Education, ecduation, no iced tau

What always amazes me about politics (so that means you as well as the politicians) is the way that obvious solutions to problems are abandoned in favour of doomed strategies which will do nothing except to further inflate our already huge tax bills.

Here's a good example: the cost of a failing reader to the UK is probably (I'm underestimating) of the order of £50,000 to £100,000. Yet we won't spend £2000 on an early intervention with an 80% success rate. I don't know whether to cry or scream when I contemplate the wrecked lives that result for illiterates- children who are grossly and signally failed by a system predicated on arrogance, trendy buzzwords and a fundamental neglect of the underclass that would beggar the belief of oppressive Victorian capitalists.