Silly Mr Brown, please go away.

So the Chancellor wants to hand out more taxpayer’s money to educate the poor in Third World countries. Oops, I meant to say developing nations. What a load of hypocritical hogwash!
Pupils get paid to go to high school in the U.K., whilst university students have to pay ‘top up’ fees that will leave them in serious debt if they can manage to finish their degree. I would call these people poor!

When the last GCSE examination results came out last year, a young girl I know, proudly showed me her exam results. A large range of passed subjects, all with grades ‘C’ or above. One of them was an ‘A’ grade for German, despite that she could not understand even the most basic sentence of the language when I spoke to her in that tongue. Her knowledge of English, where she also achieved a high grade, was such that she could neither read nor comprehend, nor concentrate on any of my little anecdotes I print out and let people in this town read for feedback and comments. Any reading material I ever see in her hand consists of glossy ‘Celebs’ type rubbish.

I suggest Mr. Brown stop gallivanting around Africa and sort out the education problems back at home. Africa must sort itself out. Pumping donated billions into the continent has made a bad situation worse.

Zimbabwe produced one of the highest literacy rates in Africa for the first 15 odd years after achieving Independence. An incredible feat, considering that during the ‘Liberation Struggle’ the army of the ruling party effectively shut down or destroyed just about every school in the rural areas. After taking over the former whites-only schools, the government promised free education and although the qualifications, as in Britain, have been watered down, it produced a generation of a rather well educated population.

Today the Zimbabwean school system is in bits. The teachers are leaving en masse. Their wages barely cover the cost of 30 loaves of bread a month. They are forced to sell sweets or fruit and vegetables to their pupils to survive.
The government initiation of fees has resulted in a huge amount of the population unable to send their children to school. Many of the kids pass out in class from malnutrition. There is a shortage of everything, from desks to school books. The government now wants the children to report on their teachers.
At the University and Colleges, the situation is literally explosive. Over half the students cannot afford the term fees. Some colleges have erected fences in an attempt to stop non paying students from attending classes. Dissenting students are regularly arrested and beaten by the police or the feared secret service, the C.I.O.

Private schools supply the best education, but have been targeted by the ruling party who are attempting to cap fees as inflation passes the 900% mark. It is only a question of time till they collapse.

So what happened to that generation of well educated Zimbabweans? Most of them live abroad now. The economy and political chaos in their homeland cannot give them employment or if they find any, the wages are a pittance. There is hope though. Robert Mugabe and his corrupt ruling elite cannot hang on to power much longer. Should a regime change show transparency, honesty, respect human rights, personal property and above all, obey the rule of law, these people will go back and build a new Zimbabwe.

So I say to Mr. Brown: Stay at home and sort your system out here. The only education you must supply is teaching the crackpot despots of Africa the basics between right and wrong. Until they have that drummed into their heads, shovelling billions into another African black hole will only produce a few fancy examples to show on T.V. during party political broadcasts, which are watched by an ever larger dwindling British populace who are literally incapable of understanding at all what their leaders are waffling on about.

Instead they will download the G8 pop concert for their iPods, collect ASBOs, attempt to read The Sun and dream of becoming a celebrity.

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Please take time to look at this:

http://www.simonpoultneyfoundation.org/