Government, GCSEs and Betraying Generations

What bugs me with the GCSEs - as someone who did the last O levels, is that my double A in English has been downgraded by 20 odd years of downgrading, dumbing down of marking, cheating/marking-up of course work by some schools etc. 

The politicos have made a right mess of education. Every year for 2 decades they told us pass rates were betters and yet we kinda know that literacy, historical knowledge etc. had been plummeting. Generally speaking of course. 

Baby Fish and Exam Results: Celebrations All Round

Some great news from the garden. Our goldfish have had more babies. Not sure how many, but at last count there are at least seven wee black bairns in there (each about 1cm long). There may be more under the lily pads.

The 'older babies' (if that makes sense) are now about 3 - 4cm long, still black but eating the floating pond sticks that we feed the "grown ups" with.

It's great that we're now getting our own fish. And not a penny given to the big chain pet shops! Yippee.

I've also seen at least 3 grown-up frogs in the pond, so I suppose they'll be having their own babies soon enough... be great not to have to catch tadpoles from old quarries and have to "bring them home" next year.

We had a good crop of peas this year, though towards the end the slugs and snails went a bit bonkers on them. After a slow start the potatoes shot up too, so I think I'll be digging them up any day as they're just starting to wilt. The weather really hasn't helped this year.

So I suppose that's the garden up to date.

This last week or so we had happy news, with the AS and GCSE results in. Our eldest got an A in AS History which is what he plans to do in uni, and our second born got an A in GCSE Geography which is what he's going to college to do at A Level, so both did well and seem to know what they want to do...

What with O Levels becoming GCSEs and now the media saying the children get lower grades for the same percentages... I just wish the government(s) would stop fiddling with the exams so we could just know what the children get, they earn -- and can be compared like for like, year on year. But hey, what do I know?

What a week! Birthday, Driving, Proms (oh and a Dead Chicken)

Going grey - me and George! (there the similarity ends)

This week we've had or will have:

• one child's (16th) birthday.
• one child started his driving lessons (second one today).
• one child's prom for leaving junior school.
• one child's prom for leaving high school (as Head Boy).
• one child's participation in a school music concert.
• and (just into next week) a Grade Three violin exam.

On top of all the other usual chaos of family life (and preparing a first VAT return! yikes!)

And we lost one chicken at the end of last week to a fox (tunnelled into the run, broke off the 'egg basket' lid - now nailed down). It was one of the speckledys...

It's been quite a busy time! if I have a few more grey hairs than before, well, no surprise.

And the baby goldfish in the pond are getting bigger - about an inch and a quarter long and now more grey than black.

Damn Those Disney Films - They Hastened Our Demise

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

It's called "pop music" m'lud

Last year 'The Hurley Family' won the quiz shield at our local school. Our name was the first one engraved on the shield. Perhaps the fame and adulation of our peers went to our collective heads... because this year we came second!

Oh the shame. The ignominy. The humiliation.

In our defence I must say that last year's questions were academic and some of the questions quite cryptic. This year there were a lot of multi-choice and a whole section on 'Disney Films', one of the children suggested it epitomised the dumbing-down of the education system.

C'est la guerre. Next year we'll have to swot up on 'popular culture' -- like High Court judges finding out what Top of the Pops is. New struggles, new vistas, new opportunities.

What's Wrong With This Country?

Yes - uphill gardeners really do give these cards out to children!

A provocative headline - but read on  itinerant wanderer through the blogosphere.

Last night there was a "trade unionist" for professional footballers on Newsnight (such an oppressed minority dontcha know!) giving forth about sexism, racism, homophobia and prejudice against baked beans. OK, I made that last bit up, but the rest is true.

At one stage Mr. Who-He (OK, I made that bit up too) said that a key aspect to making this a better country to live in (copyright Miss World circa 1974) was to stop children in playgrounds saying "that's so gay" as a means of calling things pathetic.

I thought to myself, do professional footballers really have nothing they could "make better" to improve society other than children saying "that's so gay?" How about greed, corruption, foul language, dissent, cheating, drugs, rape, infidelity... just for a start!

Picking up SAS Eddie today from the train station I told him of this (probably extremely over-paid) footballer's angst about the (allegedly) offensive language of schoolchildren. No, not foul language which they copy off footballers who should know better, but supposedly "homophobic" language.

SAS Eddie simply replied: "Now, that is gay."

I couldn't have put it better myself.


P.S. As far as I know there is only one piece of law which openly discriminates as a matter of fact - actually preventing anyone in this land from entering the upper echelons of power, and that is the Act of Settlement which has seen members of the Royal Family and their spouses removed from the line of succession for becoming or marrying Catholics (despite the English/British monarchy being rooted in Catholicism). It does not apply to any protestant, Jew, Muslim, Sikh, homosexual or Jedi/Sith. Now that's so gay.

Howardian High and the Son of a Cardiff MP

Sorry this week has been a bit barren with posts. There's a cartoon in the latest Private Eye which has a person saying to another "how am I supposed to know what you think when you don't update your blog." Well, quite!

Anyhow, I got to reminiscing this week about the good old days. Yes, rose-tinted specs firmly in place, and all periphery vision set to sepia, I dived (dove? tweet tweet) straight in like an older and less fit Tom Daley.

When I was in school - at Howardian High in Cardiff - there was one chap who was a friend. Not a close friend, part of the inner circle, folks you played sports or 'hung' out with at dinner time or after school, but the kind you shared one lesson with and got on great with.

His name was Toby Grist. He was a good laugh, intelligent, but open to the kind of incisive and clever humour that still tends to tickle me to this day. Now despite him being a thoroughly good egg, this isn't what's made me put pen to paper (well, you know what I mean!).

No, the fact was (and is) that Toby's dad was a Tory MP, for Cardiff Central at the time I was in school. Sadly he died in 2002. Yet despite being a Conservative, his son went to what was in essence a bog-standard comprehensive school.

I don't (and didn't) know anything about the politics of Ian Grist MP, yet the fact his son was a funny bloke, likable yet intelligent, and that his dad hadn't ushered him off to some private school always made me think highly of the Conservative MP.

Kirsty Williams with Welsh stereotypes

Without getting too political I've always thought it a 'bit rum' that the very MPs who vote on schools and hospitals very often send their children to private schools and/or use private healthcare. It's like a social version of the Mid Lothian Question. I have long thought that those who went to or send their child(ren) to private schools, like Dianne Abbott MP, should be forcibly absent from votes on the education system.

A regular face on the Welsh news is Kirsty Williams, the leader of the Welsh Lib Dems. She went to a very expensive private school in Carmarthenshire, yet often attacks the Welsh government's record on education. Whenever she pops up on TV to launch into a tirade, especially if it's on education, I often think of Toby Grist the son of a Tory MP, and Howardian High which was sold-off when I was in my last year there.

Ahh. The good old days.

Teacher Training? Watching Rugby!

Quite a few of the local schools are "closed" today as an inset day, which I believe is for teacher training.

I wonder how much of that teacher training will take place near a TV, with the Australia V Wales match, live from New Zealand, in the background? or the foreground?

Well I suppose it is 'team building'.

Another bacon sandwich Mr Williams?