SATS

I see Ed Balls "feels the pain" of the kids awaiting their SATS results, but it looks as though saying sorry it happened on his watch might just be a bit too much.  Is it any wonder that kids don't accept responsibility for stuff if adults won't show the way?  One thing that led to my mistrust of authority and authoritarians was the minority of teachers at school who misused their power.  If kids see that adults can make things miserable and rotten for them and no-one will take responsibility for any of it or say sorry, what's that teaching them about people in charge?

How the Mighty Fall

I read in today's paper about a judge who met his wife's new bloke at a barbecue after what was described as a bitter and acrimonious divorce.   The judge threatened this guy on account of the new bloke being around his kids.  He's been convicted and ordered to do community service.

 

It must be pretty hard to take when your ex-wife parades her new bloke in fornt of you and your kids, I can see that.  Evidently some people who are used to sitting in judgement of others can't accept it when they are treated in this way.  Unfortunately for them, they have to behave themselves.

 

In another case I heard on the radio, a student has been turned down for a place at a top medical school because of a conviction for burglary when he was 16.  A woman on the radio was arguing the case for forgiveness and that this sent a message that criminals might as well continue with crime as society would offer them anything else.  I beg to differ.  All this says is that a top University might choose not to offer one of their hard-won places to someone who has misbehaved quite seriously in the not too distant past.  This guy has secured a place at another University and will no doubt go on to become a doctor (unless he decides to go back on the rob).  Like thousands of others he is finding it a little harder to get a highly paid and very responsible career when his past actions suggest dishonesty - and what's so terrible about that? 

ID cards - now the answer to illegal immigration

The BBC has done an excellent undercover operation finding street after street of people living and working illegally. One point they made was the apparent lack of fear of detection and sanction of the people concerned.

The details were on telly tonight but they are summarised here.

The government wouldn't respond to the BBC except to say it proved we need ID cards.

I cannot believe the stupidity and ignorance of these morons. You don't need the fingerprints of all of the (vast majority) law abiding population to stop illegal immigration. You need to take enforcement action against the perpetrators, not people who have nothing to do with it. The illegals don't fear being caught because they know no-one in the Government or Civil Service is interested in getting off their fat arses to do anything about them. And for the terminally hard of thinking pillocks we have for a government - how many illegal immigrants are they expecting to dutifully queue up at the fingerprinting and interrogation centres?

MPs expenses

It seems they have voted for little change. I've heard the case made quite well for the fact that they divide their time between two places, their work and their home (in some cases, like our Conservative MP in the 80s, more than two – he actually lived in Buckinghamshire, about 100 miles from his constituency, but kept a house in the constituency and had a flat in London). For those MPs who don't have an independent source of wealth, I can see that this could be a problem.

This is interesting, in that it mirrors my own working arrangements for about the last 10 years. Since I go where the work is, and I can't afford the costs and upheaval of moving house each time I start a new contract, I tend to live in a Hotel or flat during the week and return home at weekends.

Where this differs from MPs is that there are very strict rules about what I can claim as expenses. Amongst things that would almost certainly attract additional personal taxation or simply not be allowed are many of the things that reports suggest they are spending their ACA on – that seems wrong.

By all means, have their employer (us) pay for their reasonable expenses in running a second home in the capital – but make those payments subject to exactly the same scrutiny and tax rules as the rest of us. Apart from anything else, they'd see how these things actually work for the rest of us, and they might realise how daft some of the rules are (so daft they have opted out!) and change them for everyone.

Finally, they should be subjected to the same Pension arrangements as the rest of us.

Max Mosley

“My wife and I had been married for 48 years and together for more than 50 years . . . We met as teenagers and she never knew of this aspect of my life so that headline in the newspaper was completely totally devastating for her and there is nothing I can say that could ever repair that.”

I am no fan of the News Of The World, Max, but that's a heck of a secret to keep in a 50 year relationship. Surely it was obvious that sooner or later, it would become apparent.

“I don’t believe anyone who was a sensible modern adult would honestly believe these activities to be sick.”

Depends on your definition of sick, mate, but I do see myself as a sensible modern adult and I wouldn't get enjoyment from paying to hurt (or be hurt by) other people - and I do think there's something wrong with you if you do.

The English Patient

A film I really loved when I saw it.

Apparently there was a point as it was being made where the Hollywood studios panicked and asked Anthony Minghella if he'd consider stopping what he was doing (making the film with Juliette Binoche who worried them because a French actress had never "done any box office") and make it with Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer instead.

I never even realised that this sort of thing goes on (I never stopped to think about it really) but Minghella deserves a (unfortunately posthumous) medal for sticking to his guns. The film won a stack of Oscars (and it deserved to).