roger helmer

Part of my undergraduate degree was studied in an Education Department where I wrote papers on a variety of subjects, from the case for selective versus comprehensive schooling, to looking at the educational policies of the likes of Milton Friedman.

I also was lucky enough to experience being educated in another country - the US - as a child, where my father still works as a teacher. Many people bemoan things that happen in America that suddenly become common place in this country a few years down the line. I remember one teacher at my school who hated the slow creep of baseball caps into society, hardly the most heinous of crimes, but he did regard the site of a baseball cap on a head as an IQ reducing device.

Roger Helmer MEP and Honorary Chairman of the Freedom Association has an excellent piece on the issue of education which certainly rings true to me. There has been much debate on the issue of higher education, from how it is funded to who should actually go. I seem to remember (and if someone wants to correct me please do) that educational attainment was decided much more by how a child developed in infant school years that how they developed during their University years which always led me to believe that if anything we should spend more at an infant school level and less at a higher education level if that were true.

I remember when we lived in the States in the 80's we as a family were extremely surprised by how many people went to University, how many people did a social arts degree, how long it took those students to graduate, and then how many people went to graduate school.

Now we enter 2008, and we can look at the UK. Roger Helmer points out the ludicrousness of having a 50% target of school leaver entering higher education. Why not have a target of 80% or even a target of 20% or maybe even better, no target at all? Now I remember being sold on a University education by being told that it means that you will earn more over your lifetime. But hang on a minute. Isn't that argument already faulty.

Say you left school at 16 and took a job with a salary of £15,000. If you had no pay rise whatsoever you would already have earned £75,000 by the time you were 21. At the same time your University graduate may well have racked up debts of £20,000. So that means that the none graduate at 21 is effectively £95,000 better off than the graduate. Now there are more and more cases of people leaving school who know what they want to do, actually earning more than new graduates, with stories of new graduates having to accept low paid jobs that a degree isn't needed for.

I remember a joke that I heard in America about a poorly regarded University - lets call it University X. It went along the lines of, "What's the first thing a graduate of University X says?" "Welcome to McDonalds how can I help you?" And therein lies the problem. Does a degree really guarantee you a graduate level job anymore? It would be very interesting to see real hard evidence that a graduate in 2008 really will earn more than a non-graduate - because if that is not the case anymore then we are selling many of our kids down the river by pushing them into a University career with false expectations, and on a flase promise that they should take on debt but will earn much more over their working lifetime to make it worthwile.

Roger Helmer quite rightly highlights the cinderella of education - namely vocational education. I truly believe that if I had a child and they didn't know what they wanted to do after they left school, my advice would not necessarily be to go to University. Now we can have all the arguments about University not just being about a degree and that is right. But again we must come back to one of the biggest arguments given to kids for going to University (often by their teachers) is that it will benefit them in their career in the long term.

We are also told that we need to have more graduates because we need to compete with the likes of India and China who are churning out graduates in their thousands. Yes that is true – but what are they graduating in? Lets have graduates in hi-tech and newly emerging industries, but at the same time lets educate the next generation with the skills that this country is crying out for.

Why has it been so hard in the past to get a plumber or an electrician? Undoubtedly because that career path wasn’t portrayed as being attractive or worthwhile so young people didn’t go into that field. Whilst I am not sure whether we will ever bring back poltechnics as advocated by Roger Helmer, I know that if I was a parent I would back any child who chose a vocational path, and think that if we are serious about educating for tomorrow’s world, that path should be made much easier to take.

---

---

Today and tomorrow (8th and 9th November), 400 representatives from civil society organisations will gather in the European Parliament to discuss the future of the European Union with MEPs in the first "Citizens' Agora".
 
Ahead of the December European Council, due to sign a new European treaty, the European Parliament decided, before issuing its own assessment of the text, to invite European civil society to come to the Chamber and express its views on the new institutional landscape.

MEP Roger Helmer (Conservative, East Midlands) says that this “debate” amounts to little more than the European Institutions talking to themselves.  They are paying pseudo-independent bodies to tell them what they want to hear. He likens the debate to a Soviet Show Trial, in which the action is carefully staged, the participants hand-picked and the outcome determined before the event.
 
The EU has a track record of similar events.  In November 2004, the EU Economic and Social Committee hosted a similar debate on the European Constitution, which was later voted down in French and Dutch referenda in 2005.  At that event, every participating organisation was receiving EU funding.  In effect, taxpayers’ money was used to create the appearance of a debate, but only one point of view was heard, and predictably the debate endorsed the project.
 
However in this week’s event, one euro-critical organisation has slipped in under the radar — The Freedom Association, of which MEP Helmer is the Honorary Chairman.  He and TFA Campaign Director Simon Richards will be attending the event.  Speaking in Brussels today, Helmer said “I expect to be the lone voice speaking up for the millions of citizens in the UK, and across the EU, who have profound misgivings about the European project.  Polls show that three quarters of citizens across Europe want a referendum on this Renamed Constitution.  If the EU wants a debate, it should call referenda in members states as it originally proposed with the Constitution”.
 
To listen to what Roger has to say click the download button above or listen to the short three section podcast in the player at the top of the website.

Better off Out of the EU? Roger Helmer MEP makes the case here and welcomes Peter Bone MP to the cause.

What do you think? Leave your comments below or call 0845 257 0 427 and let is know.

When you're up to your armpits in alligators, it may help to recall why you started to drain the swamp in the first place.  So why did you join the Conservative Party?
 
In my case, it was a dawning realisation that governments are there to serve the people, and not vice versa.  A perception that market solutions generally work, whereas top-down bureaucratic initiatives frequently fail.  I had seen the disasters of successive prices and incomes policies.  I saw the wisdom of Milton Friedman's assertion that inflation is a disease of money.  I believed that our economic and social structures had to go with the grain of human nature.  I understood that self-interest, properly channelled within the rule of law, was a driving force for growth and prosperity.  The Marxist maxim "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need" seems self-evident, compassionate and ethical; but it fails in practice because we imperfect human beings are hard-wired to put the interests of ourselves and our families ahead of some remote general good.
 
As usual, Marx got it wrong, while Adam Smith got it right.  It was a moment of pure epiphany when I first read his killer quote: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest".
 
Yet too often in today's Conservative Party, we seem to leave our core values stashed under the bed, while we rush off in pursuit of false prophets and fashionable fads.  And we end up taxing Tesco's car-parks, and alienating voters.  If you believe that Goldsmith and Gummer are the guilty men, I will not argue with you.
 
One of the many reasons I love to work with American conservatives is their unashamed enthusiasm for conservative principles, which contrasts so sharply with our own grudging and intermittent approach.  They call them Jeffersonian principles, and they quote them and refer to them constantly.  They test policy proposals against them.  At a recent conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (www.alec.org) in Philadelphia, a Conservative MEP colleague, there for the first time, said "Roger, I've heard more about Conservative principles in an hour here in Philadelphia than in ten years in the Conservative Party".
 
And what are these Jeffersonian principles?  Liberty with responsibility.  Enterprise and free markets.  Low taxes and limited government.  Family and nation.  And of course most Conservatives -- the members and activists out there in the country, not the strategists and spin doctors in Westminster -- immediately recognise these values.  These are our Crown Jewels.  These are what we are about.  Of course we should interpret them and adapt them and present them for the 21st century.  But we abandon them at our peril.
 
It is because of these values that I was delighted and proud to be invited, earlier this year, to become Honorary Chairman of The Freedom Association (TFA).  TFA is a membership organisation that campaigns on just these issues (www.tfa.net).  It also sponsors the Better Off Out campaign (www.betteroffout.co.uk).  I passionately believe in the principles which TFA campaigns for, and from my personal point of view, my Chairmanship gives me an opportunity to take the message of conservative values to a wider audience across the UK.  I use a lower-case "c" for conservative here, since TFA welcomes members and supporters from all parties and from none, provided only that they agree with our core principles.
 
To hear more about conservative principles, and about the TFA, please come to our two fringe meetings at Parry Conference next week in Blackpool:
 
The Freedom Association.  "Where's Our Referendum?". 

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007. 1:00pm - 2:30pm.   Main Stage, Grand Theatre, Church Street, Blackpool 

Speakers:

MICHAEL ANCRAM MP (Former Shadow Foreign Secretary)
PHILIP DAVIES MP (Shipley)
ROGER HELMER MEP (Hon. Chairman, The Freedom Association)
IVO STREJCEK MEP(Czech Republic)
PHILIP HOLLOBONE MP (Kettering)

Admission: Free.  Contact: mail@tfa.net

 

The Freedom Association.  "Cool Thinking On Climate Change"

Monday, October 1st, 2007. 5:30p.m. – 6:30p.m. The Studio, Grand Theatre, Church Street, Blackpool

Speakers:
ROGER HELMER MEP (Hon. Chairman, The Freedom Association)
IAIN MURRAY (Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute, DC)
RUSSELL LEWIS (Former Director General of the IEA)

Admission: Free. Contact: mail@tfa.net

Roger Helmer has recorded a podcast for Tory Radio in which he further outlines his views on the Quality of Life report due out imminently. In the podcast he expresses delight that David Cameron is distancing himself from the proposal for parking charges on out of town stores. In the podcast you can hear Roger comment, "Much of the stuff in the Gummer Goldsmith proposals is absolute anti Conservative nonsense….." "We really have to make up our mind as Conservatives whether we're actually supply side tax cutters or whether we're socio environmental tinkerers and interventionists...." You can hear his comments here: http://toryradio.podbus.com/Helmeronqualityoflifereport.mp3

---

---

Following on from his blog post on the subject, Roger Helmer, MEP for the East Midlands too time to talk to Tory Radio to talk about the issue of nuclear power.