1/ Worth noting that Mark Lehain director of Campaign for Common Sense was also part of the launch of Grimes Reasoned UK, you know where Starkey said slavery can't have been a genocide because there's 'so many damn blacks'
2/ Mark was also in charge of the New Schools Network for a while. A "charity" created with the support of Michael Gove, using public money to support academisation and creation of free schools.
Many of those involved have financially benefitted from the academisation process.
3/ NSN was also led by Toby Young for a while when he was allowed to run schools with no relevant experience. Still stunned that Tories thought it fine to hand control of children's futures to a contrarian hack who has since written that Trump should learn from Belarus!
4/ However despite Toby and others of his ilk speaking in praise of the undemocratic leadership of Belarus, Mark and rest of the gang would complain about deplatforming and cancel culture against anyone that decided they didn't want to have to listen to their nonesense
5/ Rachel Wolf is another name attached to NSN, created with thr support of Cummings.
You have to remember that the cronyism now being seen around Covid contracts has been a constant feature of DfE since Gove and Cummings in 2010
6/ Mark and Rachel were also involved in PTE, a pressure group for academisation and marketisation in education whilst refusing to name its financial backers
9/ Being a banker, getting given control of schools with no transparency, cutting pay and conditions for staff and financially benefiting while donating to the Tory party is actually a fast track route to a peerage, just look at unelected Lord Agnew now in the Cabinet office.
10/ Mark Lehain also stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Tory Party in GE19 and during the covid crisis has liked to appear in the media to dismiss unions safety concerns as playing politics whilst being advertised as an independent expert...
11/ The RSE guidence says teachers must speak against cancel culture and no platforming which is celebrated by the likes of Young and Lehain yet at the same time they are relishing the chance to have things they disapproved of banned
12/ I notice non of these free speech advocates spoke up when Tories tried to make the NEU take down their schoolcuts website and prevent headteachers from speaking in public about their squeezed budgets.
13/ I think the likes of Young and Lehain will be monitoring schools in hope of finding anything they can pounce on that goes against their interpretation of the RSE guidence, they will look to cancel and purge anything they disagree with.
🧵Oh what a suprise, Together Declaration are part of this network, and members of the Exec like UsForThem founder Kingsley accused anyone who said they were a hard right political project of smears and defamation
2/ Founded as anti-lockdown but going straight into anti-vax talking points, Together then switched to anti Ulez, anti net zero heading towards climate change denial
3/ They have been one of the main groups peddling nonsense about the WHO pandemic treaty, starting two years ago with Farage then becoming the leading face of a new astroturf group
While much of the media claims the inquiry is accomplishing nothing, its slowly revealed the gov knew transmission occurs in schools and causes harm to a not insignificant number of children
2/ The bill gives the Secretary of State the power to add to the list of interests that can access your childrens data through secondary legislation avoiding parliamentary scrutiny
3/ The Bill also permits 14-18 year olds to be targeted with political marketing
3/ More and more evidence emerges of the long term harms caused by covid, but the UK govs preferred paedatricians continue to peddle claims that with enough infections children will develop lasting immunity
Said this would occur after 1 infection, what is it now? 5? 7? 10?🤷♂️
🧵Cass Review
Not had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but have had time to look through the main points
What positives can be taken from it? The time spent on waiting lists was identified as a major issue, all children's services are massively underfunded at the moment
2/ I would like to think that this will lead to an investment in all children's support services like CAHMS, more pastoral support in schools etc
That would be a positive outcome, regardless of what else is included in the review, unfortunately real terms cuts are the reality
3/ What matters is how government interprets the review and what it chooses to implement, additional funding for children isn't going to be prioritised over tax cuts to appease RW papers
Imagine if the billions from last round of tax cuts had instead been invested in children