Late To The Party.....

I was in the pub last night (surprise!) when over the other side of the bar I saw a NUT member, a paedophile and a junkie - he was sitting with a couple of his mates.

Just my little joke. Besides, while the NUT may indeed be the Everest of Idiotarianism, the rest of the teaching profession is somewhat Himilayan. Plenty of people have commented on the NASUWT's latest attempt to wrest the Golden Moonbat off the NUT, - try here and here - but, late as ever, I've just got to put in my 2p worth.

Should you be in the fortunate position of not having heard this effussion, here's a short summary: violence in schools is all Lady Thatcher's fault. Really. Hey - no trust involved, read it for yourself.

In a none-too-unprecedented move, the Moonbat-in-questions charges are mostly self-fisking:

The legacy of Thatcherism has led to a rise in aggression and bullying in schools, a teachers' leader said yesterday.

Given that Lady T stepped down before most of them were born, this is something of a stretch.


Pat Lerew, president of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, said that, nearly 20 years after Margaret Thatcher declared that there was no such thing as society, parents who grew up in the 1980s had produced a generation of youngsters brought up to be selfish and to think the only thing that mattered was money. Mrs Lerew, a teacher at Amery Hill School, in Alton, Hampshire, said that "pupil behaviour is the problem which is proving the hardest nut to crack". Families who ranked things according to their monetary value had little respect for teachers, she said.

Note that: President=no traction for the L3 to claim 'itzonlyafringeelement...'. They elected her, so what's she saying must strike a large number of teachoids as perfectly sane. It's hard to know where to start with this. You surely don't have to be a howling mad Conservative (like moi) to suspect something when every single moonbat who talks about the Thatcher Years refers to the same five word quote sans any context at all. If you do know the context, then you'll realise exactly why Princess Patsy swerves round it. Lady T was attacking exactly this type of slimey evasion of responsibility: teachers have a basic responsibilty to ensure the school environment is safe, Patsy and her fellow travellers have renounced that responsibilty, passing the buck for violence on to some vast abstract thing called 'society' . Bullying ? Nowt to do with her, guv - it's society to blame. And that's the nice side of it, the other consequence is far worse.

The readiness to unload individual responsibilty in favour of claiming victimisation by massive, global forces is the defining mark of modern Liberalism. Not only does it allow teachers to ignore thuggery but, more than that, it drives the violence in the first place. The argument that everything would be just ducky, if we weren't for Lady T, Big Business, the rich, the CIA, Jews, or anyone else leads naturally to the conclusion that, should you hit rough water, why, you're clearly being victimised and so are quite within your rights to say the Hell with it, and give someone a good kicking.

There are other signs of the toxic philosophies being peddled in our schools in Patsy's speech. Try this:

Speaking at the union's annual conference in Llandudno, north Wales, Mrs Lerew said: "Today's parents were growing up in the 1980s, Thatcher's children, when there was no such thing as society and it was everyone for themselves, when anything that had a monetary value was sold and anything that had no monetary value was therefore of no value.

That sneering at money. The basic belief that to be a hard-working, productive member of society is to be somehow evil. Ayn Rand said it best, but we should all worry that our kids are being taught by people who think the fact they survive by leeching off the productive members of society makes them morally superior to those who actually work should worry us all.

Next, Patsy shows signs of light dawning, but it is soon smoothered under her all-consuming victimhood:

Teachers, who were useless anyway and therefore poorly paid, typified the failures in the success race and were continually undermined by politicians and the media.

Did the sub-editors cut out the bit where she explained why it was the job of our public representatives and a free press to spout propaganda for special interest groups ? And how does approximatly 65K pa for a job with 12 weeks holiday a year count as poorly paid ? That what the head of a secondry school can expect to recieve, together with - like all teachers - one of the most generous final salary pension schemes available today. If people percieve Patsy as a dirty, workshy, bloodsucking parasite, then it may reflect something other than filthy lucre, or a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Small wonder then that the children of the day grew up with attitudes that have now manifested themselves in their own children." Mrs Lerew added that schools were now trying to cope with the problems caused by Thatcherite attitudes. "This drive to be first and the devil take the hindmost attitude has bred an inevitable rise in aggression and bullying."

...because nothing influences a teenager more than the example of his parents. Maybe it's just me, but the rise might reflect the fact that Patsy and her 'hard-working professional' colleagues talk about it being inevitable as though violence was kind of like the weather, instead of something they're being paid to control.

Just a thought.

The rise in indiscipline coincided with the time when teachers were "the chief whipping boys for politicians and the press", she said.

Quick - hand me the nano violin, I want to play a sad song for all those teachers out there, cruelly expected to work for their salary.

Mrs Lerew said: "Unfortunately, while during the 1990s the concept of a caring society began to return, this has not been reflected adequately in the media and in too many films and television programmes, violence and aggression are the norm, tacitly acceptable, with antisocial behaviour considered cool and the continuance of yob culture and increasing use of weapons the result."

You just know her concept of a caring society is one where the producers are bled dry to fund more bums like her. But what's all this about violence in the media ? Hearing a Liberal complain about falling standards in the media is like hearing Timothy Leary complain about drug abuse. Since about 1965, all a guy has to do to be hailed as a great artist is photograph himself with a crucifix up his bum. If the Left are trying to tell us that suddenly they're all for media standards, they can shove it - they're about thirty years and six million Mary Whitehouse jokes too late.

Childhood was being "eroded" by the worlds of adverts, fashion and pop music which encouraged youngsters to grow up too quickly, she said. Now that parents felt the need to "protect" their children from the dangers of the wider society, young people were missing out on many important developmental experiences and "they have not had the gradually evolving independence of walking, using public transport and socialising without adult supervision that many of us enjoyed", she said.

...and, of course, being mugged by some of Patsy's victims of society. No doubt, Lady T is to blame for that too.

She added: "There is often a lack of common sense which is masked by a thin veneer of sophistication."

As opposed to the teachers who have their defiencies right out where everyone can see them.