It’s good to know that old communists don’t fade away, they just join the National Union of Teachers! Did you read the BBC’s report on the annual NUT conference in Manchester and the onslaught that the comrades have launched on the Armed Forced “preying” on schoolchildren? The BBC provides plenty of space for such illuminating comments as..”Join the Army and we will send you to bomb, shoot and possibly torture fellow human beings in other countries. Join the Army and we will send you probably poorly equipped into situations where people will try to shoot or kill you because you are occupying other people’s countries.
Join the Army, and if you survive and come home, possibly injured or mentally damaged, you and your family will be shabbily treated.”
It’s full on Dave Spartism – sixth form student grant political analysis from the National Union of Whingers yet the BBC gives the Ministry of Defence a mere two sentences to rebuff this hysteria. That’s not balanced! The NUT is of course entitled to its vicious anti-British Armed Forces rhetoric – what else would we expect from them?- but surely the MOD should have been given rather more space to take apart the ranting from the comrades?
From the (D)HYS on this topic most recommended comment:
“I object to pupils being lured into a left-wing “rights without responsibilities” viewpoint by liberal left activists masquerading as teachers, intent on pushing their own political agenda for social engineering purposes.
Perhaps they could occupy themselves instead with teaching English, Maths, History or whatever their contract of employment states.
Who knows, we just might see schools turning out useful citizens instead of illiterates without a chance.
Edward Treen, Wolverhampton, ENGLAND
Recommended by 142 people”
Quite.
The BBC reporter Hannah Goff is herself a union activist.
The teacher she quotes at length is a SWP/Respect activist.
No mention is made of the NUT vote proposing the use of “education packs” from the Stop the War Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and CND
DB,
Just the sort of details a fair minded journalist would provide to offer context to readers. The BBC studiously ignores it.
Agreed. When Nicky Campbell interviewed this dopey cow from NUT on radio 5 this morning, she admitted to being a pasifist.
He never asked her what she’d have done back in 1940 when the German army was massed across the Channel.
Not only that, the NUT funds the Labour party, so why didn’t he ask her why they hadn’t stopped funding the Labour party until they removed our soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan?
What ever happened to all those “stop the war” lot with their “not in my name” and “we can vote you in and vote you out” t-shirts and banners?
Seems to me that in 2005 they couldn’t wait to vote the “war criminal” and his pals back into office.
Looks like that big fat pay rise and index linked pension means more than their so called “moral stance” on the war.
Pick on the army instead.
DB,
Let me get this straight:
– NUT are Marxist nuts that have a control of much of the educational institutions in Britain
– SWP/Respect’s George Galloway likes every dictator opposed to Britain and the West, and is heavily represented within the unions
– Hannah Goff is a NUT activist that can push unvarnished propaganda through the BBC
It would seem to me that nuts have a firm grip on the British society – they control the education and have a monopoly on news.
The only thing left for them to take over is the MoD.
This sort of a takeover must have been a KGB wet dream during the Cold War.
Alan | 25.03.08 – 4:22 pm
Hannah Goff’s union is the NUJ, not the NUT.
“ yet the BBC gives the Ministry of Defence a mere two sentences to rebuff this hysteria.”
What has the MoD said on the conference so far?
standard beeboid practice , take an animal rights nutter / left wing loony, and present them as the resoned centre ground. Bonus point for managing to find some inarticulate badly briefed chump for the ‘balance’ (‘cos bbc is impartial, innit ?), part of the piece.
Its only when you have studied the bbc’s handling of one of their pet causes, and about which you are very well informed, that you realise what an evil manipulative force they are.
Here’s how the article has evolved :-
http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/109293/diff/1/2
What gets me is the ” teachers say ” – when the BBC shouldn’t be referring to teachers in general but to a faction of one single teaching union. Once again they are using language to pretend that minority left wing views are really part of the mainstream.
It’s like reporting that all CBBC puppet characters hate Gypsies when it’s actually only Basil Brush 🙂
I know some teachers have a tendency to drippy liberalism, but I have never met one quite as retarded as those quoted in the article.
I wonder what attracted Ms Goff to this “ex-soldier teacher”. The terrorist chic keffiyeh, perhaps?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7312827.stm
Oh look, Mr Cinch the keffiyeh teacher once wrote a song inspired by a Robert Fisk article. If he teaches your kids you should be worried.
Clinch, not Cinch.
And why did he become “Davie Clinch” for this article when every other mention of him is as “David Clinch“? Has he learned the art of using different spellings from his terrorist heroes? Was Ms Goff complicit in using this new name to avoid Google searches?
At least the teachers want Rabbis,Imams and Priests in the classroom to “unite us”.They don’t say whether or not there will be a referee.
This evenings PM Programme aired the most rabid part of the speech from the NUT debate and then interviewed the Brigadeer responsible for recruitment to the army. Good old Eddie pressed the officer to address the ‘concerns of the teachers’. At no point was the NUT’s motion even questioned. After his interview he invited listeners to comment on the PM Blogg. No, I came here to read a bit of sense.
TD
“Has he learned the art of using different spellings from his terrorist heroes?”
I think they’re usually spelt the same in Arabic. For example Hezbollah = حزب ,الله Hizbullah = حزب الله, Hezbullah = حزب الله, Hizbollah = حزب الله. Always the same.
Now, David, what actually was the MoD’s response to this conference?
I think the BBC are trying to whip this up and make it another ’cause celebre’. Just as they did with the dear old Archbishop and Sharia Law.
I would not think the NUT had the power to ban anything from schools – which is what the BBC are reporting. And anyway if children see something is banned their usual response is to view it as glamorous and partake to a greater extent. So it actually may have a reverse effect to the one intended.
We’ve just all got to make sure we go the extra mile to support our forces in every way possible. The British Legion has been on my charity list for quite some time. And if you are a parent and on a PTA ensure you make your views known.
See Hezbollah – think Islamic terrorists, unless you’re the BBC.
Well done David, you’ve responded to the spelling test. Can you answer the difficult question now?
What was the MoD’s response to the conference that the BBC has omitted?
It wouldn’t be along the lines of this, would it?
“A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “We do not recruit in schools. The single-service schools teams visit about 1,000 schools a year between them only at the invitation of the school – with the aim of raising the general awareness of their armed forces in society, not to recruit.”
Or this:
“‘Patronising’
An ex-soldier, Terry, told BBC Radio Five Live that the union’s attitude was patronising to 16-year-olds. “Now 16-year-olds are not kids – they know, they know their mind,” he said. “If they are not sure what they want to do and they are just tinkering with the idea of just going in the Army – nowadays they can go in the Army, they go on a six-week camp and they find out what it’s like. If its not for them, they have the choice to leave.”
Compare this to the longer Telegraph article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/25/nrecruit125.xml
“A spokesman for the MoD said: “Our recruitment practices avoid ‘glamorising war’ and ‘propaganda’. Anyone considering a career in the Armed Forces is presented with clear information and all aspects of service life are discussed in detail, following a sensitive recruitment process. A career in the Armed Forces provides amazing and unique opportunities. Armed Forces careers must compete against other potential employers. It is fair that they have the opportunity to recruit people when they are legally able to leave school. The recruiting process is designed to protect the interests of the applicants at every stage, regardless of age.””
And you’ll actually find more counter-argument on the far-left, fanatically anti-war BBC.
This is strange one.
Last year I was invited to the home of one of my former OCs who after I had moved on had got himself a job with army recruiting.
He explained over dinner that the standard of young adults who arrived for recruit training was disgusting. (Average reading age of around 14 years) and that in a large number of cases time had to be set aside in which to bring the level up to acceptable standards. He stated that after a few weeks in an environment which was purely geared to the recruits learning capabilities, they found that not only did the recruits want to learn, but they did learn and that that basically the army was funding the education of people who shoulkd have received that education from the education budget He also contrasted the British intake with the F and CO recruits. They he said came from mainly a third world base yet had an educational standard higher than their age groups. Having seen with my own eyes children in Belize walking to school on a morning in bright clean uniforms, I understand only too well what the political mandarins at the NUT and progressive governments have done to Education in the UK.
Unanswered questions. Why did Goff quote so much of McGarr’s conference speech when a couple of lines was all that was needed? Why wasn’t McGarr’s party political affiliation mentioned given its relevance to the points he made? Why has the BBC ignored the NUT’s promotion of propaganda from STWC, PSC and CND? Why the sympathetic interview with a keffiyeh-wearing moonbat? Why agree to call the keffiyeh-wearing moonbat Davie when he’s always been David in past media reports?
(PS Why does BBC Arabic’s new Gaza correspondent spell his name in more than one way? And btw John Reith, Almisshal/Al Mishal worked for the BBC – with Orla Guerin – long before he appeared at that anti-Israel meeting in London.)
The BBC, how it hates the Armed forces(Unless they are chinks) and half the story.
Ex-soldier teacher’s perspective
looks a lot better when slating the armed forces than the correct way of desscribing one who takes to water;
Ex-Sailor teacher’s perspective
When Dave Clinch joined the Navy in 1967 he says he broke his mother’s heart.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7312827.stm
But having the latter as the title wouldn’t pack as big a punch as refering to Dave as a soldier’.
Maybe there lies a reason for calling Dave a soldier. If anybody brings the subject up. Booknecks are bootnecks.
The BBC, how it hates the Armed forces(Unless they are chinks) and half the story.
Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign are the ones who march chanting “We are all Hezbollah!”. Therefore they have no problem with kids as young as seven being recruited as “freedom fighters”:
So You Wanna Be a Hizballah Fighter?
GAlil you may like to read a fine example of the poetry this fine british teacher is able to pen after over 30 years as a teacher;
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/westcountry/2003/11/281989.html
and how he uses his postion as a teacher in which to warp(and not get to grow)the minds of the ones we pay him to tutor.
http://www.dmec.org.uk/voices/
Isn’t peace a wonderful world. Esp if the teacher is a terrorist appologist.
Maybe the BBC forgot to mention this mans past history. But hey they call him a soldier when all he did was see his naval base fill up with red hot sea men.
Today was quite surreal..I was left expecting power cuts and petrol rationing…someone should tell the N.U.T. that the seventies are over.Next to cockroaches,lefties are the hardiest lowest form of life..they can live in the socialist paradise of their dreams but my child isn’t safe in their care.
Well said thud.
The NUT don’t realize that some kids might WANT to join up. Kids are not stupid – they are a LOT more clued-up about the army and life in general than the NUT imply.
That the BBC provides such a huge platform and little space for rebuttal is unsuprising. A bit of square bashing would go some way to removing the pretentiousness many Beeboids are afflicted with!
I think the reason our children’s education suffers in so many ways is down to the NUT. The NUT does an appalling job for its members, many of whom do not share the infantile and divisive approach of their union bosses.
Thanks for that pounce, I think.
I always thought poetry had to rhyme, silly me.
By the way, the nutroots are active in Israel too:
Activists decry IDF presence in schools
And just a reminder of why Israel needs checkpoints:
Palestinian carrying two grenades caught at checkpoint
Looking at Google News we can see that Hannah Goff was certainly quick off the mark with this story – she left the rest of Her Majesty’s press in her wake.
So, how come al-Beeb can be so quick with this sort of story but so very, very s-l-o-o-o-o-w with their reporting of Hillary’s little lie?
What can account for this difference in the speed of reporting?
The NUT does an appalling job for its members, many of whom do not share the infantile and divisive approach of their union bosses
I’d have to add some anecdotal evidence to support that. My wife works in state education and while the teachers and staff can be a bit drippy they don’t in any way exhibit the extreme attitudes the BBC are presenting as mainstream.
I know 4 other teachers, all of whom also work in the state system and they are what you might describe as small-c conservatives.
Last night’s paper inferred that the same motion calling for an end to military ‘propaganda’ in schools also called for the immediate withdrawal if troops from Iraq. Surely two separate issues? Unless you’re such a brain dead sap that you can’t exercise independent thought within the swamp of your half arsed leftism by numbers worldview.
In my experience most teachers are pretty reasonable people, but as with any other vocation most want to get the job done then go and do something more enjoyable. It’s only the extremist idiots who have nothing better to do than discuss issues they are patently unqualified to comment on at a union conference.
Didn’t the NUT also propose compulsory teaching of the Koran for all children as well?
“I always thought poetry had to rhyme, silly me.”
Read some Shakespeare. It’s quite good in places.
Seriously though, am I actually the only one who’s said anything about the BBC and its coverage on this thread, or is this just a miscellaneous anti-NUT rant thread?
To paraphrase a 1970s US bumper sticker:
“Don’t like the army? Next time someone bombs you, call a teacher.”
Fat lot of use!
“Seriously though, am I actually the only one who’s said anything about the BBC and its coverage on this thread, or is this just a miscellaneous anti-NUT rant thread?”
I thought the Beeb coverage was fine. The problem is that some of the stuff coming out of the NUT was so hysterical, and the MoD’s response so weak, that simply reporting on the exchange of views looks skewed. Obviously this is due to the politics, whereby the government can’t be seen to be overcritical of a union that funds them. ho hum.
Fair point, though it begs the question of what, exactly, this is doing on the B-BBC website.
Most real teachers are too knackered after looking after mummy’s little darlings and covering the lessons of the NUT reps who have swanned off to yet another seminar or meeting. We have better things to do with our time than listen to even more infantile prats on our own time. I have happily helped young men and women join the forces and yes, occasionally advised one or two that it may not be for them without a lot of growing up first. (I still remember the face of the youth who ran out of my classroom screaming “you can’t tell me what to to! I’m joining the Army!”, thanks to an old friend in the Regiment, I visited during the training! Revenge can be sweet and non-fattening!)
For many young people the forces are a great career and an excellent start in life.
Oliver Kamm with more on “a teacher from east London”:
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2008/03/the-army-and-th.html
Alex:
“I always thought poetry had to rhyme, silly me.”
Read some Shakespeare. It’s quite good in places.
I have read some Shakespeare. I also know about Haikus, which while they don’t rhyme are still considered to be poetry. Silly you.
… it begs the question of what, exactly, this is doing on the B-BBC website.
How about lack of that background that you’re constantly defending the BBC for providing, but which is clearly missing in this report.
Why no more info on “the teacher from east London” and his political affiliations, and some mention of the aims and policies of the likes of the Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. I’m sure if he were a Tory or a member of the BNP we’d hear about it.
Alex @ 11:11am – because Mr Clinch is a poor example of what the NUT are trying to get across. Note Pounce’s comments about ‘Soldiers’ not being members of the Royal Navy. Did nobody at the BBC note this obvious mistake?
I also note that Mr Clinch did not supply any examples from his service which might support the premise of the original article.
Incidentally, during his adult service (which I calculate to be from ’69 to ’80), the RN wasn’t exactly in the thick of it. (As an ex Pongo, btw, I have great respect for the Senior Service).
The article is embarrassingly weak and does little to support the NUT line. Bias or incompetence or both? Whichever, it’s relevant to B-BBC.
>Unanswered questions. Why did Goff >quote so much of McGarr’s conference >speech when a couple of lines was all >that was needed? Why wasn’t McGarr’s >party political affiliation mentioned >given its relevance to the points he >made?
Killer quote (in more senses than one) from Mt McGarr (and covered in the Oliver Kamm link given by Hugh above) writing in the Socialist Worker in 2003:
“… while the war lasts, by far the lesser evil would be reverses , or defeats, for the US and British forces. That may be unlikely, given the overwhelming military superiority they enjoy. But it would be the best outcome in military terms.”
Killer quote (in more senses than one) from Mt McGarr (and covered in the Oliver Kamm link given by Hugh above) writing in the Socialist Worker in 2003:
“… while the war lasts, by far the lesser evil would be reverses , or defeats, for the US and British forces. That may be unlikely, given the overwhelming military superiority they enjoy. But it would be the best outcome in military terms.”
johnse18 | 26.03.08 – 3:24 pm | #
If we had a proper national broadcaster, instead of a Marxist agitprop mouthpiece – the real news story would be “Why are we permitting political extremists feed anti-British propaganda to our kids ?”
“I also know about Haikus, which while they don’t rhyme are still considered to be poetry.”
They’re also notoriously shite over 95% of the time and so would have compared too well to Clinch’s poetry for my flippant comment to work.
“Why no more info on “the teacher from east London” and his political affiliations, and some mention of the aims and policies of the likes of the Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. I’m sure if he were a Tory or a member of the BNP we’d hear about it.”
Typical B-BBC straw man. “I bet if he was a Tory” or “I bet if he was a Palestinian”. Have you got any examples of the BBC gratuitously mentioning Tory or BNP membership to discredit the subject of its stories?
“The article is embarrassingly weak and does little to support the NUT line. Bias or incompetence or both? Whichever, it’s relevant to B-BBC.”
Surely that would be right-wing bias then?
Alex,
Your argumentation is getting weaker and weaker, the only person who should be embarassed is you, you and your slavish devotion to the BBC.
If you are so right why bother keep coming on this site and trying to educate us?.
Personally I would pefer not to have to read your pathetic musings, however, as this is an open blog with no need to register (unlike your wonderful BBC) it seems that I am stuck with you and your drivel.
Is there actually a part of my post you disagree with, Jon, or did you just feel like drivelling a bit?
Actually Alex, I took the time to read your blog, what a shame that your own blog is so well structured whilst your posts on this blog are so poor.
I do not agree with your political views (which is clear from your blog), however, I found most of your posts very interesting, why not take the same approach you use on your own blog to how you engage with people on this blog?.
Alex: “Have you got any examples of the BBC gratuitously mentioning Tory or BNP membership to discredit the subject of its stories?”
I sense another of your rules from the unpublished handbook of BBC journalism coming on, so – to clarify – would it not be fairly normal journalistic practice to point out that “a teacher” calling for banning the military from schools was also a candidate for a very anti-war party? Wouldn’t a more convincing argument simply be that the journalist didn’t know?
Galil accused the BBC of double standards, the typical imaginary BBC double standards. I asked him to justify his accusation with evidence. I don’t remember the BBC ever giving party affiliation as background unless party politics was involved.
I don’t remember the BBC ever giving party affiliation as background unless party politics was involved.
Alex | Homepage | 26.03.08 – 8:52 pm
Are you saying that party politics are not relevant to the NUT conference and the matters raised?
Or that party politics are not relevant to a story about somebody advocating using material from the Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in schools?
Are you really that daft or just desperate to defend the BBC no matter how ridiculous it makes you appear?
“Are you saying that party politics are not relevant to the NUT conference and the matters raised?”
Yes. This is political, but it is not party political. If they had said “Kids should vote for R.E.S.P.E.C.T.” then party politics would be important.
“Or that party politics are not relevant to a story about somebody advocating using material from the Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in schools?”
Neither of those are political parties like R.E.S.P.E.C.T.