According to Ofsted, history is successful in schools. Not so, says controversial historian Niall Ferguson : the inspectors are missing the ruination of the subject Is there a crisis in the teaching of history in British schools? Not if you believe the conclusions of History for All, the report published earlier this month by Ofsted. Based on evidence from inspections conducted between 2007 and 2010 in 83 primary schools and the same number of secondary schools, the report begins on a reassuringly positive note. “There was much that was good and outstanding” in the history lessons the inspectors observed. “Most pupils enjoyed well-planned lessons that extended their knowledge, challenged their thinking and enhanced their understanding.” In secondary schools, we are assured, “effective teaching by well-qualified and highly competent teachers enabled the majority of students to develop knowledge and understanding in depth”. In short, history is “generally a popular and successful subject, which many pupils enjoy”. Attainment at the secondary level is “high and continu[ing] to rise”. Well, that’s all right then. Clearly, all last year’s talk by Michael Gove, Simon Schama, myself and others about the urgent need for reform was mere alarmism, doubtless actuated by some sinister political motive. Or was it? A closer look at the main body of the report suggests that there are indeed grounds for concern. First, it can hardly be a cause of celebration that students in independent schools are almost twice as likely to study GCSE history as those in maintained schools. In 2010, more than a hundred state secondary schools entered no students for GCSE history. Second, as the inspectors’ report acknowledges, England is the only country in Europe where history is not compulsory for students beyond the age of 14. Worse, many state schools now offer a two-year key stage 3 course, which allows some pupils to stop studying history at the age of 13. And here are four more facts that are not in the Ofsted report: • 25% of all schools no longer teach history as a discrete subject in year 7 • 30% of comprehensives spend less than one hour a week on history in the years up to age 13 • More GCSE candidates took design and technology than history last year • More A-level candidates took psychology. It is a paradox indeed. History has never been more popular outside schools than it is in Britain today. Yet history has never been so unpopular in British schools. Even more disturbing is the evidence of widespread historical ignorance among school-leavers. A recent survey of first-year undergraduates reading history at a reputable UK university found that: 66% did not know who was monarch at time of the Armada; 69% did not know the location of the Boer war; 84% did not know who commanded British forces at Waterloo (a third thought it was Nelson); and 89% could not name a single 19th-century British prime minister. Such evidence should make us very sceptical indeed about Ofsted’s claim that history is “a successful subject in schools”. How did we get here? The problem is surely not poor teaching. Rather, it is the stuff that teachers are expected to do, which is the product of an unholy alliance between well-meaning politicians and educationalists, not forgetting over-mighty examination boards. The politicians ranged from Kenneth Baker, who vainly hoped that a new national curriculum would force schools to teach a rather traditional kind of history, to Gordon Brown, who decided (Scotsman as he was) that schools should be pressed to teach British rather than English history, in order to promote a sense of “Britishness”. Such initiatives from above provided the proponents of a so-called new history with a golden opportunity to reshape historical education. Historical “skills” such as source analysis, they argued, should be elevated above mere factual knowledge. And “discovery” by children should count for more than dusty old pedagogy. The result was a national curriculum designed to instil in schoolchildren all kinds of “key concepts” like “chronological understanding”, “cultural, ethnic and religious diversity”, “change and continuity”, “cause and consequence”, “significance” and “interpretation”. And these were to be taught with reference to an impressively wide range of subject matter. Who could possibly object to such an enlightened scheme? The trouble is not so much with the theory as with the practice that has evolved in too many schools. As Ofsted admits in a damning passage on primary pupils, “some … found it difficult to place the historical episodes they had studied within any coherent, long-term narrative. They knew about particular events, characters and periods, but did not have an overview. Their chronological understanding was often underdeveloped and so they found it difficult to link developments together.” The only thing wrong with this observation is that Ofsted seems to think it applies only to primary school pupils, whereas it could equally well be applied to those in secondary school – and students at a good few universities, too. In fact, as the inspectors concede elsewhere, in 28 of the 58 secondary schools they visited, “students’ chronological understanding was not sufficiently well developed: they had … a poor sense of the historical narrative”. This is hardly a minor deficiency. It’s a bit like saying that maths is a successful subject in British schools, apart from the fact that pupils in half of schools can’t count. I have complained before that it is possible to leave school in England knowing only about Henry VIII, Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr. This is a caricature, admittedly, but it is not a wholly unfair one. Commenting on a not untypical primary curriculum, the authors of History for All say that “its principal weaknesses are the disconnected topics and the potential for the pupils to be left with a fragmented overview”. You can say that again. Consider this list of topics spread in this order over four years: • Romans and Celts – why have people invaded and settled? • Ancient Egypt – what can we find out from what has survived? • What can we learn about history by studying a famous person? • Why did Henry VIII marry six times? • Tudor times – rich and poor; exploration • What was it like to live here in the past? • Victorian children • Victorians – how your area has changed since the Victorian era • The second world war • Ancient Greeks • Britain since 1948 The word smorgasbord doesn’t really do justice to this random assortment. Lost, as Simon Schama has justly lamented, is the “long arc of time”, to be replaced by odds and sods. And some of those odds really are odd, especially if you go on to GCSE and A-level, where the “methods” become ever more idiosyncratic. If you really want to understand what’s going wrong in English schools, take a look at some of the lessons Ofsted singles out for praise… “Students in year 8 analysed the changing attitudes towards Oliver Cromwell from the 17th to the 20th centuries and, in year
Continue reading …According to Ofsted, history is successful in schools. Not so, says controversial historian Niall Ferguson : the inspectors are missing the ruination of the subject Is there a crisis in the teaching of history in British schools? Not if you believe the conclusions of History for All, the report published earlier this month by Ofsted. Based on evidence from inspections conducted between 2007 and 2010 in 83 primary schools and the same number of secondary schools, the report begins on a reassuringly positive note. “There was much that was good and outstanding” in the history lessons the inspectors observed. “Most pupils enjoyed well-planned lessons that extended their knowledge, challenged their thinking and enhanced their understanding.” In secondary schools, we are assured, “effective teaching by well-qualified and highly competent teachers enabled the majority of students to develop knowledge and understanding in depth”. In short, history is “generally a popular and successful subject, which many pupils enjoy”. Attainment at the secondary level is “high and continu[ing] to rise”. Well, that’s all right then. Clearly, all last year’s talk by Michael Gove, Simon Schama, myself and others about the urgent need for reform was mere alarmism, doubtless actuated by some sinister political motive. Or was it? A closer look at the main body of the report suggests that there are indeed grounds for concern. First, it can hardly be a cause of celebration that students in independent schools are almost twice as likely to study GCSE history as those in maintained schools. In 2010, more than a hundred state secondary schools entered no students for GCSE history. Second, as the inspectors’ report acknowledges, England is the only country in Europe where history is not compulsory for students beyond the age of 14. Worse, many state schools now offer a two-year key stage 3 course, which allows some pupils to stop studying history at the age of 13. And here are four more facts that are not in the Ofsted report: • 25% of all schools no longer teach history as a discrete subject in year 7 • 30% of comprehensives spend less than one hour a week on history in the years up to age 13 • More GCSE candidates took design and technology than history last year • More A-level candidates took psychology. It is a paradox indeed. History has never been more popular outside schools than it is in Britain today. Yet history has never been so unpopular in British schools. Even more disturbing is the evidence of widespread historical ignorance among school-leavers. A recent survey of first-year undergraduates reading history at a reputable UK university found that: 66% did not know who was monarch at time of the Armada; 69% did not know the location of the Boer war; 84% did not know who commanded British forces at Waterloo (a third thought it was Nelson); and 89% could not name a single 19th-century British prime minister. Such evidence should make us very sceptical indeed about Ofsted’s claim that history is “a successful subject in schools”. How did we get here? The problem is surely not poor teaching. Rather, it is the stuff that teachers are expected to do, which is the product of an unholy alliance between well-meaning politicians and educationalists, not forgetting over-mighty examination boards. The politicians ranged from Kenneth Baker, who vainly hoped that a new national curriculum would force schools to teach a rather traditional kind of history, to Gordon Brown, who decided (Scotsman as he was) that schools should be pressed to teach British rather than English history, in order to promote a sense of “Britishness”. Such initiatives from above provided the proponents of a so-called new history with a golden opportunity to reshape historical education. Historical “skills” such as source analysis, they argued, should be elevated above mere factual knowledge. And “discovery” by children should count for more than dusty old pedagogy. The result was a national curriculum designed to instil in schoolchildren all kinds of “key concepts” like “chronological understanding”, “cultural, ethnic and religious diversity”, “change and continuity”, “cause and consequence”, “significance” and “interpretation”. And these were to be taught with reference to an impressively wide range of subject matter. Who could possibly object to such an enlightened scheme? The trouble is not so much with the theory as with the practice that has evolved in too many schools. As Ofsted admits in a damning passage on primary pupils, “some … found it difficult to place the historical episodes they had studied within any coherent, long-term narrative. They knew about particular events, characters and periods, but did not have an overview. Their chronological understanding was often underdeveloped and so they found it difficult to link developments together.” The only thing wrong with this observation is that Ofsted seems to think it applies only to primary school pupils, whereas it could equally well be applied to those in secondary school – and students at a good few universities, too. In fact, as the inspectors concede elsewhere, in 28 of the 58 secondary schools they visited, “students’ chronological understanding was not sufficiently well developed: they had … a poor sense of the historical narrative”. This is hardly a minor deficiency. It’s a bit like saying that maths is a successful subject in British schools, apart from the fact that pupils in half of schools can’t count. I have complained before that it is possible to leave school in England knowing only about Henry VIII, Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr. This is a caricature, admittedly, but it is not a wholly unfair one. Commenting on a not untypical primary curriculum, the authors of History for All say that “its principal weaknesses are the disconnected topics and the potential for the pupils to be left with a fragmented overview”. You can say that again. Consider this list of topics spread in this order over four years: • Romans and Celts – why have people invaded and settled? • Ancient Egypt – what can we find out from what has survived? • What can we learn about history by studying a famous person? • Why did Henry VIII marry six times? • Tudor times – rich and poor; exploration • What was it like to live here in the past? • Victorian children • Victorians – how your area has changed since the Victorian era • The second world war • Ancient Greeks • Britain since 1948 The word smorgasbord doesn’t really do justice to this random assortment. Lost, as Simon Schama has justly lamented, is the “long arc of time”, to be replaced by odds and sods. And some of those odds really are odd, especially if you go on to GCSE and A-level, where the “methods” become ever more idiosyncratic. If you really want to understand what’s going wrong in English schools, take a look at some of the lessons Ofsted singles out for praise… “Students in year 8 analysed the changing attitudes towards Oliver Cromwell from the 17th to the 20th centuries and, in year
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As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune – starting with entertainment programmes Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television. That’s why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It’s why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it’s why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek “What IS this crap?”, we can all feel proud. That’s our crap, America. Ours. Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn – but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like – and many, many people do – but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he’d weep. Creatively they’re berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we’ll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions , pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It’s as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas. Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter – not to mention Guardian liveblogs – has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again. But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year’s final, 19.4 million people were watching ). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn’t hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see. For instance, we still don’t have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he’ll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you’ll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music. Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop – but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don’t Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated. And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn’t mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek “What IS this crap?” during that, it might be best to keep schtum. The X Factor Television Entertainment Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune – starting with entertainment programmes Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television. That’s why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It’s why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it’s why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek “What IS this crap?”, we can all feel proud. That’s our crap, America. Ours. Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn – but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like – and many, many people do – but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he’d weep. Creatively they’re berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we’ll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions , pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It’s as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas. Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter – not to mention Guardian liveblogs – has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again. But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year’s final, 19.4 million people were watching ). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn’t hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see. For instance, we still don’t have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he’ll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you’ll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music. Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop – but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don’t Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated. And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn’t mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek “What IS this crap?” during that, it might be best to keep schtum. The X Factor Television Entertainment Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune – starting with entertainment programmes Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television. That’s why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It’s why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it’s why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek “What IS this crap?”, we can all feel proud. That’s our crap, America. Ours. Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn – but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like – and many, many people do – but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he’d weep. Creatively they’re berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we’ll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions , pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It’s as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas. Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter – not to mention Guardian liveblogs – has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again. But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year’s final, 19.4 million people were watching ). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn’t hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see. For instance, we still don’t have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he’ll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you’ll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music. Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop – but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don’t Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated. And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn’t mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek “What IS this crap?” during that, it might be best to keep schtum. The X Factor Television Entertainment Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
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Joe_Picks2.mov Joe_WomenloveAutomobile2.mov Joe_Sings_HonkieVersion2.mov The Epistemic Closure of Joe Bageant : The Other McCain Via Memeorandum this morning I learned that author/blogger Joe Bageant has died and is the object of several obituary tributes on the Left. Susie Madrak calls Bageant a “fire-breathing class warrior” — she means this as praise — and … Joe Bageant , 1946-2011 | The Agonist After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died yesterday following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. … cryptogon.com » Joe Bageant , 1946-2011 After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died yesterday following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. … kenny's sideshow: Oh No, Joe Bageant is gone … 1946-2011 After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died yesterday {March 26} following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and … An Ode to Joe Bageant , a Modern Mark Twain | COTO Report “ Joe Bageant is the Sartre of Appalachia. His white-hot bourbon-fuelled prose shreds through the lies of our times like a weed-whacker in overdrive. Deer Hunting with Jesus is a deliciously vicious and wickedly funny chronicle of a … MrEvilMatt says: The Epistemic Closure of Joe Bageant http://ff.im/-zXq6v
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enlarge The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 – The wolf at the front door started to look like the family pet. Click here to view this media Having noticed the steep and continuing climb in gas prices (over $4.00 a gallon in L.A.), and the state of nervousness surrounding the Jasmine Revolution, once again the oil producing Arab nations are being tagged as the culprits in the latest energy crisis. Whatever the circumstances are (and there are always countless circumstances for spikes in gas prices; some imagined, some imaginable), the region has not been a stranger to crisis situations. In 1973 it was the Arab Oil Embargo based on the then-Arab-Israeli War and our support of Israel in the way of military aid. And since there was the Cold War still going on, the Soviet Union was a source of concern with their support in the way of military aid to the Arab nations. There was also the domestic furor over Watergate which some have contended suited the Arab Oil Embargo quite nicely as it took our attention away from Nixon for a while. Whatever the real situation was, it created a crisis which has become something of a playing card ever since. But in 1973 it was something new and the signs of “no gas” were creeping up all over the country. Somehow, we knew this was the beginning of the future and it was never going to go back to the way it was. And of course all the punditry and experts were lined up to explain what was going and why this was going on and in their way, get us used to it. One of those experts called upon was Walter Levy an economist and Oil consultant who appeared on an episode of Meet The Press on November 23, 1973 to explain what this all meant. Walter Levy: “Certainly the last three years have shown that oil companies, that have huge operations in the Middle East, who discovered this oil, who developed it, exported it all over the world, have lost practically all of their bargaining power with regards to the Middle East producing countries. We have a story in the last three years of nothing but broken agreements between oil companies and oil producing countries. And where, when the producing country concerned, the producing country concerned, changed it’s demands, increased its requirements for money, for control, against arrangements just concluded, the oil companies could never afford to say ‘we want to negotiate, we want to change it’, because the usual reply of the producing country was ‘if you do not – quote/unquote agree today, we will legislate tomorrow’, and a minute before the legislation became due, the oil companies, just in order to protect whatever they still had said ‘yes, sir’.” In what sounds like the ultimate “good cop-bad cop” scenario, the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 set a precedent which has been repeated over and over simply because it works. Shift blame, shrug shoulders, wring hands and repeat. And let’s face it – this is way too comfortable a situation on the parts of the Oil Companies and the Oil producing countries to change since all parties are quite happily in bed with each other. The system has been figured out and is played at every chance. And it is most likely for that reason there will probably never be a successful alternative to Arab oil in our lifetimes. Ain’t gonna happen IMHO.
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Biden staffer put reporter in closet ABC News Biden Staffer Locks Reporter in Closet 3 28 11 Obama to be impeached by Biden. Biden reporter closet | Is Biden's closet packed with media … Vice President Joe Biden’s staff may have apologized for stowing a news reporter away in a closet during a fundraiser last weekend, but Saturday’s incident wasn’t the first time the VP kept a member of the media stuck in a tiny room … Biden Apologizes to Reporter – The Daily Beast One would think Alan Ginsburg’s mansion might have had a bigger hold room for the press than a broom closet. Unfortunately for Orlando Sentinel reporter Sc. Biden staffers stuff US reporter in closet — RT Staffers for US Vice-President Joe Biden told a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel he would need to wait in a special holing area. They then proceeded to place him being closed doors in a home closet. . Biden Team Apologizes For Using Storage Closet As Holding Room For … Joe Biden’s spokeswoman sent an apology note to Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers for using a storage closet as a holding area at a recent event in Florida. Moonbattery: Biden's Staff Lock Journalist in Closet to Keep Him Quiet But try telling Vice President Joe Biden’s staff that, after they held a local reporter in a closet for hours after he was invited to cover a Florida political fundraiser because they did not want him talking with the guests. … PardeepMoerkens says: http://chicken-casserole.blogspot.com/2011/03/nine-reasons-to-be-alarmed-about- biden .html #chicken #casserole
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The animated pig’s new theme park has plenty to delight kids – but don’t forget to bring a towel She’s bright pink, bossy and her TV show is watched in more than 180 countries. Before you make any unflattering guesses, we’re talking about Peppa Pig, whose animated adventures – usually involving muddy puddles – have splashed across our screens since 2004. The character is such a phenomenon among the under-fives that she’s appeared in videogames and a live stage show. Now comes the ultimate accolade: Peppa Pig World, a £5m three-acre area of Paultons Family Theme Park in
Continue reading …The animated pig’s new theme park has plenty to delight kids – but don’t forget to bring a towel She’s bright pink, bossy and her TV show is watched in more than 180 countries. Before you make any unflattering guesses, we’re talking about Peppa Pig, whose animated adventures – usually involving muddy puddles – have splashed across our screens since 2004. The character is such a phenomenon among the under-fives that she’s appeared in videogames and a live stage show. Now comes the ultimate accolade: Peppa Pig World, a £5m three-acre area of Paultons Family Theme Park in
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