{"id":352,"date":"2010-06-21T16:14:38","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T15:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=352"},"modified":"2012-07-10T12:00:35","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T11:00:35","slug":"praise-for-ou-in-mk-tory-mps-maiden-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=352","title":{"rendered":"Praise for OU in MK Tory MP&#8217;s maiden speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<dl id=\"attachment_353\"> Iain Stewart MP<\/dl>\n<p>Iain Stewart MP for Milton Keynes South since May 6th 2010 gave his first\u00a0speech in the Commons on 17th June. <!--more-->It is reported <a href=\"http:\/\/miltonkeynes.com\/iain-stewarts-maiden-speech.html\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/miltonkeynes.com');\">here<\/a>. The extract below echoes Harold Wilson with its reference to the OU being a university of the second chance:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Many hundreds of thousands of lives have been transformed by the Open University, and it has long-embodied the vital principle of lifelong learning, reskilling people as their careers evolve and giving a second chance to those who have, for whatever reason, missed out on a more traditional form of higher education. The new vice-chancellor of the Open University, Martin Bean, is making an excellent start in preparing and updating the university to meet the ever-evolving challenges that lie ahead. His appointment is significant, because as a former senior director of Microsoft, his move from a high-end private company to the world of education illustrates the vital links that must exist between the two if the UK is to sustain a high-knowledge economy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/miltonkeynes.com\/iain-stewarts-maiden-speech.html\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/miltonkeynes.com');\">Picture source<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iain Stewart MP Iain Stewart MP for Milton Keynes South since May 6th 2010 gave his first\u00a0speech in the Commons on 17th June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[59,45,94],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-elections","tag-government","tag-stewart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}