Shock ! .. Horror ! .. Libyan rebels slaughter Gaddafi supporters in his old stronghold of Sirte. Now there’s a surprise ! .. and you can be certain that they won’t be the last bodies to be discovered. What do people expect to happen after a bloody revolution, that the trigger happy participants will all “kiss and make up” ?

Remember “Eye-Rack” ? … Well I hope that I’m wrong, but this could turn into a repeat performance once all the tribes and political factions start ‘squaring up’ to each other: not to mention when the religious loonies and their imported terrorist mates start demanding Sharia Law etc..

Whilst I wish the people of Libya a happy and democratic future, I can’t forget that everybody and his uncle has a gun, and you can bet that many won’t just be firing them into the air and shouting .. “Allahu Akba !”  

Never fear for there is always a ‘lighter’ side to such happenings, for I suppose that now we have all seen the body of Gaddafi on TV and his ghoulish countrymen filing passed his bloody corpse and taking photographs on their mobile phones, it won’t be long before his golden gun turns up on ebay, where you can already buy, amongst other items a  Hallowen mask of the late colonel and an “I Shot Gaddafi” T shirt …

… Sick old world ain’t it ?

My education started in 1945 and ended in 1955 and I can’t remember if during that time I ever played truant from school or “hopped the wag” as it was called in those days.

Now I read that around 65,000 pupils of all ages miss school without permission on a typical day through truancy, family holidays, illness etc.

Whatever happened to the much feared school board man who stalked the streets in my young days looking out for anyone “bunking off” school ? I suppose that he would be prosecuted for assault if he was around today and gave someone’s little angel a clip ’round the ear or a kick up the arse as he dragged them through the school gates on their way to a “jolly good thrashing” from some sadist masquerading as a teacher. Umm ! .. I think that I might have remembered that, so now I’m almost sure that I never “played hooky”: or if I did I never got caught.

OK, so my little trip down ‘memory lane’ may have little to do with the world in which we live today, but it does remind me, once again, that in the field of education, as in so many areas concerning the young, no one has a bloody clue how to improve the situation. 

Sadly too many children leave school today with poor literacy and numeracy skills, whilst those with ADHD the naughty ones are “drugged up to the eyeballs” because they cannot sit still in class: and now it seems that as many as one in five young pupils are judged to have special needs, and school inspectors have warned that “as many as half of the children with certain categories of problems were wrongly labelled to disguise poor teaching”.

Now I’m sure that there are some pretty good teachers around today, although those who appear being interviewed on TV in no way resemble the ones I once respected or the few whom I feared.

Perhaps it’s that, these days, education is all about .. government targets .. interfering managers .. bureaucracy .. league tables .. and .. Ofsted, who have now come up with the bright idea of getting parents to do their job for them by getting those same parents to rate schools on a new website .. “Parent View” .. Oh! and guess what ? .. The ratings will be completely anonymous and open to abuse as it will allow parents and pupils with a grudge against schools to make unfounded claims. I’m sure those with poor parenting skills who’s kids “do a runner” from school every day will be queuing up to get on line.

As I said earlier …

…   not a bloody clue !

Here we go again ! … I’ve just been watching one of the chief nannies of the ‘nanny state’ being interviewed on the TV news and, once again, ‘stating the bleed’n obvious’ … “Eat less and exercise more if you want to lose weight”.

It’s reported that the U.K. has one of Europe’s fattest populations with more than 60% of adults and about a third of children aged between ten and eleven being overweight or obese: and is it any wonder when it is almost impossible to walk a few hundred yards in this country without passing a fast food outlet of one kind or another ? In fact, if I walk for less than ten minutes in one direction from my home I pass … a Chinese take-away … a fish and chip shop … a McDonald’s … a KFC ..  a ‘greasy spoon’ café .. and .. a Hungry Horse pub advertising “Big Plate Specials” and “Kids eat for free !”: and I live in what would be classed as ‘a village’. Oh ! .. and before I forget I can pick up the telephone and have a curry, a kebab or a pizza delivered to my door within a few minutes on any night of the week.

Our Dave and his (fat-)mates have rejected the idea of a ‘fat tax’ (Blimey ! That’s a surprise) similar to one recently introduced in Denmark, where a surcharge is being placed on foods that contain more than 2.3 % saturated fat. As if that would have stopped all those tubby people sitting in their cars at the ‘drive-thru’ from ordering their daily junk food feast.

Now we are being told that “individuals need to be more honest about what they are eating”. In other words, don’t kid yourself when you are ordering that ‘Giganto Gut-buster Burger’, super-size fries and jumbo onion rings by adding …

… “and a Diet Coke, please” !