My eye was caught today by the first of the government's Citizens' Juries, held at Bristol's Brunel Academy. Gordon Brown and Ed Balls were provided with a photo opportunity, going around tables of pupils and discussing, apparently, building schools for the future. It seems little different from the old "Big Conversation", except that the tax payer is funding it. I notice that £45 billion is being spent on new schools. This is all well and good. Unfortunately a glance at the web site of the new headmaster of Brunel Academy  fills one with foreboding. The trendy ideas he espouses and the vocabulary that he uses were being discredited when I first started teaching in the early 70s. Lets hope the £45 billion will not be wasted.

Is Gordon Brown the re-incarnation of Uriah Heep ? Ever so “umble” he insincerely recruits help from outside his party. His ambition is fuelled by his lack of ability to express it when working for Blair (Mr Wicklow).  He is eventually thwarted by DC (!) and Mr Micawber (Boris?).

Ashamed by my dismal posting record in recent months I offer a few thoughts.

* For all ex-teachers next week is (disgracefully) the best one of the year. You can call it schadenfreude but the feeling of relief that we are not going to face the hordes next week is almost a physical sensation.

* I help out in a critical midland marginal a few hours a week and will not believe the Conservative Party is on an election footing until they provide chocolate biscuits for their volunteers every day.

* The past summer has been great for my lawn.

* I bought a wide screen telly for the cricket and the rugby world cup. It makes Sharapova look like a front row forward for Wigan.

* This summer I discovered the correct grip for my forehand. I now need to regenerate like Dr Who so I can move about and actually get to the ball.

* Readers, if any, should now prepare themselves for my brilliant insights into the state of the Conservative Party as we build up for the election.

The decision by David Cameron and Willets not to campaign for the return of grammar schools looks set to cause a row amongst the ranks of the Tory party.

Before they come to a decision on the subject, the general public should understand what teachers are really saying when use their professional jargon. For instance,

Too much paperwork means - "bloody kids"

Restrictive National Curriculum means - "bloody kids"

Misleading league tables means - "bloody kids"

Finally, and most importantly, I love teaching kids in the classroom but the bureaucracy is getting me down means - "bloody kids"

Raising standards in British schools can only come from restoring discipline. Everything else follows from that. It should be the Holy Grail of British Politics. Any party which promises it will do well: any government that achieves it will become heroes.

lair was dead: to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burial was signed by the commentator, the reporter, the party, and the chief mourner.  Brown signed it. Old Blair was as dead as a door-nail.

 

Brown knew he was dead?  Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?  Blair and he were partners for I don't know how many years.  Brown  was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee.  And even Brown was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

 

Brown never painted out Old Blair's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the door: Brown and Blair.  The firm was known as Brown and Blair.  Sometimes people new to the business called Brown Brown, and sometimes Blair, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

 

Oh!  But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Brown! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clunking, covetous, old sinner!  Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.  The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.  A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his jutting chin.  He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Brown, how are you?  When will you come to see me?"  No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Brown.  Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

 

Brown took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's-book, went home to bed.  He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner.  They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Brown, the other rooms being all let out as offices. 

 

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large.  It is also a fact, that Brown had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Brown had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London. Now  let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Brown, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change -- not a knocker, but Blair’s face.

 

Blair's face.  It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it.  It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Brown as Blair used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead.  The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.  That, and its livid colour, made it horrible.

 

As Brown looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. After several turns, he sat down .  As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building.  It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing.  It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

 

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour.  The bells ceased as they had begun, together.  They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar.  Brown  then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

 

"It's humbug !" said Brown.  "I won't believe it." His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes.  Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him; Blair's Ghost!" and fell again.

 

 The same face: the very same.  Blair in his open neck shirt, tight jeans and cowboy boots. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle.  It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Brown observed it closely) of bombs, shells, bullets and padlocks  wrought in steel.

 

How now!" said Brown, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"

"Much!" – Blair’s voice, no doubt about it.

"Who are you?"

"Ask me who I was."

"Who were you then?"  said Brown, raising his voice. 

"In life I was your partner, Tony Blair. You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.

"I don't." said Brown.

 

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Brown held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon.  But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast! Brown fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

 

"Mercy!" he said.  "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"

"I do," said Brown.  "I must.  But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?  You are fettered," said Brown, trembling.  "Tell me why?"

 

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.  Is its pattern strange to you?"

Brown trembled more and more. "Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?  It was full as heavy and as long as this, you have laboured on it. It is a ponderous chain! It has the four billion links of the pounds you raised for the war, and 650,000 links for the deaths you caused.

 

Brown  glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing. "Tony," he said, imploringly.  "Old Tony Blair, tell me more.  Speak comfort to me, Tony!"

 

You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits." Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.  Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."

It is ten minutes to midnight and I have just made a complaint to the BBC about the outrageous bias of tonight's Newsnight programme. I know its a waste of time and I am a bloody fool to bother but.....

In a balanced discussion on Blair's legacy Polly Toynbee, David Hare, Alistair Campbell, Charles Kennedy and Alan Milburn are ranged against Michael Howard.

Not only is Howard outnumbered, Paxman sits silently as he his interrupted and talked over when he gets one of his few chances to speak.

After 10 years of complaints and some apologies the BBC has learned nothing. The programme is beyond parody.

 

When the news of the terror trial convictions came through I am ashamed to say that my first thought was, "how will this effect the elections on Thursday". Then my mind turned back to the first election night programme I can remember. A news flash came through. No "breaking news" scrolls or backdrops in those days: the presenter read from a scruffy piece paper that had been handed to him that the Chinese had just tested their first atom bomb. He turned to one of his experts who said, "Too late to help the Conservatives". plus ca la change.

[Google:1964 election]

Having established this blog because A) I wanted my name to be shown in nice blue letters when I posted on other blogs and B)because it came free with the local history website I run, I find myself in the embarrassing position of finding that some people are actually coming here and reading it (only once, I presume). I feel constrained, therefore, to say something. Erm............

1. Who, with any sense would want to be PM when you see what it has done to TB (a shadow of his former self)

2. David Dimbleby: the reruns of his election night programmes remind us what a star he is. Like a world class footballer he always seems to have plenty of time to do and say the right thing.

3. The pleasure in visiting blogs is not in the original post but in the comments. That is why pb.c is supreme.

4. The best political interviewer is, and has been for several years, Andrew Neill.

5. The colonel's lady and Rosie O'Grady are sisters under the skin.

6. Finding things to say on a blog is not as easy as it looks.

In 40 year's of budget watching, this was the first that appeared to affect me personally. As I live, contentedly and carefully, on a small, actuarially reduced pension I find that my tax bill has doubled in a flash.

A post on another blog says I will not be affected because it is unearned income. We will see !

On a good note I thought David Cameron was brilliant when all the cards were stacked against him. Very encouraging.

 

The problem with bribery and cash for honours recently has been that the money has been going to the wrong people - the political parties. Now we are to have an elected Lords we should reinstate the honourable tradition of bribery, with the money going to the constituents - which is right and proper. Candidates should make promises- ie pay for a hospital wing or a swimming pool or free pints of beer and deposit bonds to pay for it, if elected. Independent people with the interest of the community at heart would get elected. The parties would have no hold over them because they could not possibly afford to subsidise the bribes and money would flow to those areas which the people themselves consider most important.

Today I have been three weeks without a daily or Sunday paper. I have been reading papers ever since the time I looked at Giles cartoons about the Suez canal in the 50s. There were 4 main reasons for this drastic change.

1. The Daily Telegraph's insane campaign against David Cameron. I didn't mind reports of disatisfaction with him from within the party but hated the "spin" insinuated into its pages, treating me like some ill educated reader of a Murdoch red top tabloid.

2. The saving: c. £360 a year.

3. The paper was increasingly rather boring. I skipped too much to make it a justifiable expense

4. Got fed up with waiting for the paper boy to arrive - after 10 in school holidays.

Do I miss it ? Surprisingly not - more a feeling of liberation.

    

Joshua Rosenburg has just said on BBC News 24 that split in Home Office will result in Justice being transferred to Dept of Constitutional Affairs. Thank goodness prosecutions for loans etc. will be in safe hands of Lord Falconer.

It seems that all my harmless pleasures are being taken away from me. Being interested in history I used to like the above mentioned programme. Despite criticism that the BBC were using it to promote the channel's stars it was fascinating viewing, showing, with some technical detail, how to research a family tree.

The present series, however, has virtually eliminated research methods and concentrated on various episodes from the past in which the selected families took a part. And what episodes the BBC has decided to highlight ! 

Barbara Windsor dwelt gloomily on the Irish potato famine. Robert Lindsay gave us ineptitude at Gallipoli. Colin Jackson's programme covered slavery and the most recent, David Tenant served up a triple bonus of Highland Clearances, the Plantation of Ulster and Bloody Sunday.

Truly a liberal Guardian-reading version of Our Island's Story. If I wanted this sort of thing I would content myself with Time Team and Tony Robinson, who drools when "Low status" artifacts turn up and he can imply that if only the medieval peasant had had the foresight to vote New Labour, he would have been living in a pleasant semi with carpets and central heating.

Do you agree Phil ? "Ooh Ahh, Tony".

 

After an idle period I have found time to do this blog after giving up on the DT this morning. It is a thick paper which, on Saturday mornings, the paper boy cannot get through the letter box but I finished "reading" it in record time.

Are the DT mounting a coup ? What possessed them to put such a critical spin on one opinion poll and then highlight it as the main leader on the front page ? Why employ Anthony King, who looked shocked and depressed by Tory gains on General Election night, to expatiate on the numbers? Why do it just before the Tory party conference ? Surely Simon Heffer, lurking in the Comment section today hasn't such power at the paper as to sway its entire editorial policy ?

This is not why I subscribe to the DT, especially as the rest of the paper has not been that great lately - not much to read before about p. 17, typographical errors creeping in etc.

An interesting letter in today's DT from Peter Dawson, ex teachers' union leader. He says,

"The amount of time and energy being expended on getting into to school those whose purpose is to disrupt lessons works to the great disadvantage of the rest. Never has so much been done for a relatively few at the expense of the many."

THIS IS TRUE.

I suggest that the time and money now wasted should be re-directed into a new scheme based on the needle exchange for drug addicts. Wag men should hand out clean fivers at the doors of amusement arcades and, in those cases of parental collusion, supervise child care facilities at airports and check home kitchens for health and safety.

 

I was one of the few people watching Sky News last night for their newspaper review at 11.30 (I know). We are certainly living in strange times.

Bloke from Guardian discussing "Cameron effect" says latest poll figures were bad news for Gordon Brown, "beyond bad".

Nice young lady from Sunday Telegraph jumps in faster than Hazel Blears on speed: if you look closely these are very poor news for Cameron.

Check Topaz is not Stephen Pound in a wig, go to bed.

The glorious first few weeks in September. Only retired teachers know the meaning of true happiness as they watch the children go to school through the front window. Nearly time to stop mowing the lawn. Nothing in the Telegraph worth reading before page 17. Now is the time to start blogging rather than just posting and help to bring down the government. I started out as "goderich" but took umbrage and changed to f.r. after having a posting inexplicably deleted by iain dale.

I begin with a posting arising out of amazement at the BBC's News24 news at 2pm today. The reaction it got on Guido encouraged me to start the blog.

BBC NEWS 24:TRAINEE NEWS EDITOR TEST. Put these items in order of importance.
a]presenter in car crash
b]1 million pound donor to Labour Party arrested
c]truancy rises
d]pupil in Aberdeen excluded for firing plastic balls from plastic gun. No one injured.
e]rules on airport luggage changed
f]changes on phone tap laws
g]windy in Ireland
h]Ming's speech

(ANSWER:1c, 2a,3f,4d,5e,6g,7h,8b)
Source - BBC News24 2pm News