Thursday, 16 June 2016

The Lanchester Review: The Scandal of the Durham Teaching Assistants

I have given up trying to pitch these 500 words, or even just the story behind them, to what might have been expected to have been sympathetic outlets, and I am rather inclined to name names.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous16 June 2016 at 23:22

    Wrong week.

    There's a referendum on and, as anyone with any media knowledge will have told you, only an idiot would try and "pitch" a news story in the run-up to the biggest vote of our lives.

    The news will be dominated by that until after the vote.

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    Replies
    1. David Lindsay16 June 2016 at 23:39

      Everyone without a realistic hope of becoming Leader of the Conservative Party stopped caring about the referendum at least a month ago, and now actively hates the mere mention of the wretched thing.

      As for UKIP, this is already the second "biggest vote of their lives", and they already want there to be a third if this one doesn't go their way. They are very much like the European Commission.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous16 June 2016 at 23:44

      The referendum has been a huge distraction from proper news for the whole of 2016 so far. Cameron proves his unfitness for office by the fact that he has called it. The outcome might change the Prime Minister but won't change anything else and he was going anyway. But they'll drone on about that for the second half of the year and to hell with real news.

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    3. David Lindsay16 June 2016 at 23:51

      Quite.

      Even the legislation to "withdraw" would still say that all EU law would continue to apply unless specifically disapplied by a Commons resolution, in order to maintain the supposedly precious Single Market, with the further requirement that any such resolution would have to be a Government motion. So, that would be never, then.

      The referendum result will be close, but watch out for the enormous abstention rate. The whole thing long ago passed the pins-in-your-eyes stage, and it is now in a category previously unimagined. But, as you say, it will be 2017 before we are allowed to hear about anything else.

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    4. Anonymous17 June 2016 at 00:05

      This has been going on for months. As you have said on Twitter, the London media either can't believe it's true or assume it's a Tory council being a Tory council.

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    5. David Lindsay17 June 2016 at 00:38

      Whereas the fact that it is a Labour council is one of the most newsworthy things about this story, and explains all sorts of things about it, such as the fact that the union is refusing to send the TAs the forms to stand for stewards' positions.

      Some of them have been told that if they so much as join a Facebook Group against this, then they will be denied references for future employment. Consultations are illegally being held outside working hours and with no union representatives or other friends present.

      And so it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

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