The Aged P

…just toasting and ruminating….

With Christine Blower You Could Say That Some Teachers Have The Union Leader They Deserve

There is no doubt that Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers is a hard left old school apparatchik, a humourless Fred Kite figure in the mould of Bob Crowe and Len McCluskey. That such prehistoric dinosaurs, still mouthing the empty platitudes and slogans of a long discredited messianic Marxist cult, should be the standard bearers of the shrivelled rump of a once mighty British trade union movement should come as no surprise….wasn’t it Marx himself who said that history eventually repeats itself as farce?

What does raise a few eyebrows, however, is that hundreds of thousands of teachers within the NUT, supposedly intelligent, educated folk, should be willing to see a relic like Blower as a figurehead for their profession.

Anyone familiar both with teacher unions and teachers, of course, would not be surprised at all. People like Blower dominate the infrastructure of the NUT because they throw themselves one hundred percent into the mind numbing routine of committees, minutes, agenda and motions that characterise the everyday business of union administration. Most teachers are happy to let them do it because they have better things to do with their lives…preparing lessons, marking work, shopping, kids, drinking, sex, gardening etc. They very rarely attend branch meetings or conferences – it’s far easier to leave it to the Blowers. So the Blowers drift to the top as a result of ….apathy.

But how come the apathetic majority of NUT members put up with being led by Blower and an executive dominated by fossils like herself?

It’s partly because quite a few teachers regard themselves as vaguely “left wing” …I say regard themselves because, of course, though they might talk the talk they never walk the walk. They are what Lenin called radish socialists…red outside, lilywhite inside.  They lead middle class lifestyles. They like to pretend the revolution..join the odd one day strike, maybe a work to rule but that would be as far as they would go.

This hasn’t always been the case. In previous decades there was always a solid core of professionals who would never ever dance to the Blower tune. But remember that many of today’s teachers are lower level graduates from second or third tier universities where a lack of academic rigour is matched with a shallow sub marxist pedagogy.

State school teaching today is a nice little number. No covering for absent teachers, generous salaries, lower contact hours, plenty of support, no compulsory dinner duties, long holidays and automatic pay increases. No performance payments and almost impossible to sack – no wonder they, like the police, resent any idea of change

That’s why Blower’s class warfare rhetoric strikes a chord. But it’s not a Marxist uprising– it’s a Luddite resistance against anything that threatens their cosy cartel

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posted by david in Education,Liberal/Left,UK and have Comments Off on With Christine Blower You Could Say That Some Teachers Have The Union Leader They Deserve

Why Guy Fawkes Is Just The Right Role Model for The Occupy Protesters…

The Occupy protesters in the UK and USA have apparently adopted Guy Fawkes as their role model.

That figures…

For many years he had been a soldier in the Spanish army sent to crush the Dutch rebels who were fighting to win their independence

He was a terrorist who did not mind killing hundreds of people in his attempt to kill King James I

He wanted to turn England into a client state of Spain

He planned to kidnap the young daughter of King James and educate her as a Catholic to rule over a largely Protestant England as a puppet Queen using the Spanish Inquisition to suppress those who opposed the influence of Rome and Spain

By the beginning of the 1600s the English Parliament was beginning to see itself as a counter balance to the power of the monarchy – Fawkes and his Spanish minders believed Catholic monarchs ruled by divine right and should not be challenged

So…let’s see….

Guy Fawkes =Soldier in an army of occupation +Terrorist +Traitor +Kidnapper + Fanatic + Hater of an elected parliament….

Come to think of it – that mask is a perfect fit for those Occupiers…

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posted by david in History,Politics,UK Politics,USA Politics and have Comments Off on Why Guy Fawkes Is Just The Right Role Model for The Occupy Protesters…
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