At 12:23 16/07/01 -0700, Michael Gurstein wrote:
(MG)
>Score one for Keith!
>
>M
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "radman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 11:35 AM
>Subject: Library a closed book for some British schools
>
>
>> Library a closed book for some British schools
>> ----------
>> Eleven British secondary schools have refused the gift of a
>> �3,000 library of classic books written over the past
>> three millennia because they are "too difficult" for
>> their pupils. And Herodotus is boring. (07/13/01)
>> http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,520391,00.html
>>
Yes, an example of prissie middle-class patronage of ordinary folk. The
vast majority of the books will, of course, remain lying on the school
library shelves untouched and unopened until they are ditched and sent to
second-hand bookshops in the years to come.
To clarify what this is all about, I'll mention that this money comes from
The Millenium Fund which receives billions of pounds every year from the
state-authorised and supervised Lottery. This is a monopoly which was
initially run on licence by a American gambling organisation which has been
found guilty of corruption by several American state courts. (I'd dearly
love to know which politicians received backhanders when the state was
choosing this corrupt operator.)
The Lottery and its offspring, The Millenium Fund, is is a happy device by
which the middle-class in England (more specifically the chattering
literati of London) milks the working class and generally spends the money
on themselves. About 70% of the money goes to middle-class hobbies in the
rich South-East such as the Royal Opera House or (a recent case) a commuter
village in the Essex stockbroker belt which received a couple of million to
build a luxury clubhouse for their "village" cricket team (composed of rich
commuters -- the local farmworker doesn't get a look-in of course). I
haven't yet heard of a single case of any funds going towards badly-needed
youth centres for the benighted towns and villages of the North of England
where the schools are hell-holes for teachers and where the young people
have no job to go to and nothing to do except hang around the streets and
occasionally have fun by attacking other gangs or the police.
Keith Hudson
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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