Sunday, January 27, 2008

Swinton beat St.Helens!

Or more accurately, Swinton's first team beat St.Helens' under 21 side in a low key friendly. One day ... one day ...

2 comments:

Harry Barnes said...

It seems that we have both been typing messages to each other at the same time.

My experience of Rugby League is limited to the odd visit with my son to see the team he supports - London Broncos/Harleqins RL, plus GB being trumped by NZ at QPR and St. Helens defeating Huddersfield at Twickenham in 2006. Now on our common interest.

I was an adult student at Ruskin College and then Hull University between 1960-65 and taught mainly Trade Union classes from Sheffield University Extramural/Division of Continuing Education 1961-87 - teaching parallel classes to Tony Topham's of Hull Extramural in Scunthorpe at one time. I then became a Labour MP until I retired in 2005. Whilst I served on the Committee Stages of the initial Students Loans Bill and the 1992 Further and Higher Education Funding Bill, I was pulled into issues away from those relevant to adult education -although I returned to the issue periodically and had an adult education slant to my rebellion over the Higher Education Bill in 2004. So whilst I am roughly aware of the general developments in adult education over the past two decades, I hold no specialist knowledge.

Could you help me get back up to speed on developments over the past decade or two by recommending some key (but not too heavy!) literature? You seem to be well placed to do this.

Since retiring, I have addressed the bodies for ex-students at Ruskin and Coleg Harlech. This was on Iraq, but it helped to re-kindled the interests reflected in my review of Rose's book.

The Plump said...

Only the last twenty years Harry? Not asking for much then in the continuous revolution of adult education :-)

Seriously, more than happy to help. I suggest you email me at this blog, then we can correspond. It is a very important subject. There is a link on here but just in case the address is:

fatmanonakeyboard@yahoo.co.uk

Not a happy story at the moment but I can fill you in with the details.

Tony Topham was before my time but I worked with others that knew him well. We do have a Derbyshire connection though. I used to work for High Peak College, based in Buxton, running Access courses in Buxton, Ashbourne, Hope Valley, Glossop and New Mills, though not in your neck of the woods.