No Refuge, No Resource

The Government's reintroduction of Dickensian standards into our education system is proceeding apace, as budget cuts mean more and more primary school children are going hungry to their lessons. Received wisdom in Dickens' time taught that cold and hunger helped the concentration and encouraged self-discipline; much as, for similar reasons of economic management, the promise of reward in heaven for self-denial on earth was preached to the poor by a generally well-upholstered Anglican church. Given the current fashion for policy-based evidence, it can hardly be long before such useful pedagogical myths are resurrected unto profitable glory alongside the deportation cancelled on feline grounds and the mansion-dwelling benefits claimant. In the meantime, the Department of Gove Bibles extruded a spokesbeing to say, once again, that it was up to individual schools to choose between starving their pupils and letting the roof fall in, because individual choice is what modern Conservatism is all about. There are plans to double the "pupil premium" for those children who are so badly disadvantaged that even the Bullingdon Club cannot yet find anything to deprive them of; but the money will not be made available until just before the next election, when presumably it will serve some useful purpose.