There is going to be a teacher shortage…the problem is a result of government failure to recruit more teachers in light of a baby boom, as the BBC put it on the radio.

Others might categorize the problem as having too many pupils due to the flood of immigrants coming to this country rather than too few teachers….just as the ‘housing problem’ is not one of too few houses but too many people walking across the border demanding a house.

Control the immigration and there wouldn’t be a problem.

The BBC, as stated, doesn’t mention ‘immigration’ just the fact that by 2023 we will have 9% more primary school pupils and 17% more secondary school pupils and that apparently we were 17% under target for teacher recruitment in 2014 and that Labour is outraged.   Which you might consider odd, as there are more teachers now and far more teaching assistants than in 2010.

The BBC is also less than honest when it comes to counting those teacher numbers.

It tells us…

Teachers warn of unqualified staff

A teachers’ union is warning that schools are increasingly likely to use unqualified teaching staff.

“Parents no longer have the certainty when they send their child to school that they will be taught by qualified teachers,” says NASUWT leader Chris Keates.

Labour’s Tristram Hunt says “this is nothing less than a scandal”.

The BBC does mention this…

But the Conservatives say there are fewer teachers in school without qualified status than in 2010.

But goes on to give us this less than clear claim bolstered by eyecatchingly large percentages….

The union has asked its members about their experiences. Among the 4,600 who responded 61% said they were “working alongside unqualified staff”, with 66% claiming the situation was “deteriorating” because of funding problems.

So just how many qualified teachers are there?  451,000. Just for a bit of perspective.  How many unqualified?  17,100.   But then there are also teaching assistants….so when the BBC tells us that 61% told the union that they are ‘working alongside unqualified staff’ does that also include those teaching assistants? Kind of skewing things a bit by not clarifying that.  In 2005 there were 434,200 qualified teachers and 18,800 unqualifed. Do the maths.

We now have more qualified teachers and fewer unqualified teachers both numerically and as a percentage.

Just how many teaching assistants do we have?  In 2005 there were 147,200, in 2013, 243,700.  In other words teachers are getting more help than ever before to teach…..Teaching assistants being there to assist teachers not to teach pupils themselves.

What of Labour’s Tristram Hunt who is ranting that “this is nothing less than a scandal”?

What’s the truth?

Is it any good asking the BBC?  Well it depends.

Here’s how they report the facts in the above article…

The most recent Department for Education figures available, for 2013, show the number of unqualified teachers rose compared with the previous year, from 14,800 to 17,100, but is lower than in 2010, when there were 17,800 of teachers without qualified teacher status.

However for academies, the proportion of unqualified teachers has risen each year since 2010, from 2,200 to 7,900.

It tells us that there are fewer unqualified teachers now than in 2010…but could have gone back to 2005 when there were 18,800 on Labour’s watch at a time when there were fewer qualified teachers as well…so a higher proportion were unqualified under Labour not just numerically.

And what of that word ‘proportion’?  Look at the second sentence…’However for academies, the proportion of unqualified teachers has risen each year since 2010, from 2,200 to 7,900.‘

The ‘proportion’ of unqualified teachers in academies has actually dropped….as the BBC’s own figures show in a more robust analysis.

In November 2010 there were indeed 2,200 unqualified teachers in Academies or 9.6%, in 2013 there were 7,900….a big rise….but that’s only 5.3%…how come?  In 2010 there were 22,800 qualified teachers in Academies, in 2013 there were 149,300….a  huge rise in qualified staff at Academies.

The BBC is being less than honest in its reports…on the one hand you have the regular news report which doesn’t give the full facts and favours Labour and the unions in its nuanced approach whilst the more indepth analysis, which I suspect most people won’t read, gives the figures but ends with this odd conclusion…

So as far as those political positions on qualified versus unqualified teachers are concerned, it seems the parties’ rhetoric is largely about staking out different visions of teaching and the school system.

One view is of a less regulated, more diverse teaching workforce; the other argues that formal training in the skills of being a teacher is an essential part of bolstering the status of the profession.

That’s a statement that flies in the face of all the facts that they have just given us on the numbers which clearly show the number of teachers has grown under the Coalition whilst the number of unqualified staff has fallen from November 2010…and not only that but the help teachers get in the way of teaching assistants has grown enormously which should make their job easier.

How the BBC can claim that Labour is the party of the qualified, high status teacher is beyond me…it’s just not borne out by the facts.

The Guardian provides a perfect illustration of just how the truth is being twisted in the propaganda war in the run up to the election…one would have hoped for better from the über ethical Guardian…

The rise of DIY dentistry: Britons doing their own fillings to avoid NHS bill

In a country that prides itself on free healthcare, DIY dentistry is an almost Victorian notion of hardship. But poverty and inequality – and the increasing stigma attached to both – are blocking access to healthcare for the poorest people in the UK, and grim tales of a black economy are on the rise.

 

Ah yes the stigma of poverty and inequality…..so using Labour’s narrative that poverty and inequality are a Tory creation the Guardian is trying to suggest we vote Labour if we want a Hollywood smile…..not even the BBC has stooped that low…perhaps because they remember this from 2009 under Labour whose recession, the worst in 100 years according to the IFS, helped with that inequality…never mind their policy of abandoning manufacturing, replacing the shopfloor with banks and the trading floors of London financial houses…

Millions ‘opt for DIY dentistry’

Millions of people in England have resorted to DIY dentistry, a survey by consumer magazine Which? suggests.

Since a new dental contract was introduced in 2006 there has been growing concern over access to care.But the government said the findings of the survey were unreliable, and said access to NHS dentistry was improving.

 

And this in 2007…

Pros and cons of DIY dentistry

Problems with getting an NHS dentist are leading some people to pull their own teeth out.

 

Still the BBC isn’t being exactly honest in its reports about the NHS…but what’s new.

From the Telegraph….

Did BBC help win Labour the 1964 election by cancelling Steptoe and Son?

When Harold Wilson learned that the BBC planned to broadcast an episode of Steptoe and Son on the night of the 1964 general election, he sensed disaster.

The Labour leader feared that working class voters would stay at home to watch the comedy, which in those days drew audiences of 26 million, instead of heading to the polls. In an extraordinary intervention, he visited the home of the BBC director-general, Sir Hugh Greene, and pleaded with him to pull the show from the schedules.

A government minister, one of Asian background, Sajid Javid, tells us that ‘Muslim communities in parts of Britain have a ‘cultural’ problem that allows women to be viewed as commodities.’

He tells us….

“If we are to learn proper lessons from this, we have to look at the cultural side of some communities in Britain and see why it is that in some communities there are men that have a view of women that is completely unacceptable in modern British society; why do they have such a low value of women that they see them as commodities to be abused?”

“Some of the values that certain people in some communities have, in their attitudes to women or on the question of freedom of expression, are just totally unacceptable in British society; and we do no one any favours when we don’t investigate or talk about them.”

The Mail reports it, the Independent reports it, the Guardian hasn’t and the BBC hasn’t…presumably still working out the line to take on this one…perhaps due to a ‘misplaced sense of political correctness’.

But, even though just about every news outlet in the world reported the below story, even the Japan Times,  the BBC didn’t report what the Pew Research Centre had to say about religion and population…wonder why…..

The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050

Why Muslims Are Rising Fastest and the Unaffiliated Are Shrinking as a Share of the World’s Population

‘Muslims are expected to account for 10 percent of Europe’s overall population, Pew added.’

The Sturgeon caviar turns out to be more cod’s roe, or is it cods wallop, as Sturgeon is revealed to be a secret Tory….or so the Telegraph tells us…

Nicola Sturgeon secretly backs David Cameron

“she’d rather see David Cameron remain as PM (and didn’t see Ed Miliband as PM material)”

The BBC seems rather put out and counters with the denial…

Nicola Sturgeon denies ‘preferring Cameron’

Naughtie on the Today programme also gave the denial more prominence and thought it was all a bit of political skulduggery by someone…after all he sniffed, the civil service is supposed to be neutral.

Funny.  Very very funny.

Back to the Today programme and we had the BBC’s Zoe Conway (08:20) giving us a run down of what ‘The People’ think and who they might voter for….first three told us they wouldn’t be voting UKIP or for those ‘extreme’ or polarising parties, the next was a nurse….Conway asked if she would be voting Labour as they have been making a good play  on the NHS, then we had a Conservative voter…who wouldn’t be voting Tory as he didn’t want a referendum on Europe..and he definitely wouldn’t be voting UKIP…and that was it.  A pretty broad and balanced segment of the populace….presumably she just went to the next door office at the BBC studio and asked her colleagues for their thoughts.

So four who wouldn’t vote UKIP, one of them anti the Europe referendum, a nurse who was probably Labour ….the BBC, you gotta love the bias.

So it’s all over bar the shouting….and what do we know that’s new?  Nothing.

Anyone who has listened to Sturgeon swatting aside the hopeless journos of the Today programme will know she is an effective speaker….never mind the poll ratings in Scotland.  And everyone else was as expected.

A complete waste of time that was more about the Media and its sense of its own importance than any attempt to provide us with real enlightenment….Paxman’s over aggressive interviews were equally unenlightening though they had the potential to be much more effective….in fact that was the format that should have been used for all party leaders….a head to head with a sensible journo with questions sent in from the public and fellow politicians….we might actually have learnt something and had less posturing from all, including Paxman and the interviews could have been longer and more involved spread over the day and not crammed into a couple of hours for 7 party leaders to try and get a word in on complex subjects…..you could also have known in advance when your politician of choice was going to be grilled and tuned in to watch without having to waste time on those of no interest to you….after all did we want to know what their policies are and how they defend them or was it more about watching a political dogfight to see who could out-talk all the rest, and not necessarily the winner because they had the best policies…..aren’t we told we are tired of such smooth talking politicians and want more grit and reality from them?  So why put them on show in a gladitorial contest?  Because it supposedly made good TV.

And what of Farage and his comments about HIV and immigration, comments he has made before?...the BBC lays into Farage …

BBC Political Correspondent Alex Forsyth, on the campaign trail in Ramsgate, said she had been told by a senior UKIP source that “people who support us are likely to agree with us on this issue”.

And the comment could be viewed as part of a “shock and core” strategy to “reach out to their core voters”.

…and quotes as many of the self serving sanctimonious put downs from other politicians who haven’t the guts to say the things that Farage does as it can cram into a report….a report that is remarkably lacking in honesty…..what’s missing?  Perhaps a quick shufty on Google would have made Farage look less like the pariah the BBC is trying to paint him as….how about this from only a year ago….

Ban on HIV positive immigrants entering the UK proposed for Immigration Bill by Tory MPs

Conservative MPs have been accused of trying to change the law to ban foreigners with HIV and Hepatitis B from living and working in Britain.

Nearly 20 Tories backed an amendment to the Government’s controversial Immigration Bill which would have required anyone coming to settle in Britain to prove that they were not HIV positive.

 

Or how about this from 2005…

Tories plan HIV tests for migrants

The Conservative party raised the political heat on immigration yesterday by demanding that anyone seeking to come to Britain for more than a year should undergo compulsory health tests including screening for HIV and TB.

And it wasn’t just the Tories…

Labour responded a week later with a range of tough proposals in the Home Office’s five-year plan, including its own proposals for migrant health checks, focusing on TB.

 

And never mind that ‘core’ UKIP vote that the BBC is so worried about….I suspect you could ask almost anyone in the street if Farage is right and get an answer that would have the chattering classes demanding  a new voting system…perhaps each vote in leafy lefty Hampstead be worth 5 of those from UKIP ghettos.

The Mail looked into this subject a while back…

Immigrants, HIV and the true cost to the NHS: Should the ‘International Health Service’ be treating patients who come here with the killer disease, asks SUE REID

And it’s not as if the BBC themselves haven’t raised the question about health tourism….

“It seems very strange when we’re shaving off the pennies here and there to actually open the door wide to the citizens of the world to walk in and have free medical care at primary care level in the UK.”

Farage is evil.  Or just honest.

From Harry’s Place...

‘Hey Khaled, looking good!’ The BBC as an Enabler of Antisemitic Terrorism

On 1 April the world woke up to a Hamas propaganda video. It took the form of a BBC ‘interview’ with Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas, and an accompanying ‘analysis’ by the BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen. It was so Andrex-puppy-soft, so simperingly unchallenging, so knowingly complicit in helping Hamas to spin to a western audience, that I thought it was an April Fools joke. (It wasn’t.)

When Bowen met Mashaal it was more Susanna Reid than Jeremy Paxman.

Just like the besotted Reid, Jeremy Bowen began with a bit of flirting. “Khaled Mashaal looked to be in good health. ‘Keep fit to keep on resisting,’ Mashaal joked before the interview” Bowen tells us.

(I bet Mashaal was looking chipper. A private gym in Qatar, private jets, luxury hotels and a personal fortune estimated at $2.6 billion will do that for you. And if the Jerusalem Post is correct, Mashaal also owns a 2.5 acre commercial centre in Qatar, which can put a smile on your face.)

Bowen then allowed Mashaal, an anti-Semitic terrorist who has exulted in the killing of Jews as Jews, to preen and pose, without challenge, before a global audience, with the full imprimatur of a respectful BBC, as a heroic Palestinian democrat, a moderate man, a peacemaker, and a reluctant Liberator in the glorious tradition of Nelson Mandela and George Washington.

Bowen might have asked Mashaal ‘If your goals are so benign, and so moderate, as you claim, why not revoke those parts of the Hamas Charter which say “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”?

Instead Bowen opted for a ‘Mr. Mashaal, do you have a message for the nation?’ style of ‘interviewing’. Matti Friedman calls this the ‘ideological onslaught successfully disguised as journalism.’ Yesterday, knowingly or not, the BBC was used as a vehicle for Hamas Propaganda. Yesterday, to its shame, the BBC became an enabler.

The Muslim Brotherhood propagandist has found a new cause…..it is worth looking to see what Bowen’s apprentice, Donnison, is saying on Twitter?  No, I can pretty much guess what Hamas’ mouthpiece in Oz is saying….ahh couldn’t resist…amused by this…

What if the BBC’s John Sweeney had said….Islam…A force for good or something more sinister?  It’s not easy to investigate Islam.  If you investigate them, they will come for you….a cult that is corrupt, sinister and dangerous, out to capture people and brainwash them.  So, a force for good or a brainwashing cult?

What if Piers Morgan had said that Tom Cruise must ditch the vile cult of Islam NOW before Hollywood ‎ditches him?

What if he said this…

What is different, and shockingly so, is what we now know about his always mysterious personal life.

And in particular, his relationship with an even more mysterious entity – Islam.

On Sunday, the BBC aired a much-hyped documentary into the cult , called “Going Islamic”.

It was an astonishing, terrifying film; one which finally nailed many of the unpalatable truths about this deeply secretive and deeply unpleasant ideology.

The whole ideology is utterly sickening in its cynical heartlessness and exploitation.

Muslims, as they always do, reacted with a vicious public diatribe against the BBC – condemning it as a pack of lies.

Denigrating opponents is their default position to any perceived attack.

But of course it wasn’t Islam it was Scientology that has enraged Piers and Sweeney.

Isn’t it odd how some religions get kid glove treatment whatever they do and others, whacko and slightly sinister perhaps, get absolutely vilified….would Morgan or Sweeney call Islam vile, sickening and deeply unpleasant…or even corrupt, sinister and dangerous?  Don’t think so.

And it’s not as if Christianity, the full-on ‘authorised’ and ‘approved’ versions don’t have their own dark sides…..but nothing that can compare to the acts done in the name of Islam…acts which can be justified with clear commands from the Koran and Hadith.

And yet……it’s Scientology that gets it in the neck from the Media (and Piers Morgan, whoever he was)…paradoxically the BBC’s Sweeney, who was ‘spying’ on the Church of Scientology and making a film about them complains that they were ‘spying’ on him and checking what he was up to as he spied upon them….their spying was bad, his good…..Sweeney’s investigation makes altogether fairly, by comparison, trivial complaints against Scientology, nothing that couldn’t be levelled at Christianity never mind Islam…..and the film seems more concerned with explaining away Sweeney’s mad outburst from a previous attempt to examine Scientology than anything else…

At Easter, a Christian festival, the BBC are more concerned about Islam and what you think about it….yesterday they gave us some Muslim propaganda and today they bring us yet more with this on the Frontpage…

US Christian wears hijab for 40 days

Jessey Eagan is a Christian and a mother of two, who works as a children’s director at Imago Dei Church in Peoria, Illinois. This year during Lent, she decided to wear a hijab. She kept a diary of her experience in a blog called #40DaysOfHijab, which is sparkling a debate both in the Christian and Muslim community.

Who cares?  The BBC always adds in that line about ‘sparking debate in the community’ in an attempt to show that it’s not just a story of interest to the BBC bubble and has real relevance to the world…when it doesn’t.

Perhaps a US Christian might like to dress up as Kenyan Christian and keep a diary of their experience…possibly a very short diary…..147 dead in Kenya terror attack as Islamists target Christian students

Or those in Egypt, or Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia or Syria or Nigeria…you get the picture.

In the Spectator there are some thoughts from Roger Scruton about ‘The problem of the integration of the Muslim community into our cities’  and how the Left have deliberately set out to destroy our own civilisation and society.

He tells us that ‘‘The truth is hard. We don’t need reminding that there is a heavy censorship in all matters to do with immigration, to do with the integration of immigrant communities and in particular the integration of Muslim communities.’

He says there is a battle for our civilisation and we’re losing it…[There is a battle?]….. ‘Yes, and for the survival of western civilisation. It’s not as though we’ve lost it completely. We still have got this civilisation — it’s all we’ve got, and it’s not as though we’re going to be able to replace it with any other.’

And the BBC is battling on which side?  Look at this report and you might wonder...A truly dangerous meeting of minds.

The BBC is claiming that MI5 knew of the likelihood that the men who carried out the 7/7 attacks were likely to become suicide bombers and missed the opportunity to stop them…..the BBC’s source?  An apparent MI5 agent…a disgruntled ex-Jihadi….whose story doesn’t add up.

The former MI5 agent who calls himself Aimen Dean recently spoke for the first time about his work for the UK intelligence agencies.

He says his job was to “understand al-Qaeda and other jihadist movement cells based in the UK as well as their recruitment and fundraising activities”.

So it was that in the winter of 2003 he went to the meeting room in Dudley to attend a lecture by a man he had never heard of but who would go on to be an inspiration to Islamist extremists throughout the world…Anwar al-Awlaki.

He can remember the names and faces of men he met briefly in a crowd..

Dean said he shook hands with everyone there, including three men who’d driven down from Leeds. They introduced themselves as Mohammad, Shehzad and Abu Abdullah. The next time Dean saw their faces was in news reports following the 7/7 bombings in which 52 people died.

The BBC tells us…

Dean says he was invited to the eight-day course of lectures by someone who was at that time being watched by MI5 because of concerns he was involved in terrorist activity. Curious to hear the preachings of this new kid on the block, he agreed to be there.

They then say..

In the winter of 2003, MI5 were sufficiently interested in what their agent told them about the lectures that the BBC understands they hurriedly mounted a surveillance operation outside the venue, photographing people coming and going. But by the time the team was in place it seems the men from Leeds had left, since no photographs of them were taken.

So MI5 were already watching a terrorist suspect, the man who invited Dean to the lectures, and yet the BBC tells us they had to ‘hurriedly’ mount a surveillance operation and unfortunately missed the 7/7 boys?  And yet they were already watching the suspect and they must have had pre-warning of the lectures which were over 8 days….but the team wasn’t in place in time?  Someone is telling porkies.

The BBC speculates that MI5 hid ‘the damning evidence of their negligence’, which is what they are trying to subtly suggest in this story….

A parliamentary committee report in the aftermath of 7/7 found that it could not criticise the judgements made by MI5 and the police based on the information that they had and their priorities at the time. There is no reference in the report to the lecture given by al-Awlaki in Dudley but that may have been because the intelligence had come to MI5 from an undercover agent who needed to be protected.

Maybe there is no mention of it because it never happened.

We’re then told more of what good old Dean said…

Dean remembers reporting to his MI5 handler that all of those in the room could potentially become suicide bombers, but he says that he never expected anyone to attack the UK.

Remarkable…not only does Dean say he saw the 7/7 bombers and remembers them well and that MI5 missed them but that he knew they would become suicide bombers…probably…and again MI5 missed them and must have made little effort to find the people at the lectures despite the ‘knowledge’ that they had 30 potential suicide bombers roaming the UK.

Can’t help thinking someone is taking the BBC for a ride…a ride that the BBC is happy to go along with even if they think it is suspect…the BBC will never turn down a chance to poke the security services in the eye.

This has a prominent position on the BBC Frontpage…

#BBCtrending: The ‘Eid Pray Love’ movement

The BBC tells us that ‘These Muslims are fasting…and its not Ramadan’ to show solidarity with Christians.’

Really?  In what way are they ‘fasting’?

What are the big sacrifices they are making ‘in solidarity with Christians‘?

Sweets, cheese, no online shopping, Instagram…and the man who organised it…he’s giving up sour cream and onion crisps….for a while.

We’re told by a Christian ‘interfaith activist’ that they are showing a different side to Islam to how it is portrayed in the Media…challenging people’s perceptions, myths and fears.

The Muslims tells us that it is an “initiative with the goal of uniting Muslims and changing our perception through positive social, and interfaith action.”

So in other words it has nothing to do with ‘solidarity with Christians’ but all to do with trying to make people think Islam is wonderful.

It’s outright propaganda for the Muslim religion,  a ‘Trojan Horse’ if you like.

Good of the BBC to put it on the Frontpage especially at Easter when we hear what other Muslims think is the real face of Islam rather than what we hear in the Media….the BBC and the Guardian….. Muslims may be taking the opportunity to flock to ISIS….. about which this is an interesting comment….

However, police have not been told of the families’ concerns as the schools do not want their pupils to be criminalised.

Mr Afzal told The Times: ‘One head said he was being approached almost on a daily basis by parents who fear their kids are about to go to Syria.’

But neither the parents nor the school go to the police.

Will we hear Muslims subsequently blaming the police for not stopping their Jihadi offspring from going to Syria as we have recently had….only for it to turn out the parents often knew more than they were admitting about the radicalisation process? Or as Sir Peter Fahy said…

The parents of teenagers who flee Britain to join ISIS should take more responsibility for their children’s actions, a senior police officer has said.

Sir Peter Fahy, one of the country’s leading counter terrorism officers, said families are more to blame for young jihadis who runaway to Syria than the police, schools or local authorities.

Rather than report their concerns to police for fear of being criticised, some parents are guilty of embracing ‘victimhood’ when their children leave, he claimed.