Is there a common purpose ?

UK Column News 2 November 2018:

In the studio with Mike Robinson is David Scott from Northern Exposure. 

Mike Robinson begins: "Here is Sarah Thornton and of course over the last couple of days the National Chiefs` Police Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners were holding their partnership summit because, as we know, everything is about partnership, and well, she was saying something that did get some media coverage: that incidents of misogyny, claims against dead people, should not be pursued. So this is about police priorities and the amount of money the police have to spend on various things and, of course, the rise, or at least the alleged rise, of violent crime in the country. So let`s see what she actually said. Here we go."

"Neither investigating gender-based hate crime or investigating allegations against those who have died are necessarily bad things - I just argue that they cannot be priorities for a service that is over-stretched."

"Well this is all pretty hypocritical, David, because why would we not  want to investigate people who have been abusing children even in the past?"

David Scott: "You have an institutionalised abuse network; you have people right up to [a] former prime minister who has been abusing children on an industrial scale; you have the cover-up of that industrial scale abuse ... through the police, through the courts, through the entire system. You don`t want to know, Mike; you don`t want to know because the people are dead and it`s time to move on and we need to be looking at far more important things. And it`s just the same as looking at hate incidents and basically gossip on social media; it`s the same sort of level. We`re going to equate these two things so that people get the idea that investigating the core breakdown of our society is not really that important and should not be a priority for the police."

Mike Robinson: "Well let`s just remind everybody that Sarah Thornton does have form here because, of course, one of the subjects that we were trying to cover for quite a number of years was the abuse that was taking place at Oxford & Cherwell Valley College. And Sarah Thornton was Chief Constable at Thames Valley police, therefore was responsible for any investigation, or not, into the abuse that took place at that college. And, of course, she refused consistently to investigate and we were asking on an issue of the UK Column, when we were printing the newspaper, we were asking: `Was there a conspiracy of silence or a common purpose at work here?` Because all the people involved from the local authority, from the school and the Chief Constable herself, were all involved or graduates of common purpose. So I can`t image why she would want to cover things up. But anyway as you mentioned, one of the other things she said, of course, was `We don`t want to be investigating hate incidents any more unless there`s a crime been committed, but if it`s an incident we don`t really want to be highlighting that or investigating that` ..."

"But this is all a bit strange, David, because apparently we`re going to be investigating the labour party over anti-semitic alleged hate."

David Scott. "It appears not all hate is equal..."

Mike Robinson: "Well let`s move on to education and you wanted to highlight the passing of John Taylor Gatto."

 

"Yes, I wanted just to highlight how important John Taylor Gatto has been and to briefly .... record his passing on the 25 October. He has been an inspiration to many of us. He`s spoken with great vigour and great insight about what exactly is wrong with the education system, the very fundamental harm that it does, and the depth of the problem and what can be done about it, and the joy and vigour that can be obtained from education that`s based on different principles. He`s written several books. `The Underground History of American Education` is an absolute goldmine of information on these matters. There`s one called `Dumbing Us Down` - probably about half a dozen books in all .... Anyone who`s interested in education at all, anyone who`s interested in how to think freely, and anyone who`s interested in how the state is modifying society, needs to read John Taylor Gatto. He was a great man and he`ll be sadly missed."

Mike Robinson: "So we have a quote here. Genius is `as common as dirt`. We suppress genius because we haven`t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves`...`"

"Yes, and this is what he put into practice. He won New York state and New York City, `Teacher of the Year`, He was working in a very poor school and ghetto in New York and with very poor and disadvantaged pupils and they were doing magnificently well. They were going to various universities and no-one could figure out how he did it. But what he was doing was he was engaging with the parents, working with them and the children and completely subverting the system. And so when he won the award he had to resign because the attention he got stopped him doing the subversive creative things that were actually working. So this is an extract of his resignation which was published in the.... Washington Post. It was titled `I quit, I think`."

"I`ve

"I just can`t do it anymore. I can`t train children to wait to be told what to do. I can`t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds. I can`t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn`t any, and I can`t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn`t true..."