Won't Somebody Stop Me?

(Which film did that come from?)

The sixth form common room brigade, aka the Conservative Party, is at it again. They have set up a web site which has the sole purpose of writing and sending a letter of apology that purports to have been written by Gordon Brown.

I wonder what these people, who, don't forget, may well be in government before too long, are thinking with their jolly japes.

If Prime Ministers and Ministers were ever required to apologise for their transgressions, we would hear nothing else from them. That is predicated on them being able to tell the truth, of course.

Are we meant to believe that Conservative governments and Prime Ministers have nothing to apologise for? Churchill? (Read Roy Jenkins' dreadful but extensive biography of Churchill for a LOT of evidence. read my review of that book here). Thatcher? From the days when Thatcher was Education Secretary and deprived many poor people of their main source of nutrition in school dining rooms (Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher still resonates) all the way to her dreadful and divisive economic and industrial relations policies while she was PM.

What we are seeing here is a bankrupt political party being led by a marketing man who in turn is leading a group of people who have never done a real day's work in their lives.

Even if you think you are a died in the wool conservative, please think very carefully about voting for this lot. On the other hand, my previous post on GCSE and A Level examinations is a warning to anyone who is thinking about voting back in Brown's Hiberno centric champagne socialists.

DW

A Level Exams and GCSE Exams for Sale

Want to gain an unfair advantage in your GCSE and A Level Examinations here in the UK? It’s official now, you can pay a Chief Examiner to come to help you to pass his/her examination.

I have been in correspondence with two MPs over the last three or four years and the upshot is that they have told me that it is official UK Government policy to allow Chief and other examiners to sell their services to anyone for personal private gain.

This means that these examiners can hold private revision sessions with anyone who is about to take one of their examinations.

Imagine the luxury and advantage: the very person in charge of your exam will tell you exactly what you need to do in order to pass his/her exam. Don’t worry, it’s all done behind closed doors and all you have to do is to pay the examiner a fee.

What happens if you can’t afford to pay? Sorry, you’re on your own.

Never mind, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair before him, have presided over this system for years now. The two MPs I have been writing to are Evan Harris, Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and Linda Riordan, Labour MP for Halifax. The final approval for this elitist system came from Sarah McCarthy Fry who is a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools and Learners.

My view of this system? In the letter I have just sent to Mrs Riordan I say this:

On behalf of honest and hard working teachers, parents and pupils I feel unable to support any government, any MP and any examinations system that essentially is supporting the following approach:

• Elitism in education:
• Exclusivity in education;
• Encouraging examiners to work ex officio for personal private gain;
• Encouraging students and candidates for examination to expect that they may meet examiners for their chosen subjects for personal private directed guidance in order to gain an advantage in an examination;
• Cheating;
• Immoral behaviour;
• Unprofessional behaviour.

It is obvious that there is nothing more for me to say to you on this matter since it is clear that the government is fostering lower and lower standards. Moreover Secretaries of State, Under Secretaries of State, Members of Parliament and those in a position to gain financially from this situation are all quite happy to ensure that the privileged few who can afford to pay will receive a better standard of preparation for an examination than those who can't I cannot see the socialist approach in this system.

While the standard of UK examinations and so on plummet, you are perfectly free to buy your way through the examinations system. I wonder how many people think this is a good approach to end of compulsory education and pre university examinations? I wonder how many people believe that the UK’s schools examination system is now of third world standard? A Professor of an overseas University said that to me, by the way, on hearing about my campaign.

Shocking!

DW

Sport and Politics

Well, I hope these people who march under a political banner to sports events are satisfied.

Now that we have had those 12 year olds trying to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and so on, there are murderers in Pakistan who feel that they can target a cricket team with a view to murder. Tragically, some of the people whose job it is to protect the Sri Lankan cricket team have died as a result of a gun attack.

I appreciate that this is an extreme example of political demonstration but then again those Anti Chinese demonstrators were pretty violent in some of the actions they took.

I said last year and I’m saying it again, keep your poxy political hands off our sport: whoever you are. Go and find another politician to fight with not an innocent sports person or team or organisation.

DW

Inflationary Journalism

Last week I heard two separate assessments of the UK's unemployment level.

Laurie Taylor correctly said the there are currently around 2,000,000 people unemployed in the UK.

On the same day some clown BBC News reporter related the situation as unemployment heading to 3,000,000.

Dear Clown Reporter, you have, at a stroke, inflated the level of inflation by 50%. Even if unemployment does reach 3,000,000 it is going to take some time to get there. Moreover, I wonder who it was at the BBC who allowed you to make a forecast that might well have been spurious, ill founded or even malicious.

Won't someone protect us from the lowering of standards of journalism at the BBC and elsewhere in the media?

DW



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Fat Cat Pay

Sir Fred Goodwin is the UK pariah of the moment. I sincerely hope he gets his come uppance and that they take all of that nonsense pension off him. As they said yesterday, it’s not a pension, it’s severance pay. Very generous pay too. I wonder how he has the gall even to think that he deserves that vast amount of money?

There is an excellent article in the Washington Post that’s well worth a read, URL below. A couple of points of interest from that article.

Note the comments about John Thain … a couple of months ago, Wall St Wallahs were saying that Thain deserved his $10 million bonus but the wind has changed now:

Take the now infamous example of the recently ousted Merrill Lynch chief John Thain, who not only splurged on his office decor but also had the audacity to propose a $10 million bonus for himself. In recognition of what? A year's work in which the company continued to make bad business decisions, lost about 80 percent of its value, sold itself to Bank of America to stave off possible collapse and appears to have seriously damaged its buyer's franchise? After a less than heroic performance, Thain's grasping for $10 million,  presumably because he thought it could be had, represents what has come to be expected from America's business leaders.

The author makes two more good points worthy of note:

In 1960, the ratio of CEO pay at large companies to that of the President of the United States was about 2 to 1. In 2007, it was more than 20 to 1. In 1980, executives at large companies made about 40 times what the average worker made. Last year, CEOs made about 360 times more than the average worker.

And maybe here is the most telling statistic that possibly underlies everything that has happened in the financial world and at the C level in many companies:

On the NYSE today, the average share is held for less than a year, as compared to about five years in 1960 and two years in 1990.

There’s more, in this well written article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020602794.html

DW

Water, water everywhere …

Can you complete that line from what is possibly one of the most famous poems in the English language?

Well, take a look at this page on the Economist web site and think about your role in man’s consumption of water http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176056&CFID=44501457&CFTOKEN=26124267

You might find it shocking reading and I recommend you take a look at the comments that follow the article too as they make some interesting additional points. Some of the additional points are healthily sceptical and you should take them into account.

DW

The Dog Whisperer

If you've got a dog and it doesn't seem to behave properly, you need to realise one thing: it's your fault!

Take a look at the programme The Dog Whisperer on National Geographic Wild to see how Cesar Millan deals with dogs via their owners.

My favourite programme at the moment.

DW


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Duncadoodle do!

I am now going to take a potentially huge risk as I bare my soul to the world.

I have just finished a lengthy telephone conversation and during that call I did a lot of doodling … as you can see in the graphic that follows. I have hidden the original material on that page because it is someone’s personal contact details.

Any doodle psychologists care to let me know what is going on in my tiny mind?

PLEASE, I know cheap remarks are easy to make but you ought to refrain from making them. Seriousness only is the order of the day.

DW

Andy Gray During the Penalty Shoot out at Wembley

He said, "You see, that's football", when the goalie saved a penalty!!

I'm surprised he didn't say, "That's what you've got to do"!

DW


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