School -eughhh!

Schooling very much in the news at present - particularly as the new Prime Minister  has nailed her colours to the mast of grammar schools.  At the risk of appearing to be reactionary, can I suggest that our attitude to education is, and to an extent always has been based on a false premise - that children want to learn?  Now, many if not most of them do, but as any schoolteacher will tell you, there are those who simply have no interest in learning - at least, not in learning what the school wants to teach them. These are the disruptive pupils who don't want to be there, and are simply getting through the day as best they can waiting to be able to go back home.  So, are we simply wasting everybody's time by forcing them to attend school?  Many of them are smart kids who are well capable of making their way in the world without any formal education - and some may come to education later in life.  Not sure our "one size fits all" attitude to schooling really suits those at either of the extreme ends of the intellectual spectrum, and if we're going down the grammar school line for those at the top end, what about those at the bottom end?

Computer says...

I'm old enough to remember a world without computers, and very definitely without the internet.  So perhaps as a result I am in awe of what computers can do but equally very cautious of placing any blind reliance on them to get the job done. And every now and again something happens which reinforces that belief.  Like the story of the flight from Sydney which was scheduled to go to Malaysia, but thanks to an incorrect computer input ended up in Melbourne.  A good example of what we used to refer to as GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.

Here we go again!

Certain topics keep cropping up according to the time of year.  It's back-to-school time, so once again we have stories of head teachers acting like Little Hitlers and sending pupils home for breaches of the school uniform code.  There are good reasons for having a uniform code but some head teachers simply see it as yet another excuse to throw their weight around.  Apparently there's a school in Margate where no fewer than 70 pupils have been refused admission in the first two days of term for wearing the wrong sort of shoes or trousers or such.  I've said it before and I'll say ir again - schools are for teaching.  Does the fact that I am wearing trainers in any way affect my ability to learn?  By all means send me home at the end of the day with a note and give my parents a couple of weeks to find me some proper shoes, but otherwise get on with your job!

Round and round...

In parts of Cornwall, there is a tradition of building roundhouses - we stayed in one on a holiday many years ago.  The tradition comes from the Celts, who believed that the Devil hid up corners.  So - no corners, nowhere for the Devil to hide.

Strewth!

Did you know we had a parliamentary sleaze watchdog? No, me neither.  His (actually I think it's currently a her) official title is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and is in charge of regulating "MPs conduct and propriety".  Lovely word - propriety.  It's the noun derived from the adjective proper, and therefore means that which is proper.  Problem of course, as with all such concepts is that what I consider proper and what you consider proper may differ, so it's a subjective notion.  Which brings us to Mr Vaz, a Labour MP who has apparently been indulging in homosexual activity in the privacy of his own home with what used to be called "rent boys".  Note that it was in private, and we only know about it as a result of a Sunday newspaper "sting" operation,  The Commissioner may well now have to decide if that is "proper" behaviour for an MP.  Good luck with that!

Curate's egg...

So - quick thought on the BBC's sitcom "reinventions":-

• Are You Being Served - no, waste of time.  Just a pale reflection of the original.
• Porridge - yes. this could fly.  Updated, and turned the old idea upside down, with a younger protagonist and an older sidekick,  Shows promise.
• Goodnight Sweetheart - not so much a remake, more a continuation and if you were a fan of the original, you'll like this one.
• Young Hyacinth - not sure.  Don't think these "before they were famous" programmes often work, and can't see this one having a future.

So, two possibles out of four - not bad I suppose.

Ooh - that's a good idea!

I suppose if you want to encapsulate just what is wrong with Jeremy Corbyn (always presuming you think there is anything wrong with him) you need look no further than this idea of his that popping down the pub after work with your workmates for a quick drink (or two) before going home should be outlawed because it discriminates against mothers who want to get home to their kids.  So what exactly does this tell us about him?  That he's a thinker with no regard for the practicalities of his thoughts.  That he believes a good idea is sufficient unto itself irrespective of whether or not it could ever be put into effect.  Or.....  the more scary notion is that he sees a future where people do as the Government (or perhaps just Jeremy) tell them to.  This is the future of the secret police, of people informing on each other, an Orwellian future where the idea of going down the pub after work just wouldn't occur to you, because you have been brought up (brainwashed?) not to think like that.  Either way, he's not a man I would want running the country.

No fair???

A review of parliamentary boundaries, which has been ongoing for some time now, is due to report shortly.  It will reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and redraw the constituencies so that, as nearly as possible, each constituency has the same number of potential voters, and so each vote is "worth" the same.  How could you possibly argue against that?  And yet, just about everybody other than the Conservatives are doing so.  An analysis of what is likely to happen shows that of the 50 seats which will disappear altogether, 10 to 15 will be Tory seats, but 25 to 30 will be Labour, and as a result of the redrawing of constituency boundaries many reasonably safe Labour seats are likely to  become marginal.  So not surprisingly Labour are having a moan.  Of course. what they fail to acknowledge is that for some quarter of a century, they have had a built-in advantage at every general election in that a Labour vote has been "worth" considerably more than a Conservative one.  What goes around, comes around, folks.

Huh???

Struggling to see how the line "I have more roots than Kunta Kinte" which was apparently said by a character in Coronation Street the other day, is racist.  A lot of people have taken objection to it on that ground and Ofcom is looking into it.  As far as I can see, the only reason it could be considered racist is on the basis that Kunta Kinte (who by the way was a completely fictitious character in another TV series) was a black man.  And presumably, there are those who consider that making a joke (or a pun, or whatever you want to call it) about a black man is racist.  The question is - should we really be taking such people seriously? And by the way - how on earth did the original writers and producers get away with the name Kunta Kinte?

Tricky....

Can the Prime Minister invoke Article 50 (see post dated 6th July) without parliamentary approval?  Well, yes, probably so.  The "royal prerogative" (by which the Government exercises authority from the days when the monarch could do what they liked, simply because they were the monarch) covers the conduct of treaties and almost certainly covers this point.  So, she can, but should she?  Ah, that's a different question. There are certainly calls for her not to proceed without a parliamentary vote, but the problem is that as far as we know, the majority of MPs are opposed to Brexit, and she may well struggle to get their approval for such a move.  It's a bit "devil and the deep blue sea" stuff, isn't it?