Defending the Diaspora

Picture shows Indian nationals stranded in Yemen being evacuated from Djibouti on board an Indian Air Force aircraft.

Nitin Pai in The Hindu


New Delhi ought to review the risks to its diaspora populations and create the capacity to act in their interests should the need arise — without offending foreign governments, of course.

Many people involved in the massive evacuation of Indian expatriates from Kuwait in 1990 are disappointed at the mischaracterisation of the role of the politicians, diplomats and airline officials in Airlift, a new Hindi film based on that incident. While film-makers have dramatic licence to set fiction against facts, diplomats are rightly upset that the story of the biggest ever air evacuation in history, carried out by a resource-strapped government in the throes of political and economic crises, has deliberately painted foreign service officers in negative light.

K.P. Fabian, who headed the Gulf desk at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) during that episode, is quoted in this newspaper as saying “young people who are watching this film are getting a wrong impression of their history”. Nirupama Rao, former Foreign Secretary, criticised the production of falling short on its research. Even the MEA’s official spokesperson stepped in to set the record straight. It is unfortunate that the producers felt the need to reinforce popular prejudices of uncaring bureaucrats in that one area where that prejudice could not be more wrong.

Whatever you might think of the Indian government, when it comes to expatriate citizens in conflict zones, our diplomats go to great extents to ensure their safety. The airlift from Kuwait is only the biggest and the most famous one — more recently Indian diplomats and armed forces coordinated mass evacuations from Lebanon (in 2006), Libya (2011) and Yemen (2015). This is a job our diplomats, armed forces and airline officials do well, and it is unfair and self-defeating to cast them in poor light.

The damage, however, is done. But the public interest arising from the movie and the debate over the accuracy of its portrayal of the government’s role is a good opportunity to focus on the issue of diaspora security.Indians around the world

According to government figures, as of January 2015, there were 11 million Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and 17 million Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) around the world. The largest populations were in the Gulf, the United States, United Kingdom, Southeast Asia and Nepal. On the thin end, there were seven Indians in North Korea, two in Nauru and one in Micronesia.

Until the turn of the century, the government’s relationship with overseas Indians has been twofold. Indian citizens (NRIs) were treated differently from ethnic Indians holding other citizenships. While the government concerned itself with the former, the latter were encouraged to be loyal and upstanding citizens of their respective countries.

In the recently released Netaji Files, in 1960, Prithi Singh, India’s envoy to Malaya, reminds headquarters that “our own expressed policy has been to encourage persons of Indian origin, domiciled abroad, to absorb themselves into the life of these countries and I feel that any step which we might take which helps them to maintain rigidly their emotional and/or communal links with India, actually prevents them from giving their whole-hearted loyalty to the countries of their adoption”.

This policy has served India and overseas Indians well. If the Indian diaspora is highly successful and integrated into the societies around the world, it is in part due to the fact that the loyalties of persons of Indian origin are beyond doubt. They might retain Indian customs and faith, but they bat for the interests of the country they are citizens of.

Courting the diaspora

The longstanding policy began to shift in the 1990s, with India looking East and West initially due to economic adversity and subsequently due to opportunity. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government put the courtship on a formal footing with a high-level committee recommending the long-term visas under a PIO Card Scheme, a grand conference and recognition in the form of awards. The United Progressive Alliance government constituted an entire ministry for overseas Indians which, wisely, the Narendra Modi government has recently decided to merge back into the MEA.

No Prime Minister has gone so far out to court overseas Indians as Narendra Modi. Reaching out to the humble construction worker, the middle-class professional and the wealthy elite has galvanised the emotional links NRIs have with their home country. Mr. Modi has reinforced the growing feeling among NRIs since the turn of the century that India is a great country to be from.

Mr. Modi’s highly publicised engagement of overseas Indians changes the tenor of the government’s old policy to downplay their emotional links to India. It is for the Prime Minister to decide what the new policy should be. What we should recognise is that change comes with risks that need to be managed.

First, to the extent that New Delhi is seen to engage NRIs and protect their interests in foreign countries, foreign governments will not consider it an intrusion in their politics. However, if New Delhi begins to speak out on behalf of ethnic Indians who are not Indian citizens, then the interventions are likely to encounter resistance. In 2007, Malaysian politicians reacted viciously when Indian politicians made comments critical of Kuala Lumpur’s strong-arm tactics against its Indian minorities.

The modern world is constructed on the Westphalian model, where sovereign states relinquished their right to intercede on behalf of their religious and ethnic kin in other sovereign states. To violate this norm risks inviting any number of foreign interventions into our own domestic affairs.

Second, the reputation that PIOs have cultivated over several decades for being loyal citizens of the countries they live in can come under a shadow. In many parts of the non-Western world, countries are still reconciling with their nationhood and identity.

Any suspicion, even at the margin, of PIOs having multiple loyalties can be detrimental to their interests. Notice how the Singapore government insisted that only NRIs attend Mr. Modi’s public event, demarcating the line between its own citizens of Indian ethnicity and expatriates with Indian citizenship. 

Airlifts of the future

Finally, the airlifts and naval evacuations of the future might be more complex in a context where there is a conflation of NRIs, PIO card-holders and other ethnic Indians with foreign citizenships. During crises when time and resources are tight, who should Indian diplomats prioritise? Will they have moral grounds to put non-citizens on a lower priority than citizens? If they do, what impact will it have on the Indian government’s reputation and the expectations it has created? New Delhi ought to review the political and security risks to its diaspora populations and create the capacity to act in their interests should the need arise.

It is unclear if India’s overstretched diplomatic corps has been tasked with paying greater attention to multilateral arrangements, institutions and agreements that pertain to diaspora-related interventions.

Similarly, the external intelligence establishment needs to be reoriented towards gathering and analysing information relating to the threats that diaspora populations might face. The conceptual move from defending the homeland to defending the diaspora needs a concomitant retooling of government machinery.

Diaspora security will require more naval ships, wider patrolling, foreign berthing and outposts. Military heavy lifting capacity apart, it will also require policy measures, like for instance, licence conditions in civil aviation requiring private airlines to put their aircraft and crew at the government’s disposal during emergencies.

The commitments that India makes require the state to have the capacity to redeem them. If we widen the scope of our commitments, we must invest in the capacity to carry out the airlifts of the future.

The Effort behind his Effortless batting

V RAMNARAYAN in Cricinfo



David Gower worked very hard to master his technique against spin, following initial struggles © Getty Images



"Ï wish God hadn't made me so beautiful." The girl who uttered these words must have forever regretted them. She was one of the brighter students of Chennai's Presidency College during my own student years there, and this was her reaction to the catcalls and whistles that greeted her at the college gate every morning courtesy a gathering of louts inspired by the so-called heroes of the Tamil cinema of the day. Of course, her naïve response to their harassment only added to the ammunition of her tormentors.

David Ivon Gower, recently in Chennai to deliver the first KS Narayanan Oration, perhaps never had cause to regret his good looks, but I am not sure he was entirely happy with the media hype about the lazy elegance of his batting. He did hint during his interactions with Chennai's cricket enthusiasts that much effort went into his effortless batting.

I have this irritating habit of drawing parallels from other walks of life, especially the world of art, and I could not help remembering a lament of the late MS Subbulakshmi, one of the greatest Indian vocalists of our time. Though she was hurt by constantly being described as just a great voice, she rarely expressed her disappointment at it. She did sometimes drop her guard and confide in her closest associates, saying, "People always speak of my great voice and give me little credit for my technical prowess. They don't know how hard I must work to achieve my 'natural' voice.''

In Gower's case, while it was all very well to have fans and critics swoon over his left-hander's grace and the time he had to play his stylish shots, it must have been less pleasant when critics saw the very effortlessness of his successes as the irresponsibility that caused his failures.

In his informal conversations with cricket aficionados in Chennai, Gower did reveal a tinge of regret at how this so-called casualness was labelled the villain in English defeats in his time, though his wry sense of humour has a way of converting every jibe into a joke.

With his golden curls, his carefree approach to batting, and the elegance of his shotmaking, Gower was certainly one of the most popular overseas cricketers to play in Chennai, but it was a revelation that he still has a fan following here decades after he last played in the city. Gower himself was overwhelmed by the high level of awareness of cricket history among the locals he met. "Their knowledge of my cricket statistics is quite amazing,'' he said.




Gower brought out the best in Graeme Fowler during the 1984-85 India tour © Getty Images


Ray Illingworth, Mike Brearley and Richie Benaud were the captains who inspired Gower. ''Be yourself'' was the mantra he followed as captain, and asked his players to follow, but he also never forgot Benaud's advice, ''Captaincy is 90% luck and 10% skill, but don't try it without that 10%." In the early days of his captaincy Alastair Cook, Gower claims, was trying to be Andrew Strauss, and the improvement when he decided to be himself was palpable.

Beating India in India in 1984-85 was among his finest hours as captain, second only to England's Ashes win the same year for the amount of satisfaction he derived from it. Though his on-off career as both player and captain was not easy to deal with, and he is generally self-deprecatory about his captaincy, he recalls with some pride that he gave his players the freedom to express themselves on the field and in team meetings. He believed in giving each player responsibility, sometimes specific responsibilities. The results were there for all to see - for instance in the almost unexpected successes of Graeme Fowler and Mike Gatting in India.

Fowler tended sometimes to behave like a kid and was treated as one. By giving him the responsibility and encouragement to open the innings in alien conditions, Gower made sure the boy grew up.

Gatting, who had debuted for England before Gower, had been in and out of the team for some seven years, and he too was given the freedom to play his natural game, and his appointment as vice-captain placed on him added responsibility. Both scored runs in the series opener in Bombay, disastrous for England, where L Sivaramakrishnan took 12 wickets to send them hurtling down to defeat, but the English batsmen bounced back in the very next Test, in Delhi, though Siva's golden streak continued, with another six-wicket haul in England's first innings. By this time, however, there was a distinct change of mindset among the English batsmen, who were beginning to play the bowling on its merits, without getting bamboozled by the turning ball.

Gatting and Fowler made the transformation complete when they scored double-centuries in the Madras Test. In this match, a new fast bowler had emerged in Neil Foster, who took 11 wickets in the match, starting with a fiery spell on the first morning. The captain's laid-back but confident style had paid off.

During Gower's Chennai visit, he and I talked about a match we had played against each other back in January 1978, he for a Perth club, and I for the touring Hyderabad Blues. I remembered that he had been uncomfortable against spin in that game, and marvelled at his rapid progress in that department which enabled him to make a double-hundred against India the following year. ''I was a novice against spin when we played that match'', he said, ''and I worked really hard when I went back to England. I had help from my captain, Ray Illingworth, and other team-mates, and we worked systematically on my approach to playing slow bowling.'' This was evidence of the steel under that casual exterior, the same determination that helped him to play the great West Indian pacemen better than many other batsmen of his era.

First Corbyn, now Sanders: how young voters' despair is fuelling movements on the left

Owen Jones in The Guardian

On both sides of the Atlantic, economic insecurity is fuelling the rise of new movements on the left.

 

Bernie Sanders was neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in this week’s Iowa caucus. Photograph: Yin Bogu/Xinhua Press/Corbis

He’s the septuagenarian powered by youth. The figures behind Bernie Sanders’ triumph in Iowa – in which his grassroots insurgency scored a virtual tie against what he rightly described as “the most powerful political organisation” in the US – are astonishing. Among Iowa Democrats aged between 17 and 29, 84% opted for this unlikely youth icon; among those aged 30-44, Sanders still had a 21-point lead over Hillary Clinton. It was older Americans who flocked to Clinton’s camp: nearly seven out of 10 of those aged over 65. The generations appeared separated by a political chasm.
Here is a phenomenon far from specific to the United States. It is a story of young people facing a present and future defined by economic security, often apparently doomed to a worse lot in life than their parents. They often feel unrepresented, ignored, betrayed or outright attacked by the political elite. They are far more progressive on social issues than their grandparents’ generation. And they are helping to drive movements from Sanders’ to Podemos in Spain, from Syriza to Jeremy Corbyn.

That’s not to exaggerate or oversimplify. A “generation” is itself a sweeping generalisation: it may include the retired white billionaire and the black pensioner shivering in a cold home, or the daughter of a miner and the privately educated young man whose rich parents pay his mortgage deposit. Only a minority of young people are meaningfully politically engaged, let alone politically active, and that includes those who opt for conservative or even far-right parties.

But there’s no question that a swath of disenfranchised youth is powering the new movements of the left. Political attitudes have changed. Labour’s rout last May is often compared to the party’s 1983 disaster; but when Labour was defeated under Michael Foot, the Tories had a nine-point lead among 18- to 24-year-olds, while in 2015, Labour achieved a 16-point lead among 18- to 24-year-olds. What’s more, younger Britons were twice as likely to opt for the leftwing Greens as the rest of the population. While a poll last month found that a derisory 16% of those over the age of 60 think Jeremy Corbyn is doing well, the figure rises to 41% among 18- to 24-year-olds. During the leadership contest that swept Corbyn to power, it’s reported that an influx of relatively young members drove the party’s average age down from 53 to 42.

Is it all just youthful naivete? “In 1984 and 1988,” notes the US journalist Peter Beinart, “young voters backed Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush by large margins,” just as Margaret Thatcher attracted a level of youth support that has eluded David Cameron. The evidence that people become naturally more conservative as they age is not conclusive; indeed, on social issues, older people are often simply keeping the conservative attitudes of their youth. “Change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism,” notes one US study. For older Britons, the left may be associated with the disastrous failure of Soviet totalitarianism and the breakdown of the postwar consensus. For younger Britons, the aftermath of financial collapse and a self-evidently profoundly unequal society may loom larger. It’s the fall of Lehman Brothers, not the Berlin Wall, that may be more significant.

The generations seem to live on different political planets. American youth are far more likely to support immigration than their elders, and to have a positive view of Muslims; and while the over-35s are slightly more likely to believe government does too much, the under-35s are decisively more likely to believe it does too little. Here is a generation that has grown up in a world defined by market failure rather than one shaped by cold war rivalries. As a self-described socialist, Sanders is an exceptionally rare breed of American politician. But it is notable that, while just 15% of Americans over 65 have a positive view of socialism, that rises to 36% among the 18- to 29-year-olds, just three points fewer than those who opt for capitalism.
Yet it is surely economic insecurity that drives today’s young radicalism. A poll last year found that nearly half of so-called “millennial” Americans – those aged 18 to 35 – believed that they faced a “dimmer future than their parents”. Forty million Americans are now saddled with student debt, helping to suppress their living standards and leaving them with less disposable income for, say, a mortgage or a car. Home ownership across the Atlantic – the linchpin of the “American dream” – is now at its lowest level for nearly half a century. The economic recovery is an abstraction for many young Americans, all too often driven into insecure and low-paid occupations with little prospect of rising wages or a standard of living they believe they deserve.

A similar picture could be painted in Britain, of course. Government policies have disproportionately targeted younger people: whether it be the punishing of educational aspiration with the trebling of student fees, the cutting of youth services, the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, a minimum wage that discriminates against the young, cuts to youth services or a fall in living standards that older Britons have not had to endure. A young person may find that attending university – which now means accruing a huge pile of debt – does not open doors it once did. Home ownership is at its lowest level for a quarter of a century, and it has particularly plummeted among the young, with evidence that many have given up saving up for a deposit altogether. There are now more private tenants than social tenants, and half of those in an often unregulated private rented sector with what can be income-devouring rents are under 34.

But here is the danger. Like other western nations, Britain is an ageing society, and older voters are both decisively opting for the Conservatives, and turning out to vote in great number. The new movements face a formidable task: to both inspire younger voters to turn out in greater number, and persuade a substantial number of older Britons of their cause. A failure to do so will doom these movements. But the mainstream political elite should not feel complacent. They seem to believe they can abandon the young and face no political consequences. They may find that, one day, they run out of luck.

The age of deference to doctors and elites is over. Good riddance

Mary Dejevsky in The Independent

There was something about the story of five-year-old Ashya King that went beyond the plight of this one small, sick child, wrapped up in his blanket and connected to a drip. It was not just the public relations savvy of his family: the elaborate preparations for their flight, recorded and posted on the internet that drew such all-consuming public interest. Nor was it only the drama of the police chase across Europe, and the nights spent in a Spanish prison. It was much more.

There was a profound clash of principles here at a junction of extremes: a child with a terminal brain tumour, a fixed medical consensus, and parents who hoped, believed, there could be another way.

You probably remember – I certainly do – how forcefully Ashya’s father, Brett, argued his case. He had, he said, set about learning all he could about treatment possibilities for his son’s condition on the internet and in medical journals and concluded that a particular form of therapy was superior to the one being offered by the NHS.

Now, 18 months on, Ashya King’s story has a sequel beyond the so-far happy ending of his recovery announced last March. The sequel is that the treatment his family fought for so hard has indeed been found to be superior to that generally offered by the NHS, and in precisely the ways that the Kings had argued. A study published in The Lancet Oncology – an offshoot of The Lancet – concluded that the proton beam therapy, such as Ashya eventually obtained in Prague, was as effective as conventional radiotherapy, but less likely to cause damage to hearing, brain function and vital organs, especially in children. 

In one way, that should perhaps come as no surprise, given King’s claim to have scoured the literature. There is also room for caution. This was a relatively small study conducted in the US. There was no control group – with children, this is deemed (rightly) to be unethical – and harmful side-effects were reduced, not eliminated. But such is the nature of medical research, and the treatment decisions based on it. Things are rarely cut and dried; it is more a balance of probability.

This may be one reason why the Lancet findings had less resonance than might have been expected, given the original hue and cry about Ashya’s case. But my cynical bet is that if the study had shown there was essentially no difference between the two treatments, or that proton beams were a quack therapy potentially hyped for commercial advantage, sections of the NHS establishment would have been out there day and night, warning parents who might be tempted to follow the Kings’ path how wrong-headed they were, and stressing how the doctors had been vindicated.

Instead, there were low-key interviews with select specialists, who noted that three NHS centres providing the therapy would be open by April 2018. Until then, those (few) children assessed as suitable for proton beam treatment would continue to go to the United States at public expense. (Why the US, rather than Prague or elsewhere in Europe, is not explained.)

It may just be my imagination, but I sensed an attempt to avoid reigniting the passions that had flared over Ashya’s treatment at the time, and especially not to raise other parents’ expectations. But I don’t think the controversy should be allowed to rest so easily. The King family’s experience raised serious questions about the practice of medicine in the UK and the attitudes of the professionals to their patients. And these latest research findings on proton therapy mean that it still does.

When Brett King presented his arguments, he did so not just with understandable emotion, but with enviable lucidity. He patently understood what he was talking about. This treatment was there; he wanted to give it a go, and he was prepared to raise the funds to pay for it. To the medics, he may well have come across as difficult, and there were those who genuinely felt that he was acting against the best interests of his son. In that case, the arguments should have gone to court – as they had done with eight-year-old Neon Roberts and his contested cancer treatment half a year before. That the Kings are Jehovah’s Witnesses may also have cued particular caution.

However, what many, especially in the medical establishment, seem reluctant to recognise is that change is afoot in relations between the professional elite and the rest – and not only because the so-called “age of deference” is dead.

Increasingly, it seems, we lay people are invited to make choices, only to be censured, or worse, for making the “wrong” one. Lawyers, for instance, will repeatedly tell you that they offer only advice; it is up to us to act on it, or not. So it is, increasingly, in the NHS. 

In theory, you can choose your GP, your hospital, your consultant – and, within reason, your treatment. In practice, it is more complicated. You may live too far away, the professionals may try to protect their patch, and the actual consultant is not there.

In the crucial matter of information, however, things have been evening up. The internet-nerd who turns up at the GP surgery convinced he is mortally ill may be a time-consuming nuisance, but such self-interested diligence can also help to point a time-strapped GP in the right direction. Not all are hypochondriacs. Patients may have more time and motive to research new treatments than their doctor. We old-fashioned scribes may have misgivings about the rise of citizen-journalism. But not all challenges to professional expertise are ignorant – or wrong.

In the case of Ashya King, everyone behaved questionably, even as they genuinely believed they were acting in the child’s very best interests.

But the days when the professionals – for all their years of training – had the field to themselves are gone. In medicine, we lay people are getting used to that. Are they?

Teachers increasingly boosting predicted A-level grades to help pupils win top university places

Richard Garner in The Independent

Increasing numbers of teachers are boosting their pupils’ predicted A-level grades to help them secure offers of places at Britain’s top universities – which in turn are accepting more students who miss their targets, largely to increase their income.

Figures from Ucas, the university admissions body, show that 63 per cent of all candidates are now predicted to get at least an A and two B grades at A level – up 9 percentage points from four years ago.

Yet the data shows that only a fifth of those predicted to score ABB actually achieve those grades – a 40 per cent drop from just six years ago.

READ MORE
Students increasingly admitted to university without three A-levels

The ploy by teachers has been successful because growing numbers of universities are offering “discounts” on their conditional offers to prospective students when A-level results are released.

This is because the Government decision to lift the cap on the number of places universities can offer has increased competition among the institutions when it comes to signing up students.

However, many teachers still reckon they need to bump up their students’ potential A-level grades to ensure they are noticed and are given a provisional offer by universities. More than half of pupils accepted on predicted A-level results – 52 per cent – missed their conditional offer grades by one grade or two, another substantial rise on four years ago. Senior academics say controversy over the issue could reignite calls to move to a system whereby pupils apply for their university places after they receive their A-level results.

Many teachers believe they need to bump up their students’ potential A-level grades to ensure they receive offers by universities (iStock)

The change was called for by a government inquiry headed by former Vice-Chancellor Steven Schwartz a decade ago but disappeared from the table when universities and schools could not agree to the changes necessary to the education calendar to implement it.

The new figures and the trend they highlight were disclosed by Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of Ucas, at a conference at Wellington College on the future of higher education.


University admissions in numbers

63% of all candidates predicted to get at least an A and two B grades at A-levels
One in five actually achieve those grades
495,940 university applicants in England
52% of candidates accepted on predicted grades miss them by one grade or two
44% of students being admitted with three B grade passes or lower, compared with 20 per cent in 2011

Ms Curnock Cook said that, in discussions with teachers, she had asked: “Surely you wouldn’t be over-predicting your students’ grades last summer?” She told the conference: “I have teachers coming back to me saying: ‘Actually, yes we would.’

“The offers are being discounted at confirmation time,” said Ms Curnock Cook, referring to A-level results day. “It’s been [caused by] the lifting of the number controls that has increased competition [amongst universities].”

“You have to hope you can unlock some latent talent [in those taken in with lower grades],” said one university source. “If you don’t take them in, they could be snapped up by a rival and their reputation increases.”

As well as lower-ranking institutions, high-tariff universities – those most selective in their intake – are also lowering their entry requirements, with 44 per cent of students being admitted with three B-grade passes or lower, compared with just 20 per cent in 2011.

Professor Michael Arthur, provost of University College London, said his university had dropped a grade in 9 per cent of admissions.

Many universities have seen huge rises in the numbers of students they are enrolling. Professor Arthur said the number of students at his university had soared from 24,000 six years ago to 37,500. Part of the increase was down to mergers with other bodies such as the Institute of Education – but at least half was due to a rise in student numbers.

READ MORE
Record number of GCSE and A-level exams sent to be regraded

However, the number of university applicants from England decreased on the previous year by 0.2 percentage points to 495,940, the new figures show. The number of 18-year-olds applying also fell by 2.2 per cent.

Overall the number of university applicants for this autumn has held steady – with 593,720 applicants (up 0.2 percentage points on last year) by the time of the January deadline. But the increase was down to a significant rise in applications from the EU – up 6 percentage points to 45,220.

The figures show that more disadvantaged pupils applied than ever before – up 5 percentage points in England, 2 in Scotland and 8 in Wales.

Ms Curnock Cook urged students to be “bold” in their Ucas applications and take advantage of the fact that leading universities were lowering their admissions criteria. Speakers at the conference said parental pressure was partly to blame for teachers upping predictions for their pupils. 

The UCAS clearing house call centre in Cheltenham (Getty Images)

Another teacher said that performance-related pay, which means teachers’ salary increases depend on the results of their pupils – was leading them to predict higher grades.

“Performance-related pay and performance-related management play a part,” they said. “It is why you have to be a little bit aspirational.”

However, it was acknowledged this could be a double-edged sword – as failure to achieve the grades could result in teachers being penalised for failing to meet their targets.

Ms Curnock Cook also predicted that the number of students taking the A-level route to university would continue to drop over the next four years,

Last week Ucas showed that the number of students taking the vocational route through Btecs had almost doubled from 14 per cent in 2008 to 26 per cent last year. Predicted outcomes showed the number taking the traditional A-level route was likely to decline by 25,000 by 2020 – while the number with vocational qualifications would go up by 15,000.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "We trust teachers to act in the best interests of their students by giving fair predicted A level grades that accurately reflect their ability.

"Distorting grades would be unfair on the pupils involved and could result in universities having to artificially inflate their entrance requirements, rendering it pointless in the long run."

David Cameron's ever-shifting view of Britain's place in EU

Long before current renegotiations, PM made series of half promises and pledges that never materialised. Here is a selection

 

David Cameron speaks to factory staff at the Siemens manufacturing plant in Chippenham on Tuesday. Photograph: Ben Pruchnie/AFP/Getty Images


Alberto Nardelli in The Guardian

David Cameron has come a long way in how he views Britain’s place in the European Union. Over the years, long before the current renegotiations even started, the prime minister has made a series of bold comments, half promises and pledges.

Tuesday’s draft agreement demonstrates that only a handful of his commitments have been delivered. Here is a selection of some of them:

• In 2009, he promised that a Tory government would stop the European court of justice overruling UK criminal law by limiting its jurisdiction. The government has since opted back in to 35 justice and home affairs measures, including the European arrest warrant.

• In 2012, Cameron said that the government was “committed to revising the working time directive”, a set of EU-wide working standards. However, last December, George Osborne, told the Treasury select committee that this formed no part of the negotiation. Back in 2007, before becoming prime minister, Cameron had even pledged to pull Britain out of Europe’s social chapter on workers’ rights.

• The prime minister also promised in the Conservative manifesto last May to push for further reform of the EU’s common agricultural policy. This promise was not part of the renegotiation as it was likely to face fierce opposition from some member states.

• Cameron said in early 2014 that he would put in place treaty change before the referendum. Tuesday’s documents make it clear that there will be no changes to the EU’s governing treaties – including its headline principle of “ever closer union” – ahead of the vote because this would not be feasible in the referendum’s timeframe.

In any event, Tusk said in Tuesday’s letter that the principle of ever closer union is already not equivalent to an objective of political integration, and the substance of this will be incorporated into the treaties when they are next revised.

• Last year Cameron said that he wanted EU jobseekers to have a job before they come to Britain. Such a measure is contrary to the principle of free movement and as such was also not part of the negotiations.

• When the renegotiations formally began Cameron started by asking for a cap in the number of EU migrants allowed into the UK. That idea lasted the length of a phonecall to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in 2014. She was not very impressed.

• The prime minister had to think of a new idea and proposed – in writing this time – that people coming to Britain from the EU must live in the UK and contribute for four years before they qualify for in-work benefits or social housing. It has proven to be the most controversial – albeit the most precise – of Cameron’s demands.

What he is set to get is the dilution of an already diluted idea: an “emergency brake” on in-work benefits for up to four years. The one-off restriction would not amount to an outright ban on benefits either but would be graduated. That means that EU migrants would receive no benefits upon arrival but would get an increasing proportion each year – another piece of complexity for an already over-complex benefit system.

When it came to the formal negotiations, Cameron’s other requests included:

• Ending the practice of sending child benefit overseas. This was also watered down. The UK will be allowed to index the payments to the country where the child is based.

• On measures to crack down on the abuse of free movement, members states will be able to take action against fraudulent claims and sham marriages, as well as against individuals who pose a threat to national security. None of these measures would appear to be new, but are simply based on the interpretation of current rules.

• On “economic governance”, Cameron had asked for a series of principles to be recognised ranging from a simple recognition of the idea that the EU has more than one currency, and that taxpayers in non-euro countries should never be financially liable for operations to support the eurozone as a currency.

Here Cameron did better, although only because Tusk clarified, in effect, that all these things are already covered by existing rules and principles.

• As part of the competitiveness basket, Cameron had said he wanted the EU to be more competitive. In response, Tusk has committed the EU to increasing efforts to enhance competitiveness. It is probably not surprising that the contents of this basket proved the easiest to agree on.

Nevertheless, however much has been negotiated away, Cameron has still won some important concessions. Take the emergency brake: just a month ago the measure seemed to be off the table but now it is a centre piece of his pitch to the British people. The European commission has accepted that the UK is facing exceptional circumstances due to high levels of immigration and must be allowed to do something about it – assuming the British people vote to stay in the EU.

However, the vast majority of the words in the draft agreement are dedicated to clarifying how existing rules and principles can be applied to ease British fears. The achievement is somewhat distant from the grander aspirations set out by Cameron over the past five years, but in the end it may be enough.

We’re drowning in cheap oil – yet still taxpayers prop up this toxic industry

George Monbiot in The Guardian

As these new crisis bailouts for fossil fuels show, it’s those who are least deserving who get the most government protection

 

‘Oil companies have already been granted ‘ministerial buddies’ to ‘improve access to government’ – as if they didn’t have enough already.’ Illustration: Andrzej Krauze



Those of us who predicted, during the first years of this century, an imminent peak in global oil supplies could not have been more wrong. People like the energy consultant Daniel Yergin, with whom I disputed the topic, appear to have been right: growth, he said, would continue for many years, unless governments intervened. 

Oil appeared to peak in the United States in 1970, after which production fell for 40 years. That, we assumed, was the end of the story. But through fracking and horizontal drilling, production last year returned to the level it reached in 1969. Twelve years ago, the Texas oil tycoon T Boone Pickens announced that “never again will we pump more than 82 million barrels”. By the end of 2015, daily world production reached 97m .

Instead of a collapse in the supply of oil, we confront the opposite crisis: we’re drowning in the stuff. The reasons for the price crash – an astonishing slide from $115 a barrel to less than $30 over the past 20 months – are complex: among them are weaker demand in China and a strong dollar. But an analysis by the World Bank finds that changes in supply have been a much greater factor than changes in demand. Oil production has almost doubled in Iraq, as well as in the US. Saudi Arabia has opened its taps, to try to destroy the competition and sustain its market share – a strategy that some peak oil advocates once argued was impossible.

‘Last week David Cameron flew to Aberdeen, where he announced another £250m of funding for, er, free enterprise, much of which will be used to prop up oil and gas.’ Photograph: Andrew Milligan/AFP/Getty Images

The outcomes are mixed. Cheaper oil means that more will be burned, accelerating climate breakdown. But it also means less investment in future production. Already, $380 billion that was to have been ploughed into oil and gas fields has been delayed. The first places to be spared are those in which extraction is most difficult or hazardous. Fragile ecosystems in the Arctic, in rainforests, in remote and stormy seas, have been granted a stay of execution.

BP reported a massive loss today, partly because of low prices. A falling oil price drags down the price of gas, exposing coal-mining companies to the risk of bankruptcy: good riddance to them. But some renewables firms are being tanked by the same forces; they are losing their subsidies just as gas prices crash. One day they will compete unaided, but not yet.

To cheer or lament these vicissitudes is pointless. They are chance events that counteract each other, and will at some point be reversed. The oil age, which threatens the conditions sustaining life on Earth, will come to an end through political, not economic, change. But the politics, for now, are against us.

Already, according to the International Monetary Fund, more money is spent, directly and indirectly, on subsidising fossil fuels than on funding health services. The G20 countries alone spend over three times as much public money on oil, gas and coal than the whole world does on renewable energy. In 2014, subsidies for fossil fuel production in the UK reached £5bn. Enough? Oh no. While essential public services are being massacred through want of funds, last year the government announced a further £1.3bn in tax breaks for oil companies in the North Sea. Much of this money went to companies based overseas. They must think we’re mad.

Last week David Cameron flew to Aberdeen, where he announced another £250m of funding for, er, free enterprise, much (though not all) of which will be used to prop up oil and gas. A further £20m of public money will be spent on seismic testing. Expect more whale strandings, and ask yourself why the industry that threatens our prosperity shouldn’t cover its own bloody costs.

The energy secretary, Amber Rudd, says she stands “100% behind” this “fantastic industry”. She will “build a bridge to the future for UK oil and gas”. Had she been born 300 years ago, I expect she would have said the same about the slave trade. In a few years’ time her observations will look about as pertinent and about as ethical.

Oil companies have already been granted “ministerial buddies” to “improve access to government” – as if they didn’t have enough already. Now they get an“oil and gas ambassador”, and a new ministerial group, to “reiterate the UK government’s commitment to supporting the oil and gas industry”. A leaked letter shows that Rudd and other ministers want to silence local people by transferring the power to decide whether fracking happens from elected councils to an unelected commission. Let’s sack the electorate and appoint a new one.

Compare all this to the government’s treatment of renewables. Local people have been given special new powers to stop onshore windfarms being built. To the renewables companies Rudd says this: “We need to work towards a market where success is driven by your ability to compete in a market, not by your ability to lobby government.” Strangely, the same rules do not apply to the oil companies. Your friends get protection. The free market is reserved for enemies.

Yes, I do mean enemies. An energy transition threatens the kind of people who attend the Conservative party’s fundraising balls. It corrodes the income of old schoolfriends and weekend guests. For all the talk of enterprise, old money still nurtures its lively hatred of new money, and those who control the public purse use it to protect the incumbents from the parvenus. As they did for the bankers, our political leaders ensure that everyone must pay the costs imposed by the fossil fuel companies – except the fossil fuel companies.

So they lock us into the 20th century, into industrial decline and air pollution, stranded assets and – through climate change – systemic collapse. Governments of this country cannot resist the future forever. Eventually they will succumb to the inexorable logic, and recognise that most of the vast accretions of fossil plant life in the Earth’s crust must be left where they are. And those massive expenditures of public money will prove to be worthless.

Crises expose corruption – that is one of the basic lessons of politics. The oil price crisis finds politicians with their free-market trousers round their ankles. When your friends are in trouble, the rigours imposed religiously on the poor and public services suddenly turn out to be negotiable. Throw money at them, trash their competitors, rig the outcome: those who deserve the least receive the most.