TEACHING MATHS

1. Teaching Maths In 1970

A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price.
What is his profit? (Show all working)

2. Teaching Maths In 1980

A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is 80% of the price.
What is his profit? (You may use a calculator)

3. Teaching Maths In 1990

A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is £80.
How much was his profit? (Hint: What is 100 minus 80?)

4. Teaching Maths In 2000

A logger sells a truckload of timber for £100.
His cost of production is £80 and his profit is £20.
Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Maths In 2005

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habit of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. Your assignment:  Discuss how the birds and squirrels might feel as the logger cut down their homes just for a measly profit of £20.

6. Teaching Maths In 2009

A logger is arrested for trying to cut down a tree in case it may be offensive to Muslims or other religious groups not consulted in the felling licence. He is also fined a £100 as his chainsaw is in breach of Health and Safety legislation as it deemed too dangerous and could cut something. He has used the chainsaw for over 20 years without incident however he does not have the correct certificate of competence and is therefore considered to be a recidivist and habitual criminal. His DNA is sampled and his details circulated throughout all government agencies. He protests and is taken to court and fined another £100 because he is such an easy target. When he is released he returns to find Gypsies have cut down half his wood to build a camp on his land.  He tries to throw them off but is arrested, prosecuted for harassing an ethnic minority, imprisoned and fined a further £100.  While he is in jail the Gypsies cut down the rest of his wood and sell it on the black market for £100 cash.  They also have a leaving barbecue of squirrel and pheasant and depart leaving behind several tonnes of rubbish and asbestos sheeting. The forester on release is warned that failure to clear the fly tipped rubbish immediately at his own cost is an offence. He complains and is arrested for environmental pollution, breach of the peace and invoiced £12,000 plus VAT for safe disposal costs by a regulated government contractor.

Your assignment:  How many times is the logger going to have to be arrested and fined before he realises that he is never going to make £20 profit by hard work, give up, sign onto the dole and live off the state for the rest of his life?

7. Teaching Maths In 2010

A logger doesn't sell a lorry load of timber because he can’t get a loan to buy a new lorry because his bank has spent all his and their money on a derivative of securitised debt related to sub-prime mortgages in Alabama and lost the lot with only some government money left to pay a few million pound bonuses to their senior directors and the traders who made the biggest losses.

The logger struggles to pay the £1,200 road tax on his old lorry however, as it was built in the 1970s it no longer meets the emissions regulations and he is forced to scrap it.

Some Bulgarian loggers buy the lorry from the scrap merchant and put it back on the road. They undercut everyone on price for haulage and send their cash back home, while claiming unemployment for themselves and their relatives. If questioned they speak no English and it is easier to deport them at the governments expense. Following their holiday back home they return to the UK with different names and fresh girls and start again. The logger protests, is accused of being a bigoted racist and as his name is on the side of his old lorry he is forced to pay £1,500 registration fees as a gang master.

The Government borrows more money to pay more to the bankers as bonus's are not cheap. The parliamentarians feel they are missing out and claim the difference on expenses and allowances.

8. Teaching Maths 2020 

أ المسجل تبيع حموله شاحنة من الخشب من اجل دولار. صاحب تكلفة الانتاج من
الثمن. ما هو الربح له؟

It says "For fuck's sake, Allah, 

Why is there so much fucking SAND?"

You do the maths.

(Wantonly plagiarised from several Internet sources!)

Lies, damned lies, statistics and politics

Who can you trust? It's a really important question.

Do you trust the weather forecasters? Do you trust the economists who alternately say cut or borrow or tax or spend or save? Do you trust the newspapers - ANY newspapers? Who DO you trust? Because if you can't trust anybody, the political classes have you exactly where they want you.

There are few outright political truths. We've rubbed along with a mixture of oppression and liberty, private and public, business and personal, war and peace for centuries without learning any outright truths. Would a truly unfettered economic system lead to prosperity? Would a truly controlled system lead to equality and fairness? The evidence is that neither has all the solutions, so we swing slowly this way and that, relying on the negative feedback of public opinion to determine the direction of the wind.

My perception is that the breeze is blowing from the West and setting our course towards the right after a prolonged period of intrusive leftist interference in people's lives. But from the East come the chill winds of opposition and the current opposition are masters of the bait and switch. All for one? Or every man for himself? As these air masses of ideology meet, Britain is trapped under a deep depression.

We are gearing up for the big race to the bottom; to the landfill where truth and integrity, principals and morals go to be buried under a giant mound of steaming bullshit. The big prize is a win in the 2015 general Election, seats on boards, snouts in troughs. The losers, as always, will be the British population at large because politics has long ceased to mean anything other than the least-worst choice between competing evils.

They would rather not compete for your vote - one day they will do away with your annoying interference in the grand plan - but for now (maybe not for long) they need you to choose sides. If they can't convince you of their merits they can turn you against the other side. If that is a dangerous proposition they can try and steer you to a third option that least badly affects their share of crosses in boxes. It's a dirty game and as in war, truth is the first casualty.

So, on the heels of UKIP's outstanding surge in Eastleigh it came as no surprise to find that Labour had planted Amy Rutland, a Labour skivvy, as a stooge in last night's BBC Question Time audience to vilify Farage's forces as racists and imply this was the view of the majority. The wee dupe was brought up short by the ever-rational Melanie Phillips' spirited and rational adjuration to grow up and stop the rot.

It won't happen, of course. Andy Burnham and Jeremy Hunt will trade lies about the NHS's fortunes under their relative administrations. David Cameron will tell lies about holding a referendum on EU membership. Ed Miliband will lie about Labour's contrition and weep crocodile tears as he apologises, fingers firmly crossed, for everything Tony Blair did and Ed balls will say "Flatlining!" every PMQs till polling day.

Lies, lies, lies. So who DO you believe? All you can do, I reckon is wake up, take a long hard look at yourself and decide if you want to be part of the solution, or part of the problem - they are both legitimate, if unequally meritorious viewpoints - and vote for the candidates or parties whose actions (not rhetoric) chime with your beliefs.

When I'm King, I will rule with a light touch and a benevolent hand. Honest ;o)

Payday Loan Arranger

I'm all for looking after the weak and helpless. I'm not so sure I want to provide the same supporting shoulder for the stupid and feckless; to those who have brought misfortune on themselves. Payday loan companies are in the news again and The Guardian is reporting "widespread irresponsible" lending behaviour. Of course there is, largely caused by elements of widespread stupidity. 

And hot on the heels of the actual news story we get the inevitable tacked-on sound-bites from the wounded survivors of the loan companies’ rapacious attacks on their inability to grasp that nobody lends money commercially for any other reason than profit. And if I'm brutally frank they all sound a bit whiny, a bit ‘victim’ and – let’s not be coy – a bit dim. 

Who are these hapless borrowers and why do they need protecting? Oh yes, it’s the same old suspects beloved of every political party wanting to put on a caring face. Well, ever heard the expression ‘you have to be cruel to be kind’? The alternative to legal extortionate lending is illegal extortionate lending and unlike the loan sharks, at least Wonga might not break your legs. 

Why would anybody take a payday loan? They are short-term bridging loans and they do have a place for those times when, say, an emergency finds you with too much month left at the end of your money. On such blue-moon-rare occasions they are a godsend for some. But they are a desperately unwise source of funding for a sure thing at the three-thirty at Kempton or to satisfy a craving for a tattoo... or to pay off another loan. There is a heavenly host of voices throughout the land advising the avoidance of any such undertaking and the fact that others have judged you un-credit-worthy should be a big clue. 

Obviously, in the view of Stella Creasy, it is down to the government to wade in and help out ‘the most vulnerable in society’ as if it hasn’t been the activities of interfering governments – principally her party – that resulted in so many being so stupid, naive or reckless as to be tempted by such usury. There has been a progressive deterioration in education, self-control, self-respect and concern for others, coupled with a rise in welfare dependency and entitlement mentality, etc, the inevitable outcome of which is aberrations like Heather Frost. Yes, it is all her fault; why not? 

Pointing the blame finger is easy, but when will we wake up and accept that some humans are just lesser examples of the species than others? Yes, we can all fall on hard times but given that most payday borrowers probably watch more television in an afternoon than some of us manage in a month they ought to be wise to what happens to those who don’t repay. Even with all the warnings of concrete boots or an opportunity in construction - propping up a flyover for eternity – not to mention a wealth of personal experience, some people are just too stupid to listen and too impatient to wait. 

Welcome to the inevitable cost of Socialism’s profligate ‘caring’ policies – Wonganomics – the more you avoid hard decisions in favour of misguided aid the more you entrench the levels of dependency. Maybe it’s time to let people learn from their mistakes, rather than teach them the state will always be there. The time is fast approaching when it just won’t be. 

Money talks. For most of us, all it has ever said is “Goodbye!”

Straighten up and buy right

Twice in the last 24 hours I've seen somebody having a pop at the policy of selling off council houses and it’s telling that the use of the word ‘Thatcherite’ automatically implies criticism. Boo, hiss, nasty, etc, although isn't it curious that nobody called the Conservatives of Mrs Thatcher’s day The Nasty Party (That was down to TheresaMay – cheers, Tess.)

Anyway, to hear some talk, the heinous selling of homes to their long-term tenants at very generous discounts is directly responsible for the current ‘housing crisis’, causing the return of Rackman-style landlords to raid the public coffers of housing benefit. What utter cod. Predictably the red-to-its-roots Daily Mirror leads the rallying cry against ‘toffs’ and ‘cronies’ as if every single social housing entrepreneur is directly related to the Iron Lady and her evil plot to help ordinary people achieve a lifetime ambition.

Actually, the Labour Party itself, in its manifesto of 1959, proposed to introduce the right of tenants to buy the homes they lived in. It was a laudable aim, a very British aspiration and it offered for the first time the possibility that an ordinary working class family could accumulate some bricks and mortar; a castle of their own to pass on to their children. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea... except for the profligacy of weak and venal humans.

Throughout the eighties council tenants exercised their right to buy, effectively capping their accommodation costs, acquiring a little bit of England for themselves and starting to feel a little bit middle class. Living through real austerity in the post-war years and true to their working class values a good many lived within their means and eventually paid off their small mortgages to live rent-free for ever more. Plenty of ordinary pensioners owe their relatively comfortable old age to Mrs Thatcher.

But it was also the age of consumerism and among the younger and more reckless a more dangerous game of Keeping Up With Every Single One Of The Joneses was played out. The race was on; some sold as soon as they could, took the profit and moved up and out. Others discovered the money-for-nothing world of the remortgage. After all, the price of houses had only ever gone up, hadn’t it? And the banks in their turn were duped and continued to lend, ever more optimistically, fuelled by exactly the same greedy instincts as their mortgagees.

The warning signs were there from the start – cars worth more than the original price of the houses standing alongside the settee in the garden. Too-expensive new show kitchens and bathrooms and giant televisions and foreign holidays. This was not the fault of any government - New Labour even rejoiced at the notion of ordinary people living way beyond their means – this was simple human avarice. Former secure council tenants wilfully placed themselves in jeopardy and rode the boom until the inevitable sorry bust.

Buy-to-let mortgages allowed ordinary people with a bit of vision to acquire a property portfolio and as former owners became renters once more it was a viable enterprise. Now they are pariahs because what, because they rent to welfare recipients? Despite what Owen Jones thinks there are few predatory landlords out there. Most are bumping along the bottom just like their tenants.

Renting in the welfare sector is a gamble and without any capital gains many social landlords are currently making a loss. If Housing Benefit is cut they can’t rely on tenants to make up the difference so they suck it up; they have little choice, yet according to the merry little Chavmeister they are all evil millionaires exploiting the weak.

Talking of chavs, self-styled King of the Chavs, Michael Carroll blew the best part of £10million and freely admits he couldn’t handle it. He is an extreme example, but one recognised by every law-abiding neighbour of one of his kind.

A poverty-stricken council house tenant. 

Don't give him money - he'll only lose it.

Is there a moral here? Not really, just a truth - in life there are winners and losers at all levels. It doesn’t matter how much social engineering is applied, money will always leave those incapable of understanding it; plenty have proved they fit that profile. And of course it is the naivety of Socialism once again... not understanding money or people is a real problem in a world that is run by people. With money.

Small Talk

I'm not really sure I understand humans at all. I mean, what’s the point anyway when as soon as you get to know one it grows old and dies, taking your secrets with it to the grave. Or is that pets? I get confused.

Take food. I used to marvel at the way people would eulogise over a new type of processed cheese slice, gushing out their praise and drooling at the thought, longing for their next encounter. I’d try said cheese, find it, well, a bit cheese-like, shrug and get on with my life. People, eh? What a bunch of tossers. 

But that isn't it. It isn't that I am out of step with other people’s aspirations and lifestyle choices at all, I seem to be out of step with their perceptions of others’ perceptions. Which sounds a bit mad, so I’d better try to explain. An example here from my past, from the days when I cared: 

I’m on the edge of a conversation; a bunch of people I know (let’s call them ‘friends’ for want of any better term) went out last night. They went to a new pub and it was abso-fucking-lutely brilliant; the best night of their lives to behold such wonders, “You MUST go!”. So, a few weeks later I have the opportunity to try out this Nirvanic experience for myself. I go. It turns out to be just another pub and – just as with all other pubs – it’s a big, noisy, uncomfortable place where wankers try to outshout each other and strangers spill drinks in my path. Are my ‘friends’ mad? Were they on drugs? Why was, well, that, the best thing they’d ever done? 

I harbour feelings of enmity and feelings of separateness. I am not like other people – they thought this was brilliant, I know it’s shit. But, of course, because I’m different, I keep my observations to myself... until the day I reveal my utter confoundedness to one of these ‘friends’. They seem somewhat taken aback at my impression of their impressions of the place. “It’s just a pub,” they say, “I don’t see what the fuss is about.”

And I’m stunned; but you were one of the ones saying it was the best night of your life, that you could have happily died, having experienced the full extent of what it means to be human. “Oh, I think you’re exaggerating,” they say and change the subject. The fuck? 

It’s taken years of this kind of bullshit for me to finally work out what’s wrong. It's not you, it's me; I'm too emotionally honest about these things. I go out, I get drunk, I have a reasonable time and in the morning I say so. It was, you know, it was okay. Really, it was fun… and then I got drunk and went home – JUST LIKE YOU ALL DID! The bit I never understood was how shallow and meaningless that next-day small talk is meant to be. 

Lazy orators use superlatives as punctuation. ‘It was an okay night.’ does not make for a conversation, apparently. For a conversation – this isn't a debate, dummy! – you have to lie, exaggerate, outdo each others’ tittle tattle, banter, grunts, etc. THAT’s where I got it wrong. Nobody ever taught me this. And so I'm going to tell you the truth. Like I was brung up to do. 

Small talk is exactly that; it is meaningless. It’s small. It means nothing, it's so small. Nothing. There, got it? This means you can exaggerate until your arse falls off. You can exaggerate a million times until; you are blue in the face, until you quite literally die and it’s all right. It’s not only acceptable, it’s the way things are. 

So, that’s the bit I've had wrong for fifty-odd years. It’s not that people are so easily wowed by the mundane, not that they crave squeezy cheese at all. But to admit all this would be to face up to the mundanity of existence, which, let’s face it, would be downright depressing. So, to pretend it’s all better than it is, everybody else – hear that? everybody but me – simply lies about their life and everybody else colludes with that lie and then forgets all about it. 

But what about the BIG talk? This morning you should be talking about economics and Europe and immigration and welfare. You should be getting angry about the government passing bills that extend the powers to enact justice in secret. You should be working out what you will do to help get us avert economic Armageddon. Wait! Where are you going? What are you laughing at now? Eh? Eh? Tell me!! 

Great party, dude!

Sod it. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. We had a party on Twitter last night – it was, well it was just, wow, you know, I mean it was just BRILLIANT!!