British "Education"

Inspired by Dr. Joseph Goebbels

A reader has sent me deeply disturbing evidence of the indoctrination into hatred and lies being perpetrated in at least one of our schools. This is a questionnaire that was distributed to pupils at a large mixed comprehensive school in Britain (the reader has asked me not to identify the school for personal reasons). The seven questions included litter, racism, refugees, a petition against `British attacks on Iraq', dolphin friendly tuna, racism again and then the last question:

`You know that Israel's actions against Palestinian civilians go against international law. Which of the following do you decide?

a) People like us in Britain should stop buying goods made in Israel, to help put pressure on Israel to stop attacking Palestinians (3)

b) This conflict has nothing to do with us and there is nothing we can do (1)

c) Our government should put pressure on Israel to do what international law says, and cut down its occupation of Palestine (2)

d) We need to find out more about the conflict between Israel and Palestine before we say what we do (3)'

The numbers in brackets indicate the score a student would receive for their answer - the higher the better. The week before they had a number of photos they had to group together - one was an Israeli tank and a Palestinian boy that was put under `Oppression.'

This travesty is being perpetrated in `citizenship' lessons. The teacher who devised this question clearly is completely ignorant of international law, within which Israel acts, and is merely recycling the ideological equivalent of saloon-bar bigotry that passes for discourse about the Middle East in Britain. Thus the calibre of those entrusted to pass on to the next generation a sense of national identity grounded in the values of this country. Once, these values included truthfulness, integrity and academic rigour. No more. We are now a country where the uninformed are instructed by the bigoted. From the Olympian heights of Britain's once unsurpassed education system, which produced the fairest, gentlest and most rational society on earth, Britain's children are now being equipped instead to inhabit Planet Virulence, where ignorance, irrationality and injustice rule.

I warned from the very introduction of these `citizenship' lessons that they would become a vehicle for crude propaganda. So it has proved. The irony is that the government introduced them in the first place because it was so alarmed that British identity and values were being eroded from within in the face of the threat to the nation from without. Now we can see the result. British citizenship includes hatred of Israel by way of the propaganda of one of the Big Lies of history - the very same Big Lie that is fuelling the murderous onslaught on the western world.

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HURRAY! THE BBC'S NEW IMPARTIAL CLIMATE REPORTING

See it below:

US President George W Bush infuriated his critics by professing world leadership on climate change at his meeting of the top 16 world economies - while offering no new substantive policy and implicitly rejecting binding emissions controls. Mr Bush, who has been sceptical of climate change, said at the forum in Washington that our understanding of the science had moved on. He agreed that energy security and climate change were major challenges and pledged to solve both problems - but dismissed notions of despair. The American president said clean technologies like nuclear power and clean coal would protect the economy as well as the environment. He said the US wanted to work with the United Nations towards a long-term goal on greenhouse gases. He also proposed a new global fund from the US, Japan and Europe to channel clean technology to developing countries.

But some visiting delegates were outraged by what they said was a stream of spin running through the speech. One (who understandably asked not to be named) said: "This is a total charade. "The president has said he will lead on climate change but he won't agree binding emissions, while other nations will. "He says he will lead on technology but then he asks other countries to contribute funds, without saying how much he'll contribute himself. "It's humiliating for him - a total humiliation."

Some delegates were particularly upset by the extravagant invitation by Mr Bush for other nations to follow the US lead in cutting emissions while increasing the economy. Emissions did indeed buck the upward trend by dropping a fraction of 1% in the US during 2006 - but even the American government admits this was due to a warm winter, cool summer and an oil price they considered far too high.

Significantly, some of the visiting delegates indicated they were already planning for Mr Bush's departure from the White House. The Germans said they had spent the past two days in productive meetings with US Democrats. More diplomatically, the British said the issue of climate change stretched beyond any political cycle so it was natural to look ahead.

Certainly the Democrats are hoping to push an energy bill through the US Congress soon - maybe within the next few months. Mr Bush would then be forced to veto it to prevent it passing. And this may not prove popular as opinion polls in the US suggest the American people are more concerned about climate change than ever before.

Delegates, though, are not dismissing the Washington meeting out of hand. They say all talks on climate change bringing together the major economic powers are useful in some way - forging personal relationships and building trust. A number of delegates said the Chinese were becoming less defensive with every international meeting on climate - and that will be vital if China is to be helped to deal with its booming emissions.

And some said it was useful - albeit tedious - to hear American officials lecturing them with the very facts of climate change that they had been ignoring for years. The US has offered to continue this Washington process of discussions if it is deemed helpful by the United Nations. Mr Bush himself says he is organising a summit of world leaders next summer. Privately, some European delegates are already saying they hope their political leaders are not invited.

BBC News, 29 September 2007






Schools show the new make-up of Britain

White British schoolchildren are now a minority in parts of England, and make up just one in ten pupils in some areas, according to new government figures. The data from the Department for Children, Schools and Families reveals the extraordinary demographic changes that are taking place in 21st-century England and highlight dramatic variations in the ethnic make-up of the school population across England. They also show that more than one in ten pupils in primary and secondary schools in England do not have English as their mother tongue. This rises to more than half of primary pupils (53 per cent) in Central London.

As the numbers of nonwhite and non-native-speaking pupils are much higher in primary than in secondary schools, the figures also suggest that the full extent of current demographic changes in England's schools have yet to make themselves felt.

Damian Green, the Conservative immigration spokesman, said that the changes were putting an extra burden on teachers. What was important, he said, was whether or not these children arrived in school able to speak English. "If they can't, and they are being taught in overcrowded classrooms, this makes it much harder for teachers to do their job." The Conservatives have complained that schools do not always intervene early enough to teach pupils English, often preferring to teach them in their own languages initially.

The latest figures, from January 2007, show that more than a fifth of pupils are now of ethnic minority origin. Nationally, 21.9 per cent of primary school children are from ethnic minority backgrounds, up from 20.6 per cent in 2006. There was a similar rise in secondary schools. The figures also show that the number of primary school pupils who do not speak English as their first language increased by about 7 per cent on the 2006 figures to 447,000, or 13.5 per cent of the total. Figures for secondary schools showed a similar rise in the number of pupils not speaking English as their first language, to 342,000 or 10.5 per cent of the total.

The Government has said that English should be the main language of teaching in schools, and children should become fluent as quickly as possible. Research suggests that although pupils who are not native speakers struggle at first, most make up any lost ground by the time they reach secondary school.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that the Government had put guidance in place to help teachers to support children who have English as an additional language. He said that a new statutory duty on schools to promote community cohesion had focused the minds of head teachers on these issues. "Schools are the building blocks of our communities so it's vital that they promote tolerance, respect and understanding across society," Mr Knight said.

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NHS failure on allegies

An epidemic of allergic diseases is sweeping Britain while treatments languish and people's lives are blighted, according to an influential House of Lords committee. Britain is "the laughing stock of Europe" for its neglect of treatments that work and are routinely used elsewhere, said Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, who chaired an investigation by the Science and Technology Committee.

Allergies - which include hay fever, asthma, some skin conditions and peanut allergy - are often poorly diagnosed by GPs, who lack facilities to which they can refer patients for proper testing. As a result, many allergy patients go untreated while others go through life convinced that they are suffering from allergies they do not have. Waiting lists for the few allergy clinics that exist are long, and would be longer still if the many neglected patients could be referred to them.

Teachers are poorly trained to deal with allergic emergencies, the food industry is lax about labelling foods that have the potential to kill and advice given by the Department of Health to pregnant women to avoid peanuts is baseless - and could even be making the situation worse.

Lady Finlay said that her committee was extremely alarmed by the advice to pregnant women, and to children from families with a history of allergy, to avoid peanuts. "Academics and clinicians have told us that a growing body of evidence suggested this guidance may not only be failing to prevent peanut allergy, but might even be counterproductive," she said.

It was possible that exposure to peanuts in the womb or when young could prevent peanut allergy rather than cause it. The evidence did not justify the advice the department was giving, and it should be withdrawn. In parts of the developing world where groundnuts were used in a "soup" for weaning babies, there had not been the explosion in the number of people allergic to peanuts, she said.

The committee recommended setting up a network of centres headed by an allergist and staffed by other specialists such as immunologists, dermatologists, paediatricians, gastroenterologists and chest medicine specialists. It also called for an overhaul of food labelling regulations to improve on "vague and defensive" information such as "may contain nuts".

Allergies cost the NHS in England 1 billion a year for drugs and treatment, and the cost to the economy of asthma alone is o2.3 billion a year. Millions of people suffer allergies: 3.3 million suffer hay fever at some time in their lives and 5.7 million have asthma. Food allergies kill about 20 people a year through the severe reaction called anaphylactic shock.

Lady Finlay called for increased funding for research. The recommendation was welcomed by Stephen Holgate, of the University of Southampton, a leading expert. He said: "We need new environmental research, trying to find out what it is about our environment that causes allergies. We need to set up proper studies. This is the fourth report in recent years to criticise UK allergy treatments."

The National Allergy Strategy Group said that the four reports had said much the same. "But the department has not acted to bring about change. Unless strategic health authorities and primary care trusts are directed to develop services, patient care will not improve." The committee said more use should be made of immuno-therapy, where people are exposed to small doses of the substance that causes a reaction to "desensitise" them.

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British Leftists to destroy the navy that Napoleon and Hitler could not: "Ministers have drawn up confidential proposals to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose. The expected reductions follow a fierce row between Service chiefs and the Treasury over defence spending. The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy's capability to the level where it could carry out only "one small-scale operation".