Everything in its place by Bill Kirton
An approximation of more or less any leading UK politico and THE leading US one. By Poliphilo (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons I was sorting through (and chucking out) old notes and files this week and came across a cutting from way back when the appalling Michael Gove was Education Secretary. It concerned a 15-year-old schoolboy, Joe Cotton, who was the first ‘child’ (as the Guardian called him) ever to address the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers. He was speaking about some of Gove’s cynical, sinister ideas, one of which was to get rid of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) to help with his budget cuts. This is what young Joe was quoted as saying: ‘Well, I don’t know how nifty Michael Gove thinks he can be with a loaf and some fishes, or even a bus pass and some textbooks, but he’d need nothing short of a miracle to replicate the benefits of EMA with that budget’. First, I admire enormously a 15-year-old with the confidence to stan...