{"id":543,"date":"2010-02-07T18:15:10","date_gmt":"2010-02-07T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=543"},"modified":"2010-02-07T18:15:10","modified_gmt":"2010-02-07T16:15:10","slug":"543","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=543","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Education<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Tory high command has to get a grip. Just weeks ago it was considered a certainty that David Cameron would lead his party to victory in the spring. He was treated virtually as a Prime Minister in Waiting. But all that has changed. There have been blunders and muddles and even Tories I talk to are wondering whether this army of management consultants, researchers and marketing advisers are really up to the job. There is more and more talk of a hung parliament, when so little time ago the buzz-word was landslide.<\/p>\n<p>This blog remains impartial but reserves the right to point out fault where it finds it. The latest fiasco is a leaked policy which would evidently take planning permission for new schools away from local authorities and allow schools to be set up anywhere subject only to a yes from the Secretary of State for Education. This is ridiculous. Local democratic institutions must have primacy on such critical matters as where to site schools. We do not want\u00a0Whitehall&#8217;s meddling fingers and barmy initiatives encroaching into every neighbourhood. The idea is to reduce the power of central government, not increase it.<\/p>\n<p>This is very worrying. The Tories under Thatcher had a weakness for bypassing Local Government and centralising decisions. This part of their policy was not a success and the country suffered years of neighbourhood decline as a result. It is beginning to look as if the lesson has not been learned. Whilst in the election campaign so far I have not noticed many new reasons for voting Labour, there seem to be an alarming number piling up for\u00a0not voting Tory.<\/p>\n<p>I read somewhere that Gordon Brown believed that the Conservatives would come apart at the seams under the pressure of an election campaign. I am beginning to wonder if this time he is right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Education The Tory high command has to get a grip. Just weeks ago it was considered a certainty that David Cameron would lead his party to victory in the spring. He was treated virtually as a Prime Minister in Waiting. But all that has changed. There have been blunders and muddles and even Tories I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}