Lib Dem Voice, Florence Nightingale and the ludicrous national curriculum

Lib Dem Voice has published an article praising Simon Hughes for lobbying to keep Florence Nightingale on the National Curriculum.

Now Florence Nightingale is no doubt worthy of study - anyone who invented the pie chart can't be that bad after all - but I fail to see anything other than a ludicrous level of bureaucratic micro management in this case.

No wonder government costs so much when you have teams of civil servants coming up with changes (on the whim of a minister), others consulting on them and others deciding to not to do anything.  It would be far more efficient to abolish the curriculum and the ministry for which it is such a successful make work scheme.

As Liberator magazine's Simon Titley eloquently says in the comments, "I am disappointed that neither Vlad the Impaler nor Harry Worth are included in the national curriculum, but I trust the judgement of history teachers on such matters."

Clegg to quit in Feb 2014?

Liberator 's blog reports that Lib Dem activists may be moving against Clegg as he "seems to have reached a stage in his leadership, where he can no longer disguise his contempt for his own party."

Clegg's speech at the conference of what's left of ALDC at the weekend certainly gave that impression.

I haven't heard anything that suggests an active campaign to oust Clegg, but I have heard from a number of sources within the party that Clegg had been planning to stand down as leader next February, with the aim of handing the baton on to Ed Davey. 

The timing is significant in that it is a few months before the Euro elections and a new leader bounce might save the skins of four or five MEPs who are facing defeat if the party continues to bump along under Clegg's leadership.  MEPs are extremely important to the party's campaigning capacity with well funded offices and the ability to engage with voters in all parts of their huge constituency regions. 

But the handover plan was apparently scuppered by the rise of Tim Farron - who now looks like the favourite to win a post Clegg leadership election.  A Farron leadership would be unlikely to enjoy such cordial relations with Cameron and the Tories and would certainly mean an end of the Clegg project. 

The fact that these rumours are re-circulating perhaps suggests the plan is back on - with the Cleggites perhaps emboldened by Farron's internal troubles over his voting record on Gay marriage meaning he is no longer such a clear favourite.

But regardless of whether any of this is true - I think we are seeing the start of the party turning its mind to what a post Clegg leadership might look like.

New links...

My eagle eyed viewer may have noticed I've added a couple of new links - Gareth Epps and the Liberator blog.  Both are well worth a read.

And if you don't subscribe to Liberator I'd encourage you to do so.  You might disagree with some or all of its content - but it is the only independent voice for liberals in the UK and as a result is worth its very reasonable subs.

Tony Greaves is right...

I don't always agree with Lib Dem peer, Pendle councillor, campaigning guru and icon of northern Liberalism the noble Lord Greaves.  But in  this month's edition of Liberator,  Tony Greaves writes an excellent article - Leaders on a different planet - on the challenges facing the party in government.

The key passages echo a posting on this blog analysing the disasterous elections in May.  Greaves writes:

"Attempts to improve the dire communications within the Liberal Democrats have all been about people at the top telling worried members and activists why the top people are right and the worried ranks are wrong, There is still little explanation of the trade-offs and compromises of coalition, why and how positions have been reached.

"We are still being lumbered with stuff that is politically bad for our party. Whether we have any more core vote to piss off is a matter for debate, but we still seem to be going out of our way to upset traditionally supportive lobbies such as civil liberties and the environment.

"It seems that, in spite of changes in personnel, the people around the leadership the special advisers and other advisers have no more idea of what this party stands for and what our activists will put up with than they had a year ago. Richard Reeves may, thankfully, have gone; but his successors seem no wiser. The bubble they work in may be more stratospheric even than the House of Lords, but it's just as remote from what remains of our party and, more desperately, from the real world."

The full article can be found here and I recommend it in its entirety.