All posts by Alan Storkey

Alan Storkey has stood in two elections as a Christian candidate, was Chair of the Movement for Christian Democracy, has written "Jesus and Politics" and has helped shape recent Christian political thought.
General, Re-Remembering War

1. RE-REMEMBERING WAR.

We are coming up to Remembrance Day, but this year it must be different. Usually, it is frozen in a sacred, silent respect for the dead and an implicit, always unchallenged, understanding that they died for a good cause. Actually, they always did not, as this man in the painting knew. Respect for them should be different. They were let down by war after war that should not have been. We look at these failures and honour those who died, and still die needlessly, by facing the real cause of wars and rumours of wars. Let us shake off this propaganda control by the militarists and honour the dead by facing the truths about war. We begin with a general point and the example of WW1.


1. WORLD WAR ONE. The Military-Industrial Complexes of the World need wars and generate wars. Accumulating arms causes wars and did in 1914.
Most modern wars do not have a big disputed reason, but start because the military and the arms sellers need wars for their business. The military-industrial complex, allied to its politicians, cause wars and rumours of wars.


Why was the Great War triggered by a single murder in Sarajevo? Because there were already four massive arms races underway. The GREAT WAR WAS ABOUT ARMS. This was hidden in the long remembrance of the World War One. We discussed it endlessly, but not its cause.


The person who knew the build up to World War One most thoroughly was Lord Grey, British Foreign Secretary for the preceding decade. He said: “The moral is obvious; it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war. If there are armaments on one side, there must be armaments on other sides.. The increase in armaments that in each nation is intended to produce consciousness of strength and a sense of security, do not produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. Fear begets suspicion and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts…The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them – it was these that made war inevitable. This, it seems to me, is the truest reading of history, and the lesson that the present should be learning from the last in the interests of future peace, the warning to be handed on to those who come after us.”

There were many other witnesses to the same truth, as we shall see. ARMS CAUSE WARS.


Is Lord Grey correct? Your answer counts.

General

ALL THE WORLD

Forget about Bojo and even Trump. They are dangerous froth. Dangerous because they are Tory autocratic and Plutocratic opponents of democracy. They need to be defeated democratically in elections, resoundingly, opposed fully by Christians. The real test is structural. It is to dismantle the control of big money over world economic policy. Here, the old Left is useless and discredited. In China, Russia and elsewhere the Old Communist Left finishes up with greedy autocrats who govern by intimidation. Liberalism – you can do what you want – is a big bit of the Western problem and controlled by big money. It is causing us to fail. The capitalists are in charge, accelerating to destruction. There is a vacuum of truthfulness for the world. That is why we are in chaos, made worse by Covid.

There are five main world problems. 1 GLOBAL WARMING acute; Capitalist control prevents it being addressed. 2. WORLD MILITARISM – funding weapons, fighters and war destroys economies and wastes on a vast scale, but the military keep capitalists safe. 3. POVERTY – in poor and rich countries several billion will struggle to live and are nearly slaves in crisis world economy. 4. LIVING – many people’s lives are destroyed by wealth, consumerism, antagonism, mass media and sin. 5. Persons – billions are lost, controlled by consumer “needs”, selfishness, social isolation and political control.

Christians can see how their faith addresses 4 and 5, but for a variety of reasons they have given up on responding to the first three problems. We need to recover the whole counsel of God. God calls us to meek living, uncontrolled by consumption, small in footprint. Jesus is clear about it. Christian peace easily addresses the silly destructive waste of militarism. We can all disarm and be far better off loving the enemies the militarists have been busy creating. Finally, rich Christians have compromised, but the Christian faith insists on redistribution, the poor inheriting the earth and the deconstruction of empire, might and economic power. Jesus shows us how to live by losing our selfish lives.

The Christian Good News addresses all five world problems structurally. Nothing else will. Christianity does it for all, for the survival of this wonderful God-given planet. Head-down Christians have got to look up, two billion plus around the world, thinking and acting together. They have got to see the big picture, the full structure of their faith – against no-one and forming the world in love. Stop, you who are inside your little Christian enterprises, and think how God loves the whole world. You will need to see Big Picture Christianity anew.

General

THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

The Facebook posts on the Church of England receive some interesting responses about what churches are doing, some nonconformist critiques and soft defences – No, its not really nationalist, but it would be fair to say that the Church of England was not rocking. Yet, in my humble view (not opinion) that is what it needs. For five hundred years it has been establishment, supporting the political (tory) status quo. The destruction of the Reformation Gospel for all people living before God and reforming politics and living achieved by Henry VIII goes on and is now chronic. Normal people cannot even understand the C of E. The hierarchy is in an ecclesiastical cul de sac, and also with you. It, aside the ordinary Anglican Christians doing good work, having visions, welcoming refugees, living the faith in personal terms, is terminally in failure. Congregations are old. The museum culture engulfs us – oh the Church roof, and we go no-where, we do nothing, we can do nothing because church structures are not geared to doing anything.

And here the Facebook posts come in. Those who see more are too nice to confront the system, and the system is too slippery to address itself. Five hundred years of relative inertia is difficult to shift. The Anglican subconscious does nothing. Yet, we need a Reformation in the Church of England which shakes it to its foundations. It is only up for a crack in the plaster. Marx, in another bit of his Christian/Jewish thinking aside his materialism/atheism said the point was to change the world, not just understand it, but the Anglican hierarchy, without a work of God, cannot change. It is like asking a garden gnome to sprint. Christians change not by revolution, but by reformation. The present Anglican Church can’t address militarism, poverty and wealth, sexual faithfulness, consumerism, superpowers, global warming, international relations because it is stuck. The God Who rules the whole of life, science, wars, arrogant rulers through all centuries is in Anglican minds fixated down on the Eucharist, liturgy and choosing the next vicar. So, this post is not about a few views, but the Reformation of the Church Of England. And Reformers have to stand up one by one and reform. Somehow the ecclesiastical and political establishment of the Church of England must go. It is not mainly about shuffling persons, but it is about changing persons and a radical review of Anglicanism and its unchristianities and subcultural mindsets.

Teresa?Trump letters

( read this slowly) My Americans,

I am your President and I am Donald Trump. I come before you and you will elect me again to be your greatest President because you are the greatest electorate in the world and we are going to make America great again, again.

I defeated North Korea. I defeated somewhere else in the world and I made America respected around the world. We want America to be first. Under my leadership America was first in the Coronavirus league, first to land on the moon and will have the biggest world deficit in history. In this election remember you are voting for me and not for Saddam, Putin, the Chinkie with the funny name, that Queenie woman or Saddam. They are no good. You are an American and you will vote for me and not the rest of the world, wherever that is. We are on the up and up and I want you to vote so hard for me that I finish up on Mt Rushmore.

I have cleared the swamp in Washington of all the people I appointed who were not up to it, but still there are people around in that Capitol thingie who are swamp. They favour their own businesses, get their dumb family in jobs, say anything that will get them elected  and go on about global warming. I am going to do global warming later in my speech. They talk money, healthcare, Co Operation and a load of shit. As you know, I do deals. I can make money out of the taxman on losses. I come out on top. America comes out of top. We stand tall. I have sorted Iraq, Syria, Vietnam, that Yemeny place, and we are going to do Canada. I do trade deals. We are going to take the Brits to the cleaners and make them another US state. I run the show here and play golf. My balls are always in the hole.

This election is also about Biden. Biden is Bad and Trump is Good. Biden is bad, because Hillary was bad and Obama was bad. Bush was good and won the War in Iraq until I won the war in Iraq. Bush spent a load of money and I spend a load of money, but Biden is bad. Spending a load of money makes you feel good. You feel good don’t you. That’s because I am spending a load of money. Obama was bad. He got the deficit down, but I am going to make it great again, the greatest deficit. My economic policy is to make the rich richer and you can see them on telly. You can see their wealth, my wealth right in your home on TV. But Biden is bad. His policies are bad. All policies are bad, but especially Biden’s. You must not vote for Bad Biden. You vote for Good Donald. Soon all my family, who like the White House stuff, will say how Good I am and How Bad Biden is.

Then there are the truthies. They are everywhere. They say too many Americans have died in the virusthing because of me. Americans do not die. I have not died. Americans may pass away but they do not die. And we will conquer the virus. We have the best troops in the world and they will shoot to win.

The truthies say that the economy is way down and we have a big trade gap and I am looking the other way, but Americans have always been able to go out and get a job. I need trash collectors in Trump Tower. You can tote that barge. You can lift that bale. We have the greatest economy in the world and the truthies always tell lies, so we must never listen to them. Never listen. Always talk over and remember Biden is bad. The economy is booming.

I want to talk to you Christians. Remember Jesus was a loser. He was slow getting votes, and he got nailed because he did not win. It is time you Christians backed a winner. You have to understand the logic. This is God’s America and God’s America voted for me and God can’t be wrong, so you vote for me again, and Biden is bad. I can hold a Bible. Of course, I don’t do the Commandments stuff, but I am the President. So, all you Christians will vote for me because Biden pretends he is a Christian and is bad. I am a sinner saved by space.

And then there is global warming. It does not exist. You can always inject it, or if that does not work we can cut the globe out and just do America warming. My wall may help keep it out, but if fires and hurricanes invade, we will stop them knowing they do not really exist. The best way is not to talk about them and vote for me. I will lead us through American warming which does not exist.

So Americans, vote for me. Think of it as a choice. Vote for me or vote for me. Sorry, I got that thinking thing wrong. Your arm goes straight for Trump. Democrats vote for Trump. Republicans will automatically vote for Trump. If all men and all women vote for Trump, like my family, then I should win and I can make America great again, again. Biden has two syllabillies and is bad, so you will forget that. Vote for Trump. Vote for Me. Always vote for me. There that should sort the bastards out.

General

WE WILL DISARM THE WORLD IN FIVE YEARS

We, the people of the world, can make peace. You, superpowers, have run the military show for a century – doing World Wars, Cold Wars, death and destruction everywhere. You have had your turn and it does not work. Move over.

We see through winning wars, threats, scares, massive destruction, new weapons, fear and needing enemies. We back friendship, law, proper democracy and peace. You promise peace with nuclear weapons. You arm dictators and we lose democracy. You waste 5% of the world economy on weapons and war. You push up world CO2 by 5%. We cannot afford you any more. Your way is crap. We quite like other countries, see human life as sacred, and know the way of war does not work.

We are determined democratically – if necessarily against governments, dictators, the militaries and arms firms – to take the world to peace. We show this by having at least four billion people agree to it, across the world. Then, we require governments to disarm, 20% a year for five years, fully policed, rooting out avoiders, until this silly military machine is eradicated from the earth. As citizens have no arms within most states, so multilaterally we fully disarm. Disarming is easier than the arming. It is cheaper, does not destroy, builds trust, ends poverty and refugees and frees up science, technology  and fifty million soldiers. So, we do it across the world through the UN.

We will love supposed enemies, co-operate, and save the planet from the way of death you have charted for us. Making peace costs nothing. Loving one another is a good deal, and the planet needs this blessing. We will disarm the world in five years.

I vote for this as one person of peace.

We Can Disarm the World

ENDING THE MILITARY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF KILLING

THE AGE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL WARFARE.

Science is seen as benign, but around the world the military and the arms industry does much of the world’s most advanced scientific and technical work. Probably a million scientists and technicians are a highly funded elite running the world’s most sophisticated R and D programme. Military science does space, nuclear, ballistics, explosions, ‘intelligence’, materials, flight, metals, propaganda, information, speed, chemical and biological warfare, communications, encryption, logistics and a large number of other specialities where it is at the “edge” of science. Universities, research institutes and special units often receive money directly from governments to “spearhead” much of world science and technology in military directions.

Of course, many scientists see their research as neutral and impartial in relation to the subject matter. That is an important principle, but it does not address the shape of scientific research. For science travels. One discovery leads to another. Money is put into areas of research. It is like a tree which is cut back or has overladen branches. And technology makes demands of science. It creates  direction. Ballistics is science and weaponry. Fritz Haber, poison gas, WW1 Gas and the gas chambers are direction. The Atom Bomb led to the H Bomb. WW1 biplanes led through to the F35 costing more than a trillion dollars with a lot of practical science involved.

Overall, Militarism may be the main direction of world science and technology. This is not surprising. WW1 saw about seven years of frenetic build up to war and WW2 ten years of fairly total preoccupation with it. We focus on Alan Turing, the person and mathematician, but he was merely one of a vast number sucked into the military machine. In these periods weapons and war was the fierce focus of almost all scientific research. That continued through the Cold War to 1990 with heavy expenditure and the competitive technical development of weapons which bankrupted the USSR. So, for 60 years of the last century, weapons were heavy drivers of science and technology. We should feel little surprise if it is still dominant.

THE IGNORED BIAS

Of course, this is camouflaged. We see science as neutral, investigating everything openly, and so it partly is in schools and some universities. Scientists look away from this military focus, and pretend it does not exist. But money talks. Research funds, the recruitment of scientists, the technical work where the money is, the companies and webs of military related developments channel recruits into their domain. Both in democracies and dictatorships the weapons’ people find “good” careers and the direction of research is turned towards the required ends and away from normal useful humane science.

We do not easily see this bias. Rockets were sophisticated; bikes were ignored. Explosives were developed; house insulation was slow. Poison gas was opened up, solar energy was unthought. Nuclear bombs were tested round the world; its dangers were slowly investigated. Aircraft carriers were developed, but fresh water carriers were not. Star Wars technology was developed, although it could not work, while the science of trees was underfunded. The pre-occupation with military science and technology had to be right, because we were under threat from someone else’s weapons. The obvious conclusion that threatening science and technology is dumb for all of us was drowned in Cold War propaganda, which carried on even when the Cold War bathwater had drained away. Some scientists protested, but they were drowned out by the System. This great bias was unaddressed and is unaddressed in West and East. Budgets of trillions keep the military science and technology juggernaught expanding.

THE BY-PRODUCT MYTH.

Of course, we were all taught that Teflon, used on rockets, was also great on non-stick frying pans. Military scientific research produced good by-products and was therefore part of useful science. Nuclear weapons research led to useful nuclear power. Most of these arguments are special pleading. Aside the decommissioning problems, we now find that good old windmills do the job better than nuclear power and copper bottomed frying pan does quite well. The big by-product story is space exploration arising from military rockets, which of course it did. The formation of NASA is interesting. Partly, it resulted from the Cold War competition with the USSR’s Spitnuk launch. Partly, it was Werner van Braun’s tortured conscience, but more widely the military rocket people realised that space exploration was a PR coup because space rockets might be useful rather than just destructive. So, the landing on the Moon was related to military research, and has helped astronomical knowledge, but it was also PR for an industry that otherwise had a load of killer rockets in silos and subs which were at best going nowhere. Meanwhile rush hour traffic is unbelievably slow and telescopes tell us a great deal. By-products are usually less important than products, and we should therefore focus not on military technology by-products, but on the central focus of the products which is to kill.

THE TECHNOLOGIES OF KILLING, MAIMING AND DESTROYING.

Really, military scientific and technical research has been directed towards killing and destruction; that is indisputable. It has been successful with 200 million dying through war and weapons. The gas used in WW1 was horrific, and developed by all sides. One and a half billion shells were used in WW1, killing millions and producing PTSD, or shell shock, in tens of millions.  Planes were developed where you could push bombs over the side, then bombers, then carpet bombers. Machine guns allowed a hundred to be killed in one spray of firing. In WW2 we had the horrific concentration camp gassing of Jews and other minorities, and finally nuclear weapons arrived where the lucky children who had not been killed held their eyeballs in their hands and tried to put their flesh back. Now we can destroy the human race many times over. They have not yet been used but their purpose is killing. One nuclear bomb wipes out the people in Greater Manchester well into the Pennines.

This death and destruction go right up to the present. The 21st century has seen Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other territories bombed with large loss of life, destruction, tens of millions of refugees, and failed states. The US and UK played a large part in these calamities. Trillions has been spent on these wars and trillions of damage has been done. So, this investment in the advanced technologies of death and destruction has produced its straight line outcome. Now drones will fight instead of soldiers, at vast costs, and conflict in space will add to potential tensions. Improved military technologies are merely more destructive. Technologies of death are what it says on the tin.

THE GREAT COVER-UP.

Except it does not say it on the tin. This vast scientific and technological investment is for death and destruction. It has done what it was for, yet we have the myth. Weapons of death and destruction produce peace and security through “defence”. The weapons people and the scientists would say that wouldn’t they. But let us examine what they say. Since the time of Hannibal or earlier weapons on one side produce weapons on another. A new technology on one side is soon picked up by the other, whether it be chariots, lances, crossbow, longbow, cannon, armour, muskets, rifles, bayonets, radar, dynamite, gun turrets, barrel rifling, explosive shells, gas, mines, torpedoes, nuclear weapons and so on. Whatever one side develops, another side develops. We have had two hundred years of the modern era to work out that wars do not work. All sides lost World War One and World War Two. America  was winning in Vietnam and then lost in Vietnam. They won in Iraq and then lost in Iraq.  The CIA won in Afghanistan and then faced 9/11 by way of reprisal. What is the point of two sides fighting to death and destruction without learning the lesson? WW1 was the War To End All Wars for obvious reasons, but then it was not. The Great Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932 which could have prevented Hitler coming to power was defeated by the militarists, including those who wanted to work on new planes and ships. Since then the wars have gone on. It requires the intellect of someone banging their head against the wall to see the whole enterprise of competitive military technology is dumb for everyone. But it is not challenged, because at present scientists and technologists compromise with the military establishment and do not challenge the lie.

ENDING THE LIE. THE SCIENTIFIC/TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLT.

The lie is that the next bit of technological development and its supporting science will win the next war. Always the hope is dangled there. Usually, it is unspoken, because explicit it is so silly. Satellites in space will win us the next war, or prevent a war with a power who has also put satellites in space. All the moves have the same character as giving two boys who are quarrelling a bigger gun each to help sort out their quarrel. Even thick aristocrats quit duels a couple of centuries back.  Wars do not work, but the arms companies keep persuading us that it is the “way forward”., simply because they make the money and they have the technologies. They would say that wouldn’t they, backed by the militaries. They tame politicians, demanding loyalty through blind patriotism and we do weapons, war, weapons, war, decade after decade, destroying the planet, messing up the lives of hundreds of millions and wasting science and technology on death and destruction. This oh so dumb ritual of scientific genocide scientists must address. They should, and can, close it down. They cannot take the militarists’ dollar and abjectly do death and destruction, and redesign national budgets. There is no military technological breakthrough. We are trillions better off without fighting. World Multilateral Disarmament is easier than WMD. Scientists and technicians should revolt, en masse, against this prostitution of their purposes and do good.   

It is time for the scientific rebellion. Military science and technology is destroying the planet through global warming, war, threats and mega military technology. It is time to stop and disown this direction simply because it kills people and offers a false hope. Some will have split loyalties, but those can be resolved. The detailed stance against this scientific/technical power needs some thought, and here is not the place to do it, but scientists can fight, without weapons, and develop strategies to win. The glorious truth is that winning this one harms no-one and benefits us all.

May/Boris

HELLO MY PEOPLE.

Now we have conquered Coronavirus, I thought it would be a good time to have a fireside chat. As you know, I am both Churchill and Roosevelt. Of course, you must still wash your hands as I taught you, but now we are nearly virus free and must protect ourselves against all these ghastly EU types who would bring it over. The French, as we know, do not wash their hands properly.

I have announced we are overhauling Public Health, England. That is to imply we had some problems with these expertise people, and it was not Matt Hancock’s fault that we were a bit slow off the mark at the start and he had not got his braces on. I need him to resign after we have an enquiry and some stuff comes out. I am very grateful that he chaired the SAGE meetings while I had to do Thingy’s bottle. Now I am in charge and things are going with a swing. You must feel eternally grateful to me that you can buy fish and chips again and don’t have to stand close to people who smell. It is deeply wrong that Putin has announced a vaccine and is taking the credit for it. I hope to make an announcement about our vaccine which will lead the world from Oxford soon.

I am standing by Mr Williamson, who has said he wants to be Prime Minister, in this exams business. We need another Chris Grayling. It is being absolutely overblown. All you need to do on exams is scrape through, and there is always a bit of cribbing anyway. The best people will always rise to the top and if you can do a quick amo, amas, amat and Napoleon crossing the Alps, grades do not really matter. I never got past the Pubic Wars in Latin. But I understand that people will feel strongly about this and I am deeply with them. We will support you all the way in your degree, apprenticeship or soap delivery job. Because Britain is great again, you will go forward. Could I just say that the ladder is there and all you have to do is climb it and every ladder needs a wall and every wall has two sides to it and I can see them both.

In a week or two’s time we are having a Get Brexit Done Again week. I don’t know when. It will depend on when you need distracting. We have left Europe but just have the trade bit to go, and we are going to arrange that you will still get your tomatoes from the Dutch and your VWs from the Belgians. Of course, you can buy British, and we are offering a contract for English oranges to some of my friends. When we have fully left Europe we will be able to go onwards and upwards and forward in our great United Kingdom. Money will flock to our offshore tax havens and more Russian oligarchs will come here looking for football teams. Of course, I know that some of you are suffering in the North, but I will build a bridge from Lancashire to Yorkshire, and the other way of course, which will employ a good few navvies and make you feel good. Your bit of High Speed Two will unfortunately not be finished until 2040ish, but it is travelling north and will arrive at Platform 6 in Leeds after further delays for which we apologise. We will get MYLY Bridge done after Christmas.

At the Conservative Party Conference this year, which we will hold in Newport so that our rich Conservative members can spend trickle down money there, we will be discussing the colour of the tree on the logo. Should it be Oxford blue? We will also discuss which way forward will unite this great country of ours. We Tories are running the only show in town. We want you to talk about us and other trivia all of the time to keep the show in town the show on the road. We have been dishing out money to everyone; do not ask where it comes from. You know we are nice and you do not want to be governed by incompetents like them. So together we will lead the world with Donald Trump as our ally and trade partner. I am looking forward to eating chlorinated chicken in jeans and a Stetson while keeping my finger off a new nuclear button. We have nothing to fear bur fear itself, as Churchill said and with FDR we will fight them on the beaches, socially distanced of course. And so, finally, I say, “Stay Something. Stay Somewhere and Stay Sometime” and we will be with you all the way. That should inspire them. Leave that bit off, silly.

General

WHAT ARE EXAM RESULTS FOR?

Let us look properly at this exam results crisis with Covid – not at the detailed problems with estimation, but with all the issues in the bigger scheme of things which are brushed under the carpet for a long time.

NINE BIG EXAM PROBLEMS.

  1. RESULTS ARE DIFFERENT AND INCOMPARABLE. Testing understanding differs from subject to subject. In one subject or another you read, compute, make, evaluate, calculate, solve, absorb laws, locate understanding, learn languages, master techniques, weigh significance, reflect on persons, weigh ideas, assess cultures and so on. These are different, but we put them on the same grade scale and sum them as performance.
  2. TESTING IS FALLIBLE. Testing can be wrong or arbitrary. I’ve looked at exam papers where 20% of the questions are wrong. They are always selective within the subject and curriculum. The curriculum may be weak – excluding slavery, misreading world wars, selecting out authors arbitrarily, missing out maths concepts, out of date or trendy, reflecting examiner/teacher biases. It always involves judgment.
  3. GRADING IS PARTLY ARBITRARY. Grading is arbitrary in a number of ways. It requires differentiation which may not be there or be imposed. Some questions differentiate between scholars;  others may not. Marking often involves judgment. Exams set out, often, to be discriminatory. Results add differences. Grades bunch. They personalize; Fred was good at this but bad at that; he becomes average. Some know how to do exams; others do not, and so a skill is measured, not necessarily education within a subject. Although marking is strongly monitored for fairness, that highlights the problem.
  4. TESTING EDUCATION – WHAT IS THAT? We do not know what education is. It changes several times within out lifetimes. Is it knowledge, understanding, technical skills, data manipulation, wisdom, job training, life skills, values, frontier knowledge or what? What is a good grasp of  Those inside one definition do well. Those outside it may do badly.
  5. THE EDUCATIONAL ACCESS/ PROMOTION THING. The significance of the grading is partly in terms of acquiring access to high paying jobs through career routes. Of course, we need doctors, architects and ambulance drivers who know what they are doing, but the systems of getting into Oxbridge, promotion and opening doors are substantially socially constructed and driven by wealth right down to buying houses near good schools. The present rows over awarded grades are largely about access to educational and career routes. These social constructions are rarely examined, and are given undue significance by pay differentials created under post-Thatcher politics. They are unreal, exaggerated and without good economic foundation. Idiots can be given £1000 an hour, while good, thoughtful, educated people receive £10. The significance of grading is deeply affected by this arbitrary inequality.
  6. INDIVIDUALISED EDUCATION. Grading individualises. “Good” schools and universities, whatever they may be, often depend both on good students and teachers. If X had a good teacher Y, who “produces a good result” (for teachers are so assessed) then when X leaves Y, how good is he or she? We do not know. Teachers know that being with a good peer group vastly improves education, through example, discussion, skill development and so on. Really education is deeply corporate, but grades individualize. In the UK many parents buy skilled teachers for their average children.
  7. CULTURE AND EDUCATION. Personal cultures and language deeply affect education and what education is. Many are bi or tri lingual, but examined in one language, Whether you are middle class, Islamic, immigrant, Christian,  deeply affects education and attitudes to education. Gender, leisure, worldview, access to cultures shapes educational response and what education should be.
  8. PARENTS TEACH THEIR CHILDREN. Parents make a big difference, both in the learning culture which is set up within families and in actual teaching. Music, maths, building, care, historical awareness travels in families. Kids who are “entertained” passively, less easily learn. Parents respect evidence, read and listen, quest for truth, value education or they do not.
  9. IS EDUCATION TRUE? A lot of people may learn things which are untrue or questionable. Nationalist history may be false. Evolution as an explanation of pre-biological development is a category mistake. Jane Austin and Shakespeare are questionable. Global warming science was absent for half the population. Neo-classical economics or business studies conclusions may be wrong. They may also not learn things quite central to education. Jesus may be the world’s greatest teacher, but curricula do not reflect that. Tolstoy the greatest novelist, but he is not British. Languages are disappearing from people’s lives to be replaced by computer speak which may change in five years. Education is deeply to be questioned, not marked.
  10. EDUCATION AND LIFE. The dominant model for education is now probably acquiring a skill set for a job, but education for like, a vast question in contemporary society, is largely unanswered, and even unaddressed, in much education. It is a bigger and more important issue than ever, and testing largely sits away from it in much of the education system. Arguably, it demands far more attention in the whole educational project than is happening now in the learn and test system.

THE EDUCATIONALISTS ARE AWARE OF MOST OF THESE ISSUES, BUT BIGGER TRENDS ARE UNDERWAY.

This is a formidable list calling into question much of the testing and grading system. Of course, teachers, educationalists, exam boards are aware of most of these issues and address them carefully in their work. Education is self-reflective, questioning and critical. Scientists know that theories come and go and question their paradigms. Exam curricula are part of the complex process of deciding what is important in education. Exam Boards know the limitations of what they do. There are techniques for evaluating grading systems and even teacher assessment systems which have long been discussed and monitored. The Scottish and other responses to the challenges of no exams have been nuanced and careful, and discussed mistakes. Any educated person in the system knows that this is not “science” but aided judgement.   But there are three big issues which now arise which require a different order of response.

  1. THE SYSTEM IS UNFAIR. In this individuated educational world lots of students in an educational system with public schools, unequal educational resourcing, a false understanding of educational performance and grossly unequal pay can rightly see this system as unfair, because it is. Certain groups are privileged, coached, have access to the best, get support whenever they need it, have others to work for them and are given every resource. Others in different ethnic groups, ones who are poor, those in certain areas, with certain views, are shut out of this testing promotion system. It is run by Etonian Tories whose educational deficiencies are evident every day, as are their biasses. We have a system of privilege reflecting serious educational mistakes a few decades back and perhaps today. Boris will not discuss privilege, but it is embedded in education and ruining much of it. It must be addressed.
  2. MASS MEDIA TRUMPS EDUCATION.  Second, education is being trumped by the mass media, advertising, propaganda, fake news, Facebook, tweets and opinion. As we have seen in the last two elections in the US and the UK, blatant lies win, discussion of manifesto content is sidelined, and the manipulation of people to win elections has become normal. More than this the sheer exposure of the young to the media and advertising  dwarfs educational development. Education has not addressed this massive change. Probably reading ability and practice is plummeting among big sectors of the population. Speaking mat have fallen too. All kinds of changes to the educational matrix of people’s lives have occurred without much public reflection or questioning of what is happening. We discuss grade inflation, but not these far bigger issues.
  3. IF THE PLANET IS TO BE SAVED, LIFESTYLE, CULTURE AND ECONOMIC ORGANISATION NEEED TO CHANGE DRASTICALLY. We have maybe five years to modify runaway global warming. Yet education is continuing as if it is business as usual, and as though this league table of educational  attainment is addressing our situation. It is not  and all of us need to undertake a massive re-evaluation of what education is for. This is not happening while we are fixed inside this old model of educational performance and personal career advancement. Of course, political and economic leadership is crucial , but so too is the understanding of what the human race faces.
  4. CORONAVIRUS CHALLENGES THE INDIVIDUALISED SYSTEM. The idea of individual educational performance, though it has roots in what we value and need to learn, focusses on individual advancement.   That is what exam takers fasten on. Actually a vast redistribution of work and activity is going on around the world. Perhaps 30% of all work will disappear. Perhaps a similar amount will be relocated to home. Justifying work, for decades a passive process has now become central to redefining the economy and what is necessary for our corporate life. It is a vastly different situation.
  5. FINALLY, EDUCATION CAN NOW IN PART GO ON THE WEB. At present we have residential schools, colleges and universities providing  education to select and selected students. Already through textbooks and web teaching this pattern has been breaking down. So, too, has the age at which education is best done in the lifespan, although early learning has many advantages. Now, especially after Coronavirus and Lockdown the best education is potentially available to millions and all kinds of flexible open models of learning are available. Testing takes on a different significance, because it helps us understand what we have learned. Now different systems of funding, viewing the purposes of education, building areas of knowledge and engaging education and work will happen very quickly.

All of these changes require a vast re-evaluation of education, universities, testing and the kind of awareness which education should require. It is time to start discussing these issues now.

General

THE END OF TALKING IT UP

TALKING UP is a vast cultural move. Lots of people do it and believe in it. That is understandable because advertising is the biggest cultural force on the planet, apart from Christianity, and it is still growing. We are taught to believe in things – toothpaste, cars, shoes, baths and chairs because they are all talked up and pictured up. The picturing is part of the picture – bright colours, exotic, fast moving, tapping “iconic” (that dreadful word as it is now used. Icon painters mean it) and zooming in and zooming out. So, everything is talked up and pictured up.

But, of course, persons are talked up, or more accurately, “personalities” are. We are talking (up) game show hosts, sportspeople, pundits, business-people, politicians and they become “celebrities”. You may blank celebrities and not know the Cardigans. Celebrities are normally a waste of time listening to, because the focus is on them. The idea that billions are spent promoting these cretins around the world shows how big the problem is.

Third, enterprises are talked up. There is corporate advertising which makes every company the best thing since sliced bread. Companies fly you there, give you the best car, make you a personality, make you a success, make you beautiful (Stay with that and understand the self-contradiction), make you relax, keep your family together and give you a cosmic experience. You are so used to being offered all these ultimates, that you no longer analyse them. But stop. “You give me this toothpaste which gives me the girl/bloke who will make my life ecstatic.” There are a few non-sequiturs in that presentation.  Everything is talked up.

So much so, that it is part of the system, the vast capitalist system. You borrow to make money. Note the phrase “make money”. Now I am an economist. The Government used to print notes. Now banks create electronic money. They lend to people – we are talking trillions, and they do things which they hope will make them more money, and the vast edifice grows. Of course, people still grow, make things and serve one another; that is the real part of the system, but alongside that is the West Ham syndrome. We’re for ever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. Making money is talked up all over the place. And then West Ham loses. It might as well be East Ham. Not that West Ham is out to make money. They are just trying to score goals. But our economic bubbles are vast and we face four big pins – Covid 19, Global Warming, World Population and World Destabilisation.  

Here, we take time out to consider Boris, or Donald, and politicians talking things up. Boris talks things up all the time. “This great nation of ours, Make Britain Great Again. We will go forward. A New Dawn. We lead the world. Our magnificent this or that. Brexit is the great leap forward and so on.” Now we need to be slightly canny. Boris does not necessarily believe what he says. It is a useful form of self-promotion. It makes people feel good and therefore vote for him.  We talk about a post-truth society, but so far it has worked. Boris will get Brexit done and it is nearly done. We will bounce back from Covid 19, and the ball has nearly left the ground. People in the North have been promised a new economy and are still waiting. So, politicians talking things up works. People like Boris, even when he locks himself in a fridge or wrecks the constitution. People feel good about talking things up, because it is what the culture does.

Trump is the same. He will make America Great Again. What is great? Is it starting wars, having the greatest Government debt ever, policemen killing blacks, shitting on other states and using up the earth’s resources? Nobody cares as long as we feel good. He even goes for the big one. He is chosen by God. All negativity is banished in a universal peon of praise for the great Trump and all the wonderful things he has done for America. So, both Boris and Trump ride the wave of poor performances on the pandemic, killing thousands, talking it up with their arms spread waiting for the promotional photo. We are on top of this. We have this, or that solution – injecting bleach. I will lead you out of this. We Brits or Americans do not need masks.  

So, in the greater scheme of things talking it up has won, while good people are demoted. It governs in the United States and the United Kingdom, and in different forms in Russia, Turkey, Brazil and other parts of the world. The politics of talking it up has won and the self-promoters are in charge, just as they are losing.

Boris is losing. Are we going to have a “great national economy” when a quarter of our business is overseas owned, the financial centre of London is under challenge, we face unaddressed crises in personal credit, government debt, trade and poverty and Brexit will founder? Trade deals will grind. Businesses will close down. Subsidies will dry up and recession will grip. “We will do whatever it takes”, the Chancellor’s talk it up moniker, will go down the plughole of events. Boris will be merely sounding off, empty, talked up.

Trump is worse even than this He is not just losing, but he is losing it. He talks up his handling of Covid while millions are infected, Government debt mounts, the unsustainability of the US economy becomes evident, racial injustice festers and the US loses international friends and allies and while states begin to desert the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. He is standing on the people he has sacked and he might not accept the election result. So, the whole world has to face the end of talking it up. How do we do that.?

Maybe Shakespeare and God can help. Shakespeare does tragedies and this is the normal stuff of Tragedies. Pride, self-belief, delusions of greatness founder because the self-belief is false and because pride produces wrongs and evil. Even Macbeth knows vaulting ambition to kill the King will o’erleap and fall on the other side. Trump saw off Clinton. Johnson saw off May, but then the judgment. So, this is no new problem.

But still we all have to face this vast talking it up culture and system. It inhabits most of us and it is big. Jesus alone charts the way. It is a return to a truth society where your “yes is yes and your no is no. It is Jesus before Pilate explaining that his politics was a politics of truth rather than power, and it is a regrasping of the Beatitude, the source of blessing, found in the promise, “Blessed are the meek for they stall inherit the earth” How so? If we do not grasp, demand, self-promote, talk it up, then we can inherit the earth, all inherit the earth with enough, all be blessed without fighting, calamity and vast disasters. It hangs on the word, meek. But this turnaround, out of expansive demands and talking it up into meekness, humility and truthfulness is a vast spiritual transformation in world culture. The 2.3 billion Christians must see it, and the rest of us too. Some, incorrigible, will be hung out to dry. We all will have to talk it down. The muffled warners and prophets can be heard, and the blusterers may listen. Talking it up is ending, badly or well and, as Jesus insists to all of us, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.”   

General

A World Liability

We call ourselves Great and see much of our history as glorious, but this rethinking of slavery and colonialism may cast us in a very different light. Perhaps, even, the United Kingdom needs to repent before God of its national arrogance on a global scale. We have been, and are, one of the world’s biggest problems, even while we congratulate ourselves on civilising and leading the world. “Oh, that’s a bit extreme” you say, but come on a bit of the journey I’ve had to go over the last few months.

I’m a PhD economist, am supposed to be able to think and am prepared to be nonconformist, but only now, with the help of my dear friend, Jay Bhattachajee, have I thought properly about the Indian economy, and discover I am an unthinking smug British nationalist.

I love India and Indians. It is a rich culture and the immigrant community have added to British culture in all kinds of ways. But India is poor, with a vast population to feed and look after, and it seems less successful than the other world mass population country, China. It has a per capita GDP less than half that of China. Global warming with sea rise, food, water and other problems will hit it hard. It is a struggling economy.

Great Britain, of course, had an early industrial revolution, led in world trade and brought democracy and modern economics to India, but still that did not help much in development, and there are various theories in development economics as to why Indian development has been slow. Tacitly, the understanding is that without us, Brits, its development has not been as fast as it could have been.

Of course, recently, we have faced the challenge that  much British industrialisation was based on slave wealth. Getting the slave labour of millions free gave us wealth to develop. But slavery was Africa, North and Central America and not India… And then I read this.

“Eminent Indian economist Professor Utsa Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University) has estimated that Britain robbed India of $45 trillion between 1765 and 1938. However, it is estimated that if India had remained free with 24% of world GDP as in 1700 then its cumulative GDP would have been $232 trillion greater (1700-2003) and $44 trillion greater (1700-1950). Deprivation kills and it is estimated that 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from egregious deprivation under the British (1757-1947). The deadly impact of British occupation of India lingers today 71 years after Independence, with 4 million people dying avoidably from deprivation each year in capitalist India as compared to zero (0) in China.”

Now you assess conclusions like this. First, $45 trillion is big – some 15 years of total Indian and UK GDP – they now have similar total GDPs. Second, the long-term trajectory figure is conjectural, but the flat growth rate during the East India Company era and the Empire needs explaining. The Brits did not seem to do much good. But then the realities stack up. India’s share of global industrial output declined from 25% in 1750 down to 2% in 1900. We deindustrialised them so that they would buy our stuff. It was worse than that. British goods came in without tariffs and Indian manufactures faced heavy taxes; the system was stacked against them. Then, of course, we fixed the cotton market; cheap cotton went to Lancashire and cotton manufactures back to India. We kept Indians in villages. There were a few million who were looking after the rather leisured Brits. There would be little interest in rural or local industrial development. So probably the conclusion is substantially true. Of course, we built the railways, probably with a lot of local help, as the Romans built roads in Britain, to help run the empire, but we must have cost the Indian economy dearly. $232 trillion is too big to think. But what about the underlying reality?

I, of course, like all of us Brits, have an underlying model that British colonialism was benign bringing civilisation and democracy to the world. Now I’ve seen through most of the democracy bit. In Africa we ruled by force, trained native armies, gave colonies independence, sold them arms and soon military dictators were in place. “Democracy” was for the fairies. “Democracy” in India has stayed, but the economy was probably a “servant economy”. They did what we told them. They grew Yorkshire tea. They grew opium to sell to the Chinese. They produced saltpetre for gunpowder and a range of English luxuries. All of the developments which would probably have occurred without a colonial power were ruled out. Control was patronizing. We “gave them” the English language and they did what suited the colonial power, on the East India Company model. So, this conclusion is more than plausible. Of course, I have not even read the book and it is a big topic, but the evidence points one way..

So the conclusion that we were good for the world, good for India, Africa, China, the Middle East, the great benign British white self-congratulation, faces a massive and necessary challenge. We probably robbed India on a scale we cannot easily face. Of course, the picture is mixed, and perhaps the missionary movements, learning the local languages, building hospitals and schools and teaching the ways of Christ did real good, often against the Colonialists, but that is another debate. The main point is that British imperialism, fuelled by Public School arrogance and the elitism of people like Churchill, the “greatest Britain”, is up for deep judgment. We have been, in a full economic sense, a liability, a drain on the world economy for much of our modern history. Remorse does not come quickly. It needs to grow and requires humiliation. Dropping “Send Her Victorious” from the national anthem would be a start. But remorse and repentance, as deep as that of Germany, may be needed if we are not to be hollow, but healed.