On schools and cops

Ed Balls strikes me as the sort of person my son's mother dismisses under the label "macho dick-head":

"Schools judged to be either "coasting" on their good results, or doing too little to reverse poor performance, will face the threat of direct intervention from central government."

One day - although I suspect no time soon - the penny's going to drop and people are going to realise that central government intervention is the problem rather than the solution.

"Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, outlined new powers yesterday to enable his department to force local authorities to issue both successful and failing schools with a formal warning notice, giving them 15 days to make improvements or be taken over."

That's 15 days people. What does he imagine any school can do about anything in 15 days - even under the threat of being invaded? There's more lunacy:

"In a separate move, Mr Balls said that schools would be made to collect and publish records of children's lifestyles, through a new set of "wellbeing indicators", likely to include healthy eating, participation in sport and attendance."

You'd find it sinister if you didn't understand that Mr Balls is the spokesman for a fading regime that can't even control its own ministers - never mind its own party - never mind education in this country.

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This is completely unrelated but did you know that Glasgow police force was the oldest in Britain? I didn't - and neither did the Met when they claimed to be "the oldest police service in the world".