The race is back on

Meritocracy? You can almost hear the spitting from here. Those dirty, nasty Tories want a country where working harder, applying yourself and gaining qualification and expertise gets you more than sitting on your fat, entitled, uneducated arse and squeezing out dole-spawn as fast as you can fill in the benefit forms. How awful to suggest a society where your success depends on your efforts rather than lucking out on the lottery. Score cards, not scratch cards; elitist bastards! I think this was the gist of Labour’s education secretary, Angela Rayner's response to Theresa May’s grammar school announcement.

The purpose of opposition is to oppose. But not to blindly gainsay every single thing the government does or wants to do, or to threaten to reverse any changes made in a never-ending circle of spite; tit-for-tat revenge legislation where the only losers are the losers... the same old losers. The legacy of past Labour policy is a culturally deprived and cast-aside underclass created as an unintended by-product of social legislation over the last century or so. Not an underclass of dirt-poor, malnourished urchins who struggle daily to survive, but an overstuffed rabble of idle malcontents who struggle each day to imbibe sufficient intoxicants to maintain their torpor.

Oh sure they learn the mantras “I wanna gerra job but there’s nowt out there.” and “I gave ‘undred-an’-ten-per-cent but that’s not good enough for them an’ they sacked me and took on a Pole.” or “Fatcher ruined this country...” without qualification and as if events of 30 years ago give you a lifetime pass to feel aggrieved. Instead of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps a simmering rage of righteous entitlement seems motivation enough... until the next case of Stella arrives and oblivion quells the rage for another day.

Maybe we should have the government oversee job selection processes and ensure that companies take on their fair share of the feeble, the dim and the downright slothful? How about making a percentage of places in medical school available to the educationally challenged; heaven forfend we only allow the gifted to become heart surgeons. The Paralympics is an excellent example of the equality agenda to us all. but wait, no it isn’t. These people are nothing other than elite athletes and do you know, the bastards practice all the time? These games will never truly represent equality until there are events which favour potato-shaped people fuelled by KFC, or skunk-addled skanks with the intellect of amoeba.

The biggest problem will be in persuading those labelled ‘disadvantaged’ that putting in a bit of effort will give them any more advantage than sitting around on their fat arses, waiting for the chip van. And it starts all the way back in childhood. Poor parenting limits the life chances of their offspring before they ever set foot in a school, but good schools, with the freedom to offer better to those who work for it can do a lot to counter the rot. We did well in the Olympics and are doing well in the Paralympics not because we supported the also-rans but because the funding went to the winners.

Symbols of evil, or something to celebrate?

Call them grammar schools, call them super-comprehensives, call them what you like, but instead of going into paroxysms of rage at the very thought of diverting funding from the squeaky wheel dullards and mounting demonstrations with poorly spelled placards (or the hilariously ironic #grammerschools hashtag) why not get on board with the idea? The idea is, of course, to rescue our dire education system from the murky lower rungs of the world ratings ladder. Face it; throwing money at under-achievers simply hasn’t worked. Is it so bad to want to nurture talent, or is your ideology so warped that you would condemn all to mediocrity rather than countenance the thought of anybody getting ahead? Just what is it that the left have against excellence? 

The race is back on

Meritocracy? You can almost hear the spitting from here. Those dirty, nasty Tories want a country where working harder, applying yourself and gaining qualification and expertise gets you more than sitting on your fat, entitled, uneducated arse and squeezing out dole-spawn as fast as you can fill in the benefit forms. How awful to suggest a society where your success depends on your efforts rather than lucking out on the lottery. Score cards, not scratch cards; elitist bastards! I think this was the gist of Labour’s education secretary, Angela Rayner's response to Theresa May’s grammar school announcement.

The purpose of opposition is to oppose. But not to blindly gainsay every single thing the government does or wants to do, or to threaten to reverse any changes made in a never-ending circle of spite; tit-for-tat revenge legislation where the only losers are the losers... the same old losers. The legacy of past Labour policy is a culturally deprived and cast-aside underclass created as an unintended by-product of social legislation over the last century or so. Not an underclass of dirt-poor, malnourished urchins who struggle daily to survive, but an overstuffed rabble of idle malcontents who struggle each day to imbibe sufficient intoxicants to maintain their torpor.

Oh sure they learn the mantras “I wanna gerra job but there’s nowt out there.” and “I gave ‘undred-an’-ten-per-cent but that’s not good enough for them an’ they sacked me and took on a Pole.” or “Fatcher ruined this country...” without qualification and as if events of 30 years ago give you a lifetime pass to feel aggrieved. Instead of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps a simmering rage of righteous entitlement seems motivation enough... until the next case of Stella arrives and oblivion quells the rage for another day.

Maybe we should have the government oversee job selection processes and ensure that companies take on their fair share of the feeble, the dim and the downright slothful? How about making a percentage of places in medical school available to the educationally challenged; heaven forfend we only allow the gifted to become heart surgeons. The Paralympics is an excellent example of the equality agenda to us all. but wait, no it isn’t. These people are nothing other than elite athletes and do you know, the bastards practice all the time? These games will never truly represent equality until there are events which favour potato-shaped people fuelled by KFC, or skunk-addled skanks with the intellect of amoeba.

The biggest problem will be in persuading those labelled ‘disadvantaged’ that putting in a bit of effort will give them any more advantage than sitting around on their fat arses, waiting for the chip van. And it starts all the way back in childhood. Poor parenting limits the life chances of their offspring before they ever set foot in a school, but good schools, with the freedom to offer better to those who work for it can do a lot to counter the rot. We did well in the Olympics and are doing well in the Paralympics not because we supported the also-rans but because the funding went to the winners.

Symbols of evil, or something to celebrate?

Call them grammar schools, call them super-comprehensives, call them what you like, but instead of going into paroxysms of rage at the very thought of diverting funding from the squeaky wheel dullards and mounting demonstrations with poorly spelled placards (or the hilariously ironic #grammerschools hashtag) why not get on board with the idea? The idea is, of course, to rescue our dire education system from the murky lower rungs of the world ratings ladder. Face it; throwing money at under-achievers simply hasn’t worked. Is it so bad to want to nurture talent, or is your ideology so warped that you would condemn all to mediocrity rather than countenance the thought of anybody getting ahead? Just what is it that the left have against excellence? 

Happy Days?

There has been the usual chatter this week about education, grammar schools and school uniforms. Are we to take it that the diminutive oxygen thieves are back in their holding pens, giving much needed respite for their forlorn progenitors? The apparent progressive decline of British education seems to be beyond the powers of government to halt, which is at best disappointing. Human evolution happens over millennia so the kids of today should be no less capable of benefitting from a proper education than those of half a century ago.

Comprehensive schooling is a flim-flam, a con, a way of delivering poorer, flatter outcomes for ever greater costs. The people who make a living from propagating the rot are the very same non-experts decrying a return to what used to work. They are the sociologists and educational theorists, the meddlers and dropouts, seemingly determined to ruin it for future generations. What failures are they bitter about and why take it out on teachers and pupils?

I mean, I get the anti-grammar arguments – wealthier parents will buy into grammar catchments and employ tutors to cram for the entrance exams but that’s easily fixed, surely? Turn bog-standard comps into grammar-plus-comp combos and stream the bejaysus out of them. Provide a higher standard of academic education for those who warrant it, delivered by real teachers and get the statemented kids into intensive classes and relentlessly drill home the basics... under armed supervision if necessary.

Bring back practical subjects and introduce new ones, from working on the school allotment through woodwork and metalwork through to small-scale industrial fabrication techniques, computer-aided design and modelling and at all levels employ both carrots and sticks, literally if figuratively doesn’t hit the spot. Instead of trying to make educators into entertainers, attempting to hold their audience in a series of ten-minute stand-up sets, get the students engaged in actually doing something, for whole hours at a time. And whatever it takes, get the bright kids away from the thugs.

There is no real reason an inner city school couldn’t deliver outcomes as successful as parts of the private sector; it just needs an injection of enthusiasm, rigour and possibly a prison wing. After all, school should prepare pupils for their lives beyond. One failing school in London decided to turn itself around and brought back a more punitive regime which reaped enormous rewards in attainment. Your school days should be, they say, the happiest days of your life, although not every student was happy about it.

Whack-O!

One little girl came home from school in tears and told her mother that she had been punished for something she hadn’t done. In former days a parent would quietly acquiesce to the wiser counsel of teachers but not in today’s combative climes. “Right,” she said “I’m going straight down there to have a word with your teacher” and began pulling on a coat. The child cowered a little; she had seen her mother’s fury at work before and dreaded the scene that might ensue. Fortunately, reason intervened and the mother asked “What, exactly, was it that you didn’t do?” Her daughter replied, “My homework.”

Goodness Gracious, Great Walls of Ire!

Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. This is as true for the length of time it will take you to drive in to work as it is for how you will fare in the National Lottery. If people knew which horse would win the race, or which shares would double in value next week then acting on that knowledge would almost certainly change the outcome; the odds on a certainty are no odds worth betting on. So it is disappointing but not unexpected that bitter remainers are still asking in that irritating, high-pitched whine “Well,what does Brexit look like?”

Maybe it is all deflection because, having said that Brexiteers would be cutting off their collective nose to spite their face and having threatened the direst of consequences, many economic forecasters – for which, read mountebank – have altered their outlooks in a more positive direction. Damn and blast, say the pro-EU brigade, we hoped that voting to leave would bring the country down and it hasn’t; we must now do our utmost to cause the collapse of the British economy or else we’ll look like idiots. I know, we’ll insist on knowing “What does Brexit look like? Eh? EH?”

I do love the way they scrunch up their little faces and stamp their feet and demand to know the unknowable future that, of course, nobody knows. Not the doomsayers, not the gleeful Union Flag-wavers, not the bookies and certainly not one single economist of any persuasion. But hey, if you want to feel good about your pain, my weepy little EU-philes, have a look at the Great Wall of Calais; that’s what it looks like. Happy now? Does that satisfy your absolute certainty that we are all racist, xenophobic, insular, inward-looking, nasty, Nazi, Little Englanders? Good.  

Now the bad news? Something like this would have to have been erected, regardless. It has nothing to do with Brexit no matter how much you want it to. The only other option – the one that I guarantee a majority of British people would consent to in a heartbeat – is military action, up to and including fatal shooting. Why? Because Calais is a tiny fraction of what Merkel’smuslim invasion has in store. No wall will be big enough to contain the astoundingly ill-considered plan for the EU. Trust me, you will be glad of the English Channel when the time comes.

Calm down. While there is still a Europe to trade with we will trade. As for the incessant background drone about ‘trade deals’, such devices are merely ways for governments to interfere with  commerce, which rarely improves matters. And when it comes to the dire predictions of idiots like this as to how long these imaginarily necessary deals will take it is irrelevant; trade will take place whether or not governments have haggled over their cut. All of which argument ignores the unassailable truth that the vote to leave was emotive, not pragmatic and no amount of economic horror fantasy will change that. Leave it; move on.

Illegal immigration - no dice!

And back to this 'terrible wall', as if building walls to keep people out was anything new. The ‘great wall’ is just another obstacle for migrants to climb as they roll the dice and make their way up the chequer board of civilisation. Britain is the winning square; the top of the game. Except what may now await them at Calais is the head of an enormous snake that slides them all the way back to Africa. It’s about time we started to win again.

No Matter

Well, I have to say we’ve been having a simply torrid time just lately. Jocasta and I had been rummaging around in the offence drawer for something to be angry about on somebody else’s behalf and just when we thought we’d found something really rather special it turns out that some other white people ruined it for us. I mean, that’s despicable and entirely typical of the type of privileged white meddlers in business that is none of theirs. You see, Jocasta and I – Peregrine, by the way, charmed, I’m sure – are professionals and it is utterly sine qua non that these matter are left to people like ourselves who know how to handle them.

Now,  it’s not that climate change isn’t racist, you understand, because it undeniably is, it’s just that those... people... those soi-disant white allies at the airport were being a little bit racist themselves. You see, in doing the bidding of the black lives matter chappies, they were guilty of cultural appropriation; they don’t realise just how insulting it must be for black people to use whites to do their bidding unpaid. It was positively ghastly; slavery is not satire, you know? And don’t take our word for it – just look what other black people think of them. And that pony tail? So nineties, pur-lease!

Now when J and I were doing our PhD – I say ours as we did it jointly – in ‘Intersectional Race and Gender Protocol Anomalies and their Impact on Oppositional Movements in the Societal Continuum of Class Struggle in the Twenty-First Century’, we learned to our cost not to help black folk. They are a proud and noble people but more trouble than they are worth; we say this because we care. Anyway, don’t get involved; they don’t like it and you may well end up getting yourself stabbed. It’s all in the dissertation.

Should you call us ‘doctor’, you ask? Well, perhaps not just yet, the old ‘dissie’ is with our supervisor; he told us it may take a while to make a decision.... although now you mention it, it has been since 2013. Anyway, the jolly old race game is old hat now; classic supply and demand. There’s been such an over-supply of nouveau racism now that everybody is doing it, it’s time to move on. So this morning, over our home-made quinoa, tempeh and sun-dried tomato breakfast bake, drizzled with liquid aminos and sprinkled with chia seeds (yum!) we hit on a simply super new crusade.

We hate it when rich people 

culturally appropriate poor people's problems.

Every year, a disproportionate number of uneducated, poor people from under-privileged neighbourhoods are driven to drink through ignorance and easy access to benefits. They suffer a higher rate of premature death than even we highly educated vegans through cumulative liver damage. And being white, they often don’t get the help they need, on account of the sensitivity with which interfering with their culture is viewed in society... or the possibility of being knifed. So, we aim to tackle the matter at source; we are off to chain ourselves to the gates of the Guinness Brewery. You can support us and see our progress on the hashtag #BlackLiversMatter.