TEACHERS STRIKE IS GOOD FOR STUDENTS.

Today's news is full of stories about Michael Gove, the Education Secreatry, warning tachers not to take part in the planned public sector strikes next Thursday. He apparently thinks that striking will cause the public to lose respect for them.

What world does Herr Gove inhabit ? When I was a child, teachers actually cared about their students; they saw their occupation as a vocation and worked for decades in the same place, happy in the knowledge that they were imparting genuine education to their charges.

Today, far too many teachers are motivated not by vocation but either by money or by the old adage 'those that can, do, those that can't teach'. They are also hideously handicapped by an imposed curriculum that gives far more credence to nonsensical rubbish such as 'citizenship' and 'PSE' than it does to proper subjects. They teach 'Equality and diversity' rather than Physics and Chemistry but, of course, the latter is far easier as it's really just a matter of sociological claptrap; Physics and Chemistry require the teacher to have some genuine education of their own.

If I was Gove, I'd be jumping for joy that the teachers were going to strike, and just a bit sorry that they hadn't chosen a more helpful time of the year. As itr is, a little friend of mine has already told me that next week she's on 'work experience' (at 15) and the following 2 weeks she's trying out the next year's timetable. Why it should be necessary to 'try out' a timetable for 2 weeks is beyond me - we never did when I was at school and I don't recall ever landing up in second year French when I should have been in third year English. This seems to me like teachers creating reasons for not actually doing their jobs. Whatever, my young friend will suffer not a jot by the intended strike and may well benefit, as she'll quite probably end up in the company of adults who'll teach her far more than any school ma'am is capable of.

Gove is an idiot. He always has been, hide bound as he is by political doctrine and motivation. He has no real ideas about education, any more than have dozens of other Education Secreataries over the years; the only one I have any respect for is Estelle Morris, but only because she recognized her shortcomings and resigned, something previously unheard of amongst the political fraternity. The rest have been a joke, successively trying to please all points of view and utterly destroying our schools and university system in the process. We now have the least well educated people in the developed world thanks to decades of government meddling, cant and target setting, all supported, I might add, by the teaching unions.

Cameron talks of a 'broken society'; he supports all manner of left wing policies aimed at 'helping' families' and young people. Doesn't this moron understand that 'he does best who helps himself' ? What is needed is an education system that recognizes the different abilities of children and allows them to develop in their own way, with proper support, not a system that insists on everyone achieving certain numbers of and grades in specific exams, and then trotting off to 'Uni' to do useless degrees in colleges that used to be the local Technical Colleges awarding HND's and the like.

Let the teachers go on strike, they will only hurt themselves. Then sack the lot and start again.

WHO KNOWS BEST - CAMERON OR THE GENERALS ?

There are days when I truly believe we live in a dictatorship.

Today, Our Beloved Leader has been quoted as criticising our military leadership with a comment "There are moments when I wake up and read the newspapers and think, 'I tell you what, you do the fighting and I'll do the talking'."

As a statement of dictatorial arrogance this is extraordinarily outstanding. Cameron has absolutely no experience of military life; he knows nothing of real operational issues in any of the forces and can have no understanding of the logistical demands of warfare. The people he is taking issue with are senior officers in the services who do have such experience, knowledge and understanding. Cameron, it seems, is choosing to ignore their expert advice as it conflicts with his political aims to appear to be a leader of world standing saving us all from nasty dictators, while also getting re-elected through impossible pledges such as reducing costs and taxes, increasing life expectancy, making the trains run on time, and bringing Elvis back to life.

As our elected representative, Cameron has a constitutional duty to take proper account of the advice given to him; if he chooses to ignore such advice, the consequences are entirely his responsibility. If this man is so arrogant as to believe that he knows better than Generals, Admirals and Air Marshalls, he's a better man than I. He's also not too many steps removed from Mubarak, Gadaffi, and Assad, not to mention Stalin, Mao and Hitler; he's adopting a dictatorial stance that cannot be justified and will eventually lead to  disaster.

His comments bring us ever closer to Dictatorship.

FIFA : BUSINESS AS USUAL.

Following the previous shenanigans at FIFA that culminated in the unopposed re-election of Sepp Blatter, this unaccountable and utterly corrupt organisation continues to amaze.

Today, Jack Warner, vice president but currently suspended pending an enquiry into bribery allegations, has resigned. As a consequence, FIFA has terminated its investigation into Warner's activities and say that 'the presumption of innocence is maintained'.

How can this be ? As long as these allegations remained uninvestigated, both FIFA and Warner remain suspect; why should his resignation bring enquiries to an end ? FIFA is an organisation that has many questions to answer and that many people see as simply being a 'gravy train' for its members; surely, it is in its own interests to continue this investigation to the bitter end, in order to demonstrate that it has a desire to prove that it is not.

Once agian, FIFA and Blatter have merely shown how morally bankrupt they are.

PENSION AGE : WOMEN HAVE NO CASE.

My heart bleeds for the poor women who are now complaining so bitterly about having their pension age equalised with that of men by 2020.

For decades, women have been able to retire and receive a state pension 5 years earlier than their male counterparts. Historically, men have worked many more years, retired later and had shorter lives; no one made a fuss or complained that this was unfair. With women, however, it is different. Any change which removes some inbuilt privilege is resisted; hordes turn out to complain about the 'unfairness' being visited upon them and politicians quake. Whatever we do, we mustn't upset the female vote.

What rubbish. Let's have a bit of equality and fairness for the men, just for a change.

EXAM GRADE MADNESS.

The 'AQA' an exam-setting body, has said that it is planning to intrduce a new 'Super A star' grade to recognise the performance of particularly able students.

When I was at school, the grades were A to E for pass, and F to H for fail. Now we shy away from even referring to failure and seem to have lost the appetite for grading students sensibly. We give them 'projected' grades long before their exams and even 'target' grades throughout their school lives, effectively pigeon-holing them in a way that was never done in the past. Again, when I was at school, an 'A' grade was the aspiration of all, now the children aspire only to meet the target set for them by their teachers - what sort of lunacy is this ? We heap pressure on them in ways never thought of when I was a child. Pupils are even made to sit sub-standard exams, in which the highest attainable grade is a 'C', so as not to put them off by giving them the real exam which they might struggle at.

All this nonsense is simply to avoid facing the fact that some children have different abilities to others, and that some will inevitably do worse at certain subjects than others. Why can't we just admit this fact and work from there ? Rather than do this, we continually inflate the top of the grade scale, first with 'A stars' and now with 'Super A stars'. Logically, we should be looking at a return to the former system, in which top performers gained an 'A' and the grades then descended through 'B' to 'F' and beyond but no, this would cause distress to those awarded the lowest grades so we keep the myth that every 'F' has the same value and, instead, extend the top end of the scale.

I know 1984 has come and gone long ago, but not even George Orwell could have imagined this type of madness.

HAIRSTYLE IS A CHOICE, NOT A RIGHT.

A school in the area in which I used to live, St Gregory's in Kenton, Harrow, has been judged to have discriminated against a boy due to his hair style.

The school has a dress code that includes not allowing certain hairstyles. The boy, apparently from an 'ethnic' background, has a hairstyle that the school does not permit and would not change it; consequently, he was refused a place. The matter went to court and now judges have decided that the school's position is "not unlawful in itself, but should have taken into account the individual pupil's family tradition". It would seem that the boy has a right to his hairstyle, enshrined in law.

This is sheer bunkum. If a child is from a family of naturists, should he or she be allowed to attend school naked ? Should they be allowed to wear jeans and tee-shirts because they are Americans ? If the family tradition is for arranged marriage at 12, should we allow that too ? We fall over ourselves to maintain societal differences, while ignoring the critical need to create a society that sees itself as a single entity. The boy in question should be, and is, perfectly free to do what he likes, within the law, while he's at home; while at school, and later at work, he should be required to conform to the rules that are the traditions of THIS country, not some homeland from which his family have migrated. Hairstyle is a choice, not a right.

FATHERS ARE NOT ALL BAD.

David Cameron has, reportedly, penned an article in today's 'Sunday Telegraph' in which he condemns those he tersm 'runaway dads'. He believes that such individuals should be stigmatised by Society as it is simply not acceptable for single mothers to be left to bring up children on their own.

On one level, Cameron is certainly correct but there can be little doubt that he has also shown himself, yet again, to be horribly divorced from the Society that most of us live in. Of course, there are men who fail to act responsibly and desert their children, but there are also women whose behaviour is such as to leave them uncertain who the father of their child might be; it is not uncommon, in the real world, for some such women to accumulate several children by several different men without even being sure who the men are. Some women (not just men) are unfaithful to their partners and the resultant children may not even be aware of their true parentage; when the sinned-against partner discovers the true, the true father may have disappeared from the scene without knowing that he has a child. In a Society in which marriage is no longer the universal bond it once was, when relationships break down the parties inevitably go their separate ways, often with great acrimony; some mothers may no longer wish their former partners to have any part in their childrens' lives. Indeed, some families may now have such a confused mixture of children and relationships that trying to determe who should bear ultimate responsibility for them may be not just be difficult but might also be highly damaging to the family group.

Men have already become the downtrodden element in our modern world. They are vilified at every turn; they are discriminated against as 'positive discrimination' is brought to bear for women. Many men are frightened of being seen with small children and they are viewed with suspicion whenever they undertake activities with children of any age. Even the laws have been amended to make it easier for women to cry 'Rape' and gain a conviction, notwithstanding their drunkeness and debauched behaviour. Now Cameron wants to introduce yet another stick with which to beat us.

Cameron and his like live in a world of tradition in which marriage and 2.4 children is not just the norm but is almost mandatory. While these types look to condemn those who are not "PLU" (People Like Us), they have also overseen changes to our Society which have seen marriage downgraded and aligned with 'civil partnerships' for homosexuals; they approve the spending of substantial sums on free fertility treatments for all and sundry, rather than point out that having babies is not a right, it's a responsibility. They've introduced ludicrous benefits and advantages for unmarried mothers and, in particular, for teenage single mothers that have surely encouraged some young girls to see pregnancy as a means to gain independence from their parents. They have done little to really track down errant fathers and, in this respect, are far less effective than were the Parish officials of 200 years ago.

Another aspect that Cameron seems to have forgotten is that in some cultures, mens' attitude to fatherhood is very different to that of our indigenous western population; given the propensity of the courts to interpret human rights and anti-discrimination legislation in some very odd ways, Cameron's position could easily be seen as discriminatory towards such communities, rightly or wrongly.

Before he condemns 'runaway fathers' Cameron needs to look again at the Society in which we now live. He needs to acknowledge the mess that it is and take steps to turn the clock back to a more ordered and responsible time. In short, he needs to go back to the drawing board.

WHO NEEDS WEEKLY WASTE COLLECTIONS ? NOT I !

It's reported today that the Government is back-tracking on its earlier promise to reinstate weekly household waste collections. This is, clearly, yet another example of this Government undertaking a massive 'u-turn', but one has to ask why they made the committment in the first place.

I have never filled my standard size 'black bin' with ordinary household waste. Recycling arrangements mean that paper, cardboard, plastics, glass and cans are all collected separately, along with garden waste, with collections being on alternate weeks - week 1 is the black bin, week 2 is everything else. Additionally, green kitchen waste can be disposed of with the garden waste, or composted, leaving very little that has nowhere to go other than in the black bin. I could probably survive quite well with 2 MONTHLY collections and, for the life of me, I fail to see why even families of 5, 6, or more, can't manage their waste within a 2 week cycle. In my borough, larger familes can ask for a larger bin, too, so why they should have a problem is beyond me. Yes, some waste may begin to decompose and smell but, wrapped in a plastic bag and enclosed in the lidded plastic bin, that really shouldn't be an issue.

To me, the problem is a simple one. Too many people buy too much convenience food, and other items, all prepackaged in plastic and cardboard, and can't be bothered with separating the components; additionally, we waste far too much cooked food partly due to the prepackaged stuff usually being in specific quantities that may not be appropriate for our individual needs. Families with babies use vast quantities of 'disposable' nappies which aren't truly 'disposable' at all - they all end up in the balck bin.

When I was a child, the dustman used to walk through the house to collect the metal dusbin from the back garden, carried it through to empty into the dustcart, and then returned it from whence it had come. My family of 4 had one dustbin, significantly smaller in volume than today's black bins, and all the waste, including papers, cardboard, cans etc., went in it, and yet I never recall there being a problem. Even in those distant days, much of the fresh kitchen waste - potato peelings or dodgy cabbage leaves - went on dad's compost heap and I don't recall the dustbin ever overflowing. Yes, the collections were weekly, but all the different types of waste were collected at the same time, with modern recycling not yet invented.

It seems that the passage of time has resulted in a 'convenience world' in which everything has to be made as simple as possible, one in which individuals have to do as little as possible while the state, in all its guises, services our every whim. In truth, it's time the state, and that really means the sensible but silent majority,

fought back.

TIME TO BATH WITH A FRIEND.

After one of the coldest winters in recent times, we are now facing drought in eastern England. Not so long ago, it was floods in both the south-west and north-west and one might be excused for wondering how we can journey so easily and swiftly from flood to drought, though it will take someone smarter than I to explain that one.

Today's announcement from Severn Trent Water that restrictions may have to be brought in if there is no substantial rain in the near future is hardly unexpected but it is a harsh reminder of more difficult times ahead. This spring has seen rainfall at little more than a fifth of average levels in many places and, with some water companies still failing to achieve leakage reduction targets, levels of underground reserves are becoming dangerously low. Hosepipe bans seem inevitable, and other restrictions may also have to be introduced as we struggle to cope.

How this situation can arise is one of the mysteries of the modern world. Britain is an island surrounded by water and fish and built on coal, and yet our fishing industry has all but died, we have regular warnings of drought, and our fuel costs are soaring. Only incompetence of an enormous magnitude could have achieved such a triumph of disaster in the face of plenty.

Of course, many experts will be trotted out to tell us that the latest water shortages are a consequence of 'global warming', while the likes of Nigel Lawson will tell us that it's nothing of the sort. Government ministers will make earnest pronouncements and the water companies will be told that 'something must be done', though nothing meaningful will be. Water prices will rise as the companies tell us that they need to put more investment into their infrastructures and next year, or the years after, there will still be drought.

Surrounded as we are by incompetent politicians and companies whose first duty is to their shareholders, there seems little chance of respite. Batten down the hatches, stop flushing, bath with a friend and do the washing in the used bath-water - wartime, all over again.

ROWAN WILLIAMS : A TROUBLESOME PRIEST GONE TOO FAR.

The 'Bearded Wonder' that is Rowan Williams (I always think Atkinson), our Archbishop of Canterbury, is, apparently, unhappy with the Government. He has put his name to an article in the left-wing magazine, 'The New Statesman' that criticises the Government's approach to the welfare state, accusing it of implementing changes that were not in any manifesto and that are causing great concern to the population in general. One of his points is that :

"the comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates. The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument."

To me, and I freely admit that I am rather too old to be directly involved in the education system, this statement is pure drivel. The previous Government made an assortment of changes to the education system that the current lot seem to be doing no more than accelerating. The issues involved have been known about for many years and have crossed at least 2, if not 3, general elections. Where the 'anxiety and anger' is, I have yet to discover, as friends and family who have children at school seem quite relaxed about the situation, if they're even aware of it.

Governments always change things; they fiddle in order to make their mark, usually to no effect though occasionally they do make a difference. The current Government has no choice but to pull back on the services it provides directly, such as health, welfare and education, due to the profligacy of the previous incumbents and the inherent lack of dynamism in the UK economy. Archbishop Williams, as a socialist, wants to see the Government supporting every lost cause and every element of life, while taking all responsibility away from families and parents in order to ensure that everyone is 'saved'. In following this line, he would deny everyone the right to any self-determination, as the State, and people like himself, obviously know better than we do and can rightly tell us how to live our lives; at the same time, he would have the State spend vast amounts of money that it does not have. 

Williams gives no suggestions as to how the Government should make good the vast overspending of our current national budget without reducing spending on public services; he simply criticises, in somewhat oblique and opaque language, the Government's actions. He fails to acknowledge, in any way, that our country is, and has been, living beyond its means for many years, even decades, and that the chickens are finally coming home to roost. In short, the man is totally blinkered by his own privileged and protected environment.

As is usual with the deeply socialist Archbishop, he uses 20 words when 1 would do; his language is often difficult, if not impenetrable. He is, after all, a man of 'immense intellect' who understands much more than do ordinary folk, or so goes the mantra attaching to him. The truth is that this man is someone who is blinded by his perception of his own position, importance and insight; he sees himself as a purveyor of hugely important truths that only he perceives.

The truth is that this churchman is a fool. 841 years ago, Thomas A'Beckett fell out with his King and the King, Henry II, famously called for someone to 'rid me of this troublesome priest'. Today we no longer have an all-powerful monarch who can call for such action nor do we have readily available knights who will carry out such tasks, but Williams could still find himself shunted towards early retirement if he's not careful. He is a man who knows little of the real world, having spent most of his pre-Archbishopric life in academia; his only other experience seems to have been 3 years curacy almost 30 years ago. He may well be a great academic, but that is no excuse for making public pronouncements about matters on which he should keep his own counsel.

David Cameron has let it be known that the Archbishop is well within his rights to voice his opinions but that he, Cameron, does not agree with them; Cameron is doing no more than being polite and diplomatic. Williams is stepping into clear political territory and should not do so; he is the voice of the nation's spirtitual and religious thoughts, not of its political views. As such, Archbishop Williams should be encouraging his flock to do what they can to accept and 'embrace' the inevitable hardships that are coming, not trying to stir up dissent. The man is a walking disaster and should never have been appointed; anyone with half a brain knew that back in 2002 but now can only watch the consequential mess unfold.

Sadly, in these enlightened days, no one can rid us of this troublesome priest; we're lumbered with him for a good few years yet.

FIFA DESCENDS FURTHER INTO THE PIT.

Despite the efforts of the Football Association and their Scottish allies, FIFA duly went ahead with the coronation of their discredited President yesterday. Indeed, from odd news clips broadcast on the BBC, it seems that not only was there little support for the opponents of Sepp Blatter but several FIFA representatives, from such mighty footballing nations as Cyprus, openly sneered at the efforts to delay the election until the current crop of corruption allegations have been properly investigated.

Blatter has promised to bring about a range of reforms during his new term in charge, but history suggests little will really change. Blatter will continue to enjoy the status of an international leader, trotting around the world and being feted by all those desirous of earning his favour, and the gravy train will roll on. Those who already enjoy the largesse that membership of this organisation brings will hardly be enthusiastic in bringing about any changes that will reduce their benefits, and corruption will remain rife.

The FA will probably argue that it's better to try to reform FIFA from within than from without, but this is nonsense; FIFA is irredeemable and the only honest action would be to withdraw entirely. In due course, other major footballing nations would follow and FIFA would be left with a rump of countries that have little footballing heritage. That this scenario is unlikely is obvious; the FA doesn't have the bottle to act in any serious way and we can look forward to a repeat of the recent events in 4 years time, when FIFA is called upon to elect Blatter yet again or, failing that, his annointed successor, unopposed.