The Ruth Kelly Sketch

[faceless]

Cameron refuses to join attack on opt-out
Hugh Muir
Tuesday January 9, 2007
The Guardian

The communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, faced widespread criticism yesterday over her decision to send her son to a £15,000-a-year private school for pupils with learning difficulties. Though the Conservative leader, David Cameron, decided not to criticise the decision, backbench MPs, political foes and campaigners lined up to question her explanation for opting out of the state system. Her child, who has dyslexia, will receive specialist support at a prestigious private boarding school for two years. After that, Ms Kelly said, he will go to a state comprehensive. A spokeswoman for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said well-off families "should be staying in the system to make sure they use their skills to improve the system".

The fiercest condemnation came from George Galloway, the Respect MP whose constituency lies within Tower Hamlets, the east London borough where Ms Kelly lives. Before she withdrew her son from the state system, all of her four children were being educated there. Mr Galloway, a former Labour MP, said: "What used to be a badge of honour for a Labour politician was that they wanted the best for everyone's children, irrespective of how much money the parents had. Ruth Kelly's decision to withdraw her child from state education in Tower Hamlets undermines the life chances of other children in the borough whose parents cannot afford £15,000 a year to go private." Ms Kelly also received support from those who backed her parental right to make the controversial decision or merely refused to condemn her.

Full article is available HERE

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I watched Question Time tonight and noted one Labour speaker commenting that it was ok for her to make this choice as she was a parent first and in a position of power second... but what kind of excuse is that? It clearly sends the message that as long as you can afford to do better it doesn't really matter what your outer politics are. If she really believed that her son was not benefitting from the education provided, with her in control of funding, it really is incredible that she has stayed in the job.

I get the impression that the one thing her son needs is attention and care, not to be used as a pawn in some twisted charade. She should have resigned or at least kicked up a fuss about it if she felt so personally about it, who wouldn't? As it is she's exposed her son, herself and the entire government. What a pathetic shambles.

[Brown Sauce]

looks to me like they have given up on education education education, as they for the most part have given up with any sort of socialist idea since Thatcher denied that society existed.

for the most part they are a greedy bunch of bastards who care for their political career before the folk who elected them. They should talk to the people who elected them more often, they should listen to their conscience more often to renew the evidently slippery grip on reality their "position of power" has shunned. But they are too greedy for that. They should look to the "Beast of Bolsover" and dare I say it, GG, for guidance, but they won't. They'd rather crawl up el presidente's arse first.

To opt out of a system that relies on their political beliefs, but is failing because of their strategy is lazy hypocrisy and athletic greed at it's worst. It gets better, her husband is vice chairman of the state school "not good enough", maybe that is a reflection of her former "position of power" as education secretary.

Remember that precedent setter Harriet Harman,

"The middle classes can, like Harriet Harman, pursue their naked self interest while the rest of us scramble for the scraps." *

for Harriet Harman put most "labour" MP's.

* http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr195/schools.htm



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