A few things....

[johnny9fingers]

First, I suppose, kudos to Google for their new stance on China. Not certain quite how much difference it will make, given the fact that Baidu is that much bigger in the Chinese market, but well done, nevertheless.

Secondly....A tenth of Secondary Schools failed to meet GCSE targets. Some folk are calling for a three-tiered system similar to the German system.

Until Shirley Williams presided over the disastrous change in our education system in the early '70's we had a three-tiered system of Grammar Schools, Technical Schools, and Secondary Moderns. However, it wasn't until Margaret Thatcher's regime that the majority of Grammar Schools finally bit the dust.

This sort of policy tends to be driven by ideology first, and then budgetary savings as it is realised that giving everyone lowest-common-denominator education for the smallest cost means lower taxes. And everyone wants lower taxes, even at the expense of education, health, defence, roads, or whatever.

I fucking hate all ideological politicians. I hate what Thatcher did to my country quite as much as I hate the left-wing idiots who could not think beyond their stupid idealism. I want to see practical politicians: folk who don't fix what isn't broken because of an insane adherence to some ideology. To give some examples: the Labour Party's hatred of Grammar Schools, or Thatcher's insistence on 'marketplace economics' in the NHS adding layers of bureaucracy to something that had been reasonably efficient, or her privatisation of an integrated transport system, spring to mind. I want politicians who can deal with the problems we face without pandering to lowest-common-denominator prejudices: sensible people who can make the right choices despite the stupidities of voters.
Some fucking hope, I know.

Whither democracy?

Sometimes I wonder if the Chinese option might just be better.

We know what it isn't: it isn't free and it isn't given to human rights. It isn't nice to dissidents, or Tibet.

And we know what it is: It is paternalistic, patronizing, and totalitarian. It menaces Taiwan.

But it also might just be less stupid; and less short-termist; and less in sway to the ill-informed prejudices of the under-educated electorate than we are: and if so....it's liable to leave us choking on its dust.

We really have to get our act together.

Comments

[felephant.livejournal.com]

I'm embarrassingly enamoured by a system in which the more educated you are, especially in political/philosophical/economic matters, the greater say you get in the running of your country. This will most obviously be expressed in greater voting power.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I try to stifle the noocratic urge in me too. But I'd feel happier if overall education were rather better, wherein isocracy would be possible.

Democracy like isocracy needs very high levels of education for everyone. Noocracy just needs a proper identification of the wise.

[felephant.livejournal.com]

Yes. I think the original advocates of democracy assumed that it would be restricted to the wealthy, who, for the worst of reason admittedly, had the time to give serious thought to affairs of state, and their writings often reflect this. I'm sure that some of them would be against universal suffrage; they would consider it to be, if you'll forgive me shoe-horning English into Greek, mobocracy. (The correct Greek would probably be democracy, so I can't really use that.)

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Alas, I suppose I'm one of those who have had the time, money (and education) to inform myself of the issues: which is not to say I'm necessarily correct.

But even so....