Sunday 8 August 2010

The Amusing Truth About Education

It's probably worth enjoying this again today because the loonies are no longer in charge of the asylum, apparently - since the election.



If the Goves of this world really can't create a way of honestly educating this nation's young then we really are finished.

As this bit of classic comedy demonstrates, all Gove needs to do is, to put it simply, do it! What "it" is is entirely up to him.

But whether the prime minister, or anyone else for that matter, likes it or not, education is the real future of this country - and decontaminating it from years of disastrous socialist dogma must be the first port of call.

If you disagree, then you are [probably] a socialist and you either are just being typically typecast: dull, hysterical and/or dishonest. Or you're just trying to mix things up abit. Pray for you that it's not the latter, because I can get very cranky (!)

Friday 6 August 2010

Labour Leadership Election? A Futile Displacement Acitivity

Jeff Randall typically has come up with the best opinion piece so far about the total dearth of quality, both in terms of its tainted, lightweight candidates and its inability to interest the country, in the current Labour leadership election sham.
So far, observing the battle for Labour's captaincy has been like watching a 0-0 draw between reserve sides in a Sunday pub league. Lots of huffing and puffing, but no goals, little excitement, and a gloomy acceptance among supporters that it really doesn't matter who wins, because the players are simply not good enough, and no amount of post-match lagers can change that.
Of course, Randall soon homes in like a well-targeted cruise missile on the real weakness underpinning the current incarnation of the parliamentary Labour party foundations and leadership: rank, institutional, barefaced, epic hypocrisy. Only, it's not just Dianne Abbott's hypocrisy he rightly lambasts (as I did here a while back) but the hypocrisy of that entire rotten political organisation. But what he does to the Milibands is priceless. Of Mili Major (Dave), before writing him off: "Offer him a platitude and he will contrive a soundbite."

For Mili Minor (Ed): he manages to muster only a cursory put down for the ugly one with a voice like a defective waste pipe, as if he just isn't worth it (he isn't):
This week, he said that he wanted Labour to become "the party of small business". Too late – Mr Brown already tried that. He began with lots of big businesses and turned many into small ones.
Boom! Two targets with one bomb.

The bottom line, of course, is that everyone has just had a complete bellyful of the whole package: the lying, the spin, the waste, the arrogance, the pocket-lining, the risible incompetence at every level and, it almost goes without saying, the huge levels of hypocrisy that have outraged so many for so long but who have only recently had the chance to show their displeasure. That gulf, between the Labour leadership's public pronouncements and private behaviour, grew so fast under Blair that the leader of the people's party was somehow able to leave office a millionaire many times over. But even all that is trumped by people's contempt for Labour's diabolical economic record in government (again):
Labour's problem is that none of the candidates can accept the real reason for the party's abysmal performance at the ballot box. As research by Demos, the think tank, revealed this week, the public is sick of borrow, tax and waste. The days of bribing voters with their own devalued money are over.
Let's hope "the public" really is that sick of it and has seen through the oldest Labour ruse of all (bribing voters with their own money). And let's hope public memories are a bit longer this time. My view is that this leadership campaign signals the death knell for Labour, for the reason implied in Randall's opening: it is now a party of alley cats, fat cats and pussy cats led by a bunch of common or garden careerist donkeys.

That lack of real new leadership will kill it.

Thursday 5 August 2010

Blog Life

My impression, having been 'blogging' for over a year now, is that this activity almost necessarily follows the patterns of real life, whatever they are. Unless, of course, you are a 'professional' blogger, a strange breed, like the redtop Guido or the broadshite - I mean 'broadsheet', (of course) - Dale. They are professionals - they do it, very professionally, for money.

The sad thing is that for amateur bloggers, like me, who choose to write about the central weighty issues of the day, according to their proclivities and their lights, naturally, (and of which they are fully aware and to which they are relatively well-adjusted) - real life is just so time-consuming.

Being busy is clearly the scurge of amateur (political) bloggers.

Anyway, point is I am quite busy just now in real life. But that does not mean I've stopped bloggin, in spite of the fact I recently managed (typically for me) to upset some of the nicest Scottish nationalists anywhere on the internet, and blew any semblance of credibility I might have had out of the water in the process.

I am so very, very sad about that. Of course.

Update about how sad I am and how you can deal with my sadness to follow, quite soon.. Watch this space!

Sunday 1 August 2010

Rhodesia

I don't know if it lowers yer blog stock price if you start embedding YouTube music video uploads to it a bit too often for comfort, but it seems to me that if your blog stock price (BSP) is already in negative territory, it really doesn't matter. You can see from my profile description what I'm mainly up to on this blog - the democratic assassination of that menace to British and world politics that is the Labour party, by any means and with extreme prejudice. But I do have other interests.

One of them is music, and rather odd music at that. I, for instance, still hark back to the late-70s/early 80s less commercial bands who disappeared without trace pretty fast but had a far bigger influence on serious modern music - and on society generally - that anyone cares to mention, especially if they're in the industry trying to market the next vacuous girl/boy "band". (I put the word "band" in inverted commas because, even during those dark days of Duran Duran, "bands" were people with some kind of instrumental, musical ability and who somehow joined together on that basis. The "Beatle Model", you might call it, rather than the "Take That" mutation).

Speaking of which, here's one of those weird 70s "bands": Japan. Now I know that its lead singer thought that his musical outflow smelt far better than his peers' (hence the flowery meaningless crap he's came up with since he broke up the band), but there was some stuff in the early days that really was challenging.

I've chosen one such example for this post, although I could have chosen a number of equally challenging others. How they're challenging is a damn good question. Politically, naturally, they are challenging. And they duly challenged and intrigued me in formative years, which is probably why I spout in this way in this place through this easy electronic mass medium now. But that music, among many other forms, was the start of my inspiration. (Learning to cope with real, working life was the rest of it!)



My only request is this: if anyone has the slightest idea what these lyrics actually mean I'd love to hear from you. It sounds so meaningful, but it could be a load of sh...

Anyway, thanks for your input in anticipation of it.

PS: This is even more fantastic, and basically incomprehensible. Maybe you can work it out, because I can't:


It's a warning to all bloggers, that's what it is...