Rushdie warns Blair over faith school plan

[emad]

Rushdie warns Blair over faith school plan
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
(Filed: 30/08/2005)

Tony Blair's support for faith schools came under renewed fire yesterday when Salman Rushdie said they would do nothing to combat growing Islamic extremism.

The novelist, who incurred the wrath of radicals after publishing The Satanic Verses, also said the Prime Minister was courting the wrong Muslim leaders in his efforts to fight terrorism.

Mr Blair's belief that "more religion is going to solve the problem" was not only wrong, but was "seriously out of step with the country", said Rushdie on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The Government is due to publish proposals later this year that could make it easier for independent schools, including Islamic, Christian and Jewish institutions, to opt into the state sector.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/30/nrush30.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/30/ixhome.html

[Taxloss]

1. I sense a personal feud with Iqbal Sacranie

and I can't say I blame Rushdie in the least, Sacranie needs to go.

[julianer]

2. They want to privatise schools

Just as they want, and are trying, to privatise hospitals, council housing, the post office and everything else they can get away with.

I think it is just another angle for Blair to strip us of our property and hand it over to whoever will have it.

If they stop teaching people science and reason and instil us with a sense of superiority over everyone else, hey that's just all the better because we'll be too busy fighting each other to worry about the bastards who own everything.

[emad]

3. Prescott allegedly wants to seize any homes left empty for

6 months or more and give them to 'social housing'.

[Nihil]

4. Strangely enough ...

... that must be one of the few "socialist" things he's proposed.

Mind you, I think six months is a bit on the low side - it can take
much longer than that to sell an unoccupied property in order to
provide funds for the former owner to live in a nursing home ...
seeing as how the latter is no longer provided by the State (unless
you are fortunate enough to live in Scotland).

Hope that this also applies to the thousands of offices currently
left unoccupied for profit reasons ... there are shitloads of them
lying vacant in every town & city across the country while people
still sleep rough in the same areas.

[julianer]

6. That sounds quite good on the face of it

So what is the catch?

Have you got a link?

[fedsron2us]

5. I do not think it will be old fashioned 'privatisations'

such as occurred in the 1980s. These have become less popular with the business community since they eventually entail some sort of market risk to the purchasers. They also imply that the public might actually have some choice about where they spend their cash. This concept that was touted under Thatcher was quietly ditched under Major. His railway privatisations did not just hand over public assets to the private sector but then continued to prop up the new companies with vast public subsidies. This process has been taken even further by New Labour who appear to have made dishing out bigger and bigger handouts from the taxpayer to the corporate sector the raison d'etre of their government. I assume this decision has been made to ensure that Blair and his ministers can be assured of cosy sinecures in the business world when they finally gety turfed out of power.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Good point...

Not sure that it's anything so rational as looking after their own futures, though. Blair has a messianic love for almost anything that looks Thatcherite!