Ruth Kelly is threatening to report the Daily Mirror to the Press Complaints Commission on the ground that they breached her son’s right to privacy by naming her as the minister who had enrolled her child in a private school.
Has the woman taken leave of her senses? A wise woman would now be lying low, thankful that the Opposition did not make a bigger deal of her hypocrisy. Instead, she seems bent on drawing attention to herself and her dubious morality.
Is this foolishness on her part? Blindness? Or perhaps it is arrogance stemming from hypocrisy so deep-rooted the afflicted soul cannot recognise its predicament. Whatever it is, Ruth Kelly’s got it bad.
January 11th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I don’t think she’s a hypocrite Bel but I believe there are other, so far, unmentioned points
1. “Special Needs” in LBTH and other London Boroughs, includes children whose mother tongue is not English.
2. There isn’t enough proper funding for the above
3. Her child is “borderline”
4. If the “rumourmill is correct”, she and her husband may not be the best parents around. Not that they are bad just could do better. Maybe. Alledgedly.
January 11th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Ruth Kelly is a Cabinet minister in a Government that is closing down special needs schools, and insisting that some pupils with special needs be educated in mainstream schools, even when this is not the best option. If the mainstream option for special needs pupils which she was advocating was that great, why didn’t she put her child there? Is it good for the rest of the nation, but not for her child?
January 11th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Bel, but things are never black & white (apart from your great Blog that is)
Now what’s your take on Conservative membership melting away to UKIP?
January 11th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Thanks Jeremy
On the Conservatives following the UKIP defections:
serves them right. This is what we get from dilly dallying, and coming up with waffly, social democratic rhetoric. The people are crying out for an easing in the tax burden, and are the condervatives offering any hope of respite? Not at all.
The two UKIP peers have been dismissed by some as fruitcakes, but for Prof Tim Congdon, we should worry. When someone like that states his reasons for leaving, the Tories should take heed.
January 12th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Tim Congdon is a worry. David Cameron has to address these issues now, and I’m sure he will. I have a very deep fear, extreme parties, like UKIP and the BNP, will continue to gain ground, unless mainstream parties address the issues these parties are making.
January 12th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Andrew, is UKIP extreme because they have a policy?
January 12th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Actually, I don’t mind if UKIP make some more ground. Perhaps it will shock the Conservative Party out of its paternalistic torpor.
January 12th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
OnyxStone: For starters, I am not linking the BNP and UKIP together as one in the same.They have completely different policies, but both are extreme parties. UKIP has an extreme position in saying we should quit from the EU altogether. That is their position. The Conservative Party has a policy of staying within the EU. Both parties have policies.
January 12th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Interesting, that. Is it really extreme to say that we should leave the EU? Maybe it is extreme if we accept the status quo thinking that we must be in the EU in some form. But must we? Really?
January 12th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Shame I can’t report her for being a retarded hypocritical New Labour biatch.
January 12th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Oh, and Bel, I agree: we should leave EU.
Follow the Swiss or Norwegian model. If anything, do deals with the Swiss and Norwegians, to prevent the EU blackmailing any one of us - as the EU recently did to Switzerland: refusing to renew free-trade agreements unless they paid €800mn into the EU Development Fund.
Disgusting.
January 12th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Or maybe the poor woman was just trying to be a good mother. Why is every one ignoring the fact that she has other children who are happily ensconced in state school. Do we think she thinks less of those children and is sending them to ‘inferior’ schools? Maybe this child is her favorite and the others don’t count? Please people - her choice might not be right but sometimes us mothers just get blinded by our situations.
January 12th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Ruth Kelly is doing the best for her child? Good. What about other parents of special needs children who want to do the best for their children in a special needs school? How has Ruth Kelly’s Government helped them? By closing many special needs schools and forcing many parents to put their children into mainstream education for which they are not suited.
True, Ruth Kelly is a good parent. So are millions others in this country who have had to suffer with the Government’s meddling with the educational system.
January 12th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Someone above touched on a very important aspect of Special Needs. When you and I think of Special Needs we think of what it meant when we were younger. Nowadays Special Needs covers children who don’t speak English, children with behavioural problems, children who need slightly more attention than the others but nothing is ‘wrong’. The system of Special Needs education is seriously out of whack in this country and it actually did/does need to be dismantled and restructured. That’s not a popular thing to say because we think of the people with children who really and honestly do need special help - and they’re not getting it. However closer investigation would have shown that a large number of inappropriate recipients were - as per usual - divesting much needed attention and resources from those truly in need.
January 12th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
OK Morag, here’s my view :):
Fact number 1: dyslexia is sometimes assessed as a special need.
Fact number 2: such children do benefit from being educated outside of mainstream.
Fact number 3: Ruth Kelly and this Government have closed many special needs schools, and many such children are now being educated in mainstream, under the ’statementing’ process.
Fact number 4: this is not the best way of dealing with special needs.
Fact number 5: Ruth Kelly knows that fact number 4 is correct. Therefore:
Fact number 6: she decided that her child should not be educated in mainstream under the statementing process.
In my view, this makes her a hypocrite. If she thinks statementing is such a good idea, why not allow her child benefit from it?
January 12th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
If I had listened to my own mother I would be out of a Friday night in a swirling frock tangoing in the arms of a handsome stranger…..never mind. Your facts/points are, in the main, correct. But you are missing the point that I am making. Conditions like dyslexia do definitely benefit from special attention - and that was what Special Needs were really all about. My son recently left a well regarded state primary school where I got to observe the farce that Special Needs education had become. In order to maintain high levels of achievement primary schools now make a habit of sectioning children as special needs who are not special needs at all just not as academically gifted. By placing them in the special needs category there test results were removed from the mainstream therefore ensuring that the tables remained high. At one stage there were 14 children been designated as special needs - one was dyslexic the others were non-Englsih speaking or behavioural problems. 13 children weighing down a system. Maybe it should have been handled in another way but frankly it was such a mess that it really did need to be totally torn down.
January 12th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
So Morag, we are saying the same thing.
You say:
‘Conditions like dyslexia do definitely benefit from special attention - and that was what Special Needs were really all about. ‘
I agree.
So why then is this Government closing special needs schools?
January 13th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
What I think should have been done is that qualified independent practitioners should have gone in and ruthlessly gone through the rosters of the Special Needs students to determine who really was SN and who was just being shoved unceremoniously into that category. Provisions should have been made for teaching of those students who really need it - and the schools closed for a period of two years for a complete restructuring of the system. Closing the schools would have provided the money for the children who really do have SN to be attended to. One of the first things that needs to be done to deal with this issue is proper disciplinary measures need to be reintroduced so that children with behavioural issues can be dealt with instead of the current system which is ’statement them as SN so we can get them out of the classroom’. Then a more rigid system for determining who qualifies. As for the question of SN children being educated mainstream - for as many people who say they shouldn’t, you can find as many who say they should. It is similar to the ‘home schooling for bullied children’ issue, the ayes have a list to put forth as do the nay-nevers. One of the most interesting aspects of having children is that you will often have a theory - and this may have been what happend to RK (and by the way I am not a fan of hers for different reasons than this debacle) - you feel one way and then when reality knocks on your front door you see that the truth wears a different robe than you originally believed.
January 14th, 2007 at 2:49 am
Morag, you say:
‘As for the question of SN children being educated mainstream - for as many people who say they shouldn’t, you can find as many who say they should.’
Perhaps, but it is worth pointing out that the very person who introduced statementing, Mary Warnock (as she then was), has now recanted. Baroness Warnock of Weeke (as she now is) admitted two years ago that she had made a mistake, and that statementing had not worked as she thought it might.