Education

I posted a week or so ago about Universities and the expected rise in applications to Britain’s ‘New Universities’ caused by that cause-all, "The Credit Crunch". Since then I have been giving some more thought to the state of our education system and it isn’t too good I’m afraid.
This isn’t meant as a party political point but the Labour government has set itself a target of getting 50% of people into University, claiming that in the modern world economy we need an educated workforce. To some extent this is true since every day I study alongside students from China, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Greece, Russia and a whole host of other countries which shows that Brits need to get their smarts up as well. However, the problem lies with how we do this and I believe that we are taking totally the wrong approach.

Sure we need brighter young people but there is no point trying to achieve this by creating more University places since this is way too late. Chinese students doing Maths or Physics at A-Level stage are doing a syllabus which is on a par with our undergrad courses in the same subjects. We are churning out thousands upon thousands of GCSE and A-Level graduates who don’t have the knowledge to compete with their global peers but in the UK we send them to University, give them a degree and tell them that they are the equal of any country’s graduates.

If more money was invested at GCSE and A-Level stage and people were allowed to fail here, then students would have higher expectations and gradually improve rather than the usual cycle of grade inflation we face each year.
Maybe in 10-15 years we will have 50% of young people able to go to University because they have the requisite abilities and possess the logical and reasoning skills to study at this higher level but we are deluding ourselves if we think we have loads of brainy grads just because we farm more people through Universities.

Iain Dale's Downfall

Got bored of revision this afternoon. The subtitling timing isn't perfect as this was my first play with video stuff.

Existentialism

Today Hillary Clinton announced that Pakistan is under attack from 'existential threats'. God help the good people of that far-flung land if Nietzche and Heidegger attack!

Thicko Swarm

I see this morning that all the old polytechnics are celebrating their success at attracting more applicants. This is bad news.
It is bad enough that these silly little further education colleges get the number of students that they normally do but any further rise in applications is going to be made up of a large number of people who are not suited to higher education, should be doing manual or secretarial work and are gonna find themselves doing that in 3 years time with a few fancy letters after their names and £20k in debt.

Good day to bury bad news

So on the day of the shittest budget for 3 generations, the police just happen to announce that all 12 people they arrested in a high profile operation in Greater Manchester are all being released without charge. I guess that won't get much attention then...how lucky..

All hunky-dory then?

The BBC seem eager to paint a rosy picture of today's budget with this puff-piece. What a government briefed, loved up pile of bollocks. According to this, everything is fine as they are hiring some more people to work in the job centre to service all the dole-hounds that this govt is creating every second of every day. Also if you're fired they will help with your mortgage for a couple of months and all will be sunshine and flowers since they're only taxing the 1% of people who have bothered to make some money in this country.

Where's the critical analysis of tax and spend policy? Where is the inciteful criticism of billions of borrowing? Nowhere on the pissing BBC.

Sentencing Policy

Serial sicko John Worboys has been sentenced today and under the terms of this sentence may be eligible for release after just eight years so long as he gives a convincing sob story to the parole board. Whilst it won't make any difference to his victims, might it make sense for the judge to have been a bit innovative and on his release mandated that he should be banned from driving for 10 or 20 years? This would go some fair way to ensuring he won't re-offend as if he is caught driving he can have his parole revoked and sent back to the slammer. Just a thought

No honour

In 1947, the then Labour Chancellor, Hugh Dalton, honourably resigned over a small scale budget leak. Nowadays there seems to be no sense of either propriety or honour with the Chancelloe Alastair Darling pretty much posting the budget to every lobby hack and political correspondent across London.
Today the BBC reports market sensitive information which is bound to impact the share prices of housing companies at the very least but there is no uproar?? In googling for Hugh Dalton's name I also came across this piece by the venerable Iain Dale which echoes (what's the word for the original noise which causes my echo?) my thoughts exactly...
None of this shower are ever likely to resign though so I guess we're just waiting on next May instead!

Guido Slurs

The Daily Telegraph today published a hatchet job on Guido Fawkes and were even so stupid as to out themselves as leftwingers! First they ask the open question about his funding and then later on dismiss people who ask such a question as leftwingers?? Is this not innuendo-laden questioning?

But who exactly is Paul Staines? What makes him so angry? And is his incendiary website funded, as some of his victims like to imply, by a shadowy millionaire intent on overthrowing the Government?

then a few lines later:

Despite innuendo-laden questions about his funding that regularly appear on Left-wing websites, Mr Staines is entirely self-sufficient

Join Jade

I really hope this woman joins Jade Goody, her fellow Max Clifford money making machine.

G20 Rioters

Watching these clips on the Guardian website, it makes me wish that the Police had gone in even heavier on these jobless hippies. They were all out for trouble and sadly only a few of them got a bit of slappy-face from the law. Scabby n'er-do-wells the lot of them.

Derek Draper

After the recent e-mail scandal enveloping Derek 'Dolly' Draper, it is surely time for the massed ranks of Conservative bloggers, and I guess any decent minded people out there to start taking advantage of Amazon.com's book review facility to comment on his crappy self-help book. Mad Mary has already begun under the pseudonym "Kate Garraway's Floppy Knockers" but feel free to continue this theme here.

Spirit of 99

Seeing this article today finally pushed me to start a blog rather than to rant at my PC. I get so sick and tired of sports reporters wheeling out the same old drivel, much of which they have been spoonfed by managers. Spirit of 99? I think all remaining stocks of that particular vintage have been drunk dry by now. Didn't we recall that tiresome old spirit in 2004, 2005, Feb 2007, April 2007 and that's just from the first page of google...
This shit is getting on a par with the Sunday papers when a footballer gets sent off. Every time there is a red card, journos have two choices of cliche - "X sees red as Utd win" or "Red mist descends at stadium x". Every time, its one of these two...