Reasons why the Green Party should not be allowed on TV debates

Mark Steel in The Independent

If the Green Party isn’t allowed into the TV election debates, there should be a compromise, such as its MP, Caroline Lucas, being allowed to present an episode of Top Gear.

She could zip through the Lake District, saying: “But while it HANDLES like a DREAM, the new Alfa Romeo 2.3 litre XL Deluxe has just one problem. It’s an UNBELIEVABLY inefficient way to use energy compared to a reasonably priced re-nationalised rail network.”

Or the leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett, could be offered a different slot, such as commentating on an international rugby match. “The New Zealand pack is absolutely immense,” she could say, adding: “But even if it rucked across Sussex for two months it wouldn’t endanger natural resources as much as fracking.”

The party might have to try this, because the debates proposed don’t include the Greens at all, despite some polls showing it ahead of the Liberal Democrats. The BBC explained this was because, “We take into account electoral results from past elections”, in which case there must be an argument for including the Whigs, which remained high in the polls up to 1850.

Its leader could promise to reduce the deficit by colonising Africa, before becoming involved in a heated discussion about immigration with a Saxon warlord, who had been invited as he was part of a coalition government throughout much of the 10th century.

The Liberal Democrats have agreed the Green Party shouldn’t be allowed to take part, although it came ahead of the Lib Dems in the European elections and many recent polls. Maybe party members feel there should be a different set of rules for who’s invited, depending on the number of letters in a party’s name. So the debate on Channel 4 should only include the Liberal Democrats and the Reclassify the Brontosaurus as a Type of Diplodocus Party.

You can understand the Liberal Democrats feeling jittery about the TV election debates. Because in the last ones the party leader persuaded many people to vote for him, by confirming his pledge to abolish tuition fees. But in all the stress of a live debate, he got the words abolish and treble mixed up.

And he harangued the Conservatives for planning to put up VAT to 20 per cent, which the party angrily denied. But happily a few weeks later they’d sorted out this disagreement, by both putting it up to 20 per cent together. It’s a heart-warming tale of friendship overcoming silly squabbles that should be made into a romcom with Clegg played by Jennifer Aniston.

The problem now is no sane person can believe anything Nick Clegg promises, pledges or vows again. So there’s no point in him being there at all, as he’s like the bloke in the pub who tells ridiculous stories no one listens to. Dimbleby can ask whether he’d renew Trident, and he could reply: “I know Ronnie O’Sullivan. I always beat him at snooker, only the Government doesn’t let me in the tournaments ‘cos I’ve been shagging Michele Obama.”

Despite this, no one would suggest Nick Clegg shouldn’t be allowed in the TV debates. But it might be best if he was given a separate slot, like the act that comes on half way through the Super Bowl. He can dance to his latest apology, maybe in a provocative dress, and that way he doesn’t make such a fool of himself but the honour of the democratic process is preserved.  

Another reason given for excluding the Greens is that once you have five people in a debate, it becomes too unmanageable. And you can see how it might become difficult for the viewer to even remember who was who. When there are just four white men between 40 and 50 in suits and ties, it’s easy to tell everyone apart. But the Green Party leader is an Australian woman, and if you add her in, people watching at home would get her mixed up with Nigel Farage, or become confused and think they were watching an old episode of Neighbours.

There’s another reason why the Greens could spoil the evening. If the debates are just between the four leaders, there will be a soothing pattern to the discussion. For example, on immigration each leader in turn will say: “I deny we’ll let in more immigrants and that swe like immigrants and accuse all of you of liking immigrants, and you say you hate immigrants but we really hate immigrants and we’ll ban immigrants from eating biscuits until they’ve been here three years, and won’t let them into doctors’ surgeries unless they drink a tin of paint for the amusement of other patients.”

So if someone answers by suggesting immigration isn’t the main problem, it will ruin the whole event, like if someone turned up for a game of cards and insisted on playing tag-team wrestling instead.

You can understand why the three old parties are worried about letting in anyone from outside, as they seem honestly to believe they’re the main, proper, real parties and everyone else is still “others”. Their most persuasive argument against voting for anyone else is “they can’t win”, or “don’t all vote for them, they’re unelectable”.

The answer could be to allow the five leaders to take part in the debates, but allow each one to nominate a programme the others have to appear in, starting with David Cameron on Made in Chelsea, spending the whole show saying “Sorry, do I know you?” as he pretended not to know all his old mates

The Art of Stillness

The art of stillness: Pico Iyer in TED

Private schools know how to game elite universities – state-educated kids don’t have this privilege

The system fails bright pupils from ordinary backgrounds. And here’s how we all lose ...

• 
• • Paul Mason
  • The Guardian, Sunday 30 November 2014 20.00 GMT

'There is, in short, massive asymmetry of information in the post-16 education system and the critical determinant is class.' Photograph: Alamy

Let’s call him Matt. Aged 16, he is tall, taciturn and highly talented. He goes to a state school and is about to choose his A-levels. For all kinds of reasons, he believes he should progress, via Oxbridge or the Ivy League, to become an aerospace engineer.

So should he do further maths? If maths is the new rock’n’roll in education, then further maths is a VIP enclosure that fewer than 15,000 young people a year get into.

Last week, I had the chance to put this question to the deputy head of a top private school. “By all means do further maths, but only if you are guaranteed to get an A,” came the answer, as if it were a no-brainer. It was advice born out of years of practical knowledge.

Other opinions are available of course – and that’s the problem. This year, a quarter of a million 16-year-olds will make their A-level choices relying on hearsay, myth and information that is outdated or uncheckable. Those choices will shape their options when it comes to university – and the courses they apply for will then shape their chances of getting in.

There is, in short, massive asymmetry of information in the post-16 education system and the critical determinant is class. Kids at private school can rely on schools that have continual informal contact with elite universities. The result is that – for all the hard work being done by outreach teams in Russell Group universities, and by access teams in state schools – there’s an inbuilt advantage among those going to private schools based on informal knowledge.

Last year’s results for further maths demonstrate the problem. In English state schools, further education and sixth-form colleges, about 11,100 young people sat the exam; in the private sector, which accounts for just 7% of the school population, 3,600 sat it. And private school results were better, with 69% getting A or A* versus 54% in state schools.

Government tables show that this achievement gap is even more pronounced for ordinary maths and the three main science subjects. There are numerous private websites that offer A-level advice, and anecdotally social media are abuzz with the wisdom of teenage crowds over course and subject choices.

But why isn’t there a central repository of information that would turn all this folkore into a level playing field of checkable knowledge? Why isn’t there a single, open-source database that models all specific pathways into higher education? Without it, state school students will always find it hard to win the inside-knowledge game.

At my old university, Sheffield, they told me that you need maths and physics as part of three A grades to study aerospace engineering. That’s in line with the Russell Group’s guide, which also tells you to add design/technology, computer science or further maths.

The admissions tutor of an Oxbridge college, however, tells me: “I think here they’d be worried about no further maths, especially if it was offered at school but they didn’t take it, though I do worry that we send out mixed messages about this.”

The knowledge asymmetries deepen once you realise that elite universities require additional, bespoke tests. Cambridge University’s website reveals that if you want to do engineering at Christ’s, Peterhouse or St John’s you might need to take an extra exam called Step.

In a cantankerous, unsigned diatribe, the Step chief examiner for 2014 complains that only 3.8% of applicants scored top marks. The majority were not prepared for the kind of thinking they had to do. “Curve-sketching skills were weak,” the examiner noted, together with “an unwillingness to be imaginative and creative, allied with a lack of thoroughness and attention to detail”.

I will wager that the people who scored top marks knew that their curves had to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s and that they had to demonstrate imagination and creativity – because their teachers had long experience of this exam, and the others had not. One Oxbridge admissions tutor admitted to me that such testing may add a further barrier to people from state schools.

Suppose Matt wants to go to Oxbridge more than he wants to be an aerospace engineer? Here the advice is – for those in the know – really clear. Don’t apply for the most popular courses, where there can be 12 people for every place. Work out the college and subject combinations that reduce the odds to just three or four to one.

Oxford’s website shows the success ratio for getting on to its popular engineering and economic management course is just 10%, while the success rate of applications for materials science is 42%. A senior administrator at Oxford told me that they suspected few state school teachers really understand this game of playing the ratios. State-school students and people from ethnic minorities crowd each other out by going for the same, obvious, high-ratio and vocational courses.

Why should this matter to the majority of young people, who do not aspire to go to an elite university? And to the rest of society? First, because it is creating needless inequality of opportunity and is just the most obvious example of how poor access to informal knowledge penalises state school kids. Second, because in an economy set to be dominated by information and technology, those 15,000 people who can attempt further maths each year are the equivalent of Aztec gold for the conquistadores. Their intelligence will be the raw material of the third industrial revolution.

There is no reason – other than maintaining privilege – to avoid presenting subject and course choices clearly, logically and transparently. When the system fails bright kids from non-privileged backgrounds, we all lose.

Important Health Warning

As many as 8 lakh international students, including about 96,000 Indian students, are at a huge disadvantage in the USA for no health insurance will pay more than 80 percent of their medical bills—that too after a one-time deductible of $500 (Rs 30,000) on first visit to a clinic.

ABHIJIT MAZUMDAR in Outlook India

Dushyant Kumar, a student at the University of Illinois in the U.S., was having bouts of intermittent spasms in his stomach but a visit to the university hospital made him double up in pain on learning about staggering amount of money he would have to spend on medical tests. As an international student, Kumar said, “Despite having student health insurance cover, I was supposed to shell out $600 (Rs 36,000) for only an ultrasound.” 

Healthcare remains a concern for Indian students as well as citizens of the U.S. While U.S. citizens have health insurance cover that would pay a substantial portion of their medical bills, as many as 8 lakh international students, including about 96,000 Indian students, are at a huge disadvantage for no health insurance will pay more than 80 percent of their medical bills—that too after a one-time deductible of $500 (Rs 30,000) on first visit to a clinic. 

Procedures such as an ultrasound or a CT scan cost upward of $1000 (Rs 60,000) in the U.S, which essentially means an international student first pays $500 (Rs 30,000) one-time deductible and another $100 (Rs 6,000) as 20 percent of the total cost he is supposed to shoulder. All this after he pays a huge sum for being insured for the year.

Mounting healthcare cost is a bane on a society that has over 5,500 hospitals and 8 lakh doctors to cater to a population of about 31 crore. Sample this—a woman delivering a kid, and that too without complications, will pay about $30,000 (Rs 18 lakh). 

Unlike in India, where purchasing medical insurance is still not in vogue due to a variety of reasons, few in the U.S. can afford the spiralling costs of healthcare without medical insurance whose monthly premium jacks up the expenditure for a family of four by several hundred dollars each month, with a sizeable chunk of the population—totalling over 2 crore—remaining uninsured. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that the U.S. spends over 10 percent of its Gross Domestic Produce (GDP) on healthcare, making it one of the few nations to do so, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The recently instituted Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act (PPACA), better known as Obama Care—a derisive reference by President Barak Obama’s trenchant opponents—aims at lowering the uninsured rate and making insurance more affordable for all. However, its real achievement lies in having insurance providers include pre-existing conditions of those seeking insurance cover—a feature that was, until recently, non-existent. Also, the Act makes it mandatory for companies having more than 100 employees to provide them with insurance cover, irrespective of their race, gender and orientation. 

However, it does not change the ground realities for international students, who will still pay 20 percent of their medical bills, and the over 80 lakh illegal immigrants in the country for whom there will be no insurance cover. They would have to fend for themselves, their only solace being their inclusion in emergency care. Vocal support for this Act pales into insignificance in Republican bastions such as Tennessee and Mississippi, where its mere mention triggers angry rebuttals and baleful predictions. “It would make the monthly premium significantly go up,” said Paul Sanderson, a Tennessee-based insurance agent. Also, the one-time deductible that a person pays on first visit to a doctor would increase, he warned. 

But those are not the only issues plaguing the healthcare industry. Getting to see a doctor on time and paying medical bills are hurdles most people face, bringing to the fore broader issues of healthcare and its reform for a country that boasts of cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art research. Li Chang (name changed), a teacher of library science, landed at the JFK Airport in New York, USA, ill at ease with the weather after visiting her sister in Canada. Suffering acute lung infection, she rang up a doctor for an early appointment to control the bouts of coughing and fits of wheezing as she doubled in distress. “The doctor gave me a date one month down the line, forcing me to fight on—unaided and alone,” Chang said.

Buying a medical insurance is not a guarantee that all will be well. Doctors refusing to treat patients having insurance policies of certain companies, a variety of alternative forms of medicine, including Ayurveda and Homoeopathy, not being included despite recognition from the federal government, many emergency-room doctors not under the ambit of insurance companies and being termed “out-of-network” doctors, and thus having to be paid by patients over and above the hospital bill, have left many with no option but to mortgage their property. Oftentimes, and funnily, though, a person will have to enquire about both the hospital and the doctor he will most likely seek an appointment with being on the right side of his insurance provider. There have been incidents of a doctor not being registered by an insurance provider despite the hospital he was working with being registered with it.

Adding to the woes of the sick is “drive-by doctoring” where patients have had to pay consultants and assistants to doctors, too, at times out of their own pockets after their insurers refused to pay them. These assistants are called in at the discretion of the doctor, often with questionable motives in doing so. This translates into specialists being called in—and increasing the medical bills—when even a resident or a nurse can handle the situation in the emergency room. Sometimes doctors split the profit with such assistants or consultants, experts said.

The politics of the system too has a role to play in the way things are moving in the healthcare industry. With upbeat Republicans gaining control of the Senate, Obama supporters fear that the government-initiated reforms in the health sector may be halted by the Republicans who do not support the health policies of the U.S. government.