A miffed-off former MIfL

The Institute for Learning (IfL) is no more. The unwanted 'professional body' for FE teachers, foisted on them by the last Labour government was finally laid to rest at the end of October 2014. In reality, most of the one-time captive membership had largely drifted away when Gove ended compulsory registration in 2010. Round about the same time, the DfE - following recommendations in the Wolf report into 14-19 vocational education - also accepted that the anomalous situation whereby FE teachers couldn't teach in schools, but school teachers could teach in FE should end. However, this was dependent on FE staff obtaining Qualified Teaching and Learning Skills Status (QTLS) - something that Post 16 teacher training qualifications didn't automatically confer. As with much Goveite thinking, details were sketchy as to how this would work out in practice and pronouncements from on high seldom reflected either conditions on the ground or the substance of subsequent regulations put out by the DfE. Yesterday, I found out how... As a post-16 FE qualified teacher I recently started working in a local secondary school sixth form on maternity leave cover. In spite of showing both my degree and PGCE paperwork to the HR people, I was bemused to learn that I was classed as an unqualified teacher: some mistake, surely, I thought - after all, I'm teaching 16-18 year-olds studying AS and A2 courses. Ah, came the reply, you haven't got QTLS status, and pending confirmation of this from something called the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) you're 'unqualified' in our eyes. A few emails later and the awful truth dawned. The IfL might have gone, but a new quango has risen in its place, literally in fact - ETF has the same address as the IfL, and is in the business of charging £485.00 for those FE qualified teachers who want to work in school on parity of pay with school teachers. But the thing that sticks in my craw - alongside the threat of being paid less if I don't undertake the supposedly 'voluntary' process - is that I'm teaching the same courses to students of the same age: the only difference is that they are sitting in a school's sixth form classroom, as opposed to one in an FE college. Gove and the IfL might have gone, but their influence lives on, unfortunately.

Immigration Enforcement Agency convoy heading west

Just scene a convoy of three Immigration Enforcement Agency driving through Hipperholme. Shame they weren't greeted by a dishonourable guard of tutting UKIPpers and Daily Mail readers: plenty of both in this neck of the woods.

Curtains for Churchill

My three-and-a-half year old self was recovering from measles on the day of Churchill's funeral and I spent the day on the settee alternately lying under a blanket and playing with the bow and arrow set my grandparents had given me as a 'get well' gift - the furniture bore the circles from direct arrow hits for weeks afterwards. The day was also special because I remember being cared for by grandma and granddad. At some point as the ceremony unfolded on TV, my granddad decided to close the living room curtains as a mark of respect. They did things like that in those days, or, more particularly, my granddad did. He'd spent his formative years 'in service' as a footman, and this had left a rather confusing legacy: he distrusted the toffs, but had an instinctive sense of place. While he got on well with my Labour-voting dad, his son-in-law never forgot that granddad was a member of that confusing breed - a working class Tory. I can't remember now how dad found out about the curtains, it might be that I mentioned it in all innocence when he got home from work, but however he got to know, the response was surprising and has gone down in family legend. Dad was mild-mannered and jovial, but he let us know he wasn't happy about the respect accorded to Churchill by his own drapery. Dad fought in North Africa and Italy during WWI, and while he recognised that Churchill had been a great war-time leader, he also knew he had made mistakes and swapped parties, apparently to gain political advantage. Churchill's ratting and re-ratting, which saw him transfer allegiance from Tory to Liberal and back to Tory was evidence, in dad's opinion, of an untrustworthy side to his character. This was further compounded for dad as - along with many other Eighth Army veterans - he felt that Churchill had reneged on a promise that they would be brought home after the victory in North Africa. Instead, they were sent to Italy - where, in Churchill's words they would have the easy job of destroying 'the soft underbelly of the Axis crocodile'. This turned out to be far from the truth and the First, Fifth and Eighth Armies spent three years, often poorly fed and ill-equipped, fighting against determined German resistance as they advanced the full length of Italy's elongated boot. After D-Day, dad and his comrades in arms also had to endure the put-down that they were 'D-Day Dodgers', who should be fighting in Normandy, instead of 'sunning' themselves in Italy. In typical squaddie fashion, the term of derision was turned into a badge of honour and became an anthem to the largely forgotten suffering they endured in the Italian campaign. We played the song at dad's funeral, and when the TV footage shows the London docks lowering their jibs in homage and the crowds lining the route to mark the 50th anniversary of Churchill's funeral, I think I'll play it again, because the man who led the nation to victory had his flaws and failings too.

Another shredder shredded

Just seen off the latest in a depressingly long line of cross-cut shredders. The Fellowes H-6C joins the others at the tip, after its power switch packed up and I couldn't find proof of purchase. Only around three-months' use out of this one. The thing with shredders is, given the sheer volume of mail - junk and otherwise - that arrives here with a name and address on it, possession is vital for identity protection, but there apparent built-in obsolescence means I'm forever having to buy another. Shredder makers and retailers are on to a good thing here; what with the tendency to lock up solid - even if you have slavishly followed the maximum sheet instruction, or - as in the latest case - an electrical fault, renders another purchase necessary on a product that is priced towards the higher end of cheap, making it rather unlikely that the receipt can be found. After all, we're talking £35 tops here, not a plasma screen TV or washing machine. Although at the rate at which I'm having to replace them, shredder expenditure will easily come close over time.

Work that librarian

I like our local library, the chief librarian is very efficient and friendly, so our intention to overwork her this year might come as a shock. We don't usually go in for new year resolutions, but this year we've opted for a bit of family-based 'joint enterprise': the first call for all books - and three out of the four of us read a lot - will be Calderdale Libraries. Forget Amazon, first port of call is the online catalogue search and £1 reservation. In July 2014, the ruling Labour group lost a vote of no confidence after making total arses of themselves over parking charges. The Tories took over and scrapped the charges, so now they are casting around for somewhere to make cuts. Library provision had been protected under Labour, but now with philistine Tories in the ascendancy, Calderdale's precious libraries are in a precarious position, which is why there needs to be much greater use of the library service for book and e-book lending, as well as research and computer use in libraries themselves. Go on, ramp up your use of the library - don't care if you inflict stamper's wrist, indexer's thumb or shusher's larynx on the staff - make them work hard and save the service. Same goes for anyone reading this who's unfortunate enough not to live in Calderdale - use your library: volunteers are good, as far as they go, but librarians are a precious resource - work them hard!

A quick slap in the dark

This flight of stone stairs leads from York's city wall to the street below at Monk Bar, one of the ancient entry points to the historic inner city, which houses the famous Shambles and Minster. After a great day in the city, the four of us walked round the walls, leaving at Monk Bar to return to street level just behind the Minster close. About halfway down the stairs, I decided on a whim to perform one of my granddad's favourite set piece jokes. Rather like Eric Morecambe's paper bag routine, this is corny and predictable, yet still funny. It was also an important part of my childhood, as I was invariably let in on the set-up. First, granddad would select a low branch, lamppost or low ceilinged stairway and slap it with the palm of his hand, simultaneously shouting 'ouch'. No matter how many times we'd seen it, there would be a response, ranging from polite titter to full-blown guffaw, with a reproaching 'Alf' from grandma. Walking down the Monk Bar stairs, I was immediately in front of my wife and two sons, my youngest son right behind me, when I reached up and slapped the low stone ceiling. Unfortunately, there was no time to go for a fullblown 'ouch' because the man in front of me turned round and asked if I was alright. 'Yes', I responded: 'did you hit your head' he replied - 'just the side' was the best I could manage. On gaining street level, I turned to see my youngest son trying unsuccessfully to stiffle a laugh, my elder son stumbled into the daylight and immediately followed suit, while my wife managed to combine a wry smile with an admonishing stare. My concerned friend crossed the road before the serious laughter started, so I don't think he saw us completely lose it as a family. As the mirth subsided, however, I like to think I heard faint grandfatherly laughter percolating through from the celestial realm to my mortal ear. It was good to reprise the trick, and I know Alf would have approved...

A new year family history lesson

While visiting a friend of a friend's FB timeline, I was dismayed to see that she 'liked' a group that declared England was full. A short scroll down, however, came a mild reproach from an older relative. This reminded her that great grandma came here as a Jewish refugee from Tsarist Russia, and how she met and married great granddad, whom she then nursed for the rest of his days because he was gassed while fighting in WWI.
There are few families, and my own certainly isn't among them, that can trace a presence here going back more than a few centuries. Indeed, the  vast majority of people have at least one grandparent who came here from somewhere else, but a depressingly high proportion of us seem to want to pull up an imagined drawbridge.
I've never been frightened by an immigrant/asylum seeker/ foreigner (insert word of choice), but racists scare the crap out of me. Hold that thought in 2015.

Happy new rug

The manager of a nearby petrol station has gone for a surprising new look. For the past dozen or so years, he would perhaps best be described, along with myself, as 'folicly challenged' or bald as a coot, if you prefer.
Today, however, he sprang a surprise. Summoned to the counter to answer a query as to the availability of the jet wash, he appeared from the newspaper aisle sporting a bouffant gentleman's hairpiece that was as startling in its luxuriance as for its man-made lustre. So much nylon, close to petrol dispensing equipment might be inadvisable on safety grounds; so much new, artificial hair, as featured in his syrup, was also a threat to good order and discipline in the queue to pay.
Once I got over the shock, and mastered the urge to stare, my initial reaction was one of midlife crisis or urge to impress a new special someone in his life. Either way, what better time than a new year to completely throw over the traces and face the future with a bold, if nylon, new look?
Happy new year.

Read all about it?

I was at the gym when Sky broke the story of the shooting by police of Antonio Martin in Berkeley, Missouri. We don't have Sky at home - I can't abide the thought of adding money to Murdoch's obscene coffers, and I'm a former print worker, so there's no love lost between us. However, at the gym - as in many other areas of life, Sky is the only news source going. I was further limited by restricting myself to subtitles (Van Morrison provided my personal music soundtrack this morning). On returning home, my 16-year-old son brought me up to speed. He followed the Micheal Brown shooting and aftermath in Ferguson and couldn't believe it was starting again. His news was brought to me in a fast moving array of YouTube and website reports. I was amazed at the information he'd been able to gather in a short space of time. When I contrasted this with Sky's pared down coverage, he replied 'that's why I don't get my news from the news channels'. He's learning fast, and so are his contemporaries. Social conscience informed by the views of the world around him.

Recruitment agencies - a suitable case for regulation, or possible extermination

I'm a qualified and experienced post-16 teacher. Wanting to increase my teaching work, I registered with some agencies - mainly because many FE colleges now only recruit part-time and hourly paid teaching staff in this way. The downside - for the teacher - here is that, while agencies class you as 'self-employed', in reality you have the worst of both worlds, being expected to pay for such essentials as DBS checks (successor to the CRB), allowing you to work with young people, you can't claim travel or other expenses that the true self-employed can, because you are treated as an employee by HMRC. This not-so-neat trick aside, I naively thought that the agency would take the leg-work out of the job search. How wrong I was. For a start, registering with one online service seems to mean that your details are passed to a number of others, who all then send you details of the same job (albeit sometimes with different pay rates - of which, more later). The other problem is that, initially at least, you are promised a fantastic service and rapid results. In my case, this is mere hot-air: my subject - Law - is not one where vacancies often occur, so I soon learned to weed out the fantasy merchants. Now, to pay. I recently entered a digital merry-go-round involving a sixth form college near Wakefield that uses an agency to fill its vacancies. Having registered with the agency and filed my CV online, I was perplexed to see the advert on the agency's website, only to be told that there was a more urgent vacancy in Barnsley. Too far to travel, I told them - especially on the £16.00 per hour fee on offer, but Wakefield would be fine. The agency bod promised to get back to me, but then fell into sullen silence. The job was re-advertised several times online, and I applied to each one. Finally, tiring of getting nowhere with the agency, I contacted the college direct. Their HR dept were, I was assured, responsible for advertising all vacancies - they're on our website, I was also told. So I tried to apply direct, only to be informed that there were no Law teaching vacancies. No-one seemed to tell the agency, however, because the email alerts for this - now mythical - job kept on coming. Finally, someone from the agency got in touch to arrange an 'informal meeting' with a curriculum manager at the college, the pay? A princely £16.00 per hour. Now, this isn't a teacher-whinge: I also work in the real world of publishing so I know pay levels haven't increased much, if at all, for the best part of 10 years. But I also realise that for every lesson in the classroom, you need to make extensive preparations and mark the resulting efforts of your students, so £16.00 for the hour on your feet actually teaching soon reduces when you factor in the preparation and marking to something approaching minimum wage levels. Question to FE students and their parents: do you, or your offspring, really want to be taught by a teacher earning close to the minimum wage? We're talking A-levels here, a two-year commitment intended to prepare students for university. Sixteen pounds an hour isn't much in the way of incentive to stay with a college for two minutes, let alone the two years of AS and A2 level study, and students value continuity and the relations they establish with their tutors. Who, also remember, are frequently called on to help out with UCAS applications - a time-consuming, though ultimately enriching experience for all concerned, but one that cries out for continuity of service. After all, you can't provide a meaningful reference if you're the fourth teacher to deliver the subject because the other three have left to take up more lucrative work involving burger-flipping or manual car washing. I finally decided against taking up the offer of the 'informal chat' when a second agency - one I hadn't previously registered with - contacted me via a site called CV Library, which seems to act as a clearing house for employment agencies, offering the same post at £18.00 per hour, which proves that agencies must be making a large profit by suppressing the wages of those hapless enough to register with the hoping for a decent wage for their labours. The growth of teacher recruitment agencies has not been matched by any meaningful protection for those who look to them for work, and there is little to prevent the more desperate 'recruitment consultants' making extravagant claims when enticing in new recruits. For me, I'll stay with my two-days' teaching and wait for an upturn in publishing. Either that, or I could join the fantasists in recruitment consultancy - there are several teaching agencies who regularly advertise their internal vacancies amongst the teaching and training jobs. Wonder how I'd manage as a gamekeeper turned poacher?

The simplicity of right wing propaganda - a lesson from Goebbels

Profoundly disturbed to receive, via Facebook, something forwarded by a friend from the I am Proud to be British Facebook 'community', which says the overseas aid budget should be used to house homeless ex-servicemen. Now, where to begin: first - there is no either/or here; the overseas aid budget is far in excess of the housing needs they purport to identify; second - it isn't meant to be an intellectual exercise, rather it's an attempt to create fear and hatred of 'them': foreigners, those that differ from me/us. And it isn't meant to assist homeless ex-service personnel one iota. Rather, it's intended to further a blinkered, far-right agenda: stigmatise the scapegoats and frighten the masses: how Goebbels would approve! I prefer Auden's approach, Epitaph on a Tyrant he wrote:

Perfection of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets

By my reckoning, they've reached the easy invention of their themes, and are delighted to experiment with human folly in garnering as many shares, hits and likes as possible. We need to be afraid when they discover armies and fleets - and watch out for those Tories who, anxious to save their skins, suddenly find an accommodation rather easy to swallow, for they will be the first to quake at the jokes made at the expense of the lost, lonely, different or disadvantaged.

A little known cause of man-flu?

The middle-aged male cashier who served me Sainsbury's this afternoon was plainly under weather. After laughing off his symptoms with a self-deprecatory diagnosis of man-flu, he then said that it was nonetheless a real condition. His special pleading then broke down, because he put his plight down to excess oestrogen!
Cue hilarity from self and two women ahead of me in the queue.

Northern Powerhouse, poverty pay

Now that the excitement over George Osborne's discovery that the North is not the desolate region his father-in-law believes it to be is settling (and how many of the more excited commentators neglected to mention that our 'sovereign wealth fund' will be funded by fracking profits?) more attention needs to be paid to the value of the Northern skills base. An illustration of persistent, and pernicious, undervaluation is found in an advert for experienced freelance editors, placed recently by a Manchester-based agency. PSUK wants editors educated either to PhD level, or who are advanced members of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders to work on academic titles for the miserly sum of £12.00 per hour! SfEP suggested rates for this work range from £22.00 to £27.50. Needless to say, this SfEP Advanced Member won't be applying.

Fraud is good!

Received a piece of puffery from a business consultancy, telling me that fraud has to be expected in a percentage of all business transactions. This, they reckon, is a good sign, as it means we are now recognising the inevitability of fraud in business and can work with clients to address the issue (using, of course, the flummery only they could provide...) I countered this by reminding the sender that 'greed is good' has now become hackneyed, but they came back to say that ethically businesses have to allow for fraud in their planning and negotiations. At this point, I had to admit finding their enthusiasm and acceptance of fraud to be a profoundly depressing comment on the state of business and commercial life. How can something that causes misery and harm be acceptable in the shiny world of corporate piffle and froth?

Charitable giving becomes a tradeable commodity

My mother-in-law is interested in animal welfare and for several years has made donations to charities working to alleviate suffering or rehome animals. Recently, however, she has noticed a marked increase in requests for donations from a host of other charities. These take the form of letters, and can come at the rate of 5 or 6 a week. Being advanced in years, it can be distressing to be deluged with mail you haven't requested - and, again, being older - perhaps she hasn't noticed the little box you're supposed to tick if you don't want your details to be sold on to other parties, with the express purpose of being the target of an ever increasing number of pestering, begging letters. Things have now reached a point where I regularly remove - unopened - a range of letters and take them back to my house and our waiting shredder. Sorry to have to break it to you, but the Spectacled Bears of the Andes will not be benefiting from my mother-in-law's largesse, neither will his Grace the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Durban - thanks for the card, you look great in the cardinal's robes, your Grace, and the blessing on the back of the postcard was no doubt kindly meant. But I hope you don't mind my mentioning that your request for donations to be paid into an Isle of Man bank account does rather put the Catholic Church in the same frame as some rather disreputable company, just when things were starting to look up a bit for the Church (of which my mother-in-law has never been a member, by-the-by).

Parliament just got a little bit more supreme - now to keep up the pressure

The Labour MP Clive Efford secured a highly symbolic victory in a debate on his Private Members' the National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill on Friday 21 November to roll back NHS privatisation and remove the NHS from the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Treaty negotiations(TTIP. During the debate, in which Tory MPs were conspicuous by their absence, Labour Health shadow Andy Burnham pointed out that over 60 of their number have links to private health companies, many of which are US-owned; just the kind of multinational business that would benefit greatly if TTIP passes into law – doubly so, if the Coalition keep the NHS within the scope of the Treaty. Paradoxically, for a party that pays a lot of lip service to the convention of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ or ‘supremacy’, the Tories seem very keen to give large chunks of it away to foreign-owned businesses. TTIP would allow such businesses to sue our government if it dared to pass any future laws that threatened to undo privatisations or reduced their perceived ability to make expected profits on UK-based deals. In reality, therefore, TTIP puts the British people (the ones Cameron likes to bang on about) at the mercy of the profits of foreign and multinational business (those who have such a problem paying out taxes, remember?) And Cameron is very keen on TTIP. He wants the deal signed with almost indecent haste, and said only this week that he wanted ‘rocket boosters’ putting under the negotiations, ridiculing those who argue against it for having only ‘weak arguments’ and dismissing fears that it will be used to force further NHS privatisation as ‘nonsense’. Parliamentary sovereignty has two main features: first, there is the unwritten rule (called a ‘convention’) that parliament can pass a law on any subject it fancies – because that’s the democratic will of the people (yeah, right); and second, parliament can’t ‘bind its successors’, which means any law passed by the current parliament could be repealed by one sitting in future – we don’t have any ‘entrenched’ laws – unlike the written constitutions of the US, France or the Irish Republic, for example. So by forcing through TTIP and making sure parliament passed domestic legislation to give effect to it in this country, Cameron was hoping to make NHS privatisation unstoppable, because he’d effectively given away the power of parliament to stop it in future. After all, MPs with shares in private health companies won’t be took keen to cut off the profits from their own investments, and a future parliament would be wary of incurring legal costs if a foreign company took the UK to court because it had legislate in a way that was damaging to their supreme right to make money. TTIP, like Cameron’s line of reasoning is dangerous and needs to be stopped. Clive Efford’s PMB has to become law, for all our sakes.

My boss can be a prat sometimes

This week's Private Eye (Eye 1379) contains a worrying article on page 9 (Tidings of Joy) which reveals that Daily Express employees have been commanded not to make disparaging comments about owner Richard Desmond or any of his friends in their Tweets or on Facebook.
This is worrying for several reasons. First, an employee should not be expected to cede all aspects of their right to freedom of expression when they sign their contract of employment. Second, an adverse comment about an unidentified co-worker, superior or manager made in exasperation or as a throwaway remark should not constitute a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence that forms part of the contract of employment when to do so serves to allow the employer to intrude into an employee's personal and private life. In any event, to claim a right to control how an employee uses social media represents a gross abuse of bargaining power that distorts the employment relationship.
In my case, I can say that my boss can sometimes be a right pillock; but then again, I'm self-employed.

Recognition for George Osborne's EU Triumph?

On 17 December 1985, the Labour MP Brian Sedgemore was suspended from the Commons for calling the then Tory Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, a 'snivelling little git'. After his brazen attempt to spin his dodgy deal yesterday can't help but feel that Gideon is a worthy heir to Sedgemore's earthy epithet

War - and the failure of politics

This is what political failure leads to . The images are striking and have had a profound affect on public opinion. War is not an acceptable or 'normal' part of the human condition - it certainly isn't 'generational' or inevitable. I'm reading a collection of pieces written by First World War veterans that was published originally in 1930. Time and again, they use the phrase 'never again', and many were firmly convinced that they had taken part in the last war ever to be fought; there was no way they could ever imagine another conflict after the horror and loss they had witnessed - no politician could ever make that mistake again. But now, we see remembrance used in a very different way: remember the past, but also with an eye to contemporary and future events - almost as if the past is being used to validate future political shortcomings: 'we fought before and we'll fight again' has replaced 'never again'. On Sunday, I'll stand before a war memorial, as I did in years gone by with my granddad and my dad - veterans of the First and Second World wars. When I was young, I wondered why dad didn't wear his medals when the others did. He replied that they 'meant nothing' to him, and that the regimental mascot, a bulldog, had been given the same ones. For dad - who fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy - war was neither normal or inevitable. He'd been brought up in a family where is dad and uncles had fought - and in one case died - in the war 'to end all wars' and he knew that the conflict he had had to endure was a result of the failure of politicians to secure a lasting peace, compounding the failure that led to the First World War. Now, I have to stand on my own, my granddad and beloved dad have gone, but I go to honour their memory and remember the suffering they and their comrades and former enemies had to endure. But I have a growing sense of unease when politicians now speak of war was inevitable, or of engendering military discipline in our schools, because this makes conflict seem commonplace, even acceptable, especially when fought in far away places, where its victims are not placed in the public eye - we hear about the casualties, but the ambulance trains do not bring the wounded home to the full glare of the public gaze, as in those earlier wars. The suffering has almost been sanitised and the media - especially the tabloid end - uses this language and imagery to perpetuate the old myth: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

Hyundai - counting down the seconds

Hyundai's Auto Stop function cuts the engine when the car is waiting at traffic lights or held up it congested traffic; it restarts when you depress the clutch to engage first gear. But this environmentally sound feature comes with an unpleasant add-on. The time the engine is automatically stopped is measured - to the nearest tenth of a second - by a clock that comes to life right in the middle of the dashboard display. This is lost time you will never see again, being counted down in front of your eyes, while you wait for the road ahead to clear or the lights to change. It's very cruel of Hyundai to taunt us in this way.