thymeoperator
October 7th, 2009, 07:43 AM
i wrote the most scathing 3-page letter to my local MP a couple weeks ago after the announcement to cut education spending in the uk next year. apparently it's been passed on to the minister of education. but i wondered what other people's thoughts on this are. my husband is a music teacher and keeps losing work due to these cuts, which i think is a huge mistake even apart from the view of us losing money, because music is an important thing that has been proven to make healthier, happier, more expressive people and help with things like autism and depression. next thing you know we'll have no extra-curricular activities and the kids will be on the streets turning to crime...oh wait, that's sort of already happening. furthermore, there are the job cuts - and also i tutor english on the weekends and the teaching is already very poor, teachers seem to leave mid-year and students from all over the county report to me they've had three or four teachers a year and don't know what their exam will consist of at gcse and they have never even heard the word 'essay' despite the gcse consisting of three essays, and one student the other day told me her teacher had never heard of the word 'thesis' when my student asked her about it after learning this from me! i was just shocked. they just fail the students without ever stopping to think why these students are doing such poor work, etc. etc. i could go on. and my dad is a teacher in further education and they've lost so much funding he's now teaching creative writing, acting and speech...and he's actually a music technology teacher! and yet gordon brown seems to think our schools can lose even MORE money.
a day after i heard about that, i saw the headline they're sending 1000 more men into afghanistan. then today i read the news about the tory pledge to cut all this spending - and i've heard also they want to cut on benefits to people, disability allowance, etc. - and yet they want to increase spending on soldiers off at war. what the hell is even going on with this war? it's a total mess. the PEOPLE of the nation are saying bring the soldiers back home, and yet the govt is just ignoring this majority view and have decided hey, let's cut spending on things we genuinely need in this country, and pump all that funding into the war instead. that's a good idea! these people are absolutely nuts and i find it despicable that politics work in such a way that you only really get to vote between two or three 'evils' (i mean that figuratively only) and all these other more minor parties will never stand a chance of getting in office because even if the majority of people voted for other parties, we're voting for so many different ones that individually it's always the same two main parties getting into office, and they're both as awful as each other. i have a very bleak outlook for the future, personally.
a day after i heard about that, i saw the headline they're sending 1000 more men into afghanistan. then today i read the news about the tory pledge to cut all this spending - and i've heard also they want to cut on benefits to people, disability allowance, etc. - and yet they want to increase spending on soldiers off at war. what the hell is even going on with this war? it's a total mess. the PEOPLE of the nation are saying bring the soldiers back home, and yet the govt is just ignoring this majority view and have decided hey, let's cut spending on things we genuinely need in this country, and pump all that funding into the war instead. that's a good idea! these people are absolutely nuts and i find it despicable that politics work in such a way that you only really get to vote between two or three 'evils' (i mean that figuratively only) and all these other more minor parties will never stand a chance of getting in office because even if the majority of people voted for other parties, we're voting for so many different ones that individually it's always the same two main parties getting into office, and they're both as awful as each other. i have a very bleak outlook for the future, personally.