Fed up with all the bullsh*t

Well I've had my weekly dose of politics, thanks to Question Time and The Politics Show.
I can't believe an intelligent guy like Gerry Robinson just said Gordon Brown was an excellent chancellor. I'm afraid Gordon Brown has been presiding over one of the biggest accounting swindles of all time, with public money.

For GB is the man who has mortgaged the future of the UK Public Sector infrastructure to PFI deals, to meet election pledges now. My poor kids will be paying for these third rate buildings into their old age. Honestly the old Victorian hospitals were better, and cheaper and considerably nicer to look at than all the crappy new boxyhousing estates that have popped up everywhere and the silly modern hospitals which are too small and too uninspiring, places you dread to go to even if you are not ill.

And just how bit is the hole in the public sector pension provision that is being buried in on the UK balance sheet? The deficit must be vast. Again my kids have to work to pay for the pensions of today's politicians, civil servants, council workers, police officers, doctors, nurses etc. I don't think all the quangos have separate pension funds, but the figures aren't included in the national debt. There has to be something wrong here.

Targets in education are meaningless but millions are being spent enforcing these targets. The output of the education system needs to be employable people who have ambition to succeed. I don't care how many exams the kids have passed...can they do a decent days work? If they are creative and polite and personable they'll do just fine. My kids are already neurotic about tests and feel like failures, they are 7 and 9 years old!! As an employer I can't understand the CV of a 17 year old as the courses that they have taken are incomprehensible. I have to check that they can actually read and write an hold a decent conversation.

This is especially true when they are 21+ and have degrees (good degrees from very good universities...but can't write a sentence...great education system). These graduates can believe that the world owes them a living, because they have a good degree, which their parents have now paid a lot for (government policy again, denying access to university with one hand whilst setting a target for more people to go). So how much pressure are the universities under to increase their pass rates...hmm govt targets + parental top up fees = serious pressure. Don't tell me it doesn't happen.

When I went to Uni nobody on my course had got a 1st Class Honours in 20 years. Now 40% get them, this is a good university with a 5* research rating...well the kids today are clearly that much cleverer than we were. The difference is the targets, plus the competition to attract students and all those nasty divisive league tables.

And as for the day to day dirge that a lot of schoolchildren have to put up with, it truly makes me despair. The excellent teachers that have been driven out of the profession by the politically correct rubbish they have been forced to teach must squirm. I couldn't really tell you who did what when I was at school, but from an inner London primary school I ended up at a decent state funded grammar school and then got a grant to go to university...this was 1985...I'm not that ancient.

As a penalty for my success I am not quite rich enough to pay for an independent school to teach my kids the same things as I did at that primary school in the 1970s and 80's!!!!!!! I've been round plenty of private schools for a look, so I do know what I am talking about.

I was brought up with a work ethic, to value education and to make the best of my opportunities. A lot of my ethics were grounded in that primary school education. On the statistics the school was rubbish, but they gave the kids the opportunity to think for themselves...if they chose to take it. The government would do well to back off a bit and let people think for themselves.

Common sense is out of the window...unless it meets a new government target of course, in which case we'll all have to pass a test and get a certificate.