Vox Polis

A couple of days ago I covered the plan to set up a stricter code of conduct for school selection. In light of that it’s was interesting to see an article in the The Independent on a study which revelealed that church schools are taking in fewer children from low income families than secular schools in the same areas. Of course it is possible that a lower percentage of religious families have low income which would skew the statistics. If it is found that church schools are attempting to select on academic ability in addition to their already debatable selection practices then the education authorities should certainly take action.

The same study also showed that the new academies (which I’m not fond of) established as part of recent controversial education reforms are taking in more than their share of pupils who are eligible for free school meals (the indicator used for low income) which will probably be used as an argument in favour of increasing the number of academies.

The news that Starbucks is to be sued for fraud after withdrawing an over-successful free coffee offer prompted us to come with a top five of bad lawsuits.

1. Woman sues McDonalds after scalding herself with hot coffee (vanosteen.com).
2. RIAA attempts to prosecute a dead man for music piracy. To be honest there were almost too many RIAA cases to choose from; 12 year old girls and grandmothers without PCs have also being targeted (recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com).
3. Jonathan Aitken sues the Guardian for libel and is subsequently found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice. Take note politicians - if you’re guilty of lying don’t draw attention to yourself (wikipedia.org).
4. Woman sues hairdresser for emotional distress, depression, loss of income and counseling after receiving a bad haircut (power-of-attorneys.com).
5. Sadly apocryphal this one but too good not to mention: man sues car manufacturer after leaving his car on cruise control and going to make a cup of coffee (snopes.com).

Thank heavens for lawyers and the stupid eh?

According to the Iain Dale-o-meter of the top 100 non aligned blogs, Vox Polis is 82nd! - And I didnt even think anyone had noticed us.

If you add together all his top 100s to include those aligned to Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems, then we’re about 340th out of 400! - Plenty of room for improvement…better start blogging more.

Iain Dale’s got the new Tory logo on his site, which (unsurprisingly) is a tree - i think! It looks like a 4 year olds scribble…it just doesnt fit the new slick Tory campaign.

Ruth Lea covers the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in today’s Telegraph. Like a few of her past articles, she steals covers some research from Open Europe (who she does not always reference). -Well it must be hard to produce a weekly column!

Although I agree with her (that’s a first for me) and Open Europe that the scheme in its present form is failing, it looks like Ruth and Open Europe have got some of the details wrong.

Ruth Lea begins by seemingly welcoming climate change- she implies that because climate change helped humans move from being farmers and herders to the present “civilised” people that the current climate change threat- that will see forests destroyed, animal species wiped out and many places turned into deserts- will present a number of opportunities for humanity. Really! The only opportunities i can think of is opening some new hotels on the soon to be Blackpool Rivieria.
On the ETS Ruth Lea argues that:

“some British firms, especially electricity generating companies, reduced their emissions and hence output because they were short of permits. Inevitably this led to higher electricity prices.”

This is incorrect. As the National Allocation Plan shows, most power plants increased their emissions, but because of the elasticities of demand and supply, they, unlike alot of companies, can pass the whole cost of the scheme onto the consumer, in this case us, and this caused the electrictiy prices to rise. (and I thought Lea was an economist).

She cites Open Europe’s briefing that tells how public institutions (such as the NHS and armed forces) have had to fork out millions to buy extra allocations, whereas oil companies have made millions by selling them - this is slightly misrepresented. This is the potential cost not the actual cost, because we do not know how much the companies bought and sold the allocations at, and therefore do not know how much they paid (the scheme works like the share market, where prices can go up as well as down). Also not everyone had to buy/ sell in the first year, and may decide to settle up at the end of the first phase which runs for 4 years. The Open Europe paper only looks at the first year, and does not take account of changes over the whole period- such as weather, new technology etc. We may find that in 2008, overall oil firms end up paying more and the NHS makes a profit. Although this is unlikely, we should not be mislead.

The government are to release for consultation a new code that will create tighter controls on the ways that state schools select pupils. Guidelines already exist for the selection of candidates but adherence is not compulsory. The new code contains wording that makes it clear to schools that they are to follow the rules.

Included in the new code are rules to prevent selection of candidates based on: their parent’s social and financial background; the child’s past behaviour; relationships to school staff or governors; relationship to existing pupils.

So all in all pretty good news, we live in times where children are ferried to and from school in blacked out 4×4s and congregate outside for fear of attracting on the spot ASBOs. This climate of fear leaves comprehensive schools as pretty much the only place where kids can meet other people from different social backgrounds. Personally I’m extremely glad of the understanding of other people I received from going to a school with a broad intake (I don’t believe it had a detrimental effect on my education either). On a broader note allowing children to mix as widely as possible between social, racial and religious groups is the best way to foster a climate free of the sort of isolationism that leads on to hate crime and home grown terrorism.

Via the BBC.

1 in 6 Londoner’s admit to moving seats to avoid sitting next to someone who they think is a Muslim according to this survey.

And that’s just those who are willing to admit it.  How are we to deal with this misconception?!

Don’t know if anyone’ll care or notice (at least until it breaks) but markdown is now enabled in the comments so you can do dead swanky stuff like emphasizing things.

It’s no surprise that many are reluctant to allow EU member states’ to share security information when this can happen. De Standaard reports that a Belgian military intelligence officer was able to walk out of the Belgian anti-terrorist agency with a box load of photocopied top secret documents on his last day on the job. The agency only has one security camera and no alarm.

Probably thought no one would want to steal Belgium’s military secrets - who’d want them?!

It seems that the 35 hour week is too much for most of the French. According to this survey by TNS-Sofres for the magazine Vivre Plus most people want to work only 6 hours a day.

No wonder the French economy is doing so badly. The unemployment rate may be coming down but its still 8.9%.