Here you are, a few snaps after my two weeks away

Dubai and Kuala Lumpur: December 2011

DW

Hogwash personified ... Cheating Examiners

All nightmares confirmed. Ofqual has responded to Gove's, Secretary of State, demand for a review of cheating examiners. Read the hogwash response they have published.

http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/news-and-announcements/130-news-and-announcements-press-releases/833-ofqual-publishes-exam-errors-report-and-update-on-investigation-into-exam-board-seminars

It's tripe.

DW

Remember this M Chirac?

Chirac has been found guilty of dodgy doings from many years ago! He was protected from prosecution by being President of France for many years.

He was then tried in absentia because he claimed to be suffering from mental illness of some kind, including memory loss.

How convenient! Lower level people are forced to suffer the natural indignity of a trial if necessary: why not you?

Just having my say!

DW

Cheating Examiners: my letter to the Education Select Committee

Last night I wrote to the House of Commons Education Select Committee: they are to hold a meeting on the subject of the cheating examiner problem that has just been highlighted by the Daily Telegraph.

This is a lengthy letter but it is a good summary for them.

At the time of writing I have had neither response nor acknowledgement from them.

I wrote the letter relatively quickly so please forgive me for any errors that have crept into it.

DW

By email: see distribution list below

11^th December 2011

Dear Sirs           Allegations relating to GCSE and A Level Examiners

It both causes me sadness and gives me great pleasure to be able to write this letter to your committee. The sadness comes from the seriousness of the allegations being made against the various GCSE and A Level examiners that are the subject of your special meeting to be held on Tuesday 13^th December 2011. The pleasure comes from being able to provide you with significant information that will help you to appreciate that a lot of people have known about the allegations for many years but that they have chosen to ignore the allegations.

I have been researching and campaigning on the matter of examiner irregularities for over five years and in that time I have found a lot of proof of inappropriate behaviour. Moreover, I have made Ministers, an Under Secretary of State, MPs, Civil Servants, journalists, teachers, Examination Boards officials, examiners and others aware of my findings.

I first came across allegations of potentially inappropriate examiner behaviour in 2006 or early in 2007 and with no significant difficulty could find that many GCSE and A Level examiners were holding seminars behind closed doors in return for payment. These seminars were held for teachers on the one hand and for pupils on the other. Many teachers and others are clearly aware that these examiners were running these seminars and many teachers did not like it: they felt that unless they or their school or their pupils were prepared to pay the examiners for the insights that were given, they were disadvantaged in public examination.

The majority of teachers and pupils did not attend the examiner seminars but many of them did.

The rules of the boards of examiners clearly state that anyone who is working as an examiner for them is forbidden from announcing any association between their work as an examiner and any other work they do. I found on many web sites that this rule was openly and easily flouted: examiners boldly stated that they were an examiner in subject X for Board Y … I gathered a relatively large batch of examples of these statements and web pages and asked the examination boards to comment on my findings.

In spite of sending live URLs from genuine web sites and thus proving that many examiners were selling their services for financial reward and without respecting the demand of anonymity, the AQA Board not only said that their systems were robust and that my information must be wrong but they threatened me with legal action unless I withdrew some of the claims I was making. What happened was that they had acted in their fury and haste and their threat of action against me dissipated when they realised their mistake.

I know the DfEE as it then was kept records of my correspondence with them, via my MPs: initially Dr Evan Harris and subsequently Linda Riordan because towards the end of 2009 they wrote to tell me that I had approached them on this matter several times and each time they were telling me that there was no problem, no wrongdoing.

The surprise here is that I spent a lot of time preparing my case and whilst I never met Dr Harris I did meet Ms Riordan and I spoke at length on the phone to a civil servant at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

In my personal blog, I have documented my research and the responses of the various people whom I have involved in it. The first entry on my blog in this matter is dated 23^rd April 2007; and in that posting I announce that

I was called by a journalist last week who wanted to discuss the way that Britain's GCSE examiners may be behaving. He was specifically worried that the examiners who are marking our children's examination scripts are providing private tuition and behind closed doors advice to teachers and students alike.

http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2007/04/examiners-cheating-on-behalf-of-their.html

The journalist in question was working at that time at the Times Educational Supplement (TES) and following our discussion he had published an article entitled Examiners should stop cheating. That article was followed by another article on this topic the week following the first one, both articles appearing in the TES.

In March 2009 I posted more discussion on this topic: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2009/03/level-exams-and-gcse-exams-for-sale.html You will see from this post that the two MPs I mentioned above had been fobbed off by various ministers and civil servants so that I felt driven to write the following, quoting a letter from me to Ms Riordan MP:

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.

Late in 2009 or early in 2010 I found Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families on twitter and I started following him. I then tweeted him and mentioned my campaign and asked him was he doing about it. Eventually he responded and suggested that I wrote to him officially. I then wrote to Mr Balls and that led to my blog posting of 4^th February 2010: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2010/02/open-letter-to-ed-balls.html In that post I wrote the following:

As is my wont, I am crusading against corruption in the GCSE and A Level Examinations system. I have been carrying out this crusade for several years now. Evan Harris MP failed in this campaign. Linda MP failed in this campaign. Now Ed Balls who is Secretary of State responsible for this area has fobbed me off by passing my latest missive to a junior member of his staff.

I continued:

Here is the latest ill thought out response from Whitehall. Firstly the reply to my latest attempt at rooting out this corruption and secondly my initial response.

Thank you for your e-mail of 9 January alleging corruption in the GCSE and A Level examination systems.  I have been asked to reply.

I note that you have raised similar concerns with the Department on a number of occasions over recent years.  The awarding bodies and Ofqual have thorough systems in place to manage any conflicts of interests inherent in the exams system, and we have previously shared details of those with you.  Ofqual have also previously looked at the concerns you have raised.  This being so, I fear there is nothing I can add to the previous correspondence with you from Ministers and officials.

Yours sincerely,

HB 
QCDA, Ofqual and Exams Delivery

In the clearest terms possible, I had been told that there is nothing wrong: I sent proof upon proof, I sent web site addresses, I sent brochures and leaflets and they told me everything was fine! In my despondency at such shabby service I continued this post as follows:

Dear H,

This will not go away just because you think this matter has been resolved several times. It has not. No minister, no MP, no civil servant has ever accepted that examiners from UK Examinations Boards ARE ex officio making money by holding private seminars with candidates for THEIR examinations in contravention of the rules of those boards and in contravention of ethics and professional behaviour.

You must have seen the articles The Times Educational Supplement over the last three years or so, you must have read Warwick Mansell’s recent book on this and related examination issues, you really must be aware that I am not a crank and that I really do have documentary evidence that no one in the government and civil service, including you now, is in the least bit interested in upholding GCSE and A Level standards.

You are wrong in your assertion that you have previously looked at my concerns. Read my letters maybe but investigated no. I have been fobbed off before with the most inane arguments. I have sent you PROOF that examiners are in breach of their contracts with the Examination Boards and PROOF that these Boards are turning a blind eye to them. All of this is in direct contravention of codes of conduct, codes of practices, statutes and goodness knows what else. Here you are fobbing me off again. It really won’t do. To be fair to some examiners, once it has been pointed out to them that what they are doing is wrong, they stop. Yes, truly: one examiner wrote to me with a profound apology and he took down pages and pages from his web site because of what I pointed out to him. He realised the error of his ways. In the meantime, however, his Examinations Board, in its foot stamping belligerence closed its eyes and said the examiner had done no wrong.

Your thorough systems cannot be so thorough can they when it is as plain as the nose on your face that examiners are walking all over them all of the time. As I type this I can guarantee that there will be advertisements in many newspapers, on websites and in mail shots at the moment in the UK advertising Easter revision courses. Many of those courses will be run by and on behalf of Examiners from the GCSE and A Level Examinations Boards that I am persistently complaining about. Go to your library and reading rooms, go online, check the mail arriving at schools and colleges all over the country. Find those advertisements and then tell me I am wrong.

For your information, I have worked in countries where corruption and academic dishonesty are rife. I am currently working on a World Bank project in one such country. I am here to attempt to install democratic systems that are founded on integrity, transparency and the rule of law. Don’t you find it ironic that here I am trying to teach people in undeveloped countries how to behave whilst at home, the OFFICIAL LINE is that flawed and corrupt systems are allowed there too?

I told Ed Balls on his twitter account that I will not simply go away and I will not. If I have to wait for this government to be dismissed I will. Shouldn’t be long now should it?

Thanks for writing anyway even if it was such a shabby, ill thought out and badly researched email.

Following the above, I appreciated that MPs were not willing to blow the whistle. I appreciated that Secretary of State Balls had no interest in this matter and had dumped my evidence on a civil servant so on 9^th February 2010 I posted the following, http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2010/02/level-bunkum-ii.html:

Following on from my open letter to Ed Balls (Secretary of State in the Gordon Brown Cabinet, one of whose tasks is to safeguard the UK's education system) I sent a follow up the following day to the poor minion who had been given the task of fobbing me off. Here is that response:

Dear Helen,

I have probably failed again with my previous and relatively extensive response to your email so here is the shortened version that really, really ought to make someone in Whitehall sit up and listen:

Principal, senior and other examiners for GCSE and A Level exams present revision sessions and seminars for personal and private financial reward. These sessions are usually held behind closed doors. The audience very commonly, though not exclusively, comprises candidates for the examinations for which the examiner is responsible. Why do these candidates PAY examiners to run these seminars? I wonder!

That this happens is a FACT. That your “thorough systems” are allowing it to happen is a FACT. For goodness’ sake can you get someone to stop this charade? Other examining bodies simply do not allow their examiners anywhere near their candidates and for very good reason.

Only in British schools is such a system allowed whereby the privileged few who are prepared to pay can be given unfettered access to the very people who have set and will mark and moderate the exam for which they are about to sit. If you can’t or won’t pay, you are excluded. This charade even transcends the supposed State School v Public School divide.

Helen: is that fair? Is that democratic? Is this a transparent and acceptable system? Or is it, rather, corrupt, unprofessional, demeaning and out of control?

I have spoken to a great many people on this issue and the ONLY people who are prepared to defend it are the very ones who are in a position to do something about it: you and your colleagues in Whitehall. Isn’t that very odd?

I really do expect someone rational to be given the task of resolving this issue and I have already passed along this latest correspondence to a senior educational journalist who has been following this story for several years now.

Best wishes

I never heard from any other MP, Minister, Under Secretary, Civil Servant or Examination Board official again and because of my work commitments I was unable to return to matter until last week when The Daily Telegraph broke the story again: the SAME story.

I have persistently tweeted Mr Balls on twitter over the last few months but I am not aware of any responses from him. I asked him last week for his thoughts on the Telegraph expose and he has not responded, to my knowledge.

9^th December 2011: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2011/12/gcse-and-level-examiners-caught-again.html

11^th December 2011: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2011/12/cheating-examiners-update-letter-to.html

Finally, in case you are not aware of it, Mr Michael Gove has been aware of this scandal since October 2009: that is when I first wrote to him and informed him of the allegations I was making. Mr Gove did respond to acknowledge my letter but thereafter he remained silent on the matter.  On 6^th January 2010 I posted he following:

In October, before I went on a two and a half month trip away from home, I wrote to Ed Balls and Michael Gove in relation to the cheating and corruption inherent in the GCSE and A Level Examinations system.

Balls is the Minister responsible for education and Gove is his Tory shadow.

The problem I have been campaigning on for a few years is a real one and I have presented a lot of hard facts and evidence of cheating and corruption and yet two MPs and various civil servants have been happy to turn a blind eye to what is happening. I have even been threatened with legal action by one Examinations Board who then had to slink away from their position when they realised they had tried far too hard to bully me into silence.

These wretched people who are presiding over this abuse of position and privilege have to be hounded out of office and in the case of Gove, prevented from getting into office. Neither of them has replied to my letters.

I need a Tiananmen Square moment to get these people out into the open and this corruption solved and stopped.

Yours sincerely

Duncan Williamson

Distribution list:

Select Committee Members:

Mr Graham Stuart (Chair)        graham.stuart.mp@parliament.uk,

Neil Carmichael                        neil.carmichael.mp@parliament.uk,

Alex Cunningham                    alex.cunningham.mp@parliament.uk,

Bill Esterson                             bill.esterson.mp@parliament.uk,

Pat Glass                                  pat.glass.mp@parliament.uk,

Damian Hinds                          damian.hinds.mp@parliament.uk,

Charlotte Leslie                        charlotte.leslie.mp@parliament.uk,

Ian Mearns                              ian.mearns.mp@parliament.uk,

Tessa Munt                              tessa.munt.mp@parliament.uk,

Lisa Nandy                              lisa.nandy.mp@parliament.uk,

Craig Whittaker                       craig.whittaker.mp@parliament.uk

Committee

Education Committee
               educom@parliament.uk

Committee Staff

Lynn Gardner: Clerk                                         gardnerlm@parliament.uk 

Elisabeth Bates: Second Clerk                            batese@parliament.uk

Penny Crouzet: Committee Specialist                 crouzetp@parliament.uk

Benjamin Nicholls: Committee Specialist              nichollsb@parliament.uk

Ameet Chudasama: Senior Committee Assistant chudasamaa@parliament.uk

Caroline Mcelwee: Committee Assistant              mcelweec@parliament.uk

Paul Hampson: Committee Support Assistant      hampsonp@parliament.uk

Cheating Examiners: letter to the BBC

Message to the You and Yours Programme, BBC Radio 4 in response to an article and interviews they have just broadcast

The programme spoke to

Dr Jim Sinclair, Director of JCQ (Joint Council for Qualifications)
Francis Thomas of Ofqual

The interviewer was Julian Worricker

Dear Sirs,

I have been campaigning for many years against the abuses in the examinations system that the Daily Telegraph highlighted last week. I have just sent a letter to the Education Select Committee for their meeting on Thursday. In summary, my letter says that the following people already knew about the examiner scandal  up to five or more years ago:

Michael Gove knew ... I told him 2 years ago
Ed Balls knew as the Secretary of State 2 years ago ... I told him
An under secretary of state knew because I communicated with her
Two MPs knew this because I communicated with them in detail from five years or so ago
Civil servants knew about this because I communicated with them
The AQA knew about my research because I told them what their examiners were doing: they told me their systems prevented what I was talking about and they threatened me with legal action if I disclosed what I knew

This is not a new problem but I just hope that this abuse of position and privilege will stop now.

Feel free to call me to discuss this at any time! I will happily share my letter and blog postings with you too.

Best wishes

Duncan Williamson
Halifax, West Yorkshire

Cheating Examiners Update: letter to Michael Gove

Dear Mr Gove,

I was very pleased to see that you set up an enquiry into allegations that some GCSE and A Level examiners could be working ultra vires their examination work.

However, I want to point out to you that I wrote to you about this matter in 2009 and whilst you did reply to me to acknowledge my letter, you did nothing further to explore the matter. I appreciate that at that time you were an opposition MP.

Nevertheless, I am writing to advise you that my blog contains references to the letters we exchanged as well as letters to Ed Balls and others. Some of my letters on this topic date back almost five years, highlighting the extent and depth of this problem with our public examination system.

I am also tweeting and updating my blog via a vis this subject and I am naming you over your failure to consider the matter even though I made you aware of it.

Best wishes



Duncan Williamson
Halifax, West Yorkshire

Sent from my iPad

Christmas Decorations

I have put up my new Christmas decorations now. Nothing grand but plenty good enough.

DW

Andrew Photos

Andrew is up here for a few days ...

DW

GCSE and A Level Examiners Caught AGAIN

Just in case they decide not to post my comment in response to this article, here is what I said:

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article3251759.ece


"This story is more than welcome but it is not new.

Michael Gove knew about this because I told him two years or so ago

Ed Balls (as the relevant Minister) knew about this because I told him more than two years ago

Linda Riordan MP (Labour) knew about this because I met her and discussed it with her and then engaged in extensive communication with her

Civil Servants at the relevant departments knew about this because I communicated with them about it and they wrote back

The AQA knew about this because I told them about it and they threatened me with legal action ... empty threat

It is VERY well known that examiners are NOT allowed to do many things but surprise, surprise their books always seem to end up at the recommended text for their subject: anonymity is one of the key requisites of an examiner!

Examiners, many of them, hold seminars along the lines being discussed now. Not only with teachers either. The pupils who are about to take a public examination such as a GCSE and A Level can easily find a course being run by an examiner: for money, behind closed doors. Don't forget, that examiner could well be marking that child's script in a few weeks' time!

Other examining bodies simply forbid their examiners such close contact with their client base. Moreover, if they do get so near, they know it could be the end of their career.

You can easily find these examiners on the internet, advertising their services in exchange for money. They shouldn't but they do and when one complains about it, blows the whistle, SLAM: the door is shut. Let's hope that at last Gove gets it right.

Duncan"

The First Bin!

I have lived in this house since the end of June 2010 but today, 7th December 2011 is the first time I have put out any refuse bins for collection!

Here's the bin ...

Roast Vegetables

I don't boast very often but on this occasion I will blow my own trumpet. My roast vegetables are brilliant!

I roughly chop and blanch potatoes, carrots and parsnips. I roughly chop onions, usually a white and a red onion ... and then add any other roughly chopped veg I have in and drizzle everything with:

vegetable oil and olive oil
balsamic vinegar

The cook them.

Fantastic!

DW

Halellujah!

Neville: have you seen the Messiah?

Me: every night, just before I go to sleep!

Joke!

What Nev was getting at was that there is a performance of Handel's Messiah to be held tonight and had I ever been to a Messiah concert?

Made us laugh anyway!!

DW

Close House

Just read a review of Close House Hotel in The Times. The name rang a bell. I racked my brains and then went to the hotel's web site.

Close House is a Georgian pile set in fantastic grounds just outside Newcastle upon Tyne. It's £150 a night for B&B but they say that would be £900 for something similar in London: they are probably right.

Now I see, now I know: Close House used to be owned/run by the University of Newcastle and I spent a week or so there in 1984 or 1985 on an MBA residential course. Suave!

Go to their site, click to watch their slightly cheesy video and dream away as you listen to the unctuous voice of Mariella Frostrup!

closehouse.co.uk ... free advert from me!!

DW

Two Problems

I turned on my desktop this morning and boyoing ... no wifi connection.

On my laptop I went to blogger.com to update this blog and boyoing ... big error.

I restored the desktop and the wifi works again now: the problem is an update to my anti virus software.

I can't explain why blogger works again but it works from the App on my phone and from there, a Windows XP and Chrome browser desktop.

Now you know!

DW

Don't Trust the Office of Budget Responsibility ...UPDATE

It’s interesting what happens when one opens Pandora’s Box! As I was putting together my article on the hockey stick effect as I think it applies to the data and forecasts put together but the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) I did a tiny amount of research into what the rest of the world knew about the effect. One thing I came across a web page that said that Mr X created the hockey stick effect in 2004 or 2005 or something.

I stored that information for future reference knowing that I first heard the term hockey stick effect at least in the mid 1980s.

Well, The big hockey stick effect article comes from, according to Wikipedia:

The term hockey stick was coined by the climatologist Jerry Mahlman, to describe the pattern, envisaging a graph that is relatively flat to 1900 as forming the hockey stick's "shaft", followed by a sharp increase corresponding to the "blade". [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3569604.stm]

The reference is to a BBC web site page in which is clearly says:

The hockey stick was a term coined for a chart of temperature variation over the last 1,000 years, which suggested a recent sharp rise in temperature caused by human activities.

Well, no it isn’t: I can tell you where I was and what I was doing when I probably learned the term hockey stick effect but there is no book, article or web site to send you to. I can guarantee, however, that Jerry Mahlman did NOT invent the term: not in the way stated by the BBC anyway. Of course, if Mahlman coined the phrase pre 1985 or 1984 then fine, I can accept that!

In fact, at the time of starting my analysis of the OBR data expecting to find hockey stick effect evidence, I had never knowingly heard of Mahlman and his hockey stick diagram. Incidentally, here is the diagram Mahlman created:

Source: BBC web site supra

From the fascinating article entitled The rise and fall of the Hockey Stick that I came across this morning, even if you don’t go and read the entire article, take a look at this graphic:

Source: http://a-sceptical-mind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Comparison-charts.jpg

The point of the controversy is, perhaps, best illustrated by the following:

Until the 1990s there were many, many references in scientific and historical literature to a period labelled the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) lasting from about AD 800–1300. It was followed by a much cooler period termed the Little Ice Age. Based on both temperature reconstructions using proxy measures and voluminous historical references it was accepted that the Medieval Warm Period had been a period when global temperatures were a bit hotter than today’s temperatures. Until about the mid-1990s the Medieval Warm Period was for climate researchers an undisputed fact. The existence of the Medieval Warm Period was accepted without question and noted in the first progress report of the IPCC from 1990.

This hockey stick effect diagram became the perceived wisdom once it was published, around 2005. Then two gentlemen came along who seem to have been pure researchers: they were curious. Forget the refusal to share data and the paranoia that followed.

… Steve McIntyre linked up with Ross McKitrick … and … [t]ogether McIntyre and McKitrick began to dig down into the data that Mann had used in his paper and the statistical techniques used to create the single blended average used to make the Hockey Stick. They immediately began to find problems.

… But McIntyre and McKitrick found one major error, an error so big that it invalidated the entire conclusion of the whole paper.

… what Mann had done was blend together lots of different proxy studies of the past climate going back 1,000 years and then produced an average of all these studies and a single graph showing the trend. Clearly the validity of the techniques used to blend together and average the different data from the various different studies was absolutely critical as to the validity of the final conclusions reached and the resulting Hockey Stick graph. This sort of blending of data sets is a very common statistical exercise and there are very well established techniques for undertaking such an exercise … Effectively what Mann’s odd statistical techniques did was to select data that had any sort of Hockey Stick shape and hugely increase its weight in the averaging process. Using Mann’s technique it meant that any data was almost certain to produce a spurious Hockey Stick shape.

Source: http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hockey-stick

I won’t go through the entire paper since I am really interested in the hockey stick effect rather than reopening the climate change debate. However, please go to the web page, linked to here several times and note the comments on Briffa’s work and the article by Mann, Bradley and Hughes, just referred to about simply as Mann.

Nevertheless, consider the following revised view of climate change:

Source: http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hockey-stick

The 20^th and 21^st centuries are NOT the warmest for 1,000 years and more.

Finally, I am not sure what has happened since McIntyre and McItrick did their work and whether Nobel Laureate Al Gore has revised his film, An Inconvenient Truth. After all, any right thinking person must have thought the same as I did when I saw that film: how can all of his graphs be so perfectly directed to prove something that simply could not be proven? Now we know why!

DW

Oven Trouble

If you have a double oven unit and you would like to bake or roast something make sure you put it in the correct oven otherwise it won't cook too quickly!

Another top tip!

DW

Scotch Pancakes

My mother was Scottish and she was a very good cook: I know, your mother was the best cook ever ... One thing that my mother cooked to perfection was Scotch pancakes and I have never been able to emulate such skill ... until now. I found the perfect recipe for Scotch pancakes the other day and as soon as the first one came out of the pan I knew how good the recipe is. Let me share that recipe now:

Ingredients

makes about 12 pancakes

120 grammes self raising flour

pinch of salt

30 grammes caster sugar

1 egg medium sized

1/4 pint milk

oil/butter for frying (butter burns at high temperatures so be careful although I prefer it)

Mix Flour

  ==> Salt

   ==> Sugar

Whisk Milk

  ==> egg

Combine and mix well Dry Ingredients

  ==> Liquid Ingredients

Get the pan hot and don't be disappointed when the first pancake turns out to be anaemic because it almost certainly will! Then medium heat should be perfect.

Put a little bit of oil (I used a third of a teaspoon) in your pan and then one tablespoon of mix at a time cook the pancakes: you will find after a minute or so bubbles rise and burst in the mix in the pan which is time to turn them over. Cook them again for another minute or whatever it takes ...

Put the cooked pancakes on a plate and cover them with a tea towel until all pancakes are ready ... then eat them with butter, marmalade, golden syrup ... whatever you prefer. In my opinion Scotch pancakes are equally delicious warm or cold.

Side Note: I made and ate six pancakes but there was mix left for four more so I left the mix overnight: don't do that, it doesn't improve I'm afraid.

DW

Don't Trust the Office of budget Responsibility

Don't trust them and here is why ... this is simulcast on Duncan's Diacritical Discussion blog too

It was autumn budget statement time in the House of Commons the other day and the Chancellor of the Exchequer went on and on about how bad it's going to be be for you and me!

Cut a long story short: if you know the HOCKEY STICK EFFECT then what you are about to see will shock you. The OBR data that I have seen and on which the Chancellor's statement and financial policies are based contain many hockey stick effect examples: here are just two.

In case you think I made these two charts up for a joke or for a more nefarious reason, take a look at my excel master.co.uk blog post from earlier today where you will see more evidence and a link to the source of the data I have used: go here ... http://excel2007master.wordpress.com/ and look for the post entitled UK Government Spoke the Words, here is some Excel Analysis.

I think it's possibly shocking and potentially massively damaging for all of us.

DW

As if!

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by English author Anne Brontë, published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell.


Consider the likelihood that Anne Bronte even dreamed of putting the following words into one of her characters:


Leave right now!


Hard to believe? Well, just listen to part three of the adaptation of this story by the BBC, currently being aired daily during Woman's Hour.


Why didn't they finish the sentence, I wonder?


Leave right now y'all!


As Ed Reardon says, those 12 year olds at the BBC ...


DW

I Will Not Do That

I had a chat with a former colleague this evening and blah, blah, blah. Then he asked me to rate Muslims versus other people around the world. I asked him why he wanted me to do this and said, well you have worked in several Islamic countries ...

I told him I would never rate or compare religions as I think about and work with people: human beings, not Christians, Muslims, Buddhists ...

I am happy to say he stopped asking me about this idea then.

A few years ago someone asked me about my experiences of working in Africa: what was it like, working with all those black people? I asked, what black people? I said I taught students and worked with colleagues: no black people!

No false labels and enforced divisions, thank you.

DW

School Report

I found my secondary school report this evening too. I thought I had lost this report book many years ago.

The contents of the report book are revelatory!

DW

Deck of Cards

How about this? I was looking through one of the bags of odds and ends that I collected on a holiday in 1992 and found this unopened deck of cards from Cathay Pacific Airways.

DW

Is there Life on Mars? Irrelevant

I may be in a minority but I think the sending of a probe to Mars is a complete irrelevance.

Along with many millions of people across the world I sat up all night and watched the first ever moon landing on television. Of course, we admired the Americans for their achievement and for the next decade or two I believed space exploration was exciting and a worthwhile thing to do.

Recently, I have come to realise space exploration is futile if only for one reason: distance.

It takes us 8 months just to get to Mars let alone the edge of the universe. The distances and time involved in space exploration means that nothing useful can come of it.

I could go on but I won't! Please comment if you disagree and I will happily discuss it further.

DW

Well, Well, Well: it IS working!

Just after I moved house last year I switched on my DVD player only to find that it didn't work. It was a good quality player and I was disappointed. I did nothing about it as I was working away most of the time.

Half an hour ago I decided to take a look at the DVD player again. I thought, I am a meddler so what have I got to lose?

Let me keep a short story short. I am now watching the Shawshank Redemption on my DVD player and very old LG cathode ray tube television!

DW

Dear BBC, I KNOW Where Vienna is

It's happening! On top of all of the tripe that our twelve year olds at the BBC are wont to talk, they have started to use another one.

As you are probably aware, people from the USA will often say, eg, Paris, France or London, England. Now, the reason for that is that in the USA there are MANY cities called Paris so they say Paris, France to ensure the listener is aware that they are NOT talking about Paris, Maryland or Paris, Ohio ... far be it from me to suggest that it's to do with geographical ignorance.

Well, well, well, TWICE today I have heard a BBC reporter or presenter say ... Vienna, Austria. One even said something like Glasgow, Scotland.

Dear BBC, take it from me I KNOW where Vienna is and if ever I did not know the whereabouts of a town or city I could readily find out for myself were I sufficiently motivated to do so.

DW

Local Food: freakinomics article

I read the book Freakinomics when it came out a few tears ago. As far as i know it was the first place to read about drug dealers still having to live with their mothers! Interesting but many of their articles/chapters had racist overtones.

Here is another article of theirs that is hogwash: the Inefficiency of Local Food. Go to www.freakonomics.com to read the article.

These are my responses to that article: I tried to post them on the freakinomics site but their publish button was dead! There are many comments already there and some of them make excellent points too.

Not a good article at all. Several people have also pointed out the idea that local farms are for local food. So potatoes are better grown here rather than there: so what? Let's eat what we can grow and who says that we MUST trade our food with everyone else?

Here's something that I didn't see in this article: the current system encourages food waste. Not only is it very inefficient to produce meat versus grain but we throw away up to a third of all the food we buy anyway. Concentrating our minds on our own needs should help us to consider such waste.

More importantly, though, is the fact that the current system of absentee farming encourages a very large proportion of the population to become obese. As far as I know, obesity has not been factored into this article yet its reach is very wide ranging.

DW

The Twitchiest Girl?

On the flight home: sitting in a seat with extra leg room but the rest of my row was empty. Just minutes to go until the doors are due to be closed. Then swoosh! A family arrived. I am sorry but some babies are just not pretty, looking far too adult than baby like and here was such a baby.

The girl was 7 - 8 years old at a guess and she sat next to me. I have never met a twitchier child in my life. Talk about hyper active! Fortunately she slept much of the way but even then she spread herself and lolled where she wanted to loll!

Happily, the baby was calm and no one died.

DW

William Hague: tweets but no action

I am following William J Hague on twitter and every now and again feel the need to write and ask him something or inform him of something. I am sure he doesn't mind because I am not aggressive or offensive but the man needs help and he does ask for hints and tips from time to time.

He said there's to be a big pow wow on Afghanistan now that the Brits are leaving: I responded that he needs help because there's much more to Afghanistan than the military problems.

Just now he said he's calling former ambassadors and others together to discuss how to make British Embassies dead good. I just wrote and told him about my friend in Riyadh who had a passport/visa problem and was given NO HELP at all from the Brit Embassy. They told him either to go home to the UK or send his passport off to Dusseldorf ... and in a month it would come back. Why Dusseldorf? Is Dusseldorf a suburb of a British city now? Embassy jobs off shored now??

My friend solved his problem, by the way, without having to travel anywhere. You know how he did it? British Ambassador intervened? An Embassy clerk took pity on him? Nope: a SAUDI NATIONAL solved the problem for him.

What's going on in the FCO Mr Hague? Looks like a right mess to me.

DW

Will Self ... dead loss!

Well, he's not going to respond is he: this oh so smart Mr Will Self who cannot put his money where his mouth is.

Then again, my blog postings on this man come up on google immediately after Self's own entries ... I come in at umber 5 or 6 or so, page one! At least the world can read what he said v what he does!

No offence Mr Self but we deserve better.

DW