No time to post, but...

Norm has a good piece on 'collective punishment'.

Ken Livingstone: an apology

In commenting on the incident in which Ken Livingstone likened a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard, I have implied (see my comment on this post) that he would not think of subjecting a black person to a comparable insult.

It has now come to my notice that I was mistaken. This is Nick Cohen in the Observer:-

'[...] Livingstone used public money to produce propaganda against Trevor Phillips, which culminated in the mayor saying that the head of the Commission for Racial Equality would 'soon be joining the BNP', a revolting insult for a white politician to throw at a black man and one that makes a nonsense of his anti-racist postures.'

I would like to apologize to the Mayor of London for any distress caused by my error.

Round things that roll along the ground 'could ease transport problems', says minister

Just time for a small discharge of irascibility on a randomly selected topic...

Would you believe it? Assessing skoolkidz through coursework encourages them to cheat.


So thank goodness Skoolz Minister Jim Knight is on the case...

"Last year, we asked the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to look at making GCSE coursework more robust and reliable.

"As a result of the QCA's report, we will be removing all GCSE coursework from maths and stipulating that in other subjects, coursework must be supervised in classroom style conditions.

"We will work closely with teachers to develop even more effective and reliable coursework assessments."

So that'll be 'even more effective and reliable' than not effective and reliable at all, then.

You get marks for coursework in maths GCSE? Since when? Why?

More about the advent of 'controlled assessment' here. It looks like we're really not that far from the scenario where you hand over your books and gizmos, sit at a desk, with Teech at the front making sure you don't talk to anyone, and commit to paper whatever you can extract from between your ears. All we need now is a somewhat snappier name for this revolutionary new approach. Something beginning with 'e', perhaps?

Long-range forecast

The establishment is now preparing to vacate Schloss Grumpy and relocate to Dear Old Blighty. This will entail light to non-existent posting over the next month or so, I fear.

This may turn out to be the month in which Christian Aid criticizes Hamas, Rowan Williams acknowledges that the security barrier really does keep terrorists out as per specification, the World Council of Churches launches its Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Darfur, and Ken Livingstone gets round to saying 'sorry'. If so, I'll try and find time for a sentence or two. But business as usual is on the back burner for the time being.

If you fear withdrawal symptoms, dear reader, look on the bright side: you'll have more time to get to grips with David Hirsh's paper on Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. And once you've finished that, you might want to start on Matthias Küntzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, which has just picked up a prize at the London Book Festival.

PS You can read the first chapter of Küntzel's book here.