Blackpool hot air

So these are the Conservatives' big ideas for education, from shadow schools secretary Michael Gove? Abolishing exclusion appeal panels that are weighted in favour of the school for courts, which aren't, will increase not decrease the number of 'thugs' returned to schools. If it were so simple, don't you think that the government would have scrapped the panels already or heads' leaders wouldn't be backing their continuance. It is good to see the Tories speaking up for good comprehensives. But otherwise they differ little from Labour: the government already requires competitions for new schools and requires councils to do proper feasibility studies for new school proposals from parents and others. Extra cash already goes to schools with disadvantaged pupils (incidentally, if you tie it too closely to individual pupils, you get accused of penalising exclusion, as Labour was by the Tories when it tried a similar scheme before). There is already plenty of Blackpool hot air - if that's not too much of an oxymoron given the normal ambience of that resort - coming from the Tory conference.

Palin's new Europe

Michael Palin's latest series on The New Europe (Sunday nights, BBC 1) had a brilliant start last night with visits to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Albania. It is excellent to see the programme enjoyed 7.5 million viewers. Albania presented itself as if to caricature and clearly failed to impress Palin, but the most moving testimony came in Sarajevo and Mostar, where Palin talked gently to local people who had experienced the full effect of the terrible war in the nineties. Lest we forget, this war which left Sarajevo under siege for three years and dotted with landmines for the next seventy years, happened with the connivance and complicity of the Major government. Indeed some of those whose inaction allowed so many to perish have the gall to present themselves as honest brokers in debates on foreign policy today. It is good to be reminded so elegantly of just what the war meant to so many people's lives.

Dave needs some discipline

If you want to know why most voters regard David Cameron as policy-light, just have a look at this tosh. Cameron repeats yet again the ludicrous notion that discipline problems in schools could all be solved if only we abolished the appeals panels which lead to just over 100 kids a year out of 9000+ excluded pupils being reinstated. Heads' leaders know that far more cases would go the parents' way in the courts than end up back in school after appeals now. Of course, schools should use good voluntary units more but local authority pupil referral units are a darn sight better now than they were when the Tories left office. And banning exclusion appeals is not the answer.