Revealed: UK's blueprint for a green revolution

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Summary

The European Union has said that by the year 2020 every country in the EU should at least produce 15% of its energy from environment friendly sources such as solar heating, wind turbines and biomass energy. The United Kingdom should do this as well. Now the government has devised a plan to make this happen. It says that the UK should lower its greenhouse gas emissions and its oil usage. This can be done by improving the energy efficiency in the people’s homes whit renovating them, build more wind turbines and use more land to produce crops for biomass energy. The government should give more money to grants and incentives for businesses and households to go green. Not everybody is equally enthusiastic about this plan, but the director of Greenpeace is already enthusiastic about it.

Reaction

I think it is a g

ood thing that the EU is making sure that its countries are actively looking for more environmental friendly ways to produce energy. I am sure it will cost a lot of money but I think that it will be worth it in the end. The way the UK is planning to tackle the problem is a very ambitious one. They should let the British public know what exactly they are trying to achieve with the taxes which are going to fund this ambitious plan. I assume not everybody would be to happy if they have to pay more yet do not see were the money is going to.

'Last orders' turn nasty on Underground

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Summary

Seventeen people have been arrested for several public offences in the London Underground. The people arrested were part of a large group of ‘partygoers’ who enjoyed the last chance of drinking on the London Underground. A last chance because a ban on drinking on the Underground would go in effect the next day. The people in the group had made an agreement to be there at that time. This is called a ‘flash-mob’. Although the group was friendly at first it quickly became violent. Because of the heavy drinking, people started to vomit and fighting and vandalism soon followed. The police closed six Underground stations and several trains were taken out of service. A number of train drivers and staff were assaulted and even more people were verbally abused.

Reaction

Drinking should have been banned from the London Underground from the beginning. I do not understand why drinking was not banned already. With all those people packed in these small carriages something had to go wrong especially when they went there to party and to drink alcohol because of the impending drinking ban. Flash-mobs should not be abolished but I think you should not drink to much alcohol doing this kind of thing. I think being drunk in these small spaces with a lot of people around is a recipe for disaster. So I agree with Boris Johnson’s ban on open cans of alcohol on the Underground. I do not know if the metro rail in Holland has a rule about drinking in the carriages, but if not, I hope they institute one.

Prisoners 'spend too long in cells'

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Summary

This issue has to do with how much time inmates get to spend out of their cells on weekdays. Most of the prisons in England and Wales have to obey the rules set by Her Majesty’s Prison Service. The Prison Service says that every prison must let their prisoners out of their cells for at least 10 hours a day. However a survey of 6,500 prisoners has given other numbers. In this survey 50 percent of the prisoners are let out of their cells for less than 6 hours and 20 percent even less ten two hours.

Hearing these findings, the prison inspectorate did some testing for themselves. Of 17 prisons checked, only three met the target of ten hours. Nine prisons locked their inmates up for more than 20 hours a day even.

Reaction

I think there are two sides to this discussion. Do the inmates really have to be let out of their cells for ten hours a day? Most people will say yes on this because this way the prisoners do not get social problems if they are set free again. The matter of the fact is that the Prison Service has issued these ten hours so the prisons have to obey this target. However due to the over crowdedness of the prisons, this target cannot be met. In my opinion there are two options. The first is to try to sentence people to alternative punishments. The second is to build more prisons or to extend the prisons that already exist.

Tests 'damaging' to school system

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The Standard Assessment Test (SAT) has been criticised a lot. Although teachers and schools have been saying it is a bad way to judge a school´s performance on, the government has ignored all the complaints. Now a report has been made by a committee of MP´s which says the teachers and schools are right. It says that the SATs are being used in such a way that it harms children and the school system.

Because the schools and teachers want their pupils to get the highest scores so that more parents will put their child at that school, the teacher decides whether a pupil is ready to go to the next level of education, even though this may not be the case. Also the test could be bad news for the pupils because they experience a lot of stress when they have to do these tests.

Reaction

I think in the Netherlands we have the same problem with the Cito-test. These tests are being taken at the end of the primary school when the children are about 11 or 12 years of age. From the results of these tests the school and parents can see which level of schooling their pupils will manage to follow at secondary school. These test are however also used to grade the school’s performance. A lot of teachers and schools are against it being used to grade the school, but the government just does not listen to these critics. I think this is, as well as the situation in Britain, bad for the education level of the whole country where parents only look at the test results of the SATs instead of looking at the school itself and the way the school gets along with the students.