MAKE WAY FOR THE HIT PERSONS.
(1) Sir Michael Wilshaw.
Give a government long enough to show it is incapable of doing any better than did its predecessors and wait for the trusted establishment hit persons to make their appearance.
Step up new Ofsted head Michael Wilshaw (remember Ian MacGregor? Richard Beeching? Steel? Coal? Railways?) who, clearly of the belief that peacekeeping is for the puny, insulted everybody in his former profession when he told a conference of head teachers: “Teachers don’t know the real meaning of the word stress,” and went on to pontificate about how stressful life was for his father in the Fifties and Sixties, doing long hours in three different jobs and at weekends to support a growing family. (Come back, Norman Tebbit, all is forgiven!)
Stress, he opined, was what he was under when he started as a head in 1985 in the context of widespread industrial action. Teachers were walking out of class at a moment’s notice and he was the sole lunch monitor every day for three years. He was also covering five classes in the sports hall when there was no one to teach them because his colleagues were working to rule.
What a popular little bugger he must have been.
Well, he was in teaching for 43 years (26 of them as a headmaster) and along the way became the only schoolteacher capable of defining stress.
This was not your defusing a booby-trapped bomb or dodging friendly fire from your American cousins sort of stress, understand; nor was it your commonplace trapped down a coal mine sort of stress. Oh no. This was your real life, down to earth, prolonged school dinner duty and people working to rule sort of stress. This was tough stuff.
But he did not, I notice, mention any class of forty plus children which included a large handful of ‘special needs’ cases and more than a dozen different birth languages. Perhaps he managed to ignore classes like that.
No doubt he hastened, too, to make known his loyalty whenever some prick in parliament, advised by the bevy of mostly failed academics that constitutes Ofsted, decided to move the educational goalposts yet again.
HMI have become a byword for crass negativity and this pompous Ofsted mouthpiece did nothing to allay the suspicion that the inspectorate is in dire need of a detached watchdog. Think: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Nobody inspects inspectorates in this country, do they?
(2) Andrew Lansley.
Less to write about here. Beleaguered Health Secretary Lansley tried to convince the Royal College of Nursing’s annual conference that the number of clinical staff in the NHS has increased since the 2010 election, despite the fact that the number of qualified nurses has gone down by 3,000.
He was heckled and jeered for his audacity and RCN general secretary Dr. Peter Carter later made it clinically clear that he and his colleagues thought Mr. Lansley’s comments were a nonsense and patently untrue..
Dr. Carter will be right. Trust me: I was never a doctor, but I paid them.
(3) Theresa May.
Even less to write about here. The Police Federation conference held in Bournemouth gave the Home Secretary a no more sympathetic reception than her unsympathetic address to them deserved. She was, they warned, destroying a police service admired throughout the world.
They, too, were right: but what did they expect from a bloody politician?
TELEVISION.
The Bridge. (BBC4)
A good series which, predictably and appropriately, came to an end on the bridge. I have no idea whether the Danish/Swedish co-producers intend screening more stories featuring detectives Saga and Martin, but I hope they do. They‘ll be daft if they don‘t..
The Mentalist. (C5)
This saunters along effortlessly, enlivened by the occasional con man wisdom of Patrick Jane (Simon Baker). In a recent episode he was talking to a hospitalised gangster and, having ascertained that the man was having trouble getting to sleep, said: “The cure for that is to count one as you breathe in and two as you breathe out.”
Later in the story the gangster confirmed the method had worked for him.
So I tried it. Yep. It worked for me, too.
Phineas and Ferb. (Disney HD)
It is my lot, as a grouchy grandparent, regularly to view whatever tele title is current favourite of the manipulative little remote control purloiner known to me as Little Boo.
Thus far this year I have survived Grandpa in my Pocket, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Tom and Jerry, various loud American kids’ shows and, now, the animated across-the-pond comedy Phineas and Ferb. Daily appearances of this inspired lunacy have so far led to eighty-plus recordings on my Planner list - and that’s before an advertised new series begins.
For the uninitiated, Phineas Flynn and his English stepbrother Ferb Fletcher are a pair of genius boys determined to allay summer vacation boredom by undertaking a mind-boggling series of grand schemes - usually in their back garden - to the intense irritation of older sister Candace Flynn, who is determined, forever unsuccessfully, to “bust” them (i.e. disclose their OTT project) to their unwitting mother, Lynda Flynn-Fletcher.
Meantime, back at the happy homestead, Perry the Platypus - the boys’ pet platypus - who, unbeknown to them, is a secret agent for the O.W.C.A. (Organisation Without a Cool Acronym) heads a cast of weirdly believable supporting characters.
I am completely hooked; which, I think, rather pleases Little Boo.
The Olympics. (All Channels)
Are my Leader and I the only people in the country who are not remotely interested in The Olympics? Be honest, do you hasten to a sports stadium every weekend in summer to watch people fire pistols in the air; run; jump; or attempt to throw something farther than anybody else?
Do you religiously watch athletics, even on television? If you do, you’re in the minority. Once upon a time I did, but the amateur world of Sydney Wooderson is long gone and I have no appetite for field and track professionals.
At the height of inflation, this lot is costing a fortune. Count us out.
Oh, we’re not interested in the bloody Eurovision Song Contest, either,
Thought you might like to know.
LAST WORD
Carmageddon: Reincarnation.
Following protracted negotiation, Stainless Games (the video games company founded in 1993 by Patrick Buckland and our son, Neil) finally recovered the full rights to Carmageddon and a Kickstarter campaign, aimed at supporting the reintroduction of the game to loyal former players and discerning newcomers, is currently underway.
For a man whose son has permanently made a living from graphic art, I must shamefacedly confess my total ignorance of what makes for a good video game. But I am reliably informed that vast numbers of discerning games buyers have enjoyed the car/person/ground-breaking lunacy of Carmageddon since it was launched in 1997.
Stainless are a lovely team and deserve every possible success with their new venture.
Go to: Carmageddon: Reincarnation to learn more from me boy.
(1) Sir Michael Wilshaw.
Give a government long enough to show it is incapable of doing any better than did its predecessors and wait for the trusted establishment hit persons to make their appearance.
Step up new Ofsted head Michael Wilshaw (remember Ian MacGregor? Richard Beeching? Steel? Coal? Railways?) who, clearly of the belief that peacekeeping is for the puny, insulted everybody in his former profession when he told a conference of head teachers: “Teachers don’t know the real meaning of the word stress,” and went on to pontificate about how stressful life was for his father in the Fifties and Sixties, doing long hours in three different jobs and at weekends to support a growing family. (Come back, Norman Tebbit, all is forgiven!)
Stress, he opined, was what he was under when he started as a head in 1985 in the context of widespread industrial action. Teachers were walking out of class at a moment’s notice and he was the sole lunch monitor every day for three years. He was also covering five classes in the sports hall when there was no one to teach them because his colleagues were working to rule.
What a popular little bugger he must have been.
Well, he was in teaching for 43 years (26 of them as a headmaster) and along the way became the only schoolteacher capable of defining stress.
This was not your defusing a booby-trapped bomb or dodging friendly fire from your American cousins sort of stress, understand; nor was it your commonplace trapped down a coal mine sort of stress. Oh no. This was your real life, down to earth, prolonged school dinner duty and people working to rule sort of stress. This was tough stuff.
But he did not, I notice, mention any class of forty plus children which included a large handful of ‘special needs’ cases and more than a dozen different birth languages. Perhaps he managed to ignore classes like that.
No doubt he hastened, too, to make known his loyalty whenever some prick in parliament, advised by the bevy of mostly failed academics that constitutes Ofsted, decided to move the educational goalposts yet again.
HMI have become a byword for crass negativity and this pompous Ofsted mouthpiece did nothing to allay the suspicion that the inspectorate is in dire need of a detached watchdog. Think: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Nobody inspects inspectorates in this country, do they?
(2) Andrew Lansley.
Less to write about here. Beleaguered Health Secretary Lansley tried to convince the Royal College of Nursing’s annual conference that the number of clinical staff in the NHS has increased since the 2010 election, despite the fact that the number of qualified nurses has gone down by 3,000.
He was heckled and jeered for his audacity and RCN general secretary Dr. Peter Carter later made it clinically clear that he and his colleagues thought Mr. Lansley’s comments were a nonsense and patently untrue..
Dr. Carter will be right. Trust me: I was never a doctor, but I paid them.
(3) Theresa May.
Even less to write about here. The Police Federation conference held in Bournemouth gave the Home Secretary a no more sympathetic reception than her unsympathetic address to them deserved. She was, they warned, destroying a police service admired throughout the world.
They, too, were right: but what did they expect from a bloody politician?
TELEVISION.
The Bridge. (BBC4)
A good series which, predictably and appropriately, came to an end on the bridge. I have no idea whether the Danish/Swedish co-producers intend screening more stories featuring detectives Saga and Martin, but I hope they do. They‘ll be daft if they don‘t..
The Mentalist. (C5)
This saunters along effortlessly, enlivened by the occasional con man wisdom of Patrick Jane (Simon Baker). In a recent episode he was talking to a hospitalised gangster and, having ascertained that the man was having trouble getting to sleep, said: “The cure for that is to count one as you breathe in and two as you breathe out.”
Later in the story the gangster confirmed the method had worked for him.
So I tried it. Yep. It worked for me, too.
Phineas and Ferb. (Disney HD)
Thus far this year I have survived Grandpa in my Pocket, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Tom and Jerry, various loud American kids’ shows and, now, the animated across-the-pond comedy Phineas and Ferb. Daily appearances of this inspired lunacy have so far led to eighty-plus recordings on my Planner list - and that’s before an advertised new series begins.
For the uninitiated, Phineas Flynn and his English stepbrother Ferb Fletcher are a pair of genius boys determined to allay summer vacation boredom by undertaking a mind-boggling series of grand schemes - usually in their back garden - to the intense irritation of older sister Candace Flynn, who is determined, forever unsuccessfully, to “bust” them (i.e. disclose their OTT project) to their unwitting mother, Lynda Flynn-Fletcher.
Meantime, back at the happy homestead, Perry the Platypus - the boys’ pet platypus - who, unbeknown to them, is a secret agent for the O.W.C.A. (Organisation Without a Cool Acronym) heads a cast of weirdly believable supporting characters.
I am completely hooked; which, I think, rather pleases Little Boo.
The Olympics. (All Channels)
Are my Leader and I the only people in the country who are not remotely interested in The Olympics? Be honest, do you hasten to a sports stadium every weekend in summer to watch people fire pistols in the air; run; jump; or attempt to throw something farther than anybody else?
Do you religiously watch athletics, even on television? If you do, you’re in the minority. Once upon a time I did, but the amateur world of Sydney Wooderson is long gone and I have no appetite for field and track professionals.
At the height of inflation, this lot is costing a fortune. Count us out.
Oh, we’re not interested in the bloody Eurovision Song Contest, either,
Thought you might like to know.
LAST WORD
Carmageddon: Reincarnation.
For a man whose son has permanently made a living from graphic art, I must shamefacedly confess my total ignorance of what makes for a good video game. But I am reliably informed that vast numbers of discerning games buyers have enjoyed the car/person/ground-breaking lunacy of Carmageddon since it was launched in 1997.
Stainless are a lovely team and deserve every possible success with their new venture.
Go to: Carmageddon: Reincarnation to learn more from me boy.
