Norman Geras’s piece on the rights and wrongs of Israel’s military action in Lebanon and elsewhere is hard to fault, while his conclusion that much criticism of Israel reveals pre-existing hostility towards that nation and its people, demands exploration. Norm even provides a useful checklist by which we can tell if a critic of Israel is acting in good faith.

But Norm doesn’t explain from where such prejudice arises. Many will assume anti-Semitism or a belief that the state of Israel is illegitimate. But that lazy thinking is unlikely to win anybody over and is hard to substantiate when so many have called for an immediate ceasefire.

Many critics feel genuinely disappointed by Israel, in way that they could never be disappointed by Hezbollah. Israel is the only open, democratic, secular (despite its origins) state in the Middle East. And it’s stable too. There’s an expectation that it will uphold these values, even in the face of grave provocation. Today’s Israel is comparatively strong and strength brings temptations to be resisted and responsibilities to live up to. It’s right to be shocked and distressed when Israel bombs a UN position.

Inspired by the values of the Iranian revolution, Hezbollah rejects liberal democratic values. And only last night BBC2’s Execution of a teenage girl (on which I blogged sometime ago) revealed how this value system’s extreme misogyny endorses the most barbaric practices.

When both sides are accused of war crimes, Hezbollah meets our expectations. Israel disappoints.

Israel is expected to demonstrate that its values – our values – are not only superior to those held by its enemies in theory, but also in practice. Israel must not fail on this score. If its critics are ever able to legitimately claim that both sides are as bad as each other, we will have lost our reason to call Israel a friend.

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I’ve always wondered where larger ladies with a fondness for Chav pink got their clothes and sort of suspected it was somewhere like Ethel Austin (which, up until its recent makeover, I always thought was a charity shop). The supermarkets entering the clothes market has been a good thing. They’ve driven prices right down. But I think we can all agree that George at Asda’s lost its way and Tesco’s Florence + Fred is only okay. Up until this season, Sainsbury’s TU was what supermarket clothes should be all about: reasonably priced basics that don’t look cheap.

Sainsbury’s TU is still okay if you’re a bloke looking for a T-shirt, but the ladies section’s not only gone a bit chav, it’s been supersized. Katharine was after a pair of summer shorts, but you need a very, very large bum indeed to fill a Sainsbury’s TU size 10. On the plus side, if you’re a size 16 lady who’d like to be a size 10, get yourself down to Sainsbury’s and kid yourself.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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My old school only forced the occasional religious assembly upon us, but when they did it was done big style. It was said that the old woodwork teacher, Lionel Thomas, who shouted a lot while tolerating vicious bullying, was well into the laying on of hands. When pupils (sat quietly at the back) didn’t bow their heads in prayer he physically forced them into position while ranting that their actions denied him his right to worship and would condemn their schoolmates to eternal damnation. So that over 16s can now walk out of such rituals is very good news. And it’s thanks, in part, to an out of control faith school: St. Luke’s College, Sidcup.

Support for faith schools is a most bizarre and confused government policy, with no real effort made to argue a supporting case. Faith schools do have a reputation for being better (my parents tried to get my sister into one, but even though she sang in the church choir, the vicar vetoed the application) and, to be fair, at least one study has suggested faith schools get better GCSE results (‘The differential is not enormous,’ says the author). But is this small difference really the product of faith?

Deprived areas with failing schools up for conversion, tend to suffer parents who take little interest in their children’s education. Many kids arrive at school totally unprepared. Rather than hypothesise that faith is the magic ingredient, might it be that a parent who takes an interest in where their child goes to school is more likely to take a continued interest in their education? Might this higher level of parental interest account for faith schools’ slightly improved results?

More seriously, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) acknowledges concerns that faith schools deepen segregation, but fails to put the opposite view. In fact, the briefing to the education profession seems to argue that faith schools aren’t really that faithful, so not to worry. They have to admit pupils of other faiths and none if they have spare places and the DfES has a few carefully selected anecdotes where faith schools have admitted lots of others. (But hasn’t the eighty per cent Muslim Church of England school lost its faith?)

Other anecdotes tell another story. There’s the famous creationist school. And now a brand new faith school, St. Luke’s College, Sidcup, has fallen flat on its face. No inclusive admissions policy here, just kids wandering around playing fields with statues of the Virgin Mary and listening to evangelists when they should be in lessons.