When is reform not a reform?

Answer? When it's a "think tank" (pressure group) dedicated to self-promotion and endless public haranguing in order to suit it's own ideological ends.

Reform, the pressure group, claims to represent many shades of political thought and to have some base in market economics but it is thoroughly Victorian in its outlook.

Its basic rule of thumb seems to be, high end education for a few because that's how it stays a high end education. Education must be segmented so you and you can do A-levels and go to university but you, you and you should be doing something more appropriate and maybe one of you can go to an old style polytechnic.

And while we're at it, we're going to remind you, you and you that you are not as valued as you and you because you're not doing A-levels. In fact, if you do try to do A-levels, we're going to say that you, you and you are responsible for dumbing down education.

Reform does not represent reform. It represents regression. This was drummed home when one of it's number, a prospective Tory MP and nominally in charge of Reform's education research said that her view of education was based on the miserable time she had at school. "Quite a lot of my ideas came from what I experienced at my school."

Wow.

No research needed there. Only blinkers.

It's good to know she's broad-minded and open to thinking about new ideas. Oh hang on a minute...

Think tank is one of the most abhorrently inaccurate terms ever used. In Reform's case it should be "grumbling bludgeoning".

Merry Christmas to those whose job it is to come up with ideas and yet manage to only moan and pick. They are responsible to reducing politics to a shouting match where doing is no longer important because saying is everything.