Plumbing the Educational Depths

I thought I should probably write something about conference season. I've been very lax recently and have satisfied my anger at the world with furious note-taking or memo-recording. I suppose I should probably convert some of that diatribe into some internet words…

Nothing new from the Lib Dems or Labour - no surprises from either. The Lib Dems are claiming everything good from the Coalition whilst pretty publicly crapping on their Coalition partners in a desperate attempt to get out of single figures. Oh, and of course banging on about Mansion Taxes and other economically illiterate policies they plan to hold the Tories to ransom over. Labour are still full of themselves and can't remember bankrupting the nation over the last 2 decades. Also, forgive me for not joining the 'oh, isn't Ed Miliwho suddenly very Prime Minister-in-waiting-ey' club. He's still a massive tool. And he still has no policies. Except class envy. That old chestnut. In fact when pressed to say what he might do he has finally owned up to one of the great political white elephants…

Ed maintains that it is stupid for him to tell you what he would do differently because the election isn't for 3 years and we don't know what state the economy will be in. So, just to clarify, because he has no chance of being in power now he will simply bitch about everything the Tories are currently doing whilst providing no tangible alternatives until his 2015 manifesto (which presumably will have to be released the night before the election in case things change).

Yup, he had admitted there is no need for an opposition until election time. Labour may as well head off on a gap yah - nothing to see here, just a bunch of people sitting on green seats whose job is to criticise but definitely not put forward any other ideas.

Actually that's not entirely fair. There is one 'policy', and I use the term vaguely. Let's call it a headline aspiration - it might get a headline and and as there's been no research at all into its viability, not calling it a policy means you can't make a policy U-turn by deciding against it in years to come. Who ever heard of an aspiration U-turn? Anywho, the policy/aspiration is to remember the people that New Labour intentionally forgot - "the other 50%".

Ed is talking here about the other half of the youf population who do not go on to university. You may be old enough to remember Tony Blair setting his wonderfully arbitrary target of 50% of school leavers to go to university. It was not a number arrived at by a clamouring from industry for more media studies graduates, or even more graduates. This was all just a product of class envy. They sold it as 'you can't get a proper job unless you've got a degree like all those posh kids whose parents vote Tory'. What it led to was the uncontrolled increase in Mickey Mouse courses and 'universities' saddling these new graduates with a lot of debt and a useless qualification. I wrote about it a while back here. It totally missed the point of why we taxpayers pay for people to attend university when we don't pay for them to go to Eton. It's a limited pot so let's send the ones who will do the country the most good by being educated a bit more...

Society is broad. The cross section covers all types of people with all types of skills. Some are good at cricket. Some are excellent at kabaddi. There are some gifted painters. Some of this is luck, some of it work, some of it training - nature/nurture. Whatever.

Not all of them are academically gifted. This doesn't mean these types are not clever, though it is certainly true there are also a lot of not clever people in the melting pot. Turn on daytime TV - they tend to be sitting on chat show armchairs screaming at someone with a caption in the bottom corner of the screen along the lines of "I'm throwing out my daughter because she's having a third child by her brother". You know the shows. Remember - one man, one vote. Gotta love democracy. Getting off track…

The point is it was a Labour policy that focused everyone incorrectly on university when it didn't do them or us (John Q. Taxpayer) much good. It was them who forgot the 50% as well as misleading into wasteful courses a good 10-20%. When anyone mentioned that university was perhaps not the best for all involved (taxpayer and student) you were an elitist bastard trying to keep the poor out of the secret garden.

The same is broadly true of secondary education, which is why I for one am delighted by Red Ed's 'idea'. It certainly is about time that we worked out that we can't all be PR men, city bankers and CEOs and that it might be an idea to play to people's strengths rather than patronise them by suggesting academia is the only way forwards. Not just is there not room for everyone to have these jobs, some people will be shit at them - including some who actually do have the jobs I hear you say. For years anyone suggesting offering less academic and more technical courses to those more adept at the latter and less adept at the former was again, you guessed it, elitist right wing scum who was trying to limit the chances of the lower classes by sending them down the mines instead of up to Oxford. Or something like that.

Point is, it's great that the left finally acknowledge that if you take the class envy out of it, academic education beyond 16 isn't for everyone (and probably before 16 for some non-core subjects, though they haven't gone that far). If the last 20 years have shown us anything it is that pushing the academic only route does not raise academic standards and most likely demoralises and devalues the other very viable options. At the very least this has opened up the debate. Like the left finally talking about mass immigration meaning it became ok for anyone on the right to without being branded a racist, we might now get somewhere. For that one thing, I am grateful to Red Ed. There is hope yet in the education system if we are allowed to talk about people not being suited to academia and not being branded as anti-aspirational Nazis. Maybe then we can find suitable education paths for more people and give you an outside chance of your plumber speaking English.

On a side note, and by means of explanation of that last remark I nod my head to the dearth of British people employed in many sectors where they previously dominated - manual and service jobs being the main ones. With a population that is getting shitter at doing things themselves (I read an article recently that put the cost of not being DIY literate at about £150,000 over a lifetime as we 'get a man in' to do jobs our parents and grandparents would knock off in a Sunday afternoon in their 'work jeans') I reckon I'd rather be a master plumber or carpenter than have a social studies degree from the University of Little Crappingdon. Anyway, on that note, I must go - there's a Polish chap at the door here to fix my boiler...

Crowing from the Rooftops: A Moronic Masterclass

OMG. Yup, it has been about 2 months since anything urged me to put pen to internet paper. No recurrence of past transgression or stupidity has incensed me enough to regurgitate my bilious rant, nor has anything new of any real interest happened in my world. Apart from the Olympics. They were quite fun, and very much more than the "potted sports plus athletics'" competition I thought they might appear as.

Certainly there is an element of only watching some sports because they are part of a more important overall national competition. On a side note, who did win the Olympics? If there's a medal table and it's as important as everyone suggests, shouldn't the closing ceremony actually be Barrack Obama being given an enormous gold medal with Wen Jiabao looking glum and ol' DC grinning next to him on the podium (with Boris trying to take his place)? Anyway, there was enough good stuff there in its own right. We shall see if the legacy element is a success if Britain manages to increase not just participation in many of these sports but increase awareness and perhaps give them some more airtime (and with it much-needed TV cash). Bring back Grandstand has probably been the cry from some quarters, though I hear someone is planning to launch a 'minor sports' channel before Christmas.

But that's not the point. That's not why I'm writing. I was going to write that weeks ago but couldn't be arsed. And when you consider it's not ground-breaking or funny, you can probably see why.

No, I'm writing because I just heard Bob 'Mentally Subnormal' Crow trying to defend how a man as rich as he still deserves to live in a council house. He earns over £130,000 a year. That's about 5 times the national average wage. He must have been dropped on his head a lot as a child along with anyone who has ever voted for him or thinks he's a good spokesperson for the working man of the RMT. He thinks council houses shouldn't just be for poor people.

Moron.

They are subsidised by taxpayers to help those who can't afford to rent or buy a home for themselves.

Key phrase - "can't afford". Once you can, join the real world, pay full rent for a house and thank social mobility (or hard work, good genes or rigging union ballot boxes - whatever does it for you) for helping you out of the lower economic echelons.

His defence included the fantastic line "but what would happen if I never had this job, would my wealth come into it then?" When pointed out he does have this job, and it does pay him a fuckload of money, it apparently doesn't matter. Quite the existentialist. Because in another world he may be poor, in this one where he's rich, he can claim the benefits as if he were poor. Brilliant.

It is genuinely amazing he can think like that and not fall down more, or forget to breathe. It strikes me that a man who doesn't see that being more than likely a millionaire and taking subsistence designed to help the needy from the taxpayer is morally wrong is probably not quite there in the head. A man who appears to believe that because he was born there, now he doesn't need the help and another family certainly does (there are waiting lists for council houses), he still is under no obligation to move out. Lobotomised. Has to be something like that.

They should get him checked. Or just put down.

A Timely Ketchup on Recent Events

So it has been rather a while since I put pen to paper. I suppose it is not really that I could find nothing interesting to blog about in the political nanosphere, it is that too much of it falls into the category of 'same shit, different day' and it tires me to drag out a new example of the same argument I (and many others) have already made. I now realise that the hard thing about journalism isn't making current affairs interesting to the public, it is making them seem different to the current affairs you've been spewing out forever.

I could write about banker bashing, but we've been there before. Bottom line we need a thorough look at the regulatory system because it allows far too much shenanigans, but we must realise that the sector as a whole is one of the few areas of world politics and commerce (as if they were that different) where we are still at the top table. Indiscriminately attacking everyone and everything in the sector will only hurt us, especially with the British public's new-found hatred of money and anyone who has it or produces it.

Which I suppose brings me nicely onto the subject of the court of public opinion and its apparent role in people accepting bonuses. I think Stephen Hester (way back) and Bob Diamond (more recently) should have told the Government and the British people to go take a long walk off a short cliff. Their pay packets are none of our business. They are also none of the shareholders' business once they've had their say in agreeing remuneration packets. Ultimately, if Boards fail to include penalty clauses like "If you mismanage the bank so wildly the Government will have to rescue us by buying 80% of our shares, which incidentally will plummet to a tiny fraction of their original worth" then more fool them. Clearly Big Steve came in after the RBS crash and didn't preside over it, but you get the idea.

If they fail to add the clause "If you preside over an illegal rate-fixing PR disaster that you might not technically be incriminated in, but is sufficiently bad for you and for the company that you resign following a huge share price drop", then the CEO is perfectly entitled to walk away with whatever gains he/she can, ill-gotten or otherwise. This is because…wait for it... THEY HAVE A FUCKING CONTRACT. I wrote that in caps so nobody missed the point. The answer to the issue of massive payoffs for failure is not guilting people in the court of public opinion into waiving bonuses or pay to which they are legally entitled. It is getting people to write contracts properly so if the nuclear power plant blows up, the Board can contractually remove the bonus from the outgoing chief exec of Chernobyl.

But I'm not going to go on about that again.

Nor am I going to bang on about Trades Unions striking at the time most likely to screw everyone over despite their already comfortable pay arrangements and constant underperformance. Today, I would clearly be talking about the Public and Commercial Services Union, to whom the UK Border Farce belong. Obviously you know what I think of them, and what I think should happen to them. Not quite Clarkson style execution in front of family members, but not far off. They have no leg to stand on. They are a joke. And they're trying to ruin the Olympics. But I'm not going to bang on about that.

Nor am I going to make yet another comparison between that dark side of the public sector who blackmail the country into paying them bonuses just to go to work, or not even to go to work over the Olympics (as they are contractually obliged to), and the military, who are yet again filling the gap, not just without extra pay, but in many cases, instead of holiday. That would be going over ground we already well know. So I won't bother.

I could express my dismay at the continuation of our farcical judicial system that places the rights of immigrant terrorists and criminals ahead of British, law-abiding taxpayers, with their deference to the most ill thought out piece of legislation ever, the ECHR, but we've been there before.

I could bang on about the Lib Dems with a massive 8% hold on the UK's votes demanding what are, considering the current climate, irrelevant (and poorly thought out) bits of legislation be pushed through, or else they will bring the whole house down as if they were equal partners. Big Dave knows the Lib Dems can't afford to split because from now until 2015 is the last influence on power they are likely to have for a generation, because nobody will ever vote for them now they've had to deal with the realities of actually being in Government. Problem is, Cleggo knows that the 10 point deficit the Tories lag behind Labour also means a snap election would be bad news for them too. They need the next couple of mini-giveaway budgets and they need their European luck to turn.

Who really deeply cares about Lords reform, or realistically when there is only a limited amount of political capital around, about gay marriage? They are both on a list of things that we'd like to do after we stop the world falling apart. This doesn't mean we are evil Lord-loving, gay-hating Tories, it means we understand priorities. As ever, pollsters will be able to tell you that x and y % of the population are on either side of both arguments. What they fail to point out is that neither topic would make the 'top 10 issues that will influence the way you vote' index for more than a handful of people. But we've done that one to death too.

There are a few more things I cannot bring to mind right now, but which I have got very close to writing about before realising I would simply be nudging you, the solitary reader, to a hyperlink to some crap I wrote last year (which I've helpfully done with the hyperlinks above, in case you're really bored). So I'm going to write about a point of minimal political significance but one which has roused me into action after over 2 months off. Yup, it's time to go to town on condiments as you may have guessed from my genuinely brilliant title…

My quarrel is not actually with condiments, but with when I am in restaurants the timing of their appearance on my table of late in comparison to that of my food. Ditto cutlery. It is totally beyond me why when someone takes an order of fish and chips, they wait until they have put the plate in front of you, hot, steamy and asking to be devoured, before asking if you'd like any of the normal accompaniments or even some fighting irons with which to eat. Amazing.

These are people who earn much of their annual wage from tips. And they don't have the foresight to put knives and forks out, or preposition a likely array of condiments before bringing the food out, piping hot. I can imagine how a competent server might deal with this…

Server: "Chef, how long for table 2's fish and chips?"
Chef: "About 5 minutes"
Server: "Right, I may as well bring them their ketchup, vinegar and cutlery now so I stand an outside chance of a tip."

Alas, they instead deliver your food and ask if you would like ketchup with your chips as if they had asked if you would like a toasted sandwich comprising a walnut whip and a paperback copy of the Homer's Iliad. Dumbstruck at your adherence to nutritional form, they wander slowly back to the kitchen to return with some of your requests just after your food has gone cold.

The blame is owned jointly between the serving staff and the manager. And our current educational standards. Oh, looks like we've been here before too..

Malapropistic Misanthropy

As if she hadn't made enough of a tit of herself this week, old Nadine Dorries just showed up on Have I Got News For You looking as smug as she is stupid. She went on to further her intellectual credentials by asserting that the Leveson Inquiry this week had turned out to be "a bit of a damp squid."

Not a damp squib, i.e. a wet charge that fails to explode. No, a wet sea creature. Or just sea creature really, as I imagine most of them would describe themselves as damp at the very least what with their living in the sea and all that.

Moron.

Self-Righteous Poor Girl

So I've been off on holiday, hence the absence. I've waded through the thousands of pleading emails from my fan desperate for my return to the blogosphere (I can't back this up) and I'm finally ready to recommence. Of late I have grown somewhat weary of the domestic news cycle hence the paucity of my posts.

I may be the only person in the country not astonished that politicians talk to the media to get themselves favourable coverage and that the media talk to politicians because they are a source of information, which roughly speaking is their currency.

I'm not suggesting I think all is well in the media or politics garden, but a bit of perspective from time to time would be grand. As I'm sure I've said before, I don't think anyone is surprised that politicians speak to those with vested interests in their policies. Labour meet the unions; Ed Milliwho has meetings with the Bob Crows of this world and then comes out in support of the unions' standpoints against the Government. No-one kicks up a fuss. Whoever is the Government of the day will be courted by those who stand to lose or gain from the decisions they make. Likewise the Government of the day will always court those who they think can deliver them electoral victory, be they individuals, groups of voters, financial backers or the all-powerful media. This is genuinely getting a little boring. There are slightly more interesting things going on.

One of those is not Nadine Dorries attempting to fan the fames of self-implosion of which governing Tory parties are so fond. Who gives a shit if the Prime Minister knows how much a pint of milk is? I don't know (and I tend to buy it in litre flagons), and I earn less that the improbably stupid Dorries. Newsflash: if you're on over £65,000 a year as the lowliest backbenchers are (and under 1/2 what the PM is on), you just put however much milk you want in your trolley/basket (online or actual) and pay for it. It's not a crime. It's just financial security; knowing you have enough in the bank to pay your usual grocery bill. And you have it too, you hypocritical moron.

I for one would love the people making decisions on how to run the country to not fill their heads with so unbelievably insig-fucking-nificant things as the current price of an arbitrary low cost staple. I'm sure they know the stats on food inflation in the country for the last four years and the projections for what future food inflation will do to GDP. This is a relevant thing to fill the space in their heads. They probably have a fair grasp on defence matters and international diplomacy - you know, the stuff we pay them for.

Your average bod who knows the price of milk might need to know that to save a few pence by going to the cheaper store. They probably don't know the relevant food inflation statistics, the current LIBOR or indeed the nuclear launch codes. This is because it is not relevant information for them to have. It is irrelevant. Like you Nadine. So fuck off your high horse and try to fill your clearly empty head with some grown up ideas to justify your (considering your very public demonstration of your unsuitability and under-qualification for it) staggering salary, you idle buffoon.

The pathetic class envy that is being exercised by all and sundry right now you would think the person most likely to win a seat at the next election and be voted unanimous President of the Whole Fucking World would be an out of work plumber from Stepney who left state school (not some poncey private school where you might learn something) at 16 with no GCSEs (he has a degree from the university of life, of course), is salt of the earth, calls a spade a spade, knows Asda's milk is normally cheaper at 50p but Tesco have got an offer on matching that price from their normal 58p - yes, I had to google that, so that's me out of the running) and has a glottal stop to rival Eliza Doolittle's. Just as long as he's not well-educated, he knows some insignificant pub trivia and his family were poor, he'll be an absolute shoe-in.

Arrogant rich boys vs self-righteous poor girl. In our woeful court of public opinion they never stood a chance. Class-based discrimination. Clearly fine as long as you only target the rich - everyone knows that unlike the poor it's their fault their parents have money.

10 O'Clock Livid

Just when you thought nobody would ever beat Question Time's and the Labour Party Conference's joint world record of most illogical borderline mentally subnormal people in one room at a time, along comes 10 O'Clock Live.

Now I quite like the show. As with most British comedy these days you have to stomach the leftist leanings, but it's not all that bad if you can tune out Charlie Brooker into white noise. However, watching the last in the series I recently realised the cause of the Tories' problem at the polls. The people in this country are almost all absolute fucking morons.

David Mitchell was doing his debate bit on 'elitism' when Julia Hartley-Brewer tried to clarify the frankly pitifully poor points of Billy Bragg. Nothing like getting on an ageing relic of a thankfully soon-to-be-forgotten age of British popular music with a miniscule brain to really fill out an academic debate. Anyway, Julia tried to clarify what appeared to be Billy Bragg's main issue - that he didn't like the fact that many people on the front benches went to Oxbridge.

Or as she put it "you think it's a bad thing that all our politicians are really well educated, clever people?" Even after Julia pointed out that she went to a comprehensive and then Oxford based on grades not daddy's fortune demonstrating the latter's improved social accessibility, he still managed to bulldoze through to his stupid summary that he thinks it's bad that well-educated people are all running the country, because no-one else gets a look in. And the audience erupted with applause. Morons. Every fucking one of them.

Presumably they think GDP would be improved if the guy who runs the chip shop was Chancellor and we'd have no awkward extradition issues if your plumber was Home Secretary. Yes, they want a salt of the earth cabinet. No need for intellectual rigour, just guys who have been to the University of Life. They don't get that you want intelligent people in charge who understand what everyone needs (though not necessarily wants), and many of those will also have had good educations. You get to choose if they really understand what you need/want in elections every now and again. But with the whole 650 people in Parliament thing, each representing 70,000 or so people , it's going to be pretty fucking hard getting someone in Parliament who every Tom, Dick or Harry can identify with. I don'y give two fucks if I can identify with a politician. I'd like him of her to justify my vote by making some intelligent decisions.

No applause for Julia's point that we shouldn't be bashing those who are lucky enough to have parents able and willing to pay for their education or those who wish to give that privilege to their children. Leave the privately-educated 7% alone. Concentrate on getting education better for the 93%. No applause. They don't get the issue. They totally miss the point. Again and again. Dave and co must sit on number 10 repeatedly asking "how is this the story they are running with?" They don't get it Dave. I don't think they ever will.

The problem in this country is everyone is thick. Labour worked out how to screw the Tories. Fuck the education system so badly no majority of voters will ever again be clever enough to understand that punishing success rather than aspiring to it does not work. The politics of class envy will get you nowhere.

I think I'm going to move to Canada. I don't know what it's like but there can't be anywhere near as many morons per square mile.

And So I'm Back, From Outer Space...

I'm not dead.

I've been away in deepest darkest Scotland for a couple of weeks and have had to watch budgetary developments et al from afar. I was hoping to be able to blog whilst up there but my wi-fi hopes were somewhat dashed when I produced a new fangled 'credit card' to pay for drinks in a pub and received a look as if I had try to pay with babies' limbs and fairy dust. They don't take plastic, the kind barman spat, suggesting those who wished to pay with this new found wizardry were not the sort who were welcome here. So I didn't bother asking for the wi-fi password.

So I find myself in the familiar territory of waterski-ing behind the news.

45p - Good start but a shame Osborne either didn't have the guts or the bargaining power to go the whole hog. And a shame it won't come into effect until next year (though you can see by giving people a year to defer earnings out of 50p towards 45p it should guarantee a bumper first year of 45p revenue thus 'proving' a point in 2014). It doesn't matter that it makes sense financially, it's bad news to go to 45p PR-wise. It will be bad news again PR-wise (though sensible and encouraging of growth and investment) to drop it to 40p, or indeed the Laffer curve's 38p optimum. It would have been better to get this PR out of the way in a oner (like removing a sticking plaster) 3 years before the election and let the real economics of the decision speak for themselves by election time in generated growth. No surprise the media or their political arm in Westminster are painting it as they are. Ignore and move on.

Granny tax - Old people have done fine from the Coalition - let's not get hung up on having a generous benefit reduced until it falls in line with everyone else. Yes there are poor and needy aged members of society, but not in much greater numbers than elsewhere across the spectrum. Conversely they are in general better off than average. Today's pensioners are the baby boomers. They have enjoyed the massive enrichment of the last 40 years, particularly in terms of home values. They rarely have mortgages and other outgoings are smaller with no small children etc. Time to take a bit of 'pain' and realign to the rest of society. Incidentally, nice to see some (thought the minority) understand this in letters pages across the media.

Child benefit - good to see an effort has been made to taper the issue of the cliff edge benefit drop. This deals with the only important problem - that of someone getting a pay rise which results in a net earnings loss after they become disqualified from child benefit. It doesn't, because it is too costly to do so, deal with the almost irrelevant 'problem' of envy. That is that people who earn £60,000 don't like the idea that they get nothing and 2 people earning £40,000 each still do. My advice: suck it up, big lad. I have banged on about what is 'fair' before in taxation etc. I am willing to say categorically than it is not unfair that if you earn £60,000, you don't get child benefit. Yes it would be nice, but the economy isn't built for that luxury. I find it pathetic that people are still complaining. All they are is upset that someone else got a bigger lolly.

Donorgate (which I assume it is already being called) - who gives a shit? Politicians cannot and should not live in bubbles. They are meant to be lobbied by the people they represent. This includes you, me and Richard Branson if he so wishes. Political parties need funding. They get this from people who think this will buy them influence and people who wish them well. Just like many big businesses will want to donate to Tories who are small Government people, Trades Unions will want to donate to Labour who are big Government people.

Why? They feel those parties better represent their interests. The idea is we get to decide if we like the policies people come up with - it's a democracy, we have elections. If we think our politicians are making bad decisions entirely based upon their donors' wishes, vote them out. I have no issue with who comes to tea with Dave - it's the policies he makes I care about. And whilst we're on the subject, perhaps is it a touch hypocritical of Labour to make a fuss over supposed influence of donors to Tories when their party has actual proven influence of donors? Largest donors to Labour? Trades Unions. Who essentially decided who leads the party - the Trades Unions.

That'll do for now.