It is not known if the author of this BBC article sat the 11-plus, let alone if they passed it. But something seems a little poorly written¹ about it…

Caitriona Ruane’s plans to reform academic selection cannot go ahead without DUP and executive support, Ian Paisley has said.

The first minister said her education proposals were not the basis for a way forward.

Ms Ruane brought her proposals for the future of primary school transfer to the executive amid claims they are unworkable.

The executive meeting ended without a full discussion of the plans.

She brought her proposals for the future of primary school transfer to the executive amid claims they are unworkable.

The full discussion she had hoped for did not take place.

Now, my feelings about Ms Ruane and her fucked up abomination of a lack-of-plan for breaking a working system are well known. And I often repeat them. Much like I repeat lots of things. But is it just me, or is repeating sentences 3 & 4 just a spectacularly lazy way of creating sentences 5 & 6?

Also, the next paragraphs got my goat a little, but for different reasons:

Ms Ruane said there were parties “who were anti-change in relation to education”.

“It is disappointing that colleagues who claimed that they wanted a discussion on the proposals didn’t even engage.

“What happened today was an attempt to frustrate change. I will not be frustrated and I am not demoralised.”

There are people out there who are anti-change in relation to education. In fact, there are a fuck-load of people who are anti-change in relation to education, especially when the changing to hasn’t been published. Plus, when Ms Ruane claims that other people aren’t interested in discussion of options, my irony meter goes way off the scale.

Anyway, who really gives a shit if she gets frustrated, or demoralised. As long as she gets stopped, that’s the main thing…

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¹ - Yes, I know that I’m hardly the one to complain about anything being badly written. But then I’m not being paid to write anything, am I?

I’m a great believer in the wisdom of the Gipper:

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

Unfortunately, time moves on and has made that statement slightly less correct. Most recently, more terrifying words have escaped from the jowls of HM First Lord of the Treasury.

“There are many people who could take over but I think I can steer this economy through difficult times.”

“I have done it before and I can do it again,”

Yes, Brown has indeed steered the economy through difficult times. Unfortunately, he seemed to be steering towards the rocks, what with taking booming tax receipts and borrowing more; what with selling off gold when the price was at an all time low; what with ass fucking the lot of us with penny here, penny there tax increases, before graduating to 12 pence here, 12 pence there tax increases.

I don’t know what’s more terrifying, the thought of Brown in charge of the economy in actual troubled times, or the thought that he actually thinks he’d be good for the economy in such times…

In an episode of Jericho, the residents of the town are surprised to find that they’re the recipients of air dropped aid from China.

Given China’s current performance, perhaps that isn’t so outlandish. Effective military response, over estimating casualties rather than trying to pretend nothing has happened, asking for help from outside; it’s much more ‘US post 9/11′ than Burma, isn’t it.

Speaking of which, how bad does a government have to be for people to consider military action just to get food to those who need it?

It is obviously mean to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. But that doesn’t stop me, especially when the ‘other’ in question is a class-warrior, ‘progressive’ vandal.

Last December, Ms Ruane announced that the test, commonly known as the 11-Plus, would come to an end in 2008.

It is believed that now, the minister could commission new tests which encompass broader educational areas than the current transfer test.

Once again: why get rid of the 11+ when there is nothing to replace it, and certainly not a sniff of anything better to replace it? Unless you’re more concerned by what you’re against (in this instance, quality education that is open to all based upon ability rather than ethnic origin, financial status or political allegiance) than by what you’re for…

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UPDATE: Bloody hell; it’s not often that a man finds himself posting the same things as Samizdata before Samizdata…

Following the BA 777 crash, there’s been a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. What happened? How? Why? Could it happen again? All that good stuff.

One of the odder questions was: did Gordon Brown cause it?

But then, is it really that odd? Anyone who’s seen the movements of the PM on TV will notice that he travels as part of a convoy, to secure the precious man against terrorist attack. Anyone who’s paid attention to the news will know that the terrorist weapon of choice these days is the roadside bomb, which coalition forces try to interrupt with heavy duty jammers.

So, a paranoid man could be forgiven for assuming that part of the convoy contained heavy duty jammers.

And it was also noticed at the time that Gordon Brown’s convoy was passing under the flightpath at the time of the accident. This was used as blogfodder quite a bit; it’s been noticed that Brown has the ability to make any sports team he’s supporting crash and burn, weren’t aircraft the next logical step?

Seems that it was taken most seriously than I’d thought it would be.

The British Airways jet that crashed at Heathrow in January did not suffer from electrical interference, an interim report from crash investigators states.
…
One theory was that radio signals from Gordon Brown’s motorcade interfered with the Boeing 777 which came down on grass at the end of the runway.

Well, that’s the first bit of good news the Brown has had in two months… He didn’t actually crash a plane. Just an economy and a political party….

I’ve been in my current job for a little over a year now, and I’ve learned a few things from it. One of these things is the financial pressure put upon primary health care to ensure that ‘herd immunity’ (ie > 90% uptake) is reached for the childhood immunisations: measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, polio, tetanus, tuberculosis, HIB, pneumococcal, etc, etc. And because of this financial pressure, a fair whack of pressure (in the form of letters, phone calls, face to face conversations and the like) is put on the parents of children who don’t bring their child in for the vaccinations.

Knowing this, I’ll confess to being somewhat less than impressed with these fuckwitted, amoral, statist, condescending proposals.

Tough sanctions are being proposed for parents who refuse routine vaccinations, such as MMR.

In an article for the Fabian Society, leading public health expert Sir Sandy Macara called for child benefit to be linked with vaccination uptake.

And Labour MP Mary Creagh said children should have to prove they are vaccinated before they start school to improve uptake of MMR.

I’ve heard people say that not immunising a child is tantamount to child abuse (and be rightfully told to wise up); I’ve heard people call parents all the names of the day for being too damn lazy to turn up when they say they will. But hearing an MP say that a parent should effectively be criminally punishable (by proxy; a parent can be punished if their child doesn’t attend school, so preventing the child from attending school could come round to the parent) for not immunising their child is possibly the sickest, most disturbing thing I’ve heard in a while.

Dear Ms Creagh, with regard to your comment: “saying to parents your child has a right to live free from vaccine preventable diseases”, I can only quote the late lamented Acidman:

I have just one question: Why is it that the more imaginary “rights” people invent, the less personal freedom I have?

Wind your fucking neck in; if the merits of the arguments and a lot of pressure from family GPs and social care staff can’t convince parents of the need to immunise, then perhaps your case isn’t as strong as it could be. And even if it is, you’ve no right to take a steamroller to the entire nation just to stop the fucking mumps.

Twats.

United win the Premier league, in nail biting fashion.

Ferrari win the GP.

Celtic keep the SPL alive.

Truly, today was a good day for sport…

I think that I may have posted this before, but I can’t be bothered checking. And the wisdom is true enough that it bears repeating.

Men Are Just Happier People

NICKNAMES
If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.
If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla and Four-eyes.

EATING OUT
When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in £20, even though it’s only for £32.50.None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY
A man will pay £2 for a £1 item he needs.
A woman will pay £1 for a £2 item that she doesn’t need but it’s on sale.

BATHROOMS
A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from M&S.
The average number of items in the typical woman’s bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.

ARGUMENTS
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

CATS
Women love cats.
Men say they love cats, but when women aren’t looking, men kick cats.

FUTURE
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, but she does.

DRESSING UP
A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the bins, answer the phone, read a book, and get the post.
A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL
Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING
Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favourite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
A married man should forget his mistakes.
There’s no use in two people remembering the same thing.

There’s been a lot of fuss recently about political families; a lot of politicians put their families on the payroll. And I can see why; it makes sense to have your political office staffed by people who are used to speaking on you behalf and who you can trust implicitly. So I’m not against the practice.

On the other side, there are political spouses out there who keep themselves to themselves, and I’m in favour of that as well. If they’re not employed by the politician, then why is it that they should be victimised just because of who they’re married to?

On the third hand, there’s the political spouses who benefit directly from their political connection, get on the gravy train in a myriad of different ways, and then claim to be simple private citizens when it suits them. And for this, there is one stand-out example: Cherie goddamn Blair.

And lookee, she done got a book out. Which surprises me not a bit, what with her well known habit of trying to get something for nothing…

The bit that gets me is to be found at the bottom of the article, however:

Mr Brown, as the new chancellor, was wrong to announce he was not going to take a salary increase, thereby putting pressure on others to follow suit. “How dare Gordon do that? What did he know about financial commitments? He was a bachelor living on his own in a flat with a small mortgage,” she writes.

How dare anyone make it appear money grabbing for the rest of the pigs to put their nose in the trough?
How dare a brand new chancellor make a comment that could restrain public spending by even a tiny amount?
How dare someone get in the way of C. Blair lining her pockets at our expense?

I’ve no love for Brown, but in this instance he was bang on the money; MPs and ministers were making a very pretty penny then (as they are now) and it’s perfectly imaginable that even a married couple with a few kids could get by on the measly £100k + expenses that a minister got.

What did Brown know about spending commitments? Evidentially a little bit, considering how many he’s lumbered us with over his 11 years in government. But in all honestly, do you think that Cherie has the first clue about living on a damn budget either?

I can’t decide, is she a halfwit, a fuckwit or just a twat?

There are, in this world, a great many things I don’t like. Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, Ugg boots, pink t-shirts, tequila, mushrooms; these things and many more have annoyed me over the years.

Now, I count my opinion rather highly and thusly I’d say that my likes and dislikes could and should be used as a template for an enjoyable life. But, and here’s where it gets sensible, I don’t say that there should be laws put in place to make other people stick to my theories, despite the obvious good sense behind them.

This is because, despite appearances, I’m not a total cock.

Unlike Mr G Ramsay of Shouteyville.

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay says British restaurants should be fined if they serve fruit and vegetables which are not in season.
…
He says it would cut carbon emissions as less food would be imported and also lead to improved standards of cooking.
…
He also said chefs became “lazy” when excited by “frills”, and making out-of-season produce illegal would raise “levels of inspiration”.

“There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only,” he said.

Where to begin with such a fucking stupid suggestion?

For one thing, what Gordon is suggesting is that we cut off one of the few ways for the third world to pull itself out of poverty. The ability of farmers in bits of Africa to produce fruit and vegetables that we want economically when we can’t grow them here is a boon for them. So the next time that Ramsay gets involved with some worthy campaign for poverty reduction, I hope that the BBC talking heads are sensible enough to tell him to shut the fuck up.

For another thing, banning things to increase ‘levels of inspiration’ sounds suspiciously like something that was discredited around the time of the French fucking Revolution, and that was quite some time ago. Best not try and resurrect it just now, eh?

Thirdly, seriously campaigning for stringent laws based on your own stupid ideas is the hight of both stupidity and arrogance. In this country, laws tend not to disappear. Oh, they get amended and generally added to, but they don’t go away. So he’d proposing legislating for the entire future based on a fad that he happens to be profiting from.

I used to think that Ramsay was an entertaining lad. Now I think he’s a total cock, and a rampant statist at that. Not ideal.

The US has, for a great many years, published the pictures of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. Terrorists, murderers, rapists. And yet very few of them have been caught.

Other such campaigns have gone on in other countries, and have crossed borders. For example, one O Bin Laden hasn’t been caught despite six years of having his picture on every TV screen in the world.

Still, sometimes it works.

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble hailed Corliss’s arrest: “Two days ago, this man’s nationality, identity and location were totally unknown. All we had to go by were a series of graphic photographs in which the suspect was seen sexually abusing young children and our confidence that the public and police worldwide would once again respond… That two days later, the primary suspect is now in custody is an outstanding achievement and a credit to the citizens, media and law enforcement worldwide who responded to Interpol’s call.”

In all honesty, this scares the beejaysus out of me. That Interpol can publish a picture around the world and within a week have an arrest is a sign that the world has become too damn small for those of us who are less than convinced that the state is you friend.

It’s always good that there is one less child abuser out on the streets. And if I thought that these powers would only ever be used for catching such people. But I can’t help but think that the politicians will look at these successes and think “Hmm, that looks like both a power grab and a vote winner, let’s get involved.”

So going off the grid, which is something a lot of us would like to do from time to time, is becoming more difficult. Which is less than ideal.

While there are people out there who really don’t like the police, and people who really get irked at low level aircraft operations, this sort of thing is just bang out of order.

A man has been arrested on suspicion of endangering an aircraft after the pilot of a police helicopter was temporarily blinded while at the controls.

The helicopter was helping chase a vehicle in the Lancashire area.

While the pilot was flying over Nelson the beam from a laser pen was shone into his eyes. He could not see and was forced to take evasive action.

The odds of this happening are vanishingly small, and the odds of it happening in a situation where people were in a position that it would cause a crash are even lower. But that there are people who’d try it is plenty sickening.

Because it’s not just a direct strike against the people on the helicopter, it’s a direct strike against random people on the ground who could easily be hit by a tonne of metal and jet fuel heading towards them at a considerable speed.

Oh, and given the basics of ballistics, inertia, flight profiles and the training they try to instil, it’s not that unlikely that an out of control aircraft (helicopters especially) would hit the ground straight ahead of where they were. And to hit someone with a laser pen, your best bet would be directly ahead of them… So Darwin would have a decent chance of making sure that you didn’t do it again…

It’s a very trivial thing, you would think, aiming a laser pen at someone. But sometimes the consequences of it could be somewhat larger than anticipated. And that’s more than a little scary.

I’m fairly dubious about the benefits of this investment conference, for a couple of obvious reasons. One, I don’t think that our particular system of local government has attracted politicians who would be attractive to any sane businessman. Two, some may have noticed that the US economy is less that 100% brilliant at the moment, so massive overseas investment in an expensive tax regime probably isn’t on the cards. And Three, let’s be honest, most of the people on it are just on a junket…

That said, fair play to them, and I hope a couple of decent jobs arrive at the end of it.

Not bloody likely, though, if yer wan is going to attend…

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Irish counterpart Brian Cowen are due to meet at Stormont later, to address a major investment conference.

The leaders will speak to more than 100 US executives who are in Northern Ireland for the two-day conference.

If that doesn’t scare the US businesses away, I don’t know what will…

Come now, this figure has got to be a gross understatement.

One in three employees admits they have been to work with a hangover and more than one in 10 has been drunk at their desk, a study suggests.

Staff said they made mistakes, struggled to concentrate and had to go home early as a result of drinking.

I want to know where all these millions of folk who’ve never turned up to work with a hangover are hiding, because in every job I’ve ever been in the figure has been well over 50%. And over the third have turned up still a little tipsy.

Not that I think that’s necessarily a bad thing; as long as you can do the job still why would it matter if you were a little baked. Or, for that matter, stoned. Or in a mood, or feeling happy, or anything like that.

I do, however, think that something is affecting the ability of one Prof Cooper to do his job without being daft.

Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at Lancaster University, said excessive drinking was a manifestation of stress, and it was endemic in certain industries.
…
“It’s the jobs where there is most stress - long hours, high expectations, short-term contracts and bad management - where you get the most excessive drinking.”

Professor Cooper said people drank to cope with stress.

“Employers need to change the culture of long hours. More flexible working is needed and employers need to offer more healthy options such as more working from home.

So he looks at a fact (people like a drink, and always have done) and extrapolates from that that employers must bend over backwards to make work less like work, and less of it. I assume he’s also advocating less in the way of wages to go with the less work, but that’s not made clear in the article…

In related news, I was delighted to hear on local radio the day before yesterday the esteemed MLA with responsibility for the DHSSPS informing us that a bottle of beer is now cheaper in supermarkets than bottled water. I, for one, am very interested in this and keen to hear his plans for dealing with the scourge of hideously expensive bottled water. Because the problem with his statement isn’t that beer is cheap, it’s that people will happily pay as much as they do for water when the stuff coming out of the tap is so damn cheap…

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that the UK is fucking bonkers about CCTV.

Have a look at a new bus; you’ll see a camera looking forward, one looking back, one looking at people as they get on and one looking at people as they sit down.

Walk down any High Street and you’ll see literally hundreds; every shop will have two covering each door (one inside and one outside) and there’ll be others randomly dotted about.

Actually walk into a shop, and you’ll be recorded a dozen times between walking in and walking out.

And what do these cameras cost. There’s a dollar value, that of the hardware and the people to run it. That’s bound to be in the hundreds of millions of pounds, nationwide. But there’s also the less easily calculated cost to our civil liberties. We don’t have any privacy once we leave our front door, because there are so many cameras watching our every move. From private ones covering houses, through private ones covering businesses, to public ones covering open spaces, we’re recorded hundreds of times a day.

Obviously, there must be a real, discernible benefit to this. There’d need to be, given the costs.

Apparently not.

Huge investment in closed-circuit TV technology has failed to cut UK crime, a senior police officer has warned.

Det Ch Insp Mick Neville said the system was an “utter fiasco” - with only 3% of London’s street robberies being solved using security cameras.

Although Britain had more cameras than any other European country, he said “no thought” had gone into how to use them.

Det Ch Insp Neville heads a unit which is piloting a new database to track offenders using CCTV.

Speaking at the Security Document World Conference in London, Det Ch Insp Neville, the head of the Met’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido), said one of the problems was that criminals were not afraid of cameras.

Typically, the problem (that CCTV isn’t working, either as a deterrent nor as an effective way to catch criminals after their crime) isn’t going to be dealt with head on. No, the Metropolitan Police’s Viido team will instead spend more money, to make the problem bigger, flasher and much more expensive. Without, y’know, fixing the damn problem. It’s the Max Power way.

Max: Kids, there’s three ways to do things! The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!
Bart: Isn’t that the wrong way??
Max: Yeah, but faster!

Dear Government: if CCTV works, then by all means you have an argument for keeping it. But it doesn’t, so please wasting quite so much of my money on it. Thank you.

Following on from the tremendous drubbing handed to him last week, you would have thought that Gordon Brown would have sat back, thought about some of the little mistakes that he’s made, and reconsidered. Perhaps, although this isn’t the only possible option, he could have reconsidered the way that he’s raising taxes on just about everything just as people are feeling something of a pinch because of larger economic problems.

Apparently not.

Trials of a scheme to tax householders who throw away too much rubbish are to forge ahead, Downing Street has said.

It had been reported that Gordon Brown was planning to scrap the policy after Labour’s disastrous showing in the local elections in England and Wales.

Not only is the dozy fucker not reconsidering opening new holes in the wallets of the public, he’s also planning to open this holes in a way that requires massive (and massively invasive) new regulation. And people tend to get somewhat tetchy about being told by busybody local councils that they’ve to pay extra for a service that they’ve already paid for, so that’ll hardly increase his popularity.

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few days about Gordon’s future. I think that it’s pretty bleak, but he’ll be around for a little while yet. Because I can’t imagine too many people queuing up to try and fix his mess before a general election… The front benches of Parliament are full of daft people, but there’re can’t be too many that daft. It’d be political suicide…

Over the years, I’ve belittled the occasional Apple fanboy trend. I don’t get it, and I don’t get the culture of lying prostrate, waiting for the next nugget of overpriced shit to fall from the arse of Steve Jobs.

That said, I’ve previously acknowledged that I’ve been a little fanboyish over Nokia in the past. But that’s over, for there is now something else that I’ve realised I may be spending money on a little too consistently…

And taken on a Sony camera too…

D’ye think that there may be one too many Sony products in there, by any chance?

Bother. It would appear that, on waking up this morning, I was no longer in my mid-twenties.

See, a little birdie told me the following:

So, what wonderful news do they give you on reaching this milestone? What new insights do you obtain, what wisdom is shared?

Diddly fuck, that’s what. Nothing new. It would appear that you’re expected to continue on in your late twenties much as you did in your mid twenties. Oh well.

On a related note: Happy Star Wars Day to you.

Well, this just makes me happy happy joy joy.

Over 610 civil servants at HMRC have been disciplined or dismissed for inappropriately accessing tax records since the department was formed by the merger of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue three years ago.

Refreshingly, none have been caught reading HMRC personnel files, though more than 600 have been caught snooping on UK citizens’ tax records.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s not too much less than one per working day. And those are the ones that were caught… How many more got away with a sneaky peek?

And there’s been more than a few of these little transgressions in the last few months. You know, since the little incident where half the country’s personal details were misplaced by Her Majesty’s Revenue And Customs.

So that lesson sank in well, didn’t it? Boy, haven’t the civil service shown that they can be trusted to learn from their mistakes and keep our details secure? Hasn’t the government shown effectively that they should be allowed to put all out details together in a nice, shiny, single, accessible database for the ID card?

Or as I’ve always said: they done fucked up, and they’ll continue to fuck up because, organisationally, they have nothing to lose.

Plus ça change…

Hoo-fuken-ray. Boris is now London mayor.

As importantly, Ken ‘Bastarding’ Livingstone is not.

This pleases me greatly, and I shall have a tasty beverage to celebrate, as the new mayor advised in his victory speech.

“Let’s get cracking tomorrow, but let’s have a drink tonight”

linked from Guido’s place