One of the funniest films I ever watched was Night of the Living Dead. That was in 1977 I think. The whole cinema, in Hampstead, London, was full of convulsed people gasping for breath. When we walked out into the evening streets, around every corner was a group of people doing the special zombie walk. You can see some of that in this clip:

Zombie walk

It never occurred to me at the time that we have zombies amongst us in the form of ex-Secretaries of State — not just in education, but in other areas too. Every so often one of them oozes out from his or her crypt to complain about the fact that X needs doing, or that Y should not be happening — when they were the ones in charge of it all at the time!

These people rely on an absence of institutional memory or poor journalism, because they never seem to be called to account. You never hear — or at least I have never heard — an interviewer say, “But excuse me, your guruship, weren’t you the person who was responsible for that area?”

It must be a wonderful gift to be able to behave in complete denial of your part in any debacle or disaster. In a weird sort of way, I envy them.