Watched an interesting documentary about a journalist and his middle class associate’s attempt to establish a ‘free school’ in West London. Their plans have been agreed by the Department for Education and theirs will be one of the first 16 Free Schools to be established in the UK – to be up and running by [...]

Another nice quote from Polly Toynbee’s blog about how we are accepting the need for budget cuts so uncritically…..In my mind this is a good example of neo-liberal hegemony.   “It has become the grown-up, rational, received opinion that there is no alternative to budget cuts of unthinkable proportions. People believe that Labour spending, not global [...]

In this article -  – http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/18/boys-girls-gender-gap- Cordilia Fine argues that biological differences only account for 3% of the difference between boys and girls, gender stereotypes held by parents are far more important in shaping a child’s gender identity. Where gender is not emphasised the differences between boys and girls are minimal…

Assess the Contribution of Social Control Theory to an understanding of Crime and Deviance (21) Social Control Theory sees crime as a result of social institutions losing control over individuals. This is associated with the Functionalist point of view, fist being expounded by Emile Durkheim who argued that when social institutions such as the family, education, [...]

Of 80,000 15-year-olds who’d been on free school meals in 2002, only 45 had made it to Oxbridge- compared to the high-end private Westminster school which averages 82 successful applicants every year. Talk of class is not exactly guaranteed to put Oxford and Cambridge’s admissions people at their ease. For 2008-9, their government target for state-schools intake [...]

According to this article the richest 1000 people in the UK saw their wealth increase by a third last year-  an increase of £77bn – If I were in power I would give these people the opportunity to  donate these profits to socially useful public services - (no one can actually earn this much money after all), if they chose not [...]

  You have to wait ’til the very last lines to get the ‘anomie’ reference – ‘Adrift in a sea of normless-ness Anomie shifts all dormant sets’ (At least I think that’s what the lines are!) Interestingly Lyrics mania has the lyrics down as ‘upset a drift in a sea of normless-ness And a knee-shift [...]

Worth a listen for A2 students – especially those thinking of doing Criminology at university – summary of some very contemporary research strands in the subject! – from Thinking Allowed http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/ta/ta_20100908-1645a.mp3

Two interesting articles – the first outlines police concerens over domestic violence increasing during previous world cup tournaments and announces measures to tackle it in the June 2010 one, the second is West Yorkshire police claiming success because there was less of an increase in DV during the 2010 tournament compared to the 2006 tournament, [...]

A brief summary of some of the key themes in a talk by Ha-Joon Chang based on his book ’23 things they don’t tell you about Capitalism’ – relevant to the A2 Module on Global Development - He is basically critiquing neo-liberalism. He claims that 95% of economics is common sense deliberately made complicated and that [...]