Truss and Osborne up to usual tricks!

Few will have been taken by surprise by the "hellfire" of Liz Truss`s "logic" (Two data points of nonsense? This Tory has been hacked, 01/02/18). Her ridiculous attack on Momentum members this week was hardly unexpected following her co-authorship of "Britannia Unchained" in 2012. Who can forget this treatise`s claim that British workers "are among the worst idlers in the world"? Let`s hope the voters in South-West Norfolk don`t!

Osborne is right to say there is a north-south split in education; it`s the gap in school funding which he more than anyone was responsible for creating  (GCSE results of poor pupils in north worst in England, 01/02/18)! Not only did his austerity cuts to northern councils` budgets mean the shutting of hundreds of Sure-Start centres, but his profligacy with spending on free schools meant unnecessary diversion of much-needed funds away from state schools. Is it surprising that northern children achieve "GCSE grades that are significantly worse than those of their counterparts in London", when primary schools in the north receive £900 per pupil less than the ones in London, and secondary schools £1300 less? The small matter of investment gap between everywhere in the UK and the south-east, again his creation, also contributes strongly to the teaching recruitment crisis, which is most evident in northern areas.

   The arrogance of the former chancellor clearly knows no bounds. He even had the audacity to claim on Radio 4`s Today programme that the success of the London Challenge was due to his financial management, the Tories` academisation policy, and Gove`s curriculum reforms! Next he`ll be trying to get us to believe that his Northern Powerhouse idea wasn`t an election wheeze dreamt up weeks before the 2015 election, when the Tories were behind in the polls!