March 7th 2021 - THE WEEK THAT WAS AND HOW STUPID EDUCATION CAN MAKE YOU; WELL THE PORTFOLIO ANYWAY.
Today I watched the Education Secretary on TV. It's a shame they didn't send the Minister because this secretary only seemed good for the taking of minutes.
Basically they took many minutes to say the most imbecilic things I have ever heard in all my 40 years of being involved in education. They want children to catch
up on the learning they have missed so they will abuse them by making the school day longer, the school holidays shorter while putting an amazing amount of extra
pressure on the only qualified individuals who actually put the children first; namely, teachers.
Children need familiarity and a place to learn where they feel secure, welcome and things are stable. Ha ha, said this secretary, children are so used to a
school year with three terms let's make it five. Parents are used to dropping kids off at 8.30am and picking them about 3 ish, let's make it 8am to 4pm. Leaking
Willy didn't actually say this because, although incredibly stupid and therefore something he is capable of, it would have required a decision and that is something
he is totally incapable of in any form.
The budget contained nothing that we hadn't read in the days before but did go on a bit about our world-beating NHS. The decision was then taken to beat them a
bit more and only offer a 1% pay rise. Oh and Corporation Tax will rise to 25% one year before an election. It was last that high under Dennis Healey. Something
tells me Rishi Sunak is either a silly billy or a bit of a liar who hopes he can grab money off the poor by not increasing personal allowances and can then say,
yippee, I don't need to raise Corporation Tax.
March 14th 2021 - THE WEEK THAT WAS AND ANOTHER BORING SOAP OPRAH.
So, what's annoyed me this week. To be honest, on an international or national scale, not too much. However such is the situation in my own personal life,
I have now been without hot water for over two weeks, I guess the outside world does look a little better. In case you are worried about my personal hygiene, don't.
I have an electric shower so smell and, indeed nakedly, look just as wonderful as ever.
I considered a brief moan about the Leaking Willy sharing his bedtime secrets with us but the whole idea frightened me. I'm guessing that this year, at least,
he is being assessed without the need for an external assessor or any algorithm or any form of hard, rigid examinations.
Today the BBC informed me that there was a shortage of garden furniture but, again, I was unmoved by this. BOJO has been pretty quiet, Pretty Petal only made
a public statement today and DORA and MAHA (Raab and Hancock to you) have also been rather subdued.
The news this week has all been about the Royal family and who said what, when, why, how and to whom. My problem in commenting on this is that I didn't listen
to a word of the interview and only briefly saw a few extracts or reports on the BBC and other reputable websites. I assumed that anything in inverted commas was
an accurate re-telling of what had been said and this is how I formed my opinion.
I have several problems with some parts of what appears to have gone on. If I ask you what sex your baby will be, am I being sexist. My answer is no. So if
I ask two people of different ethnic colour, what colour their baby might be, I would not consider that racist. Now the problem is I don't know how the comment
was made and so any comment from me about the actual situation would be out of place. Also, so I heard in one extract, Prince Harry said he would never reveal
anything about who made the comment and then a couple of hours later Oprah Winfrey told us who it wasn't so I guess he did reveal something about it. However,
if you are not going to tell the truth about something, i.e. not reveal something, I think it is best to say nothing. To my mind, the comments about the colour
of said baby being questioned were, when revealed in the interview, a blatant attempt to manipulate the audience into thinking the Royal family are racist.
Cleverly putting it in the part of the interview when you complain about your child having no title and no protection, implies that those two factors were
also racist decisions. That was a pretty sick thing to do, almost brain washing the public to think something that wasn't actually said, but was implied. Now
here I have made a basic assumption. Harry and Meaghan are of average intelligence so would know this was what they were doing. I may be wrong and they may be
thick as two short planks in which case I accept there was no manipulation going on. I'll leave you to choose. The fact is Prince Harry's children, even if he
had married Snow White, were not entitled to a title and, once he stepped back from Royal duties, his family were not entitled to Royal protection. It doesn't
happen that way. Ask the late Duke of Windsor.
I never watched the interview with his mother by Martin Bashir nor read the book that Andrew Morton wrote about her. I'm not interested in people who
feel the need to belittle and abuse others to satisfy their own ego or need to be publicly loved. However I do feel that in future, when I hear people telling
lies about me or something I have done, I may use the phrase "recollections may vary" rather than calling them a liar outright.
Oh, and to finish, I think Piers Morgan is a self-opinionated, rather pompous, loud-mouthed idiot with very dubious morals and, to be honest, a vague
recollection of facts when it comes to his own work, and to that opinion I'm entitled. However, in this case, I think he was completely correct, not only in his
right to share his opinion but actually in that opinion.
March 21st 2021 - THE WEEK THAT GAVE YOU ENTERTAINMENT AND TOOK AWAY ENJOYMENT.
I'm sorry but I have finally had enough of "entertainment" on television in our modern world. This week I have been watching trailers for a programme
where "contestants" will try to make jewellery and be assessed by "experts". This follows on from watching dog groomers grooming dogs. I accept that
some people may enjoy this sort of thing but I feel we are only a step away, and god I hope no programme planners read this, from watching a programme
where dentists compete to do the best fillings or extractions or shoe shop assistants compete to measure their customers accurately but in the quickest
time or worst of all an amalgam of the two. We could all applaud a great feat from people who surely know the drill. Cobblers. It's all cobblers.
Watching people do their jobs is not entertainment. It doesn't make you laugh or, sadly, if it does you are actually laughing at someone rather than
with them. Not a nice trait. Who thinks up these programme ideas? Maybe a group of people who have already had an extraction, namely of their wisdom teeth.
Oh I know it's cheap to make. I know it's easy to make, You will have an endless supply of Andy Warhol believers who want their 15 minutes of fame.
But, to be honest, I'd rather watch a tin of Campbell's soup come out of its own factory.
Different antique programmes, house hunting, home renovators, other renovators and a merciless menu of cookery programmes fill the 24,678 channels
that seem available to those of you stupid enough to subscribe to them all. I may have to shut myself in a barn called The Despair Shop.
Yesterday I heard an advert for Sky Q. Apparently if you ask it to show you the best shows, it will. It will even select some especially for you.
These shows will of course be on a Sky Channel and are just a way to make you think you want to watch something you don't but Sky and its advertisers
want you to so do.
The internet and modern technology has some great advantages. It makes it easy for you to look up information which a small percentage of people
can turn into knowledge. Well one or two perhaps. The trouble is that everyone thinks information is knowledge. The great Albert Einstein said that
"information is not knowledge", adding though that "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world".
How sad that in our world of wall-to-wall TV we remove imagination and replace it with someone else's view of what we should see. Einstein also felt
that "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease at death". How sad so many die when they begin an evening's diet of modern TV. It would be
absurd for me to think I could change things and I shan't be around to see the demise of the human intellect from being "entertained" this way although
Albert also said that "Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible". Who knows?