Nothing But Hot Air!

That's me back in school for a 5 week stint, although I suspect I sounded like a comedian saying that! Perhaps the comparison isn't that inaccurate, much of the job nowadays is to entertain. It's not like when I were a lad! Anyway, the education sytem is once again about to be shaken up, and I'll be caught up in the changeover to whatever new course they bring into replace the Standard Grade and Intermediate courses. The government spokesperson for education was talkling it up last week, all the bright new ideas they have, then when asked what would be replacing the existing courses, she admitted to having no idea. It's all hot air! At the end of the day, they'll have to pay a bunch of experienced teachers to write the new courses, but in such a way that all the daft government ideas are addressed.

It's true that most existing courses need a real shake up anyway, to make them nmore appealing, but what's proposed isn't intended to make them more appealing, only to place more emphasis on achievement rather than attainment. The Curriculum for Excellence for intsance suggests that students might have talents which are not assessable within a school context, and therefore, that although they might not be successful in an educational sense, their out of school success should be recognised within the school system. In other word, let's breed more Richard Branson type figures.

This is probably a welcome time of the year for most teachers, with exams coming up. A chance to take stock and evaluate how the year has gone, and to start planning for next session. Next session I'll be teaching full-time, so I'd probably better pay attention!

Lottery Swindle!

For today's post I was planning to write a follow up to yesterday's post on the Illuminati plot to depopulate the planet, by expanding on the possible ways by which human life might cease to exist. Unfortunately, I will have to put this on the back-burner until tomorrow, because last night something inadvertently came to my attention, which I believe needs to be expounded upon herein.

I was washing the dishes (yes, I'm a 21st Century man) and the T.V. was on, although nobody was watching it as far as I'm aware. So, although I couldn't see the telly, I could hear it. The Lottery show was on, something which I would normally avoid like the plague, because it's so cheesy and... it's just awful really! Anyway, it's going on and I catch the presenter saying something very much like;

"Remember, all your money going to the good cause fund will be paying for the Olympic and Paralympic games!"

And, I'm thinking to myself "Did I just hear him correctly?" because he said "all your money". I know the Olympics are going to cost a fortune, but surely the Government should be paying for it. Well, it's obvious really, I'd already heard that the government was using lottery funds to pay for government sponsored projects under the guise of being "good causes", but this takes the biscuit! Firstly, all the good cause money is being channeled into London, when it's supposed to be distributed across the UK, and secondly it's now even more transparent why Richard Branson's Virgin company were turned down the opportunity of running the lottery.

Branson offered to run it for free with even more money going to good causes, but clearly such enterprises are only intended to operate as some sort of gigantic money laundering scam. There's no point coming up with an idea where the public are eager to pour in their cash for virtually no return, if you can't abuse it completely.

A second thing that was said on the show, once again made my thinking travel off on a tangent. The host said;

"I know it's going to be a busy night, but can you give me a time-check please?"

A omnipresent being responds;

"Yes, the time is almost 11 minutes past..." whatever, 8 I think he said.

I thought to myself "Why would they do that? Do they feel the need to demonstrate that the show is live, because in reality it isn't?" It just seemed like such a bizarre thing to do. Surely, if the show is in fact live, they wouldn't feel the need to prove it. Highly suspicious, I'm being to think the whole thing is run by mobsters!