The Lottery of Life

I have a good friend who lives directly opposite the gates of an excellent local Comprehensive. Currently his kids go to the local Primary School which is about 10 minutes walk away. On Planet Reasonable we'd expect his children to enjoy their secondary education at the school over the road - it is, let's remind ourselves, a local school for local children.  

Today's news that the Government is keen to utilise the lottery system of school place allocation could see his eldest have to travel to the other side of town (a matter of two bus journeys). Two years later his youngest may have to travel to yet another school, in another part of town, not on any bus route from the suburb where they live - it's 4 miles, so let's say a one hour walk. 

And yet just over the road there lies their local school.

Now multiply all those cross city journeys by 5000 (roughly the combined roll of all 3 schools)...

The illogical stupidity of the Government sometimes stretches reason to such limits that you begin to wonder if they are actually having an internal competition to see who can come up with the most ludicrous, incompetent fuck-up of an idea.