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Tuesday, April 08, 2014

DST L3 British Civilization

I am working through your commentaries: here are some favourite mistakes:

1) In this document, Labour suggests several specific policies

- renationalization
- reversing Thatcher's laws about trade unions
- building social housing
- reforming the House of Lords
- moves towards nuclear disarmament

(To name only five of them)

Almost no student has said anything about *the future* of these policies. Certainly it is true that these suggestions were not able to persuade the electorate to vote in a Labour government in 1983. But which of these policies were instituted by Tony Blair in 1997?


2) The danger of partisan language
The aim is to explain the objective, the methods and the effect of the document. It is not to denounce Margaret Thatcher, or to denounce the Labour party ( you may denounce anyone you wish in your leisure time!)

So you must not write "in this document, the Labour party points out the failures of Margaret Thatcher's government" (denouncing Thatcher).
Similarly, you must not write "the document is Utopian and could not be put into practice" ( denouncing Labour).

More comments tomorrow.

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