So, let’s get this right.
A Labour government would seek
to create four new UK-wide bank holidays, according to the Labour Leader Jeremy
Corbyn.
Those holidays would be on each nation's patron saint day - St David's Day on 1 March, St Patrick's Day
on 17 March, St George's Day on 23 April and St Andrew's Day on 30 November.
According to the statement he made this morning on the BBC’s
Andrew Marr show, Mr Corbyn believes the move would "celebrate the
national cultures of our proud nations".
If that policy had been in place this year (2017) that would
mean that St David’s Day (1st March) would have been a Wednesday, St
Patrick’s Day (17th March) would have been a Friday, St Georges Day,
(23rd April) would be today, Sunday and St Andrew’s Day (30th
November) would fall on a Thursday!
Not very convenient for shops and businesses to close down
and stop production mid-week. So invariably the days would be shunted around to
different dates and tagged on to the nearest weekend! – Making a mockery of “celebrating
the national cultures of our proud nations”, as Jeremy puts it!
Now, as a man who never lets an opportunity go by to criticize
the current educational policies of opportunities for all, one would assume
that the Labour leader would be emphasising the importance of regular education
and the effects of a child ‘missing school’ may have on their future successes.
According to the Department for Education, they are adamant that: "It is irresponsible
to take a child out of school without good reason. Every extra day of school missed can affect a pupil's chance of gaining
good GCSEs, which has a lasting effect on their life chances. Following our
reforms there are now 200,000 fewer pupils regularly missing school compared
with five years ago."
In fact, as it
stands, parents who defy the law and take their children off on holiday or
allow day’s off can, and frequently are, fined by their local authorities.
Department for
Education figures show councils dished out 157,879 fixed penalty notices in
2015/16, and 151,125 the year before for unauthorized term-time absences (so
not just holidays).
But now, with an
election on the near horizon, Jeremy is desperately looking to the popular vote
by promising them anything!
Suddenly, children’s
education is flexible and taking another 4 days off their schooling really
takes second place to getting his feet through the door of No10!
If he really wanted to put the education of our children
back on the right track he should start by creating policies that prevent the ability
to fire useless teachers and the inability to exclude seriously disruptive
students. We all know of schools where teaching is first and foremost an
exercise in crowd control.
Freedom of choice for the schools and the especially the
parents is what is needed.
So it begins, weeks of concocting half-baked ideas and yielding, for the sake
of popularity, to the selfish emotions, passions, and greed of sectional groups,
that, together with Labour’s crackpot Marxist economics would bankrupt the economy.
Chris Leslie, the former Labour shadow chancellor, said of
John McDonnell’s economic policy: “It’s the magic money tree that will make all
our dreams come true. You’d have to double income tax, double National
Insurance, double council tax and you’d have to double VAT as well.”
And that comes from someone in his own party!
God help us if this chap ever the key’s to Downing Street.
