the call about as well as could be expected in the circumstances.
He apologised, took a lot of flak from a very distraught Mrs Janes, but remained calm throughout.
Whether the Sun should have published a private phone call is open to debate. I can see arguments both ways.
However they should be thoroughly ashamed that they deem it appropriate to precede the recording with an ad for a Family Guy DVD which includes a joke about horse sperm and follow it with an ad for the Bruno DVD.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
Theme Park Auschwitz - Or Children's Views Misrepresented?
An interesting survey reported in The Telegraph suggests that one in six 9-15 year olds think that Auschwitz is a WWII theme park and that Adolf Hitler was a German football coach.
Now on first sight, and to anyone of my generation who will have studied WWII in school history lessons, this looks dreadful.
But hang on a minute - dig a little deeper and it becomes clear that our children's views have been at best badly reported and at worst misrepresented.
The full results of the survey are here - and what is obvious is that children were offered multiple choice questions.
This suggests to me that quite a lot of the children simply guessed at answers they didn't know and a proportion of them guessed wrongly.
That DOES NOT MEAN that one in six 9-15 year olds believe Auschwitz is a WWII Theme Park - but that 30% didn't know the right answer and randomly picked the wrong answer.
And given that Auschwitz is now set up as a Visitor Centre where thousands of people, including parties of UK school children, find out about WWII, is it such a bad guess anyway?
I knew about WWII from a young age because it had been a major event in my Grandparents' lives and in my Dad's formative years. I spent a lot of my younger years in the company of my Gran who talked at length about the war, and in my younger years still had an air raid shelter at the bottom of her garden. I then learnt more about the war at secondary school in history lessons.
However the average nine or ten year old nowadays will not necessarily have any living relatives who remember WWII, and even if they do it isn't talked about nearly as often as it was thirty years ago.
A large proportion of those 9-15 year olds surveyed probably haven't got to that part of their history course yet. My 11 year old happens to have just read a book about Hitler as part of his half term homework for a book review, but he has not studied WWII as part of the curriculum yet.
So it is perhaps not surprising that a proportion of 9-15 year olds don't know much detail about a conflict that ended 50-55 years before they were born.
In fact many of the answers are surprisingly good.
For example more than half the children surveyed knew the start and end years of the First World War which started 89-95 years before they were born. This is the equivalent of me knowing the dates of the Boer Wars, the Tauranga Campaign or the Bhutan War, which I didn't until I looked them up on Google for the purposes of this blog!
A massive 90% got the years of WWII right, 60% correctly identified Harry Patch as the oldest veteran of the trenches, 80% knew that the poppy is the symbol of Remembrance Day and 86% that the Blitz was the bombing of London.
For a group of children, many of whom won't have studied the subject in History yet, I don't think this is bad at all.
That is not to say that there is anything wrong about people doing more to educate children about WWII, Remembrance Day or more recent and more relevant conflicts.
But a survey like this should not be used as yet another criticism of children's knowledge or of 'modern teaching standards', particularly when the survey has been deliberately structured to produce whacky answers.
Now on first sight, and to anyone of my generation who will have studied WWII in school history lessons, this looks dreadful.
But hang on a minute - dig a little deeper and it becomes clear that our children's views have been at best badly reported and at worst misrepresented.
The full results of the survey are here - and what is obvious is that children were offered multiple choice questions.
This suggests to me that quite a lot of the children simply guessed at answers they didn't know and a proportion of them guessed wrongly.
That DOES NOT MEAN that one in six 9-15 year olds believe Auschwitz is a WWII Theme Park - but that 30% didn't know the right answer and randomly picked the wrong answer.
And given that Auschwitz is now set up as a Visitor Centre where thousands of people, including parties of UK school children, find out about WWII, is it such a bad guess anyway?
I knew about WWII from a young age because it had been a major event in my Grandparents' lives and in my Dad's formative years. I spent a lot of my younger years in the company of my Gran who talked at length about the war, and in my younger years still had an air raid shelter at the bottom of her garden. I then learnt more about the war at secondary school in history lessons.
However the average nine or ten year old nowadays will not necessarily have any living relatives who remember WWII, and even if they do it isn't talked about nearly as often as it was thirty years ago.
A large proportion of those 9-15 year olds surveyed probably haven't got to that part of their history course yet. My 11 year old happens to have just read a book about Hitler as part of his half term homework for a book review, but he has not studied WWII as part of the curriculum yet.
So it is perhaps not surprising that a proportion of 9-15 year olds don't know much detail about a conflict that ended 50-55 years before they were born.
In fact many of the answers are surprisingly good.
For example more than half the children surveyed knew the start and end years of the First World War which started 89-95 years before they were born. This is the equivalent of me knowing the dates of the Boer Wars, the Tauranga Campaign or the Bhutan War, which I didn't until I looked them up on Google for the purposes of this blog!
A massive 90% got the years of WWII right, 60% correctly identified Harry Patch as the oldest veteran of the trenches, 80% knew that the poppy is the symbol of Remembrance Day and 86% that the Blitz was the bombing of London.
For a group of children, many of whom won't have studied the subject in History yet, I don't think this is bad at all.
That is not to say that there is anything wrong about people doing more to educate children about WWII, Remembrance Day or more recent and more relevant conflicts.
But a survey like this should not be used as yet another criticism of children's knowledge or of 'modern teaching standards', particularly when the survey has been deliberately structured to produce whacky answers.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
The hypocrisy of the tabloids
Excellent post over at The Enemies of Reason about the utter twaddle being spouted by the right wing tabloids about the BBC's decision to allow Griffin on Question Time.
Hat Tip: Mark Reckons
Hat Tip: Mark Reckons
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Chris cleared
Delighted to hear that Lord Rennard, or Chris, as I know him, has been cleared by the Parliamentary authorities over his expenses.
I didn't blog about the allegations much at the time because, as a friend, I knew I was biased.
I did know, however, that he had moved his home base down to Eastbourne, and am delighted that the evidence backing this up has been properly taken into account.
It was good to see Chris looking so well at conference, and to hear the rousing reception he got at the rally.
I didn't blog about the allegations much at the time because, as a friend, I knew I was biased.
I did know, however, that he had moved his home base down to Eastbourne, and am delighted that the evidence backing this up has been properly taken into account.
It was good to see Chris looking so well at conference, and to hear the rousing reception he got at the rally.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Fancy a pint of freedom this evening?
A few weeks ago I bought a batch of beer from our local farm shop, one of which was a bottle of William Wilberforce Freedom Ale from those nice people at the Westerham Brewery in Kent.
On reading the label I discovered that the beer had been brewed to commemorate the 200 anniversary of the abolition of slavery, and that profits from the beer were being given to the Stop The Traffik campaign.
Now this sparked my interest because I had just been talking to our new Lib Dem MEP for the South East, Catherine Bearder, about this very issue.
Following a chat with her staff we then arranged for Catherine to visit the brewery, which she did on Friday with Lib Dem blogger Antony Hook.
This evening we will be meeting at the Royal Blenheim pub in Oxford to drink a few pints of Freedom Ale (and quite possibly some of the excellent White Horse beers they have on tap there) in support of the European Union's Anti-Trafficking Day.
Do feel free to join us.
On reading the label I discovered that the beer had been brewed to commemorate the 200 anniversary of the abolition of slavery, and that profits from the beer were being given to the Stop The Traffik campaign.
Now this sparked my interest because I had just been talking to our new Lib Dem MEP for the South East, Catherine Bearder, about this very issue.
Following a chat with her staff we then arranged for Catherine to visit the brewery, which she did on Friday with Lib Dem blogger Antony Hook.
This evening we will be meeting at the Royal Blenheim pub in Oxford to drink a few pints of Freedom Ale (and quite possibly some of the excellent White Horse beers they have on tap there) in support of the European Union's Anti-Trafficking Day.
Do feel free to join us.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Good beer round here
Today's Independent features a guide to the top 50 beers.
Oxfordshire breweries have done rather well with four of the fifty being brewed in the county.
Hook Norton Brewery does particularly well with both their bitter, Old Hooky, and their Double Stout both featured.
Brakspear Triple, which is nowadays brewed by the Wychwood Brewery, and Ridgeway IPA, from the brewery set up by Brakspears former head brewer, also feature.
This is great news for local brewers and the top 50 as a whole, which is mainly made up of UK beers, demonstrates the strength of the growing UK small brewery sector.
The list also featured several other of my favourite tipples including Badger Golden Champion from Hall and Woodhouse in Dorset (for any Westminster based readers you can enjoy it at St Stephens Tavern next to Westminster tube station), St Austell Brewery's Admiral Ale and Hop Back Brewery's Summer Lightning.
Unfortunately Wychwood's cult brew, Hobgoblin, didn't feature.
There are several other excellent small breweries in this area including the Appleford Brewery based at Brightwell-cum-Sotwell near Wallingford, Best Mates Brewery, based at Ardington near Wantage and the White Horse Brewery based at Stanford-in-the-Vale.
See my next post for more about beer.
Oxfordshire breweries have done rather well with four of the fifty being brewed in the county.
Hook Norton Brewery does particularly well with both their bitter, Old Hooky, and their Double Stout both featured.
Brakspear Triple, which is nowadays brewed by the Wychwood Brewery, and Ridgeway IPA, from the brewery set up by Brakspears former head brewer, also feature.
This is great news for local brewers and the top 50 as a whole, which is mainly made up of UK beers, demonstrates the strength of the growing UK small brewery sector.
The list also featured several other of my favourite tipples including Badger Golden Champion from Hall and Woodhouse in Dorset (for any Westminster based readers you can enjoy it at St Stephens Tavern next to Westminster tube station), St Austell Brewery's Admiral Ale and Hop Back Brewery's Summer Lightning.
Unfortunately Wychwood's cult brew, Hobgoblin, didn't feature.
There are several other excellent small breweries in this area including the Appleford Brewery based at Brightwell-cum-Sotwell near Wallingford, Best Mates Brewery, based at Ardington near Wantage and the White Horse Brewery based at Stanford-in-the-Vale.
See my next post for more about beer.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Well done Dave!
A brilliant result for my good friend Dave Hodgson in the Bedford Mayoral election.
Dave is a great guy and has worked solidly hard over the years both for his Bedford constituents and the party.
He joins another good friend of mine, and very fine Mayor of Watford, Dorothy Thornhill, in that very exclusice club of Lib Dem Mayors.
Dave is a great guy and has worked solidly hard over the years both for his Bedford constituents and the party.
He joins another good friend of mine, and very fine Mayor of Watford, Dorothy Thornhill, in that very exclusice club of Lib Dem Mayors.
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