Skip to main content

Go Go Govey

Perhaps because I've always hated team sports (to watch or play), I've never really understood the tribal politics that makes people consider politicians to be either wonderful or entirely terrible, with nothing in between. So I'm rather pleased to be able to totally agree with Michael Gove about something. Let's be clear. Gove made some ludicrous decisions while in charge of education, and acted in a totally unprincipled fashion in the post-Brexit shenanigans. However, I've just read an article by him that I can only give my whole-hearted support to.

In today's Times (I don't usually read it, but Waitrose won't give me a free i) Gove argues for the removal of charitable status from private schools. As he says, it's absolutely ridiculous that these bastions of privilege don't have to pay VAT, get an 80 per cent exemption from business rates... and apparently taxpayers even subsidise their quasi-military cadet forces. Surely there can be no reason for this to continue?

So come on, Tory-haters. Let's have three cheers for Michael Gove. (Here's the full article, which apparently you can read online if you register.)

Comments

  1. As husband to a teacher and admirer of the EU I have a very low opinion of Mr Gove. However, I also feel it is generally detrimental to have a world view populated only by goodies and baddies. This clouds our view of the real world.

    So when a baddie does something good it is beneficial to call it out.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...