http://blogs.independent.co.uk| Blogs from the Independent newspaper - news, views and features from the world's most free-thinking newspaper| Fri, 24 May 2013 19:41:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2| en hourly 1 http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/06/21/in-my-gcses-we-practised-with-o-level-papers-knowing-nothing-that-difficult-would-come-up/ http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/06/21/in-my-gcses-we-practised-with-o-level-papers-knowing-nothing-that-difficult-would-come-up/#comments Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:30:13 +0000 Liam O'Brien http://blogs.independent.co.uk/?p=25558 It’s easy to dismiss Michael Gove’s decision to replace GCSEs with O-Levels as a “ludicrous” move. In fact, that was the exact term used by Mary Bousted, leader of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, who accused the Education Secretary of having a rose-tinted view of the past. As the news emerged last night, the Twitterati jumped all over it. Why stop at bringing back GCSEs, they cried. What about leg warmers and fax machines? ]]> http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/06/21/in-my-gcses-we-practised-with-o-level-papers-knowing-nothing-that-difficult-would-come-up/feed/ 56 http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/09/28/will-we-be-safer-with-the-investment-bankers-in-charge/ http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/09/28/will-we-be-safer-with-the-investment-bankers-in-charge/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:52:41 +0000 Ben Chu http://blogs.independent.co.uk/?p=4722 Look at the write downs for Barclays and RBS: $22.9bn and $26.5bn respectively. Those were mainly losses on toxic assets accumulated by Barclays Capital and ABN Amro, the investment banking divisions of the two British banks. Does that show admirable risk management?]]> http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/09/28/will-we-be-safer-with-the-investment-bankers-in-charge/feed/ 1