There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Schools and the toxic resilience agenda
The poorer the area, the more the school walls will be plastered with exhortations that students 'believe in themselves' and dig deep for individual reserves of positivity. It's no coincidence, writes STEVE HANDFORD
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
RECENTLY, I worked in a school for deprived and vulnerable pupils. Its walls and corridors contained a litany of inspirational quotes from gurus ancient and modern. This blu-tacked, laminated treasure trove included: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Another read: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” There were so many of these they became a running joke with the cynics among us, staff and pupils alike.
I didn’t realise I was waking up to what teachers are now calling “toxic resilience.” Not dumbing down, but numbing down.
More from this author
We must take a stand against the government’s spending on war
These vast multi-school bodies are fast becoming a monopoly in our marketised education system — one that can lobby the government to defy inspection and democracy, warns STEVE HANDFORD
STEVE HANDFORD introduces a co-operative in northern England that could be a massive win-win for the working class and for schools currently being fleeced by employment agencies
