Credit where credit is due

This is the first two-for-the-price-of-one posts.  I hope it stitches together okay.  I was going to post first with a suggestion for clubs considering Wonga as shirt sponsors (Newcastle FC next year.  Currently Hearts and Blackpool have deals).

Plenty has been written on the moral repulsion towards pay day loans and the like, with counter arguments from the pragmatists who argue that people who live in poverty will fall prey to loan sharks of a different kind anyway.  All I'd like to add is a suggestion for any club considering joining the afore mentioned outfits:

Why not take the money and slice off a sizeable proportion to fund schools in your fanbase community.  The cash could fund specific work to help every pupil develop a clear understanding of what x% APR actually means and how to make smart choices by asking the questions the loans companies don't want you to ask.  Then again they could spend the money and develop a credit union. Or both. . .

Which kind of brings me to the second half of this post.  Whilst Wonga.com might have some clever spin-ads they kind of are who they say they are.  Unlike the TES (Times educational Supplement) who position themselves as the great champions of teaching and learning.  Their latest great idea is to provide a 'service' by taking professional's ideas and making them available to other teachers through their website.  Sounds simple enough until you hear about things like this.

There's a lot of rhetoric around these days about creativity and the importance of nurturing ideas in our young people through an education system that recognises we are schooling kids for jobs that haven't even been imagined and to solve problems that we don't yet realise we've created.  All well and good, but we need to be honest with our children.  If their ideas, and those of teachers as above, are going to be appropriated by large organisations under slightly false pretences then it might just sound like a mixed message. Or very devious.  Instead shouldn't these ideas be supported in ways that take pride in acknowledging intellectual property and authorship, rather than throwing a net over them as if to make out that the net-thrower now has rights to them.

As the old saying goes, what goes around comes around.  So let's set an example by giving credit where credit is due.