Tories try to back down over children's books funding

Following up my earlier post, it appears now that Michael Gove and the Tories have belatedly realised that it might make for some negative press and are trying to walk it back a little.

This is being described as a partial U-turn, but to me it looks like classic doublethink newspeak - maybe children should have funding for reading 1984 so as to unravel this sort of crap in future!

Here's what they actually said:

The department and Booktrust will be working together, with publishers, in order to ensure that we can make every possible saving in developing an enhanced programme.

(Emphasis mine)

Now, forgive me for my scepticism, but it seems to me that making savings usually means cuts to a programme; an enhanced programme usually costs more. To my mind, this is a lie, pure and simple. They are still shutting the programme down. They are talking about finding some way of making it appear as though they are replacing it, but the chances are whatever they come up with will be ineffectual and elitist, keeping education and power away from the poor. So I don't see this as any kind of U-turn, partial or otherwise. It's a faint deviation from the original course, that's all.