During election campaigns, my own preference has always been to emphasize the positives and ignore negative campaigning.
But I seem to have lost the ability to bite my tongue, something which came easily before retirement.
Accordingly, I make the following of the Tory campaign policy set. To me it seems as if Sunak is saying, ''all available accommodation is taken up by immigrants at great cost to the state, we must overspend our budgets by sending them all to Rwanda; then and only then can we overspend some more by making an additional 30 000 teenagers homeless. This will be good for them.''
Instead, the money could be spent on safe routes for asylum seekers, a triage system for initial assessment, a rapid returns system for those who are economic migrants, and a second stage assessment for others within four weeks. I wouldn't be against Rwanda places for those who volunteer to take places with financial and other support for a couple of years to transition to a new life there.
As far as the new National Service plan is concerned. I say forget it, and if there is money available, give it to the FE colleges who are failing learners due to shortage of resource. The funding mechanism is a 'lag model' which is designed to reduce the ability of colleges to offer places.
I left school at the age of 16, went to college for one year full-time. After this I became an apprentice technician, attending college for a further three years on day release - nine in the morning until nine in the evening. We sat two written exams, technology, science & maths, and one additional exam of engineering drawing producing actual drawings from specs.
I later spent many years working as a lecturer in FE. I have witnessed terrible decline in the service, caused by government interference and micro-control, decline in pay and working conditions for lecturers., and great reduction of resource.
FE colleges are the places that skills and underpinning knowledge can be learned at craft level (the how) and at technician level (the why).
A so-called full-time college is in reality, two days per week. It used to be thirty hours per week and now colleges struggle with resources to provide fifteen.
As a country, in the midst of skill shortages, we need to fund our future, not with gimmickry, but with commitment for well-planned well-resourced, well-resourced long-term systems, of which the country and learners can take pride.
