“The name ‘Sir Jim Rose’ sounds like a solecism to me – surely if you accept a knighthood your moniker should reflect your nobility? Either style yourself Sir James Rose or stick to Jim. Still, not only does his very name embody a linguistic error, but Rose – a former head of Ofsted – has the temerity to be launching a campaign aimed at ‘helping’ those who don’t speak like what they oughta.

“It’s all part of his overhaul of the national curriculum for 7-11 year olds. Rose’s proposals place a strong emphasis on teaching children to ‘recognise when to use formal language, including standard spoken English’. A Government-backed report has identified what it terms ‘word poverty’, and suggests that up to 50 per cent of primary pupils in some areas have speech and language difficulties.

“The solution is for speaking and listening to be considered as subjects in their own right; Rose’s recommendations will build on the £40m Every Child a Talker programme which was launched last year.”

Read the rest of this article here.

“What on earth got into the heads of United Nations officialdom when they decided it would be a good idea to hold a conference on racism in Geneva? I shouldn’t imagine that Ban Ki-moon had much input, because like most UN Secretary Generals, he’s nothing much besides a superannuated politician and placeman.

“In Britain we bump our duds ‘upstairs’ to the European Commission – globally they get bumped up to the UN. If Ban had any opinions worth holding, beyond a flabby attachment to multilateralism, he wouldn’t be in the job.”

Read the rest of Will Self’s First Post column here.

“The emails were ‘inappropriate and juvenile’, while the sending of them is among ‘such actions (that) have no place in public life’. So Gordon Brown grovels, like a wounded Cyclops, goaded out of his No 10 cave by those brave Argonauts, the Tories. Meanwhile, the media is falling over itself to huff and puff – yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many commentators and politicians being so surprised by so predictable a happening.

“I don’t believe anyone who takes any interest in British politics can have been remotely shocked by the antics of Damian McBride and Derek ‘Dolly’ Draper – the latter may now be a qualified psychotherapist, but clearly this transference was only ever psyche-deep; for underneath his conscious pose as a principled pundit, there lurk the instincts of an immature – yes, the PM had it right – anorak.

“McBride is another of the same genus: the obsessively politicking nerd, willing to go to any lengths in order to advance his party, much as a rougher lad will crack the opposing football team’s supporters’ heads, in the erroneous belief that this adds lustre to his own side. I first saw these types smearing their opponents, rigging ballots and briefing journalists, when their candidate was up for election as blackboard monitor at primary school. There’s something about politics – and elections in particular – that seem to attract them the way excrement does flies.”

To read the rest of Will Self’s First Post column, go here.

“Is it only me, or is anyone else getting a weird feeling of ‘Dubya Lite’ coming off the shapely form of Barack Obama as he tools Air Force One around the world, a-meetin’ and a-greetin’?

“It was bad serendipity indeed that bouffant-haired nutter Kim Jong-il chose to launch his duff ICBM on the same day Obama stood up in Prague and committed himself to a world without nuclear weapons, but even so I remain unconvinced that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions really are the biggest threat to peace that we face.

“Let’s step out of the comfort zone of Western power just for a second and try and see the world from a different perspective: here we have the man who has his finger on the trigger of the biggest nuclear arms stockpile in the world, gaily telling us that the proliferation of these weapons must be stopped.”

Read the rest of Will Self’s First Post article here.