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A quite remarkable and complacent letter from Michael Gove

18th July, 2012 5:23 pm

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Graham Stuart MP, Chair of the Education Select Committee, wrote to Education Secretary Michael Gove expressing concern over leaks from his department over plans to abolish GCSEs – which came out as thousands of students were about to sit GCSEs. Here’s Gove’s remarkably complacent and dismissive reply (plain text version below):

Graham Stuart MP
Chairman of the Education Select Committee
House of Commons

16th July 2012

Dear Graham

Re: Recent leaks on GCSE reforms

Thank you for your concern. After two years in Government, I have come to the conclusion that leaks appear to be part of political life.

MICHAEL GOVE

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  • Why are all these Tory Ministers so incompetent, rude and out of touch with the vast majority of the population?
    Perhaps Gove is the sole living proof of ‘creationism’? Seems no other explanation!

    • Daniel Speight

      He certainly looks kind of strange. It’s hard to see natural selection being responsible for that.

      • treborc

        I know a school with funny looking children or so I have been told, I coach them at football, some of them are great kids, and I hope God or natural selection did not do it to them, they have Downs syndrome.

        Grove is a very very poor politician Twigg is not far behind I pray it’s more their ability then personal looks.

  • Dan Filson

    There are leaks BY the minister or his acolytes and leaks by civil servants horrified by his actions. Which category was this particular leak?

    • This is totally about Gove releasing something seeing how it flys and then seeing how bad it was drops it.

      Hence he could not be bothered to reply as it is clear he leaked it.

      • treborc

         Well most political parties do that, ED has been doing it for a while, the problem for Gove is of course he’s an idiot

        • and yet we have not hit him once despite the mass privatisation of education in this country destroying the hopes of anyone who does not have the cash.

          • Ibid

             Because all they have to say is “we ‘re continuing New Labour’s work” and they’d be right, as evidenced Twigg’s excuse for opposition.

          • treborc

            I suspect people are just to fed up  to bother fighting any more.

          • Sres

            If only grammar schools still existed

          • Robin

            If only you’d been properly educated you wouldn’t have forgotten the full stop at the end of your sentence.

  • Actually the bigger story is that Gove is allowing creationist schools, funded better than any state school using state money.

    Will Stephen Twigg stay silent on this as well ?

    • treborc

      Then we will hear the word it’s worth looking at, we cannot just reject it because it’s Tory.

      • timsharp1

        I don’t think Michael Gove is the right place to start when looking for genuinely nickable Tory thinking – his policy initiatives would have been laudable to right thinking people in the early twentieth century – copies of the King James Bible – A new Royal Yacht – but so far he seems to many people like a very uninspiring minister and for that reason he should remain.

  • Brumanuensis

    Part of me admires his bluntness. Part of me is disgusted by his continuing arrogance and complacency in office.

  • Derek

    You have to wonder why they have put the most ignorant of MPs in charge of Education. The poor fool proves this every time he opens his mouth. As for Creationism we should note how dangerous this can become by just looking at America and some of the very dangerous proponents of this nonsense. We think Islamic fundamentalists are dangerous – check out some of the lunatics in America whose beliefs start with Creationism.

    • treborc

       Grove and Twigg  says everything we need to know about career politicians really

  • AnotherOldBoy

    An excellent riposte from Mr Gove.  Will Mr Stuart show us his letter to Mr Gove?

    • Nemo

      Were you a bullied child at school, Mark. I bet you that Michael was.

  • Robin

    It took two years for Gove to realise that the Coalition government leaks like a sieve!

    Not the sharpest tack in the box is he?

  • Luther

    What a strange little fellow. Can you believe some see Gove as Cameron’s successor?

  • James

    Gove is the Ronnie Corbett of British politics.

    • Julie

      Really? I laugh at Ronnie Corbett’s antics.

  • JC

    So are leaks a good or a bad thing? Given that no party has been able to stop them in recent past, it seems reasonable just to accept their inevitability. It seems to me that the majority have come from LibDems disenchanted with the idea of being in government. When they have to accept a decision they don’t like, they leak in order to try to stop it. 

    Moral of the story: don’t get into coalition with LibDems ever.

  • Pingback: Gove on Leaky Whitehall Life - Guy Fawkes' blog()

  • ian

    as is flipping homes apparently.

  • He’s just approved three new free schools: Santa College, Tinkerbell Academy and another where everyone believes we’re all in this together.

    • Jon

      At least it was only egg.

  • He’s just approved three new free schools: Santa College, Tinkerbell
    Academy and another where everyone believes we’re all in this together. 

    • treborc

       Head teacher Tony Blair.

  • VVVVV

    I love Michael Gove. He reminds me of Jimmy Krankie.

    • Wee Jimmy

      Fan’dabi’dozi!

  • Pingback: Gove on Leaky Whitehall Life - Guy Fawkes' blog()

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