*Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The likelihood that Mr Miliband will desert Labour as the party heads towards defeat at the election rose with the disclosure that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, is backing him for the post.While Mr Miliband has publicly insisted he is "not available" and "not a candidate", he is understood to be genuinely interested after senior EU figures at the Brussels summit last week said he would be ideal. Yet his interest in the role means he is prepared to give up the Blairite hope of succeeding Gordon Brown as leader before the election and minimise or even avert electoral catastrophe.
The likelihood that Mr Miliband will desert Labour as the party heads towards defeat at the election rose with the disclosure that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, is backing him for the post.
While Mr Miliband has publicly insisted he is "not available" and "not a candidate", he is understood to be genuinely interested after senior EU figures at the Brussels summit last week said he would be ideal. Yet his interest in the role means he is prepared to give up the Blairite hope of succeeding Gordon Brown as leader before the election and minimise or even avert electoral catastrophe.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband is making his first official visit to Russia today. His two-day visit to Moscow - which will see him meet his Russian counterpart and a host of other officials - is also the first by a British foreign secretary to the country for five years.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband is making his first official visit to Russia today.
His two-day visit to Moscow - which will see him meet his Russian counterpart and a host of other officials - is also the first by a British foreign secretary to the country for five years.
A senior British cabinet minister insisted on Sunday that the Labour party could not "spare" David Miliband to take the role of Europe's first "foreign secretary".Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, claimed that the British foreign secretary did not want to go. "We'll be keeping him," she told the BBC.
Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, claimed that the British foreign secretary did not want to go. "We'll be keeping him," she told the BBC.
Ministers face an embarrassing showdown in court after the European Commission accused Britain of failing to protect its citizens from secret surveillance on the internet. The move adds to claims that Britain is creeping towards a Big Brother state and could end with the Government being forced to defend its policy on internet privacy in front of judges at the European Court of Justice.
Ministers face an embarrassing showdown in court after the European Commission accused Britain of failing to protect its citizens from secret surveillance on the internet.
The move adds to claims that Britain is creeping towards a Big Brother state and could end with the Government being forced to defend its policy on internet privacy in front of judges at the European Court of Justice.
in his absence, his brother Ed would become leader and he's supposed to be more leftish and traditional. It may not be the perfect course, but it would turn labour away from disaster and give them a chance to sort things out. keep to the Fen Causeway
Tests for 11-year-olds are just as important as GCSEs and A-levels in holding schools to account, Gordon Brown declared yesterday. His intervention in the row over national curriculum SATs tests comes just as heads and teachers prepare to ballot on a boycott of them next year. The stand-off between the two sides makes it likely that the row over tests will be the Government's next major confrontation with trade unions following the post office workers' strike.
Tests for 11-year-olds are just as important as GCSEs and A-levels in holding schools to account, Gordon Brown declared yesterday.
His intervention in the row over national curriculum SATs tests comes just as heads and teachers prepare to ballot on a boycott of them next year.
The stand-off between the two sides makes it likely that the row over tests will be the Government's next major confrontation with trade unions following the post office workers' strike.
My head is spinning from the many acronyms in the article. Someone with a handy rundown of what this is all about? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
BBC NEWS | UK | Education | School tests: who takes what
Why are they called 'Sats'? Officially they aren't - though that has become the almost universal name for them. In 1991 the Conservatives had a trial run of Standard Assessment Tasks (hence the acronym "Sats") for six and seven-year-olds in infant schools across England and Wales. Originally they were practical "tasks" rather than pencil-and-paper tests. In science, for example, groups had to experiment with rocks, feathers, and plastic to see whether they would float or sink in water. The then education secretary, Kenneth Clarke, changed them to written tests which all pupils could take simultaneously. So national curriculum testing was born, but the old acronym stuck. Not to be confused with the totally different SATs (pronounced as initials - "S-A-T" - rather than as a word) used in the US for assessing people's college potential.
Why are they called 'Sats'?
Officially they aren't - though that has become the almost universal name for them.
In 1991 the Conservatives had a trial run of Standard Assessment Tasks (hence the acronym "Sats") for six and seven-year-olds in infant schools across England and Wales.
Originally they were practical "tasks" rather than pencil-and-paper tests. In science, for example, groups had to experiment with rocks, feathers, and plastic to see whether they would float or sink in water.
The then education secretary, Kenneth Clarke, changed them to written tests which all pupils could take simultaneously.
So national curriculum testing was born, but the old acronym stuck.
Not to be confused with the totally different SATs (pronounced as initials - "S-A-T" - rather than as a word) used in the US for assessing people's college potential.
Also:
General Certificate of Secondary Education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification awarded in a specified subject, generally taken in a number of subjects by students aged 15-16 in secondary education in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. (In Scotland, the equivalent is the Standard Grade.) Some students may decide to take one or more GCSEs before or afterwards; people may apply for GCSEs at any point either internally through an institution or externally. The education systems of other British territories, such as Gibraltar, and the former British dominion of South Africa, also use the qualifications, as supplied by the same examination boards. The International version of the GCSE is the IGCSE, which can be taken anywhere in the world, and which includes additional options, for example relating to coursework and the language used. When GCSEs are taken by students in secondary education, they can often be combined with other qualifications, such as BTECs, the DiDA, or diplomas.
brown doesn't listen. He's notorious for being a stolid arrogant pussbag. keep to the Fen Causeway
He's notorious for being a stolid arrogant pussbag.
I get to be Dilbert.
I have to go tie shopping. Now where's the fun in that! - Megatron
Both Mick Brookes, general secretary of the NAHT, and Christine Blower, the NUT leader, have declared that "the end is nigh" for SATs tests in the wake of their conference votes in favour of a boycott ballot. They argue a boycott will free teachers from having to "teach to the test" to ensure a good showing in exam league tables - and therefore provide pupils with a broader and more balanced curriculum.
I'm not so plugged into the Brit scene but this sounds an awful lot like the criticisms of Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program, i.e. that it promotes teaching children to perform well on standardized tests, rather than facilitating learning of creative or critical thinking (I have read that in some US school districts, they even cut out physical education and recess and physical education to allow more time for programming the poor kids to take the standardized tests).
In the US at least (and the article seems to imply that it is the case in the UK as well), a general poor performance level of a school's pupils tends to be interpreted solely as a failure of the school, and not as an indication of social deficits. The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
AFP - The corruption trial against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will take place on November 27, judicial sources said Saturday, after a high court this month stripped him of his immunity. The trial was suspended last year after Italy's parliament passed legislation giving the premier immunity, but the Constitutional Court struck down the law on October 7, paving the way for legal cases against Berlusconi to resume. Berlusconi is accused of paying his British former tax lawyer, David Mills, 600,000 dollars (400,000 euros) to give false evidence in two trials in the 1990s.
AFP - The corruption trial against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will take place on November 27, judicial sources said Saturday, after a high court this month stripped him of his immunity.
The trial was suspended last year after Italy's parliament passed legislation giving the premier immunity, but the Constitutional Court struck down the law on October 7, paving the way for legal cases against Berlusconi to resume.
Berlusconi is accused of paying his British former tax lawyer, David Mills, 600,000 dollars (400,000 euros) to give false evidence in two trials in the 1990s.
Police made the surprise arrest early Sunday, arriving at a cottage in Sperone, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Naples, where Pasquale Russo was holed up with his brother, Carmine, 47, also a fugitive from the law since 2007. On Saturday another brother, Salvatore Russo, 51, was arrested at a farm on the outskirts of Naples. The Russo clan controlled "all the illicit activities in a vast area" comprising some 40 towns in the Naples region, police said on Saturday. The Russo brothers had reorganised the structure of Naples' Camorra mafia in the early 1990s after the boss of the region, Carmine Alfieri, turned and cooperated with the authorities, and the Russos "exercised absolute control over their territory", police said.
On Saturday another brother, Salvatore Russo, 51, was arrested at a farm on the outskirts of Naples.
The Russo clan controlled "all the illicit activities in a vast area" comprising some 40 towns in the Naples region, police said on Saturday.
The Russo brothers had reorganised the structure of Naples' Camorra mafia in the early 1990s after the boss of the region, Carmine Alfieri, turned and cooperated with the authorities, and the Russos "exercised absolute control over their territory", police said.
CCTV footage of this killing carried out in the street in broad daylight was posted on the Internet by Naples police in the hope that someone would step forward and help identify the murderer."As you can see from the images, there's a fair degree of indifference among the passers-by" Innocenzo Datri, a lawyer, works as a pro bono counsellor for a Naples neighbourhood town hall.
CCTV footage of this killing carried out in the street in broad daylight was posted on the Internet by Naples police in the hope that someone would step forward and help identify the murderer.
"As you can see from the images, there's a fair degree of indifference among the passers-by"
Innocenzo Datri, a lawyer, works as a pro bono counsellor for a Naples neighbourhood town hall.
The full video version may be seen here. There is also a version with commentary by Roberto Saviano in Italian.
Saviano also wrote an editorial on the affair. Both his audio and written commentary stress the absolute "normality" of everyone's reactions- and how distant a real execution is from film stereotypes.
Professor MAHZARIN BANAJI: Sometimes it's easy to think about helping an individual person, even though a group tragedy may not affect us. And again, the bystander problem poses a dilemma because this is about an individual human being and that person's suffering. And so, of course, there are now, we know, many, many experiments done on something called the bystander non-intervention effect, and it was done in the late '60s, following the murder of Kitty Genovese. And exactly as you say, Neal, the initial response from psychiatrists and psychologists was: Who were these horrible people who stood around watching the murder of this woman and didn't call the police? And that led to a stunning set of experiments. And the reason I say that the experiments here are so important is that because in any given case, we don't know exactly what the pressures on the situation were, and we don't know exactly what those folks experienced. And that's why when we bring complex phenomena like this into the laboratory and we put them to the test there, we can say with far greater precision what it is that's going on. And the results of two psychologists by the name of Latane and Darley stand out here because they reenacted certain situations in the laboratory, a person having a seizure, a bunch of smoke just flowing into a room, and all they varied was the number of people present. And the data show over and over again that if there was one person in the room, the likelihood of helping is around 75 percent. But as the number goes to two and three and four and five and six, the number of people who jump up to help drops to 10 percent, right? So there's something about the size of the group that, although it should lead us to be more likely to help, actually produces the counterintuitive reverse effect.
Professor MAHZARIN BANAJI: Sometimes it's easy to think about helping an individual person, even though a group tragedy may not affect us. And again, the bystander problem poses a dilemma because this is about an individual human being and that person's suffering. And so, of course, there are now, we know, many, many experiments done on something called the bystander non-intervention effect, and it was done in the late '60s, following the murder of Kitty Genovese. And exactly as you say, Neal, the initial response from psychiatrists and psychologists was: Who were these horrible people who stood around watching the murder of this woman and didn't call the police? And that led to a stunning set of experiments.
And the reason I say that the experiments here are so important is that because in any given case, we don't know exactly what the pressures on the situation were, and we don't know exactly what those folks experienced. And that's why when we bring complex phenomena like this into the laboratory and we put them to the test there, we can say with far greater precision what it is that's going on. And the results of two psychologists by the name of Latane and Darley stand out here because they reenacted certain situations in the laboratory, a person having a seizure, a bunch of smoke just flowing into a room, and all they varied was the number of people present.
And the data show over and over again that if there was one person in the room, the likelihood of helping is around 75 percent. But as the number goes to two and three and four and five and six, the number of people who jump up to help drops to 10 percent, right?
So there's something about the size of the group that, although it should lead us to be more likely to help, actually produces the counterintuitive reverse effect.
Another curious turn of events involves the Marrazzo case in which Berlusconi and his daughter could be charged with having received illegal goods, the DVD of Marrazzo being framed by cops with a trans and cocaine.
A further concern is the appeals court case against Senator Dell'Utri for cohersion with the mafia. The court has admitted the testimony of Gasparre Spatuzza. Spatuzza's collaboration with the law, along with the revelations of the son of the mafia go-between Vito Ciancimino, has shed light on the mafia's war against the state in the early 90's. Both Spatuzza and Massimo Ciancimino have declared that a political deal with Berlusconi was sought through Dell'Utri after a first deal fell through with the then powerful Democrat-Christians.
Despite the declarations of Berlusconi that he has no intention of stepping down from power if he is condemned, more opportunistic and wiser spirits are jockeying silently behind the scenes.
There is a power void in Italy these days. A silence before the tempest.
Berlusconi has literaly disappeared for ten days, first in Russia as if he were de Gaulle off to see Jacques Massu.
The most exceptional event is the closing down of parliament for the next ten days, ostensibly because there's nothing to do for lack of financial coverage. This has never happened before. Granted that this legislation has seen parliament reduced to a rubberstamp outhouse that need only meet to approve government "emergency" decrees, all without exception designed to resolve his personal affairs.
Berlusconi may be preparing a blitzkreig of brute force, for prudence and strategy are no longer his strong points. Prudence would have it to let him act out his folly for all to see. Let him be his own undoing. As with Prodi, only a single vote is needed to sink his government.
But as the Gattopardo said, "Everything changes in Italy, so that nothing changes."
A judge presiding over a children tribunal in Dublin, Ireland, declared after a trial that "Roma people raise their children with the intent of teaching them how to steal, apparently this is their culture, this is the way in which, unfortunately, these families function. It is a different culture, it has nothing in common with ours and our shops are constantly robbed." During the trial, a young Roma woman from Romania was accused of theft.
<speechless> *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
More than 1,300 children were detained at three immigration removal centres in the UK during a 15-month period, figures revealed today. A total of 884 children were held at Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire between July 2008 and July 2009, 328 children at the Tinsley House centre near Gatwick Airport between September 1 2008 and August 31 2009, and 103 children at the Dungavel centre in Scotland between October 2008 and September 18 2009.
More than 1,300 children were detained at three immigration removal centres in the UK during a 15-month period, figures revealed today.
A total of 884 children were held at Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire between July 2008 and July 2009, 328 children at the Tinsley House centre near Gatwick Airport between September 1 2008 and August 31 2009, and 103 children at the Dungavel centre in Scotland between October 2008 and September 18 2009.
Dr Les King, a respected chemist and former head of the Drugs Intelligence Unit in the Forensic Science Service, said that anger over the "disgraceful" decision by the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, to remove Professor David Nutt could lead to a meltdown in the 40-year-old organisation. He claimed that as many as six of its scientists will resign from the independent organisation, putting further pressure on the Government over its handling of the affair. Dr King cautioned that the Government's whole drugs programme could be at risk.
Dr Les King, a respected chemist and former head of the Drugs Intelligence Unit in the Forensic Science Service, said that anger over the "disgraceful" decision by the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, to remove Professor David Nutt could lead to a meltdown in the 40-year-old organisation.
He claimed that as many as six of its scientists will resign from the independent organisation, putting further pressure on the Government over its handling of the affair. Dr King cautioned that the Government's whole drugs programme could be at risk.
A prominent member of the government's drugs advisory panel has resigned in protest over the treatment of the committee's chairman Professor David Nutt. Dr Les King said Home Secretary Alan Johnson had denied Prof Nutt his right to free speech when he called for his resignation.
A prominent member of the government's drugs advisory panel has resigned in protest over the treatment of the committee's chairman Professor David Nutt.
Dr Les King said Home Secretary Alan Johnson had denied Prof Nutt his right to free speech when he called for his resignation.
Germany's main industry lobby group has sounded the alarm over the tax cutting plans of chancellor Angela Merkel's new government, warning that priority should be given instead to bringing the country's spiralling deficit back under control.The comments on Sunday by the president of the BDI business association highlight growing concern that the centre-right coalition in Berlin will jeopardise Germany's reputation for fiscal prudence by pushing ahead with sweeping tax cuts.They followed veiled warnings from the European Central Bank and Germany's Bundesbank that excessively expansionary policies could backfire and that European Union fiscal rules be upheld. Central bankers fear breaches of fiscal rules would send a disastrous signal to other eurozone countries.
The comments on Sunday by the president of the BDI business association highlight growing concern that the centre-right coalition in Berlin will jeopardise Germany's reputation for fiscal prudence by pushing ahead with sweeping tax cuts.
They followed veiled warnings from the European Central Bank and Germany's Bundesbank that excessively expansionary policies could backfire and that European Union fiscal rules be upheld. Central bankers fear breaches of fiscal rules would send a disastrous signal to other eurozone countries.
What's up with all the angst over borrowing? In America they think (thought) it's a gift from God, while in Germany they think it's the touch of the Devil. Why not a little borrowing, mainly for investment, more when the economy is depressed and less when it is buoyant? The amount of borrowing should be... lagom. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
A messy bribery scandal with high-profile casualties is dividing Spain's centre-right opposition Popular party and undermining Mariano Rajoy, its leader, as a potential future prime minister.The widening scandal, which began over the alleged exchange of expensive gifts for lucrative contracts from the Popular party (PP), has "affected the probability of Mr Rajoy winning the next elections", according to 73 per cent of respondents to a recent poll published by the left-leaning El País newspaper.The fact that 72 per cent of PP voters thought this, too, reflects frustration among opposition supporters. Mr Rajoy is seen to be squandering a chance to exploit the bumbling response by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, prime minister, to the worst recession in decades.
The widening scandal, which began over the alleged exchange of expensive gifts for lucrative contracts from the Popular party (PP), has "affected the probability of Mr Rajoy winning the next elections", according to 73 per cent of respondents to a recent poll published by the left-leaning El País newspaper.
The fact that 72 per cent of PP voters thought this, too, reflects frustration among opposition supporters. Mr Rajoy is seen to be squandering a chance to exploit the bumbling response by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, prime minister, to the worst recession in decades.
