Primary education

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

In this country, this refers to the education of children up to the age of 11. I have said elsewhere that I believe this to be the fundamental core stage in any child’s education. If you cannot captivate them then with the joy of learning, I suspect you never will. It is also the time when you take them from their homes and show them that there is a bigger world out there and they are going to be a part of it.

I remember my primary days well for I can still picture the buildings, the classrooms and some of the teachers. However, when it comes to learning, the picture is far from complete.

Class sizes were typically 50 or so.

Sure we learned to read, to write and to do arithmetic, the old Victorian 3 ‘R’s’, essentials for survival in adult life. And we had to do this well, write neatly and get the spelling right. None of this simple decimal stuff either. You try dividing £14. 2s. 8d by 7 and you will know what I mean.

Much of the rest I am hazy on apart from Miss Tilson’s geography. She never taught us formal geography. She just told us stories with pictures and maps about the great explorers of this world and we had to write it up afterwards so by that means it was embedded.

She was grey haired even then but no matter. Her tales were the stuff of dreams. And that is why I shall follow Marco Polo on the Silk Road in the autumn of 2009. It is why I went to Africa (Livingstone, Stanley & Speke), to Antarctica (Scott & Shackleton) and maybe one day, I shall follow Orellana up the Orinoco.

History? Can’t remember much of what we were taught but it certainly wasn’t about remembering dates. I think it was mostly about Egyptians, Greeks and Romans plus the Battle of Hastings. What I do remember well is that we looked at the history of Tamworth - Ethelflaeda, daughter of Alfred the Great, Athelstan, her nephew, first king of the English, Offa, king of Mercia whose capital was Tamworth and Robert de Marmion , one of the guys in the Norman invasion and subsequently, King's Champion.

No foreign languages and no formal science to speak of although we did put tadpoles in jars and watch them turn into frogs.

Music? Well it was mostly singing and listening. Cannot recall anyone learning to play an instrument but then none of us could afford one.

Art? All the usual crap with paint and paper.

School plays. Oh we had a lot of these, large and small. My claim to fame was that I played Oliver in a Christmas play called ‘Oliver Twist asks for more.’

Games? Think this is PE nowadays. Usual stuff but I was never interested. They never even tried to teach me to swim which is a pity.

Homework? None but we were encouraged to go to the Town Library and look things up which we did. And, of course, when you are in the Library, you explore other things and that is where I started to read proper fiction.

Exams? Well they were simple in structure but they did ask you questions that you had to think about. None of that multiple choice then.

School trips? Can only recall two. One to Bourton on the Water and the other to Wall (aka Letocetum) a Roman site on the line of the Watling Street.

No computers and no internet, not that I am decrying either. Wish I’d had them. But we started with slates and graduated to exercise books.

I suppose that when you look at the above list and judge it by today’s standards, you’d say it was pretty poor. But then you must consider the outcomes as they say in modern education parlance.

Quite a lot of us moved on from our primary to a small single stream grammar school with a class size of 28. And there we dominated the class each and every year and most of us went to university. And this was against kids drawn from schools all over town.

Lost touch now but reflect:

I ended up running 4 businesses on 4 continents
Andrew became a professor of nuclear physics
Michael built his own pharmacy business
Alan is Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland

So there you have it. Little market town of 12,500, Victorian/Edwardian buildings (although the 10- 11 yo class was in a hut), relatively poor, no prescribed curriculum that I could divine, no H & S regulations and no SATS.

But plainly my two schools gave us something that lived with us forever.

Phoning Cefn Onn

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Cefn Onn is a small primary school in the north of Cardiff of which I am a governor. It is set in a poor housing state but it is great for all the staff are doing their best to give these kids the best. It is a bright school and it seems happy.

Ring them at lunchtime when the staff are serving lunch and then you will experience something truly magical. A little voice answers saying something like, 'Hello, this is Cefn Onn Primary School, how may I help you?.' First time I ever got this, I said, 'My name is xyz and I'd like to speak to Mr. abc. Who are you?' She said, ' I cannot tell you my name but I can pass on a message.' And so she did.

Great isn't it but sad also? Love the idea of the kids being given the responsibility of handling lunchtime calls. But it is so sad that nowadays we have to protect our kids with anonymity.

A good quote

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Found this just the other day. It would seem to contain more common sense than has been exhibited by Socialism and Communism in over a century.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Many have attributed this to Abraham Lincoln but when you read it you can see that that is too early. Best guess is Rev. William J. H. Boetcker abt 1916

Researching the bloody obvious

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

The banking system may be broke, you can’t get a mortgage for love nor money, soldiers are being killed all the while in Afghanistan but one sector of human activity is alive and thriving – researching the bloody obvious.

In the past week, we have had an outfit calling itself Passenger Focus saying that British Rail fares are by far the highest in Western Europe. We are not talking about some piddling 10% here, they say our average rail fares are around 50% higher than on the Continent of Europe. Long distance, fully flexible, pay on the day, fares were 87% higher than the next highest country, Germany. And what is more, our fares for this are 3.5 times higher than the cheapest country, Holland.

When it comes to commuting, that is journeys of 25 miles or less, we happen to be 88% more expensive than the next country, France. On top of all this, some Government minister, Lord Adonis (you wouldn’t want to bend over in front of him) says it would cost £500 million a year to bring our commuter fares in line with the Continent. £500 million? What kind of flyshit is that compared to the bank bailout?

In all this some apologist has weighed in saying that Britain has more frequent trains. So what does that mean? Are they saying that by running more frequent trains half empty is a better bet than running less frequent trains which are three quarters full? Crap, I haven't done the figures but I do know intuitively that that would not account for anything like the fare difference. Down here in Cardiff you can get a train to London every 30 minutes through most of the day. Slash that to once an hour and maybe we might see a price reduction.

None of this is any surprise to anyone who has surfed the internet checking on rail prices at home and abroad.

Next we have some woman from Princeton University ( a really nice place and my friend Lin works there) telling us that pictures of bikini clad women in the workplace can make men see them as objects or tools rather than independent people. She apparently tested the men beforehand to determine their level of ‘sexual hostility’ and guess what? The men with the higher sexual hostility rating had lower empathy. Amazing isn’t it? Who could have guessed that?

Of course, she never bothered to check that attitudes of women who have hunky males on their calendars or their screen savers. After all, that might just have revealed that women were as ‘bad’ as men when regarding the opposite sex as objects.

And finally we come to the outstanding revelation that many British retailers have failed to pass on the VAT rate cut from 17.5% to 15%. Have they been asleep since this happened, I wonder? The cut was decided on overnight and most retailers didn’t have the time to change the labels so you got your VAT cut at the check out. Not for long though.

The labels were changed and afterwards you saw just as many prices such as £xxx.99 as before. Now hang on, let’s do some basic arithmetic. If it was £299.99 before the cut, then it should be £293.60 afterwards. Did we see a mushrooming of .60 tags? Hell no. Once the dust settled, the retailers went back to charging us what they like.

All this research would be fine if it cost nothing but it does and in the end, you, me and every other taxpayer funds it.

I tell you, the day is not long off when some Ph.D tells us that after two years intensive research, he has concluded that 5 years olds are generally smaller than adults or that lettuce is often green. And of course, you can only see the sun in the daytime.

UK Government & sex education

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe. Hardly surprising given that every Labour Government and quite a few Tories since 1964 has encouraged fecklessness through their 'It's not your fault,' message. Margaret Thatcher was unpopular partially because she hinted that 'Maybe it is your fault.'

Well the other week, we had the news that some lad, Alfie, aged 13, (and looking about 9) had fathered a kid with a 15 year old girl. So now we are going to get a Government leaflet entitled 'Talking to your teenager about Sex and Relationships.'

Well, for a start that would not have helped young Alfie since the lad was actually 12 (which is not a teenager by my definition) when he knocked her up. Too late for the Alfies then.

(As an aside I note that the mother in all this was named as Chantelle. Says it all doesn't it? Cursed by name from birth.)

The key message coming from this Government drivel is that parents should not impart their own values on the kids but encourage them to form their own values. Sounds good doesn't it but what if the kids' own values develop a taste for rape, murder, theft, grievous bodily harm etc. ? Are we to put them right on those things or do we pat them on the head and congratulate them for evolving into independent human beings?

Talking to myself

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

I have always talked to myself, not quietly but out loud. Linda, my secretary for 11 years, never got quite used to it. She used to hear me muttering and come into the office saying something like, ‘Sorry, what did you want?’ and I’d just say, ‘Nothing, I am talking to myself.’

In later years, I used to say, ‘I love talking to myself. It all makes perfect sense and I get no backchat.’ That was just whimsy.

I don’t see anything wrong in talking to yourself and certainly it is no sign of madness or mental derangement nor even schizophrenia. It’s a way of mulling things over, vocally. So when you have an issue on which to make a decision, you have to weigh up the pros and cons. So one part of you feels one way and another feels another and for me, it helps to have a dialogue with myself.

Some days you do this in writing. You take a page of paper and draw a line down the middle with the opposing comments or questions on each side. Other days, you divide your mind into two parts and conduct the dialogue aloud. I cannot honestly say what provokes me to do one thing or the other.

I talk to inanimate objects too like the television or the computer screen. I speak aloud when I am driving too. Who cares? I don’t and I don’t think I am really mad – well maybe, just a bit.

NASA/Europa and ESA/Ganymede

Thursday, January 19th, 2009

Oh wow! NASA is now planning a flight to Europa and the European Space Agency to Ganymede, both on the same rocket. The trouble for me is that it won’t go until 2020 and then it’s a six year flight + two and half years around Jupiter before they orbit these two moons so that’s like 2029 before we get results and I’ll be 85 or dead. No matter.

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and even bigger than the planet Mercury. It may have sub-surface water and therefore life – so that’s exciting already.

But Europa, oh I do wish I can see this visit. We are pretty confident of an ocean below that icy crust and maybe even life. Arthur C. Clarke, that most prescient of science fiction writers, speculated on this in his 2010 Space Odyssey book, the sequel to 2001.

Let’s not hope he was completely right about this for, in the book, Europa was protected by the obelisk and when the Earthlings left Jupiter’s orbit, they received the repeated message:

All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there.

Opiate of the masses

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses and I guess at the time he wrote that then he was right. For centuries, religion had been used to guide and direct the masses in the way their ecclesiastical masters wanted it to be. What Marx did not say that was that the masses were by and large content – well apart from the occasional scrap like civil war, demonstrations and the like. It was all a bit like me not knowing I was poor until someone told me. Oh sure I could see plenty of people who were better off but I also saw some who were worse off. I wasn’t quite the rebel then.

Well Marx’s ideas prevailed in many parts of this world and that led to the formation of the Soviet Union and spin-offs elsewhere. Notably Communism succeeded where people who had bugger all. And then as my father foretold when I was a child, once those people had their bellies full, they’d want more and one day, Communism would fail to meet those aspirations.

He was right and Communism fell.

So do we have an opiate today? Hell, yes, it’s called sport. I cannot think of anything else which arouses so much emotion not even the banker’s bail outs. The Romans understood this which is why they had the games. Our own politicians had an inkling when the backed our athletes in the Beijing Olympics and made that stupid bid for the Olympic Games in 2012.

However, they have not gone nearly far enough. They should have switched the odd £100 billion from the banks and sponsored sport 24/7. Imagine it, eternal soccer, covered cricket grounds, Wimbledon every day etc... It would satisfy a multitude and given the prevalence of alcohol at sporting events, it would keep the masses stupefied too.

But not me.

Useful improvements

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

There are many items of everyday life need improving and in many cases, an improvement is long overdue. Here are a few ideas:

Windscreen wipers – I have mentioned these before; they don’t seem to have changed in decades. Why must we still put up with smearing, streaking and scrubbing? I have never inspected the wipers on aircraft cockpits but I jolly well hope that they are better.

Spouts – there are so many which are just plain bad and drip all over unless you get it just right. Milk jugs are by far the worse.

Labels – here I am talking about the ones you wish to remove before using the object in question e.g. cooking utensils, books, glasses etc. Some are peelable without coming to shreds. Why can’t they all be like that?

Towels – personal and dish towels. Why is it that the damn things are so poor at taking up moisture until you have used and washed them for ages?

Interior vehicle glass – the misting problem here just gets worse. OK, I read that the increasing use of plastics caused volatile compounds to be deposited on the screen and attract moisture but you’d think you could treat the glass to stop this.

Fruit and veg – surely with all the miracles of genetic engineering, we could develop some cubic varieties by now. So much easier to chop or slice and the producers could fit more to the box. And rectangular fish wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Shoes – I usually buy leather shoes and many are still not fully waterproofed regardless of the cost. Why not?

Instruction books – any instruction book should be ‘beta’ tested by ordinary folks before being released to an unsuspecting public.

Font sizes – disable the ability of all printers to do anything smaller than 8 pt. That helps folks like me with deteriorating vision and forces others to be a little more economical in their spreadsheets.

Defaults – And while we are on this subject, let’s distribute software with all defaults disabled and give people a simple list of the things they might wish to set at start-up. I’ve said before there is no way these anoraks at Microsoft have any idea what we ordinary folks wish to do.

We could apply the same idea to car instruments. Just give us the speedo & the fuel gauge and allow us to switch off all the other crap.

Light fittings – never understood why we use the bayonet fitting in the UK. The screw fitting would be much more logical.

Bras – they need a quick release button. Knickers too!

Screw heads – can’t we have just one type? No doubt engineers will put me right here. But then engineers always want something new. As my Purchasing Manager once told me, ‘All those standard component specification books in Engineering are there to tell them what components to avoid.’

Guinness – can’t we make it just pour more quickly without detracting from the flavour and texture?

UK emergency sirens – hysterical crap these are. They scare the shit out of people and have poor directional detection. It has already been proven that the French low-frequency ones are better in most respects.

Washing machines - surely in this day and age we could do away with all that rotating machinery and just whack the muck off with ultrasonics. And let's replace the tumble drier with microwaves. Guess you wouldn't get that fresh clean smell though.

I’ll have to give this a bit more thought

Policemen in cars

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Just watched a CNN video of a guy on a Houston freeway being chased by the police. Well, he managed to overturn one police car but the rest got him and smacked him into the central barrier. In seconds, his car was surrounded by 8, 9 or 10 other police cars and he was dragged out. I say ‘dragged’ but I mean torn out and smacked to the ground as though he was Public Enemy No. 1 or even Osama Bin Laden himself.

So what you may say, he had it coming. And yes he probably did but what amazes me is the speed and scale of the police response. Can you imagine getting all that attention if you phoned 999 (911 in the USA) saying your friend had just been stabbed? If you’d been burgled, you’d be lucky to see a copper for 3 days.

Here in Wales a few days ago some copper was in court for writing off his BMW police car in torrential rain on the motorway at somewhere between 115 and 122 mph. It wasn’t an emergency and other motorists had slowed down because of the weather conditions. Apparently part of his defence was to say that he had driven ‘at appropriate speeds.’

In a perverse way, I kinda hoped that that defence argument had succeeded and then we could lift the speed limit so I could do the same. Never done better than 156 mph in sunshine on the open road so it would be nice to see if I could beat that.

And now the Chief Constable of South Wales Police says she is facing a £14 million shortfall in her budget. She is threatening to charge people for the full cost of policing major events such as football and rugby games, concerts and royal visits. Well they are the only occasions when I ever see a copper on his own two feet as opposed to sitting on his butt in a car. Haven’t seen one walking around my area for more years than I can remember.

And finally, she is threatening to curtail motorway policing from April if her force does not get a 9.8% increase in their annual loot. Well maybe she could cut back on her BMW’s. Those Houston cops’ cars were Ford Crown Victoria’s which are no quicker than my diesel Volvo. Not as fast as BMW’s but no doubt half the price.

Pollack

Friday, February 13th, 2009

This is a fish and there are plenty of them, unlike other species like cod and haddock which are said to be overfished. I must say I have never noticed a shortage of the latter in my local fish & chip shop but that may be the reason for dwindling stocks.

Anyway, pollack sales are rising fast and it is said that this on the back of top chef's recommendations and the public's desire to move to more sustainable fishing. Hmmmm. It's damn sight cheaper than cod or haddock for a start so that's a clue. The chef's want more profit and who can tell what white fish it is once they have smothered it in their 21 ingredient sauce. The British public will by and large go for the cheaper option whenever possible.

No, pollack is a watery and pale immitation of cod and if you just simply bake it or grill it, you will know that.

Sex and the Swastika

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Watched a TV programme on this subject the other night. The first half was quite amusing since it told the story of British ‘black propaganda’ in WWII when we apparently circulated salacious stories about the sexual behaviour of Nazis by radio and by leaflets. All the usual stuff, ‘while you boys are the frontier, the lads back home are knocking off your wives.’ Saw the same stuff back in the 80’s on the toilet wall’s of the Lucas Lighting factory in Cannock Staff. Then the words were something like, ‘while you Brummies are working here, the niggers of Aston are screwing your wives’. Distasteful but as old as the hills.

The 2^nd half of the programme was poor – yet another raking over the coals of Hitler’s sexuality and pretty Freudian at that. Oh yes, we got the usual half baked speculation on the death of Geli Raubal but no mention of Unity Mitford. Then the Americans put a Freudian ‘expert’ to work on it and his conclusions were unsurprising and dirty.

Hitler apparently liked being shit and pissed on by women, kicked at times so this filled him with self loathing which he then revenged himself by smacking other countries. Have you ever heard so much utter crap (no pun intended)?

So given that Stalin and Mao killed many more, what where their little kinks? And what about Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun? Silence. And what of Robert Mugabe? Well, I'd like to shove his head into a pile of shit but I don't think he would like it.

Is it just not faintly possible that Hitler’s motivation was simply driven by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the desire of the French to rub Germany’s nose in the dirt, the economic circumstances of the Weimer Republic and the anti Semitism of the Austria in which he was raised? Sure, I’d add he did not have a happy childhood as well but we don’t need all this Freudian psychoanalysis.

Freud was vain and wrote in the Victorian era when talk of sex was considered impolite. He seems to consider this repression to be the root of all evil. Me, I’d like to discover Mr. Freud’s kinks for I sure that they were a major driving force to his own conclusions. And I’d whip him. LMAO.

Many forms of human behaviour can be predicted by watching and observing and they need no Freudian analysis. Perhaps they are innate but that would not go down well with the psychoanalysts for that’s not simple enough for them. Try conformity to the group for one; it seems to be quite universal whether or not you've screwed your mother.

This may seem over simplistic but by far the biggest problem I have in all this is that so many people study aberrations and from these studies they draw conlusions for the world at large. Same with anthropology. They study some tiny matriarchal society in the South Pacific and say, 'Whoa, men are not naturally superior after all.' They fail of course to mention that these islanders have sat in their grass skirts for millennia.

Olympics 2012

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Well, I did say we'd screw this one up and so, it seems, we are doing it rather nicely. The cost of the main stadium has risen from an estimated £282 million in 2004 to a figure of £547 million this month. And after the games, it will cost a mere £800,000/year to keep it open. No football or rugby club wants to take it over because it's design places the audience too far back from the pitch. And it is conceded that whatever is done with it, it won't make money until 2017 at the earliest and that's if they are lucky.

That does not of course matter to our politicians. The Mayor of London has said that it will be a wonderful facility for world class athletics while the Muppet, Hazel Blears, says it's all about creating communities where people will are happy to live and work for years to come. At the rate we're going, we should be able to use the arena for tents and soup kitchens for the homeless and unemployed.

Most writers compare the forthcoming debacle with the Millennium Dome, another financial fisaco. What none of them mention is location and logistics.

A simple glance at any UK map will show you that most of us Brits live to the North and West of London so what do they do? Build the Dome at Greenwich in the South East and the Olympic Stadium in Stratford to the East. You ever tried getting across Greater London? it is a nigthmare. Sure they may improve travel links but both will still be a bugger to get to (although Paula Radcliffe will no doubt have her own helicopter from Monaco.)

My son lives very close to Greenwich. Driving from Cardiff takes just 2 hours to Heathrow and anything between 1.5 and 3 hours to get to him from there. No idea what it would take to get to Stratford but I'd bet there would be no parking when I got there.

Apart from him, I did think that the location might be nice for my two doctor friends in Southend but then I realised that they'd have no time to see the Games. They'd be on call 24/7 to fix the sick and the maimed and Paula Radcliffe.

We never learn, do we? As I write, England is bidding to host the 2018 soccer World Cup. Another triumph of hope over experience.

Don't signs

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

We live in a world of being told what not to do and are rarely encouraged on what we should do. The American road crossing sign which brusquely says 'WALK,' is one of the latter and so is the green traffic light but they are in the minority.

A new takeaway has opened up nearby on on its door it has a 'No smoking' sign plau a note to the effect that it is against the law to smoke on the premises. Well, we know that and anyone who doesn't must have been in a coma these past two years. I don't suspect the takeaway will be getting many visits from blind Mongolians so the sign is redundant.

Remember what I said about the Ashford, Kent project where they took down all the road signs and made pedestrians and motorists equal and left them to their own judgement? Well reactions have been mixed but the experiment continues. Some guy moaned that such experiments may have worked well on the Continent because 'their motorists were different.' Damn right their motorists are different - they kill far more people for the most part. Any league table on road death will show the UK very near the bottom.


Anyway, I'll leave you with this. It is a sign at the entrance to the Summer Palace in Beijing. It takes the biscuit.

And in case you are wondering, the centre bottom one means 'No fireworks.' I never figured that out so I had to ask a Chinese friend.

The length of books and movies

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

When I was a kid the average movie ran to 90 minutes and the average book to less than 200 pages. I mean Agatha Christie wrapped up the most complex murders in less than 200 pages and the Dam Busters covered the planning, design and delivery of the bouncing bomb in less than 2 hours.

Goddamit, even Morse solved the most complex of murders in 90 minutes.

To be sure, academic tomes were often longer but that’s a different matter.

It seems this art has been lost nowadays in the world of the so called ‘blockbuster.’ I look at the books on my shelves, not many fiction I know, and what do I see? The brighter and more recent ones are much thicker whilst the slimmer ones are old and stained. Not so easy to discern with movies because you have to look on the back of the DVD box but it’s the same story. You’d expect summat like ‘The Longest Day’ to be on the long side but why it took 2.5 hours to knock off Meryl Streep in ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, I’ll never know. I think they call it ‘characterisation.’

Yes, yes, I know that ‘War and Peace’ was very long and Dostoyevsky could not pack a story into anything less than an inch thick. But they were 19^th century Russians and I was not their audience so maybe they were appealing to others. Today, I blame Stephen King for he cannot express anything in less than a book at least one inch thick. Same with Dean Koontz but he is even more superficial.

Moving on to music – well in the 60’s we could have a damn good pop song which sold millions and lasted just 2 minutes and say 54 seconds. Now that brevity is lost, they have to pad it out a while.

At work, I used to get ever larger emails with multi megabyte attachments and a note saying something like, ‘You may find this interesting.’ That was easily sorted. Just bounce them back to the sender with a note saying that it was far too long to read and a request for the key points to be summarised in no more than 2 pages.

Same with emails from Cardiff County Council - huge attachments on strategic planning or the price of biscuits in down town cafes. And being in Wales, they were double the normal size for everything had to be written in English and Welsh. Emails I just deleted and hard copies went in the bin. It didn't seem to bother them. They could claim that I'd been consulted and it mattered not if I had not replied.

I am conscious that I am guilty of TMI and natter too much but as I have grown older I just simply prefer succinctness.

Cars and climate change

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Back in December 2008, we had a report from the UK Government's 'Commission on Climate Change'. The Chairman confidently predicted that by 2020, 40% of all new cars sold would be electric or hybrid. Now given that we buy around 2+ million cars a year in the UK (recessions apart), that's over 800,000 sets of wheels. And it won't be just one model either , it will have to be loads.

Well the last time I checked, which is years ago, your average new car cost around $2 billion to develop and that was using the same engine and gear box. Change them and you can double the figure. DEW98, the Scorpio successor had its development stopped when Ford realised that it was going to cost $8 billion.

Given that so many of the world's carmakers are either profitless or near bankrupt, it ain't on is it?

Last week the Boston Consulting Group produced a report that looked at the supporting infrastructure for electric and hybrid cars. They reckoned that in Europe alone, we'd need $21 billion alone to set up battery charging facilities in Europe in 2020 + another $49 billion more to develop the technology.

In the wake of the banking crisis, these numbers don't look so bad but they ignore the people and ancilliary element. Where are the engineers coming from? Who will make the batteries and where will the raw materials come from? And who wants a bloody car with a range of no more than 200 miles?

And for what? It was not so long ago that Tony Blair stated that if Britain shut up shop tomorrow, it would take the Chinese no more than two years to replace our CO2 output. And the cows will continue farting methane and you can see what that gas does if you go back to my notes on the Permian extinction.

I don't know the answer but then neither will I be around to see it.

Subsidies for the Arts

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Until the recent banking bail-out, the Arts were at the very front of the queue for getting public money. And of course, if you suggested that they might bugger off, you'd have been called a Philistine. I know that Hitler burned the books but that had nothing to do with the destruction of art: it was politics. Goering after all looted pretty much anywhere the Nazis conquered for its paintings. And as far as I know, the Nazis took the Amber Room in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to bits and buried it somewhere we have never found.

The Arts community just doesn't seem to feel the need to justify its greed. It operates on the principle that 'art is good' so cough up. I mean we have just forked out £50m for Titian's painting 'Diana and Actaeon'. 'Saved for the nation,' is the cry. Did anyone ask me or my neighbours or my friends if they wanted it saved? Of course not for they know the answer they'd have got. Better still, they might have given us a choice - 'Diana and Actaeon' or Cat Rescue and I still reckon the cats would have won. And in any case, it's not a picture I'd have rushed to see. If you go round the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, you'll see enough fat naked women with big feet to last a lifetime.

Oh and having secured that money, they have the brass-necked cheek to hand out the begging bowl for another £50m to 'save' its sister painting, Diana and Callista.

There's a lot of hand wringing down here in Wales about the fact that the sponsors of the annual Brecon Jazz Festival have gone bust. It seems that great efforts are being made to ressurect it in 2010. Fine, get on with it. Three options: charge those '70,000 visitors from around the world' a bit more, pay the performers less (the world is not exactly crying out for jazz concerts) or cut costs all round.

I could move on to opera subsidies but that would take a book.

For most of us, David Attenborough, Harry Potter, Teletubbies and the Beano are quite enough to keep us entertained.

The bottom line with Arts funding is that its insatiable and completely unjustifiable to anyone but those pretentious buggers who think it is more important than starvation in Africa.

More than 2 kids

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

A woman doctor in Devon has decided that couples should have no more than two kids. I'd agree with her except I want zillions of workers contributing to my pension. This woman has two sons and despite yearning for a daughter, she had herself sterilised after the first two.

I commend her dedication but it's none of her bloody business what the rest of us do. She's a doctor so presumably has sworn the Hippocratic Oath (and yes I know there is nothing there about family size) so she should help her patients or bugger off.

We already have quacks talking about not assisting smokers and drunken drivers. Where will this end? Sorry, you are too fat. Sorry, I heard you were speeding when you crashed into that tree. Sorry, you smell. Sorry, you vote Liberal Democrat. Sorry, you eat meat.

Even better, would be, 'Sorry I hear you are against having more than 2 kids. Well I have 4, so die bitch.'

If these doctors are funded by the taxpayers, they should damn well treat us all.

People's names

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Last week, some tour operator caused a stir by saying that his trips were yob free and that he had deliberately excluded people with names like Britney, Shannon, Chardonnay etc. I could only disagree with him on one name, Candice, for Candice Bergen is quite lovely. As for the rest, I am with him 100% of the way.

My HR Manager used to despair as I rifled through a set of CV's and threw aside the 'Waynes' of this world regardless of their experience and qualifications. 'You can't judge people like that,' she said. ''Yes I can,' was my reply. Then my daughter married a Brett and even she was embarrassed by his name when she was first dating him. Well, he has turned out to be a complete asshole so there you go.

I only ever recruited one Dean and that was because I knew him of old otherwise he'd have had no chance. TT's Finance Director has the surname Dasani, the name behind Coca-Cola's biggest European marketing disaster so he'd be out on that alone.

Names are given by parents so you may say 'do not blame the kids.' But never forget, the very same parents brought up those kids. Small wonder that they turn out the way they are.

Racial epithets

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

It seems like Carol Thatcher, Maggie's daughter, is in deep trouble with the BBC after referring to a tennis player in the Australian Tennis Open as a 'golliwog'. It seems that she was talking about a man which is OK for if she was talking about the gorgeous Serena Williams, I would have been mortally offended.

OK she should not have said it. I think it is quite harmless to use racial epithets with people you know, in both directions - providing you both accept it. I call a friend, 'my melanic blonde' and she thinks it's funny; not only that but she now calls herself by the same title occasionally. You do, naturally, have to know someone well to do this.

But all this is above the heads of the BBC. They want an apology from Ms. Thatcher or she will never go on air again. They got one from Russell Brand & Jonathan Woss for phoning Andrew Sachs and saying they had fucked his daughter.

I just wonder if the BBC would have banned our Woss if he had not apologised and there had not been a public outcry. Somehow I don't think they would.

Thalidomide

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

This was a drug given to pregnant women in the late 50's/early 60's to relieve pregnant women of 'morning sickness'. Unfortunately, the babies of the women who had taken this drug often had stunted or non-existent limbs which in a way crippled them for life. I have only known one such person, a mate, who had his right hand growing out of his right shoulder.

We talked about it briefly but it was one of those things each of us came to live with so in the end you forget about it. My main worry was him driving using his left hand with a knob on the steering wheel and having to change gear with that same hand.

Now of course these victims of this drug disaster are pushing 50 and many are said to have difficulties due to the added stress imposed on the rest of their bodies. They claim they need help and I guess they do for adaptation costs to their homes and vehicles are high.

Is our Government helping? Of course, not. Far too busy bailing out bankers.

The Sunday Times said that there are only 457 victims/survivors of this debacle so it would not be too much trouble to help them. If the Government doesn't do it itself, then at least they could pressure Diageo, the owners of Distillers who put this drug on the market in the first place.

These people have no power but that does not mean they should be neglected.