Freedom to Choose

Public Workers wages are to be frozen to bring them in line with the private sector.

So, Mr Osbourne has now decided he can freeze the wages of teachers and nurses, (those are the named groupings), as they seem to be 8% higher than comparable jobs in the private sector. Well, this is great news for the Magnificent M.

Now, although the pay might be frozen maybe now M will be able to move up a grade to get more money because she is capped because of her school size. And of course no extra amount of work gets you any extra money. All after school clubs are done for free. No overtime for teaching so that will surely be introduced to bring them in line with the private sector. Oh, and flexi-time. It'll be nice to go in at 10 some mornings and stay till 6 so there aren't any kids about, much easier. I wonder who will teach for the missing hour? Holidays whenever we want to take them. Cheap rates for us then. Hooray! Off to have a tea or coffee when she fancies one. Drift off to lunch when it's convenient. Make a few personal calls and surf the net if she's at a loose end.

And yet, I suspect that isn't what is envisaged. Of course, teachers and nurses might decide to take industrial action just like in the private sector. When insurance workers go on strike you'll probably not particularly care. It might be mildly inconvenient of them but really does it matter? Of course a striking teacher is purposely trying to ruin your child's education because they are a hard-hearted bunch, just like the nurses who are intent on making sure your family members die.

Of course, there is one bunch of workers in the Public sector who have lost out big time. It's MPs. When their pay comes up for discussion they are remarkably underpaid compared to the private sector. It's why their pay has to go up each year. But not to worry because they do look long and hard at their circumstances before they vote themselves a payrise. Which luckily has been agreed by the independent body who look at the MPs wages.

So, 24 hours ago teachers were told they have to become hard-line on literacy. Today they are told they are overpaid, not long ago their pensions were considered too high, which is strange because public sector pensions were set higher to make up for the lower wages that public sector workers get. (Some mistake here surely). And of course last month there was the discussion about what to do with all the teachers who aren't up to the job. Well I can promise you one thing. All the ones that are good are thinking of leaving because teaching isn't what it was and I suspect neither is nursing. You know those people who answer the phones in call centres and don't know what the hell is going on with anything because the computer doesn't tell them. Welcome to the next draft of teachers because that is the standard of worker the government are going to be attracting with their relentless attack on the profession.

The Price of Fame

Russell Brand has been arrested following an incident with a photographer.

Who'd be a celebrity? I can't stand Mr Brand myself but I do have some sympathy with celebrities. Once you are outside your own home you are considered fair game, sometimes even when you are in it. The argument is always that if you rely on publicity for your career then the public has a right to access at all times. By the same token though, if you are a teacher, and paid for by the public purse, should members not be able to stop you in the street and insist you spell them a word or add some figures up? Perhaps I can get the postman who lives on our estate to go deliver my mums card to St Albans?

It seems to me that the sensible thing is, when celebrities are working they are on call, when they are not working, just leave them alone. It's not like they are stalked to get a good news story, it is always to try and feed the "publics desire" for seeing rich or successful people suffer. Because these days what passes for entertainment is magazines and programmes full of stories to make the populace feel better at others expense. Watch X Factor in the early rounds, not to hear good singers but to watch "the freak show". Big Fat Gypsy Wedding isn't shown to improve relations between the travelling peoples and the general public. And what's worse is that these people appearing are so desirous of being celebrities they make idiots of themselves just for their 15 minutes of fame.

The Magnificent M sometimes asks the kids at school what they want to do when they are older. No more train drivers, doctors, nurses. Boys want to be footballers, even when they can't kick a ball for toffee and the girls all want to marry footballers. Apparently a footballers wife is a career choice.

Now, if you are at the concert I'm in tonight, could you all cheer really loudly and scream when I sing my solo line. After all, I don't want to be left out. I'll be signing autographs after!

Reading

Literacy levels in primary schools are slipping.

Just part of the full headline but one that appears with remarkable regularity. The Chief Inspector of Schools made one very good point; we've got to stop coming up with soundbite solutions. This has been the role of government for years now to say something clever and then try to implement it in school. The trouble is, by the time you have implementation it's time for another soundbite. That has left a trail of confusion. Are you teaching the alphabet, phonetics, phonics.... and if it's confusing for the teachers then it sure is for the kids.

The next problem is that the main wave of teachers coming through now are the ones where literacy was already badly taught and their grip of grammar is weak and their spelling is average at best.

So, teachers have to be "hardline" now. I'm not sure how. The biggest help will be reading to them. That would be the parents job but then many of the present parents are the children who didn't learn to read before. You can force in rules of grammar and pronunciation as much as you like but that is only part of it. It's the listening that the new children do that teaches them vocabulary and the rules of English. Because it's only by listening to certain words in the context that it's set that means someone knows whether the title to this blog refers to a pastime or a town in Berkshire.

No Smoke Without Fire

Kerry Katona is in trouble for saying there isn't any real harm in having the odd cigarette whilst pregnant.

Ms Katona puts her foot in it again. This time in defending her fellow "Face of Iceland" colleague Stacey Soloman who, wait for it, has been deposed as "Mother of the Year" having been caught smoking whilst pregnant with her next child.

I've never smoked and can't really be doing with it but I have a bit of sympathy for them in as much as, harking back to yesterdays post, this is a relatively new medical phenomenom. Not immediately recent, but 50 years ago it wouldn't have been picked up at all. All the medical advice is not to smoke during pregnancy because all these things can happen to the baby. They always said that t would make babies smaller but I think I'm right in saying that the average baby weight is less now that it was 50 years ago.

Funnily enough we were talking about smoking at work on Monday. It seems so natural not to go to pubs and restaurants and they be smoke free but it isn't that long ago that it changed. One of the guys was saying that 20 years back he knew someone who owned a restaurant who decided it should be smoke free. He reckoned the bloke would go bust within 6 months, but he didn't. And I can remember working through the Good Pub Guide looking for the few pubs that were no smoking, or at least with one no smoking bar.

But more worrying than the smoking angle is, how do we survive when Stacey Soloman is Mother of the Year. Although I am prepared to say this is a step up from Katie Price.

Living is Killing Us

Eating red meat regularly increases your chances of heart disease and cancer.

The idea red meat is bad for you has been around for ages. Along with virtually any other foodstuff you care to mention. Diets have changed over the decades. Our diet now is much healthier than it was but that is because it needs to be. 100 years ago, or really before that, we needed the calorific input. Day to day life was was energetic, both for men in employment and for women in the home. Nowadays we obviously have little to move for. Other than nipping to the loo you can pretty much spend an entire evening without moving. Remote controls, laptops, mobile phones, every convenience for you to sit on your backside for hours on end.

And so now we investigate everything we can about what we eat in order to make ourselves healthier. And what have we found? Food isn't particularly good for us. In a lot of cases though it is the same food we have had for centuries. True, the amount of processing has increased and the additives are a problem. So it becomes whether red meat is bad for us or whether the aftermath of how the cows are raised is bad for us. But then not all food was healthy in the old days.

The problem isn't with what we eat but in what we expend in calories. The less you move, the less calories you burn and, in addition, your digestive system doesn't work as well, which means food residues and the chemical compounds within spend longer in your body.

Now, I admit, exercise is not something I enjoy. And the older I get the less I fancy the look of it, but if I am to shake off some if this weight, I am going to have to do some because you can only cut so many calories out of your diet. But when I was young, of school age I was for ever out and about playing some game or other. We'd spend hours playing tennis or football or anything we could make up. But more and more, young people don't play out. Whether it is because it is perceived as not safe or whether kids have already learnt that a sedentary life is an acceptable life I'm not sure.

So perhaps in looking more and more at the food perhaps we need to work out how much more exercise we can get into peoples lives. But how we do that Lord only knows.

Murderous Intent.

A man with "Locked-In Syndrome" fights for right to die.

Since the headline first thing this morning we now know that Tony Nicklinson can take his "right to die" a step further by having it fully discussed both in Parliament and with medical representation.

I, for one, hope he succeeds. I know that there are lots of moral reasons on either side of the argument but it always strikes me as strange that it is considered humane to put down an animal that is in pain, has little chance of survival or will have no quality of life but when it comes to a human me must keep them alive at whatever cost.

I know that if my mum was on a life support system or in such a mental or physical state that she has no quality of life, she wants to be helped off. She has told me so. I know it would be very hard to make the decision but I know that is what she wants and I love her enough to give her her final wish. But I hope fervently that I never have to.

It's going to be interesting to see what the final outcome is but I suspect that in the end the law won't change. Although to not change the law is discriminatory to the disabled. The able bodied are able to take their own lives, even as assisted suicide the "patient" has to administer the drugs themselves, but the severely disabled can't.This is why Tony is fighting, because he can't administer those drugs, so why, if he asks someone to do it, with all the safeguards that can be put in place, is he not given the same right as the able bodied?

Aspiration

This is somewhat connected to the previous post.

One of the feeds I follow on Twitter is for The South Bank. Just to keep up with who is appearing there. During this weekend they have been discussing Feminism, yet again.

One of the threads concerned the programme Ladettes to Ladies and whether the term Lady should be dropped as a term for women as it packages them in a certain way. Bollocks, or whatever the female equivalent expletive might be! Here is an example of dumbing down again. Rather than try to better yourself and your social standing lets all head the way of the lowest common denominator, the "Lad" so that we can drink, sleep around and basically do what we feel like. That is not feminist equality, that is sexist jealousy.

I don't mind if young women want to go out and drink all night and sleep with every Tom, Dick or Harry, but then, don't complain you can't find any decent husbands. Men have lots of different "types" as well. The Lad is just one of them, and letting young girls know that the emulation of that one single group is worth striving for is condemning them to a life well below their own expectations.

I would rather live in a world where everyone could just be themselves and be the best they can, but it isn't here now whilst men idolise footballers and women can vote Katie Price as mother of the year.

Education for the Masses

University students are going to strike this week to show what campuses will look like if the government continue to put up tuition fees.

University students have been protesting for as long as I can remember and before. A large group of young people is always going to have a political element. They will also probably be as close to socialist in their views as they will ever be. Idealism is the badge of students. With their whole life before them why should they not think they can change the world. Every generation believes this but I suspect the vast majority end up in no better or worse place than their parents, living in a world that just repeats it's triumphs and disasters over and over again.

The big difference this time ought to be that there are many more students out on strike. With the political push that everyone should have the opportunity to go to university, and by renaming all the colleges to their senior counterpart, there should be 10 times the number of students not bothering to get out of bed picketing.

I think the education system as a whole has lost it's way, although there are encouraging signs that at infant/primary level they are returning to the old skills of learning the alphabet and multiplication tables. They say that the education system has not been dumbed down but there is no way that the pass rate of GCSE and A levels hasn't been dropped to increase pass rates. I have had this argument with my brother for some time. He believes that it is just different but still as hard. If that was the case then the "real" universities wouldn't be re-testing people for admission. Some of the university lecturers we know are tearing their hair out as students turn up to take degrees without the knowledge to begin, and crash courses need to be run to get them up to level.

Nothing will change now though. Who is going to reduce the number of university places. How wonderful is it that your children can go to university now when before they would have done the same course in the same building but only have gone to college.

I wish we could go back to a system where the academic went to University, the mainstream go to college and those who have struggled academically go to technical college or art/music colleges where they can be taught useful skills or to evolve their artistic skills. No-one is made intelligent by the fact they can attend a university rather than a college but lives are ruined by taking the colleges away from the less academic and putting nothing in it's place.