Nikita Khrushchev Summed It Up, Says The Bitch!
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Well Darlings,
Thank you to all those who pointed out the anti-war rally last week was a perfect example of the way in which we have almost lost our protest marches and demonstrations. Highly orchestrated, kept away from parliament, next to no coverage in the media despite having some notable speakers (and that IS worrying), and dismissed by the Metropolitan Police as consisting of only a few thousand people (at one point they claimed just 1,000 to 2,000) despite organisers putting the figure between 60,000 and 100,000. As a tool to end war, I suspect Lorenzo's butterfly flapping its wings somewhere has had more of an effect. It will be interesting to see just how the Met justify the enormous cost of all the policing based on their belittling count.
Changing the subject: Home Office figures recently obtained by the Daily Telegraph show that the number of teenagers murdered or unlawfully killed in England and Wales has all but doubled in the last 10 years, from 35 in 1997-8 to 69 in 2005-6. A large proportion of those deaths were at the hands of another young person. And all this comes after ten years of our government supposedly being tough on crime. Tough on the rest of us, more like! But then, if they can't teach our youngsters something as simple as the three "R"s, what hope have they in explaining how to cope with all the complexities of life?
I'm convinced a lot of our violent troubles stem from a poor education, which results in anger. Unable to fully understand the ways of life, unaccepted because of their ignorance, and with no hierarchy pre-formed by any real academic or sporting competition and achievement, the kids vent their anger and resort to physically trying to attain some position within the dregs of the society they are left to inhabit. It is only once we understand their needs and supply them - a decent education and some discipline - that they will fully understand our needs, and act accordingly. They are the trouble; we are the cause.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said that not only should the teenagers who are involved in gun crime be excluded from their communities, there would be times when the whole family should be removed as well. It makes sense to me. But what did not make sense in his article was where he said that he did not believe gun crime in Britain had reached crisis proportions. I have to wonder: what does this man call a crisis?
A survey by the Teacher Support Network shows that half of teachers have been physically abused by pupils. Of those: 53% had an object thrown at them, 26% were attacked with pieces of furniture or equipment, 2% with a knife, and 1% with a gun.
All figures are approximate, but near enough: we have 430,000 teachers, and when we add the teaching assistants, administrative staff, technicians and other support staff which amount to another 239,000 it makes a total of 669,000 that are open to this kind of attack. So half of those is 334,500 and working on those 2% and 1% figures, isn't that 6,190 threats with a knife and 3,345 with a gun? Around 10,000 serious cases in all - and with a third of them involving a firearm?
And that's not a crisis?
Let's not play things down by prettying-up the figures and talking in percentages here - 10,000 serious incidents where kids have threatened their teachers needs facing up to and dealing with! These kids will not just be threatening their teachers, will they? Their violence is likely to be manifesting itself throughout all areas of society, not just in the schools.
And what of our schools today? It's not good news there either. Latest figures reveal teenage boys fell further behind girls in reading and writing last year, and hundreds of schools once again failed to meet the minimum government targets. Well, whilst I appreciate boys have always had difficulty understanding even the simplest of words - like "No!" for an example - the news we hear gets far worse than that: sixteen out of twenty-one (that's three-quarters) of Tony Blair's privately sponsored flagship city academies failed to make the grade in English, maths and science - three essential subjects. The school league tables show that, four years on, these academies which were created to address the failing comprehensive schools are still lagging far behind them.
Teachers' leaders are demanding the government review the policy which they claim is simply not working. The general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Steve Sinnott, is reported as saying: "Once again, the government's claims for the success of its academies programme are not borne out by the facts. (I guess he's referring to all the government spin here. In layman's terms: porkies!) These schools sit in isolation and don't enjoy the support that could be provided by their local authority or other schools in the area. The government must rethink this extraordinarily expensive experiment."
At around £25 million each to build, these academies are without a doubt extraordinarily expensive - especially as they are not producing the expected results! But guess what? It appears our government ministers aren't daunted one bit, and they will be continuing to waste our money on them. They are determined to establish 200 academies by 2010 - at an estimated cost of some £5 billion - and already have plans to further expand that to 400 later on.
Now, I'm wondering just who needs to go to school here! When the solution to a problem cannot be found by adopting one method, it is customary to employ a different method to seek it out. So why don't they? Have they run out of ideas? Yes, I guess they have. And that at least may come as a relief for some in the teaching profession!
Education, education, education. It hasn't happened in the schools, so now the focus moves over to the motorist to see if the government may have more luck there. According to the Audit Commission in a report entitled: Changing Lanes, better education is required in order to reduce the 3,000 fatalities and the 267,000 injuries annually occurring on our roads. The report claims that the UK's roads are among the safest in the world, and then strangely it goes on to tell us a child pedestrian is three times more likely to die here than in France, and twice as likely to die here as in Italy.
Hmm . . . It's that "among" isn't it? If we were to be near the bottom of the league, by being in the same list we would still be among the safest. It's a spin-friendly word, is "among". It immediately gives the reader an impression that may be far removed from the actual truth. I would rather know the truth: whether we were fifth, twenty-fifth, or even ninety-ninth rather than to be fed such misinformation. Perhaps a little education, education, education wouldn't go amiss in some government departments when it comes to making out a report! But then we couldn't have that, could we? Us plebs must never be told the truth. Unlike politicians and civil servants, we are so stupid we would never understand it.
It can only be because I am so stupid that I believe, come hell or high water, the government is determined to fleece the motorist in the name of "congestion", very loosely linked to a "green" policy. We can expect more restrictions, more cameras, and a great deal more taxation.
In a pretence to be "listening" to the objections of the 1.8 million people recently signing an "e-petition" on the proposed congestion charging, the government have moved the goal posts - and it's likely to cost the motorist even more money. The latest idea from the stink tank - sorry, the think tank - is to divide the whole of Britain up into "zones", rather than just charge for our congested town and city centres. A town or city centre would become zone 1, the area just outside that would be known as zone 2, the suburbs would be zone 3, and right outside the town or city, in all the rural areas, it would be zone 4. All the zones would be priced accordingly.
So putting it in a nutshell: rather than paying one fixed rate for a congested area, motorists would be charged by the mile - anywhere - and instead of a satellite positioning device placed in their cars, motorists would need to have a different gadget installed which would record how many miles the car had covered, whilst an army of cameras throughout the country would identify which zone the car was in at any given time.
Clever, isn't it? What the people don't want the sat-nav to do, the cameras will be doing anyway. The spies may not always know exactly where a car is - that is exactly which house it is parked outside - but when it comes to being in a town or city they will know within a few streets. And just think of all the extra information that Big Brother will be able to gather about us and our habits with all those cameras covering all those areas - they will quite literally have to be everywhere, street after street, to avoid "rat-runs" in, out, and around the different zones.
Just imagine what Khrushchev and the KGB could have done with the people who thought this one up!
Incidentally, you might appreciate this quotation attributed to Nikita Khrushchev: "When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to heal, so that you can skin them again." And there's an even more poignant one: "He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It's simply a question of taste."
Hmm . . . What do you want, folks? Congestion charging, or countywide zoning? It's simply a question of taste.
To finish on some better news, I have another one of my "Granny was right" stories - and when you consider the amount of life-threatening things you can catch in a hospital these days, it is very good news. An international team of researchers have "discovered" that preventing the spread of disease in a hospital may be as simple as opening the windows. Ah, the marvels of modern research! Where would we be without it?
Modern "negative pressure" rooms employing an expensive pumping system to change the air, like those found in hospitals and office blocks, do not change the air fast enough, not even in hospital high risk areas where they can only manage the recommended 12 air changes an hour. Opening windows and doors will provide at least 28 air changes an hour, more than twice that of a mechanical system - and it's enough to prevent diseases easily spreading. The old-fashioned type of rooms with high ceilings and large windows provide the safest environment.
Up there, Granny will be so pleased. Telling us it was healthy, she would frequently open all the windows to "air the house" - not that she needed to with the amount of draughts entering under the doors and around the windows being sufficient enough to wind-tunnel test an aircraft. But yes, once again we find history has taught us a lesson - we just needed the modern researchers to "discover" it!
See you next week . . .
"The Bitch!" 2/03/07.
Related: Nikita Khrushchev Summed It Up, Says The Bitch!
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