The commemoration of World War I became temporarily marred when Michael Gove suggested that there was too much criticism of the leaders of the time.
This encouraged us to go back and look at that excellent book written by military historian and advocate of the tank, Liddell Hart. His History of the First World War (it had a different title at the time) was written in 1930.
In it, he lists endless examples of people who were sacked for being right, only to be replaced by people who seem to have done exactly what their predecessors proposed. Granted, he claims the French were better at this than the British but there were plenty of British examples too, not least the early advocates of the tank.
His epilogue is objective and generous to all participants. It includes this wonderful passage which seems to be just the sort of thing to get up Mr Gove's nose.
In this mood of reflection we are more ready to recognise both the achievements and the point of view of our late enemies, and perhaps all the more because we realise that both the causes and the course of war are determined by the folly and frailty rather than the deliberate evil of human nature.
The war has become history, and can be viewed in the perspective of history. For good it has deepened our sense of fellowship and community of interest, whether inside the nation or between nations. But, for good or bad, it has shattered our faith in idols, our hero-worshipping belief that great men are different clay from common men. Leaders are still necessary, perhaps more necessary, but our awakened realisation of the common humanity is a safe guard against either expecting from them or trusting in them too much.
Have we really learned that great men are not different clay from common men? Have we really learned not to expect too much of them, or not to trust them too much? I am sure it felt that way when he was writing in 1930.
And what of the idea that the causes and course of war are determined by folly and frailty rather than the deliberate evil of human nature? Would he have agreed with this when he wrote his other great book: the History of the Second World War?
Tuesday 16 September 2014
The neutron
One of us was once a physicist and came across this poem in New Scientist some time back in the dark ages. The metre of the opening lines has stuck in the memory (and was probably a help in some exam or other).
When a pion an innocent proton seduces
with neither excuses
abuses
nor scorn
for its shameful condition
without intermission
the proton produces:
a neutron is born.
What love have you known,
O neutron full grown,
as you bombinate into the vacuum alone?
Its spin is a half and its mass is quite large
- about one AMU - but it hasn't a charge;
though it finds satisfaction
in strong interaction, it doesn't experience coulombic attraction
But what can it borrow
of love, joy or sorrow
O neutron, when life has so short a tomorrow?
Within its
twelve minutes
comes disintegration
Which leaves an electron in mute desolation
and also another ingenuous proton
for other unscrupulous pions to dote on
and last, a neutrino:
alas, one can see no
fulfilment for such a leptonic bambino -
no loving, no sinning -
just spinning and spinning -
eight times through the globe without a beginning ...
a cycle mechanic -
no anguish or panic -
for such is the pattern of life inorganic.
O better
the fret a
poor human endures
than the neutron's dichotic
robotic
amours.
Gina Berkeley
When a pion an innocent proton seduces
with neither excuses
abuses
nor scorn
for its shameful condition
without intermission
the proton produces:
a neutron is born.
What love have you known,
O neutron full grown,
as you bombinate into the vacuum alone?
Its spin is a half and its mass is quite large
- about one AMU - but it hasn't a charge;
though it finds satisfaction
in strong interaction, it doesn't experience coulombic attraction
But what can it borrow
of love, joy or sorrow
O neutron, when life has so short a tomorrow?
Within its
twelve minutes
comes disintegration
Which leaves an electron in mute desolation
and also another ingenuous proton
for other unscrupulous pions to dote on
and last, a neutrino:
alas, one can see no
fulfilment for such a leptonic bambino -
no loving, no sinning -
just spinning and spinning -
eight times through the globe without a beginning ...
a cycle mechanic -
no anguish or panic -
for such is the pattern of life inorganic.
O better
the fret a
poor human endures
than the neutron's dichotic
robotic
amours.
Gina Berkeley
Wednesday 20 August 2014
World War I
World War I commemorations are much in our minds at the moment. The following appeared in a newspaper recently. It appealed because of the elegance of the verse and the link between warfare and peace. The poem was probably written soon after the end of WWI by a little-known poet called Geoffrey Fyson who had fought in the trenches. He perceptively envisages future generations of tourists crossing the ground he crossed.
In former times the British Travel Association had a crest with the Reithian motto Peace through Travel. If only modern tourists stopped and thought like this for a few moments.
Vimy Ridge
From Arras, on the straight white road,
Where all marched up, where some limped back,
Now, motor-load on motor-load,
The tourists mass for the attack.
Over each splintered track we trod,
Over each shelving trench we made,
Over each grass-grown space – ah God!
Where dust of my friends in dust is laid.
Cheerful, loud-voiced battalions pass,
Gorging the sights their money buys...
While you who are sleeping ’neath the grass,
You who have waked beyond the skies,
Keep everlasting silence. Yet
Are glad, maybe, when eve draws on,
When still’d the turmoil is, and fret,
And Arras chants her carillon,
When round-eyed children, with soft tread,
Draw near, and frame a diadem
Of glowing poppies, that are red
Because your blood has watered them.
There is more here.
In former times the British Travel Association had a crest with the Reithian motto Peace through Travel. If only modern tourists stopped and thought like this for a few moments.
Vimy Ridge
From Arras, on the straight white road,
Where all marched up, where some limped back,
Now, motor-load on motor-load,
The tourists mass for the attack.
Over each splintered track we trod,
Over each shelving trench we made,
Over each grass-grown space – ah God!
Where dust of my friends in dust is laid.
Cheerful, loud-voiced battalions pass,
Gorging the sights their money buys...
While you who are sleeping ’neath the grass,
You who have waked beyond the skies,
Keep everlasting silence. Yet
Are glad, maybe, when eve draws on,
When still’d the turmoil is, and fret,
And Arras chants her carillon,
When round-eyed children, with soft tread,
Draw near, and frame a diadem
Of glowing poppies, that are red
Because your blood has watered them.
There is more here.
Monday 9 June 2014
Literacy
Talking of Mr Gove, he must have been miffed that news of his spat over-shadowed the announcement that he intended to eradicate illiteracy and innumeracy, and would enshrine this in law.
Sometimes the truth is so absurd that a parody is impossible. He is right. We have all been far too lax in allowing an outbreak of illiteracy of innumeracy. Shame on us.
It is the second idea that is manifestly absurd. Who will be punished if illiteracy still exists? Mr Gove? The illiterate individual? The teachers? Or will it be the parents who he also intends to punish if their children 'do not make sure their children turn up for class ready to learn'.
Sometimes the truth is so absurd that a parody is impossible. He is right. We have all been far too lax in allowing an outbreak of illiteracy of innumeracy. Shame on us.
It is the second idea that is manifestly absurd. Who will be punished if illiteracy still exists? Mr Gove? The illiterate individual? The teachers? Or will it be the parents who he also intends to punish if their children 'do not make sure their children turn up for class ready to learn'.
They just don't get it ...
One of the striking bits of fallout from the May-Gove spat was the line: A source at Number 10 said Mr Gove had not got off lightly and pointed out that Mr Gove had been forced to apologise to a civil servant, which in itself was a severe admonishment.
Apologise to the servants? How low can you fall?
How, in today's world, could anyone relish working for someone who regarded an apology as a 'severe admonishment'?
They will be making us apologise to our fags next.
Apologise to the servants? How low can you fall?
How, in today's world, could anyone relish working for someone who regarded an apology as a 'severe admonishment'?
They will be making us apologise to our fags next.
Sunday 8 June 2014
How may I deport you?
An article on the BBC website set us thinking today, especially as it came at the same time as the 'resolution' of a row between Theresa May and Michael Gove which seemed to centre who who was being tougher on immigrants.
Over breakfast, we looked at our family which is depressingly 'English' bar the usual mix of Irish and Scottish. Our surname is Normanised Welsh in origin so that hints at the male line (if our grandmothers are be believed). One member of the family is qualified to play for Scotland but has no vote in the referendum while another, very English one, happens to be domiciled in Edinburgh and does.
Then there is the Peruvian great grandmother and the two lovely half Polish children-in-law - both Cambridge graduates and not to be entirely trusted with domestic plumbing - whose parents were fleeing racial hatred, another unpleasant regime and tyranny not very long ago.
Tom Shakespeare has a good point about a natural division of England into smaller parts, something John Prescott tried but for which he found no traction amongst the populace. Where JP went wrong was neither choosing the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms nor their modern equivalent: television areas. The moment you include Leicestershire (Mercia) in East Anglia or Gloucestershire (The Marches?) in the South West, the odour of compromise bubbles to the surface.
Like many families, our ancestors left the land in the mid 19th century and became educated entrepreneurs. and so perhaps we should be railing against any immigration by others, but we are not. As Tom Shakespeare - ah, name to conjure with - so eloquently puts it, we are first and foremost human beings. Although that idea probably puts us down as 'untrustworthy Guardian-reading, wishy-washy, left-wing, intellectual liberals' in some quarters.
All this inspired the following which is dedicated to Theresa May and her friends MG and the farrago who is driving the intolerance:
How may I deport thee? Let me count the ways:
Your mother's folks were Vikings and your father's, they were Danes.
They say your aunt Matilda married ancient Norman stock
By a Saxon out of Wessex for a piece of Brighton Rock.
When Scot crossed into England they made an awful mess
The colour of your uncle's hair, came from a Pict we guess.
And now that Aunty Barbara is courting Samjit Din
I'm sure that they'll deport her, or refuse to let him in.
Our queen is really German. Her husband is a Greek.
Some Angevins who ruled us were really rather weak.
We're Celtic tribes we're Beaker Folk, we're Roman, Saxon, Dane
We're Frenchmen, Dutch, Italian, and Spaniards from the Main.
We've come from places far away, across the seven seas
From India and Pakistan, we're Malay, Thai, Balinese.
We all arrived and stirred it up and somehow made it fit.
The splendid outcome of this mix is what we call True Brit.
With apologies to so many poets ... Kipling or Chesterton would have said it so much better.
Over breakfast, we looked at our family which is depressingly 'English' bar the usual mix of Irish and Scottish. Our surname is Normanised Welsh in origin so that hints at the male line (if our grandmothers are be believed). One member of the family is qualified to play for Scotland but has no vote in the referendum while another, very English one, happens to be domiciled in Edinburgh and does.
Then there is the Peruvian great grandmother and the two lovely half Polish children-in-law - both Cambridge graduates and not to be entirely trusted with domestic plumbing - whose parents were fleeing racial hatred, another unpleasant regime and tyranny not very long ago.
Tom Shakespeare has a good point about a natural division of England into smaller parts, something John Prescott tried but for which he found no traction amongst the populace. Where JP went wrong was neither choosing the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms nor their modern equivalent: television areas. The moment you include Leicestershire (Mercia) in East Anglia or Gloucestershire (The Marches?) in the South West, the odour of compromise bubbles to the surface.
Like many families, our ancestors left the land in the mid 19th century and became educated entrepreneurs. and so perhaps we should be railing against any immigration by others, but we are not. As Tom Shakespeare - ah, name to conjure with - so eloquently puts it, we are first and foremost human beings. Although that idea probably puts us down as 'untrustworthy Guardian-reading, wishy-washy, left-wing, intellectual liberals' in some quarters.
All this inspired the following which is dedicated to Theresa May and her friends MG and the farrago who is driving the intolerance:
How may I deport thee? Let me count the ways:
Your mother's folks were Vikings and your father's, they were Danes.
They say your aunt Matilda married ancient Norman stock
By a Saxon out of Wessex for a piece of Brighton Rock.
When Scot crossed into England they made an awful mess
The colour of your uncle's hair, came from a Pict we guess.
And now that Aunty Barbara is courting Samjit Din
I'm sure that they'll deport her, or refuse to let him in.
Our queen is really German. Her husband is a Greek.
Some Angevins who ruled us were really rather weak.
We're Celtic tribes we're Beaker Folk, we're Roman, Saxon, Dane
We're Frenchmen, Dutch, Italian, and Spaniards from the Main.
We've come from places far away, across the seven seas
From India and Pakistan, we're Malay, Thai, Balinese.
We all arrived and stirred it up and somehow made it fit.
The splendid outcome of this mix is what we call True Brit.
With apologies to so many poets ... Kipling or Chesterton would have said it so much better.
Saturday 24 May 2014
General questions 2
The second A Level General paper was from June 1968. This continued the expectation that the students had a far wider knowledge of 'current affairs' than could surely have been possible for a seventeen/eighteen-year old. These papers must have been primarily designed to see if one could simply write an essay. Alternatively, they could have been designed to weed out the independent school student - the children of politicians, farmers, diplomats, teachers or the professions - from the state school ones.
Here are some more examples:
- What big advances in medicine (including surgery) have been made in the last thirty years? What further advances seem at present likely before the century ends? It would have been a bold student who mentioned MRI scanning, the eradication of polio, cancer treatments, stem cell advances ... How on earth could they begin to know?
- 'Lives of great men all remind us / As we from their pages turn, / That we too may leave behind us / Papers that we ought to burn.' Comment on this in the light of biographies you have read. And how many biographies has the average 17-year old read today?
- 'Comedy should be placeless and timeless; it does not need gimmicks.' Justify this statement with examples from the comedy (not restricted to the theatre) of different ages. This was from a period before television comedy got under way and assumes that one has studied the history of theatre or at least seen comedies from different ages.
- Has the rush to grant independence to new states in Asia and Africa been justified by results? Ouch! The Sixties had indeed seen a tidal wave of countries becoming independent but how impatient of us to ask whether the results were justified after only a handful of years. Can we not allow them a generation or even two? And how can a student have any real idea in an era when few will have travelled to any of the countries concerned? Of course, it was to winnow out the sons of diplomats, colonial officers and British Council staff.
- Discuss the present state and the possible future of agriculture in an increasingly urbanised and industrialised Britain. Not a question designed to appeal to many inner city lads. The 1967 paper also had a question which mentioned the concreting over of Britain suggesting it was a current theme.
- Can bad men write good books? Give a reasoned verdict. How lucky they were to live in a world so easily divided into good and bad.
- 'Profit' has recently come to be regarded as a dirty word. How dirty do you consider it to be, and why? This was in the days before the famous line 'the unacceptable face(t) of capitalism'.
Perhaps the modern critics of the A Level system have a point: the questions have become easier over the years, but these questions were written for young people growing up in a pre-mass media, pre-television, pre-internet age and assume some sort of ideal student who had read biographies and plays, and who had an informed view of agriculture, medicine, science, architecture and planning. In other words a miniature adult. No doubt that is what Mr Gove aspires to once again.
It is hard even to imagine what naive drivel was produced in answer to some of these questions.
Don't miss the next episode: a few questions from the actual subject papers.
Here are some more examples:
- What big advances in medicine (including surgery) have been made in the last thirty years? What further advances seem at present likely before the century ends? It would have been a bold student who mentioned MRI scanning, the eradication of polio, cancer treatments, stem cell advances ... How on earth could they begin to know?
- 'Lives of great men all remind us / As we from their pages turn, / That we too may leave behind us / Papers that we ought to burn.' Comment on this in the light of biographies you have read. And how many biographies has the average 17-year old read today?
- 'Comedy should be placeless and timeless; it does not need gimmicks.' Justify this statement with examples from the comedy (not restricted to the theatre) of different ages. This was from a period before television comedy got under way and assumes that one has studied the history of theatre or at least seen comedies from different ages.
- Has the rush to grant independence to new states in Asia and Africa been justified by results? Ouch! The Sixties had indeed seen a tidal wave of countries becoming independent but how impatient of us to ask whether the results were justified after only a handful of years. Can we not allow them a generation or even two? And how can a student have any real idea in an era when few will have travelled to any of the countries concerned? Of course, it was to winnow out the sons of diplomats, colonial officers and British Council staff.
- Discuss the present state and the possible future of agriculture in an increasingly urbanised and industrialised Britain. Not a question designed to appeal to many inner city lads. The 1967 paper also had a question which mentioned the concreting over of Britain suggesting it was a current theme.
- Can bad men write good books? Give a reasoned verdict. How lucky they were to live in a world so easily divided into good and bad.
- 'Profit' has recently come to be regarded as a dirty word. How dirty do you consider it to be, and why? This was in the days before the famous line 'the unacceptable face(t) of capitalism'.
Perhaps the modern critics of the A Level system have a point: the questions have become easier over the years, but these questions were written for young people growing up in a pre-mass media, pre-television, pre-internet age and assume some sort of ideal student who had read biographies and plays, and who had an informed view of agriculture, medicine, science, architecture and planning. In other words a miniature adult. No doubt that is what Mr Gove aspires to once again.
It is hard even to imagine what naive drivel was produced in answer to some of these questions.
Don't miss the next episode: a few questions from the actual subject papers.
Monday 19 May 2014
General questions
Rootling in the loft recently, we came across some A Level exam papers from 1967 and 1968. The questions relating to the main subjects were completely incomprehensible. Once upon a time we might have been able to understand the questions and we have the evidence in the form of a certificate that we actually knew enough to get more than an 'Unclassified' or whatever was awarded in those days.
It was the General papers that provided the most interest not only because we could actually understand the questions but because they provided a glimpse of the exam system of the time. They also suggest that pupils of the time were either much more sophisticated than their equivalent today, that the examiners were expecting them to be so or that they were trying to impose a 'grown-upness' on the young of the late sixties.
Here is a sample of the 1967 questions.
- Discuss, with examples of one or more well-known artists, the aims of the portrait painter. What effects has the development of photography had on the painting of portraits? This is in a general paper, not an Art A Level
- Write a critical appreciation of any opera or ballet you have seen. (Every aspect of the work and its performance should be considered.) It is good to see only highbrow entertainment being allowed but what does that threatening remark in the bracket really mean?
- Give an account of the origins and development of Jazz music. To what extent do you regard modern 'pop' music as a form of Jazz or as a revolt from it?
- Describe the satisfaction you have received from the formal, as distinct from the representational, elements and qualities of one work of art in any medium. Um ...
It goes on to ask one to comment on the proposition that 'When science comes in at the door, common-sense flies out the window'; whether we prefer the work of contemporary novelists to the novels of an earlier generation, with examples; whether the public image of the poet has changed from that of fifty to sixty years ago, and how; and whether we agree that 'morality is only a majority opinion on social conduct - and at that the opinion of a bygone generation'.
In a later section - only one question may be answered from each section - we are asked how much influence and what kind is exercised in the world by the British Commonwealth and what is needed to enable the Commonwealth to survive; we are invited to suggested the changes that are imminent in Western Europe and the NATO Alliance and what effect these will have (it was the height of the Cold War); we are asked to 'account for the rapid increase in organised crime'; and, most surprisingly, we are invited to consider whether it is a fair appraisal of the British political scene that 'While the Tories become more and more radical and Labour more and more conservative, the Liberals vociferously support both sides of every question'. Ouch! It is hard to imagine this last question being acceptable in today's politically-sensitive environment.
To answer these questions intelligently in a 45 minutes essay would require considerable knowledge of what used to be called current affairs and is now known as 'politics'. It would also require a degree of prescience not normally found in 18 year olds. Mr Gove would be proud as would any Etonian who had been faced with the question starting 'You are the Prime Minister of Britain and ....' in his entrance exam, taken when he was 13 years old.
These are not questions likely to be answerable by the vast majority of today's young.
It was the General papers that provided the most interest not only because we could actually understand the questions but because they provided a glimpse of the exam system of the time. They also suggest that pupils of the time were either much more sophisticated than their equivalent today, that the examiners were expecting them to be so or that they were trying to impose a 'grown-upness' on the young of the late sixties.
Here is a sample of the 1967 questions.
- Discuss, with examples of one or more well-known artists, the aims of the portrait painter. What effects has the development of photography had on the painting of portraits? This is in a general paper, not an Art A Level
- Write a critical appreciation of any opera or ballet you have seen. (Every aspect of the work and its performance should be considered.) It is good to see only highbrow entertainment being allowed but what does that threatening remark in the bracket really mean?
- Give an account of the origins and development of Jazz music. To what extent do you regard modern 'pop' music as a form of Jazz or as a revolt from it?
- Describe the satisfaction you have received from the formal, as distinct from the representational, elements and qualities of one work of art in any medium. Um ...
It goes on to ask one to comment on the proposition that 'When science comes in at the door, common-sense flies out the window'; whether we prefer the work of contemporary novelists to the novels of an earlier generation, with examples; whether the public image of the poet has changed from that of fifty to sixty years ago, and how; and whether we agree that 'morality is only a majority opinion on social conduct - and at that the opinion of a bygone generation'.
In a later section - only one question may be answered from each section - we are asked how much influence and what kind is exercised in the world by the British Commonwealth and what is needed to enable the Commonwealth to survive; we are invited to suggested the changes that are imminent in Western Europe and the NATO Alliance and what effect these will have (it was the height of the Cold War); we are asked to 'account for the rapid increase in organised crime'; and, most surprisingly, we are invited to consider whether it is a fair appraisal of the British political scene that 'While the Tories become more and more radical and Labour more and more conservative, the Liberals vociferously support both sides of every question'. Ouch! It is hard to imagine this last question being acceptable in today's politically-sensitive environment.
To answer these questions intelligently in a 45 minutes essay would require considerable knowledge of what used to be called current affairs and is now known as 'politics'. It would also require a degree of prescience not normally found in 18 year olds. Mr Gove would be proud as would any Etonian who had been faced with the question starting 'You are the Prime Minister of Britain and ....' in his entrance exam, taken when he was 13 years old.
These are not questions likely to be answerable by the vast majority of today's young.
Sunday 11 May 2014
Customer service - Banking style
It is really too easy to knock banks. Yes, of course they pay themselves eye-watering bonuses but that is because they are 'the best people' and without that quality of people, they would not be able to provide the superb level of service that they do.
We have the good-fortune to use two different on-line banking systems.The one from Barclays comes from the same Disney-inspired design stable as some of Microsoft's work, narrowly avoiding putting everything into Comic Sans. The wonderful pop-up screen that fills 2/3 of the screen contains lots of logos and other unhelpful information while leaving the 'OK' button just below the bottom of the screen so that you have to scroll down to find it; every time. Has no one told them or have those 'best people' not listened?
Then there is the RBS Bankline one which allows you to give your accounts a 'Alias' which is more memorable than their abbreviation of the account name but then does not allow you to use it and expects you to remember the numbers of all your business accounts. They too have a problem with things fitting on the screen and have produced something which looks like a techie's first rough.
Working with these streamlined, customer-friendly organisations is straightforward too: witness this recent message when we tried to set up a new Direct Debit payment system:
Notification of AUDDIS Migration Date - Service User Number : XXXX
Further to the submission of the above application form to Vocalink Ltd, and completion of successful testing I am pleased to confirm your Service User Number has been allocated a ‘Migration’ date for DD/MM/YYY(note; this date is the BACS Processing date and the Migration file should be submitted the working day before).
IMPORTANT : An AUDDIS 'migration' file must contain ALL DDIs held against the SUN(Service User Number). The file must be sent as a 'live' file and only the AUDDIS special transaction code of 0S is to be used. - Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide page 17 for details.
Please also note that after being in 'migrate' status for 4 weeks you need to be set to full 'live' status. To go fully live you must ensure ALL DDI's are converted onto AUDDIS, and that you do not post D/D mandates to banks when setting up new instructions. We will contact you at this time to check these items before we make the change on the bacs site. Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide for further details.
Should you have any queries regarding this please contact our Help Desk as soon as possible on 0870 240 5544/156 6680 option 1.
Thank You
The layout and spacing is exactly as it came through by email and it was not from a front-line person. It was from the 'second level of support'. Exciting eh? It certainly made it easy to set up the new arrangement.
We have the good-fortune to use two different on-line banking systems.The one from Barclays comes from the same Disney-inspired design stable as some of Microsoft's work, narrowly avoiding putting everything into Comic Sans. The wonderful pop-up screen that fills 2/3 of the screen contains lots of logos and other unhelpful information while leaving the 'OK' button just below the bottom of the screen so that you have to scroll down to find it; every time. Has no one told them or have those 'best people' not listened?
Then there is the RBS Bankline one which allows you to give your accounts a 'Alias' which is more memorable than their abbreviation of the account name but then does not allow you to use it and expects you to remember the numbers of all your business accounts. They too have a problem with things fitting on the screen and have produced something which looks like a techie's first rough.
Working with these streamlined, customer-friendly organisations is straightforward too: witness this recent message when we tried to set up a new Direct Debit payment system:
Notification of AUDDIS Migration Date - Service User Number : XXXX
Further to the submission of the above application form to Vocalink Ltd, and completion of successful testing I am pleased to confirm your Service User Number has been allocated a ‘Migration’ date for DD/MM/YYY(note; this date is the BACS Processing date and the Migration file should be submitted the working day before).
IMPORTANT : An AUDDIS 'migration' file must contain ALL DDIs held against the SUN(Service User Number). The file must be sent as a 'live' file and only the AUDDIS special transaction code of 0S is to be used. - Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide page 17 for details.
Please also note that after being in 'migrate' status for 4 weeks you need to be set to full 'live' status. To go fully live you must ensure ALL DDI's are converted onto AUDDIS, and that you do not post D/D mandates to banks when setting up new instructions. We will contact you at this time to check these items before we make the change on the bacs site. Please refer to the AUDDIS migration guide for further details.
Should you have any queries regarding this please contact our Help Desk as soon as possible on 0870 240 5544/156 6680 option 1.
Thank You
The layout and spacing is exactly as it came through by email and it was not from a front-line person. It was from the 'second level of support'. Exciting eh? It certainly made it easy to set up the new arrangement.
Monday 3 February 2014
Computer systems
A chum sent us this 'delightful' story of the problems of installing a new computer system to help colleges determining their funding levels.
During 2013 the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) introduced a new Data Collections and Funding Transformation Programme (DCFT), the adverse consequences of which have spilled over into 2014.
In an attempt to explain the purpose of the new system, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said that the SFA was moving to a new data collection system that would underpin a more streamlined and less complex funding system. The new system would remove the need for thousands of different funding values for each course and qualification, and that it would replace earlier complex funding formulas and funding systems.
The intention is that the DCFT will replace the:
In addition, the new Learning Aim Reference System (LARS), that should have been available since last August to help college staff check whether qualifications are eligible for funding, and how much per learner providers should receive, is still not available. Providers have to use ‘Lars Lite’ instead. This is a temporary downloadable database from the SFA that apparently is also producing unreliable data.
Initially, Mr Hancock seems to have laid the blame for the failures on inadequacies in colleges’ own internal management information systems. In a written answer to a parliamentary question about DCFT, Mr. Hancock claimed that there had been some issues for colleges and other providers in the calculating funding due to them where their own internal management information systems have not been able to report accurately their management position. This was even after the SFA had admitted that there were serious problems with the DCFT system and had apologised to providers for the inconvenience caused.
Eventually, Mr Hancock was brought up to speed with the real reason for the difficulties and has now gone so far as to say that that he personally takes full responsibility for the disruption the new system has caused to providers.
The four computer contracts for a system that does not work cost over £11.3m.
Let's look on the bright side, this is nowhere near as much as NHS England and the Ministry of Defence have spent on IT systems that don’t work and we can look forward to the Margaret Hodge and her Public Accounts Committee asking what Mr Hancock means when he says 'personally responsible'.
During 2013 the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) introduced a new Data Collections and Funding Transformation Programme (DCFT), the adverse consequences of which have spilled over into 2014.
In an attempt to explain the purpose of the new system, Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said that the SFA was moving to a new data collection system that would underpin a more streamlined and less complex funding system. The new system would remove the need for thousands of different funding values for each course and qualification, and that it would replace earlier complex funding formulas and funding systems.
The intention is that the DCFT will replace the:
- Learner Information Suite (LIS)
- Learning Aim Reference Application (LARA)
- Online Data Collection (OLDC) system
- Provider Online (POL)
- Provider Information Management System (PIMS)
- The LIS has become the ‘Funding Information System’ (FIS)
- The LARA has become the ‘Learning Aim Reference Service’ (LARS)
- The OLDC has become the ‘Data Exchange Service’ (DES)
In addition, the new Learning Aim Reference System (LARS), that should have been available since last August to help college staff check whether qualifications are eligible for funding, and how much per learner providers should receive, is still not available. Providers have to use ‘Lars Lite’ instead. This is a temporary downloadable database from the SFA that apparently is also producing unreliable data.
Initially, Mr Hancock seems to have laid the blame for the failures on inadequacies in colleges’ own internal management information systems. In a written answer to a parliamentary question about DCFT, Mr. Hancock claimed that there had been some issues for colleges and other providers in the calculating funding due to them where their own internal management information systems have not been able to report accurately their management position. This was even after the SFA had admitted that there were serious problems with the DCFT system and had apologised to providers for the inconvenience caused.
Eventually, Mr Hancock was brought up to speed with the real reason for the difficulties and has now gone so far as to say that that he personally takes full responsibility for the disruption the new system has caused to providers.
The four computer contracts for a system that does not work cost over £11.3m.
Let's look on the bright side, this is nowhere near as much as NHS England and the Ministry of Defence have spent on IT systems that don’t work and we can look forward to the Margaret Hodge and her Public Accounts Committee asking what Mr Hancock means when he says 'personally responsible'.
Saturday 11 January 2014
A transport policy?
Enjoy this collection of headlines/reports:
Ministers to consult on 80 mph motorway speed limit - BBC headline 29 September 2011
It is awfully difficult to get one's Chelsea Tractor past all those plebs in the slow lane, yah. I say, my old bus just won't go under 70, you know.
M4 hard shoulder plans criticised by road safety charity - BBC headline 10 May 2012
The government could be set to abandon plans to raise the motorway speed limit in England and Wales to 80 mph - BBC report 17 December 2012
Motorway speed limit may not rise from 70 mph to 80 mph - BBC headline 7 June 2013
So it took them six months to get round to announcing what had been leaked in December
60 mph speed limit proposal for stretch of M1 motorway - BBC headline 6 January 2014
So now the speed limit is going to go down. It is OK, it is not in our Thames valley. It will only apply to 'people' near Birmingham.
The Highways Agency is planning to remove the hard shoulder from more than 100 miles of motorway in order to ease congestion. Critics say that removing the hard shoulder would be unsafe. BBC report 6 January 2014
So much for a 'listening government' (see 10 May 2012)
Ministers to consult on 80 mph motorway speed limit - BBC headline 29 September 2011
It is awfully difficult to get one's Chelsea Tractor past all those plebs in the slow lane, yah. I say, my old bus just won't go under 70, you know.
M4 hard shoulder plans criticised by road safety charity - BBC headline 10 May 2012
The government could be set to abandon plans to raise the motorway speed limit in England and Wales to 80 mph - BBC report 17 December 2012
Motorway speed limit may not rise from 70 mph to 80 mph - BBC headline 7 June 2013
So it took them six months to get round to announcing what had been leaked in December
60 mph speed limit proposal for stretch of M1 motorway - BBC headline 6 January 2014
So now the speed limit is going to go down. It is OK, it is not in our Thames valley. It will only apply to 'people' near Birmingham.
The Highways Agency is planning to remove the hard shoulder from more than 100 miles of motorway in order to ease congestion. Critics say that removing the hard shoulder would be unsafe. BBC report 6 January 2014
So much for a 'listening government' (see 10 May 2012)
Tuesday 7 January 2014
Happy New Year
It is customary for newspapers to indulge us with fascinating quizzes of the year around the Christmas season but since our memories fade with each passing minute - that is if we ever knew who won the All-England Marbles Championship back in June - these do little more than depress us.
Looking back at 2013, however, we can readily identify our stale sandwich of the year (previous winner Eric Pickles), if this is not far too kind a description for a man who is acting in such a perverse way and who has some influence on future generations. His ability to ignore the wisdom of experts; his upside-down thinking - no Michael, it was not 'out of the box' - on academies; his inability to see the lack of logic in almost any proposal he has brought forward; and, if we are to believe what we are told, his inability to manage or control his department who seems bent on ignoring any civilised request for information or clarification ... yes, by several lengths, it is Michael Gove. A Facebook picture summed him up well.
What is so sad is that he seems to believe that education is best achieved by a Gradgrind devotion to facts. Learn the facts, spew them out in the exam and you will do just fine. This is the right answer if you want to maintain a nation of worker bees who will do what you tell them and not challenge your divine right to rule but not terribly sensible if you want to inspire people to make the best of themselves.
His new curriculum expresses a view of history so simplistic that a generation of children will know something of Ancient Egypt - a curiously dead-end civilisation - and almost nothing of the Age of Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution.
We make no apologies for once again quoting the man who always thought and expressed himself with such great clarity and invite MG to spend some time contemplating Einstein's message in the New Year.
If we are accused of displaying our grumpy side then let us also praise the star of 2013 and here there is no competition. It was those poor beleagured badgers who so cunningly moved the goalposts when our enlightened government were out to destroy them using and misusing the word 'science' as often as they could to give the illusion that the policy was pre-ordained. Lord Krebs, the government's own Science Advisor who did the original work on the possibility of a cull, dismissed the pilot as 'crazy'. A recent commentator called it one of the most disastrous and expensive wildlife culls in history.
This was a year when the government had to put up with the Mail and Telegraph - the Express was carried off to the funny farm too long ago ever to be taken seriously - as well as a resurgent Ukip. None of these have ever let facts get in the way of a 'good [mean-minded, little England] story'.
The same disease afflicted those adolescents who rejoice in the name of special ministerial advisors or Spads, thinking up ever-more dastardly plans to make their ministers look tough/creative/imaginative, thus enhancing their reputations with the backswoodmen.
It was the year in which we were told that the perfectly legal process of tax avoidance - not to be confused with the deeply reprehensible tax evasion - was re-categorised as immoral. We waited in vain for a Minister to put up his hands and say that he had paid 100% of the tax owing on his income, earned and unearned, and that he had not taken out an ISA, paid an enhanced pension contribution, claimed his expenses or a Gift Aid rebate ... especially so that he could make a bigger contribution to the Exchequer.
Much better to slag off the unidentified 'scroungers' - a phrase that also came to be a pejorative adjective for anyone who claims any sort of benefit and certainly not to be compared with any 'hard-working family' (aka someone who votes for us). This was reassuring to the self-satisfied.
It was a year in which it took the unexpected intervention of an otherwise frivolous comedian to bring a degree of reality to the political scene for a fleeting moment. Russell Brand guest-edited the New Statesman and was shortly afterwards interviewed by Jeremy Paxman who proved himself uncharacteristically unable to cope with Brand's novel take on don't vote, it only encourages them. Brand was like Bob Geldof at his best but has faded from our front pages (A mixed blessing in Brand's case).
By the end of the year, the hate-mail attitude reached epidemic proportions with the news that people from Romania and Bulgaria (combined population 27m), who were now allowed into the country like any other citizen of the European Union (population 500m), were going to flood in. Anyone would think that the Huns were at the gate but we let them in a long time ago and have lived to tell the tale.
Goodness knows why the Romanians should have been singled out; no doubt they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The racist overtones were horrid. The more informed might perhaps have been disguising their concern or confusion at the term Romanian with the title 'Roma': the semi-autonomous community of Central European gypsies who are a far-cry from the familiar British/Irish travellers. But if so, then no one was bold enough to say this.
A result was the delightful sight of Keith Vaz meeting a confused Romanian at the airport on 1 January. Well, you would be confused to be met by a random politician when you arrived at an international airport, would you not. Was he going to use the NHS? What is NHS? he asked. Another cheering insertion of reality.
A charming and random fact: with the admission of Romania and Bulgaria we can at last drive across mainland Europe without leaving the EU. Greece is at last joined to the rest of 'Europe'. It sounds worryingly joined-up.
Back to Keith Vaz. He and Margaret Hodge, respectively chairs of the Home Affairs Select Committee and Public Accounts Committee, have had storming years in the spotlight, grilling all sorts and conditions of random physicians about matters 'of public interest'. If they have occasionally strayed from their briefs or drawn unwarranted conclusions then they have certainly provided good copy, coverage and televisual moments. They are elected our parliamentarians of the year.
As well as quizzes, Christmas is a good time to bury bad news or fly a few kites. Lynton Crosby and the Spads were hard at work over the break.
The usual formula is to whisper in the ear of a journalist something speculative up to and including the confirmation that ministers are thinking terms of ...The journalist rushes off, writes an article and the Spad measures the reaction and coverage to see if the policy is worth working up. This also sends all the right messages to the backwoods that the party is thinking novel thoughts and is only held back by its coalition partner - spit, spit - from carrying out the sort of things that we would like to implement ...
Another journalistic technique is to carry out a 'survey' and then announce the results. This ruse was used with the idea that we might all be charged £10 to attend A&E with the money refunded if the need was genuine. This was wrapped around with more glib and pejorative cocktail party phrases such as the worried well and free at the point of abuse. Nearly one third of GPs agreed with the idea ... read the 'survey'.
Oh please! The idea is so manifestly absurd in an age when we are constantly being exhorted to speak to our doctor about anything that concerns us: that cough that has lasted one week might be ... that chest pain might be the early signs of ... that fever and rash sound suspiciously like ... and you need to get it checked out quickly. Will we all have to pay on entry - further delay before treatment as they take £10 from the man rolled in on an ambulance trolley, with blood pouring from his head wound? Still, collecting the money will pass the time during the four hour wait to be seen.
Though where the figure of £10 came from, goodness knows: less than a check-up at the dentist and barely a round of drinks. If a small administrative charge is generally around £30 then this figure seems strangely low and not much of a deterrent if the vast majority will get their money back.
With A&E under pressure all over the country, probably from the Lansley/Hunt re-organisations as much as the budget cuts. No one seem to have pointed out the obvious connection between the rise of demand on A&E and the difficulty of getting an appointment at a convenient time with your doctor. 750,000 patients a year cannot be seen because these doctors don't exist said a headline.
And talking of NHS re-organisation, we enjoyed the recent report that the Department had said that further efficiency savings were possible in hospitals in response to a report from consultants that no further savings were possible. Of course the Department is in a better place to judge such things.
The end of year flow of bright ideas continued with the floated proposal that the planning system might be amended in two areas. Firstly, making it easier for property owners to divert footpaths. The report that this was being proposed in response to requests from community groups was the least-believable lie of the new year when set against the well-known hate of major land-owners for historic rights of way.
It also reminds one of the titles to Have I Got News For You which thoughtfully show a new railway line - don't even think of asking why we need HS2, how it benefits the whole country or what the real cost will be - being diverted to avoid My Lord's estate.
The second, floated by our enlightened Secretary of State for the Environment, that land-owners could be given permission to destroy ancient woodland in order to enhance development, provided they replaced this with new planting elsewhere: and that elsewhere could be up to an hour's drive away. One hour away - why that would still be on their own estates or do they intend to buy up some wasteland near some plebs' houses so that they can get a warm feeling of having provided social benefit for others. Another absurd sop to the land-owning backwoodsmen.
What one never knows is whether these are serious proposals. If they are not then one can sleep at night. If they are, then effort will have to be put into objecting and campaigning, diverting energy from more productive matters.
One hate-figure, or hate-organisation if there is such a thing - is the BBC who, to quote the head of the Countryside Alliance, thinks we [people in the countryside] are all Neanderthals. He quotes the Countryfile programme as giving a metropolitan view of the countryside. Um ... is one of the presenters not a farmer showing off his own farm? He went on to say that the badger cull had not been a failure, and hankered after a lifting on the ban on hunting so the BBC might have been right. But he did praise the use of migrant labour on farms and so perhaps it seems harsh.
Some of us might argue that the BBC is actually a voice of normality in an increasingly mean-spirited world. Perhaps he really means that the BBC has dared to question things and has not slavishly and uncritically recycled party press releases or maybe he had in mind that title sequence to Have I Got News For You.
Mind you, the BBC has had its management problems this year and some of its management decisions, if that is what they were, seem open to question.
Talking of the BBC brings us back to the teaching of history for it was their Head of Religious Broadcasting who famously said during the year that people should study Religious Knowledge in order to understand the jokes in the film The Life of Brian.
There was an echo of the same idea at the end of the year when Mr Gove said that he was worried that people would interpret the history of World War I through films like Oh What a Lovely War! or Blackadder Goes Forth. It would be very wrong to imagine that the incredible death toll of the war was caused by an out-of-touch leadership.
Where does one start with such a comment? Is it the fear of the strength of mass media? Is it the recognition that the majority of school children will, under his new curriculum, never study World War I in their history lessons unless there is a specially-funded initiative to engage them; or is it simply a fear that parallels will be drawn between WWI generals safely eating smart meals disengaged from the mud and guts of the front line and the current generation of Ministers, insulated in their ivory towers? Perish the thought.
In practice, of course, the BBC is simply the most obvious whipping boy in the fight between the political classes and the media. Ever since the Telegraph, of all papers, broke the news about MPs expenses, the atmosphere has been even more poisonous than usual with each side desperate to be holier-than-thou. No one likes being caught with their trousers down and MPs were: comprehensively. The gloves have been off.
Of the print media the Guardian has borne the brunt of the pressure thanks to their work with Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. One boarding school even banned the Guardian, presumably on the basis of its left-wing views: quite something for the soft old liberal Manchester Guardian but maybe it shows how far right the 'average' view has moved in the country.
Leaks about our lack of civil liberties highlighted by the Guardian and others led even President Obama to wonder whether his country had perhaps gone too far; not just embarrassment at having his dirty washing revealed through leaks but the revelation that the USA had been monitoring the mobile phone calls of foreign leaders.
And another piece of breaking news is that a quango that has never been heard of is attempting to recruit new school governors: a voluntary activity which used to be fulfilled by the public-spirited person. We wonder why there is such a shortage when people care so much about children's education. Could it be something to do with the constant criticism from people like Ofsted and the Secretary of State for Education? Who would honestly want to give up their time to carry out such a responsible job when there was pretty much zero support from the centre? Pass the sherry and turn on the box, dear. Let's watch the golf.
But we cannot go on about the excellent Mr Gove and so let us introduce the new fall guy: our learned and apparently climate-sceptic Secretary of State for the Environment who openly states that his task is as much about enhancing the economic benefit of the environment as protecting it. Step forward the man who thinks we should cut down ancient woodland with all its well-developed eco-systems: Owen Paterson.
As we write he has been at the front of the news, trying to square the impossible circle of why the country is being inundated by storms of horrendous magnitude and large swathes of the country are without power, underwater or both. His task has been very simple: simultaneously to demonstrate that the government is in complete control and that all failings are the fault of everyone except the government.
The lack of power is due to the incompetence of the privatised energy suppliers - threats of a public haranguing by Parliamentary Enquiry is being held over them - who naturally do what suits them as they do not have a contract with the government. Maggie's revenge. The flooding is nothing to do with the cuts being imposed on the Environment Agency by the government as those cuts apparently only apply to behind-the-scenes activities. And the weather is nothing to do with a change in climate caused by our love of fossil fuels as climate change is not happening. But the government is on top of the situation and its policies are working.
Newspaper quizzes are followed by predictions for the year: the up-and-coming actors, presenters, models chefs, musicians and the like. Like many other celebrities, many of these will be despatched to the jungle of oblivion. So let's look ahead and make our predictions.
What is so sad is that he seems to believe that education is best achieved by a Gradgrind devotion to facts. Learn the facts, spew them out in the exam and you will do just fine. This is the right answer if you want to maintain a nation of worker bees who will do what you tell them and not challenge your divine right to rule but not terribly sensible if you want to inspire people to make the best of themselves.
His new curriculum expresses a view of history so simplistic that a generation of children will know something of Ancient Egypt - a curiously dead-end civilisation - and almost nothing of the Age of Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution.We make no apologies for once again quoting the man who always thought and expressed himself with such great clarity and invite MG to spend some time contemplating Einstein's message in the New Year.
If we are accused of displaying our grumpy side then let us also praise the star of 2013 and here there is no competition. It was those poor beleagured badgers who so cunningly moved the goalposts when our enlightened government were out to destroy them using and misusing the word 'science' as often as they could to give the illusion that the policy was pre-ordained. Lord Krebs, the government's own Science Advisor who did the original work on the possibility of a cull, dismissed the pilot as 'crazy'. A recent commentator called it one of the most disastrous and expensive wildlife culls in history.
This was a year when the government had to put up with the Mail and Telegraph - the Express was carried off to the funny farm too long ago ever to be taken seriously - as well as a resurgent Ukip. None of these have ever let facts get in the way of a 'good [mean-minded, little England] story'.
The same disease afflicted those adolescents who rejoice in the name of special ministerial advisors or Spads, thinking up ever-more dastardly plans to make their ministers look tough/creative/imaginative, thus enhancing their reputations with the backswoodmen.
It was the year in which we were told that the perfectly legal process of tax avoidance - not to be confused with the deeply reprehensible tax evasion - was re-categorised as immoral. We waited in vain for a Minister to put up his hands and say that he had paid 100% of the tax owing on his income, earned and unearned, and that he had not taken out an ISA, paid an enhanced pension contribution, claimed his expenses or a Gift Aid rebate ... especially so that he could make a bigger contribution to the Exchequer.
Much better to slag off the unidentified 'scroungers' - a phrase that also came to be a pejorative adjective for anyone who claims any sort of benefit and certainly not to be compared with any 'hard-working family' (aka someone who votes for us). This was reassuring to the self-satisfied.
It was a year in which it took the unexpected intervention of an otherwise frivolous comedian to bring a degree of reality to the political scene for a fleeting moment. Russell Brand guest-edited the New Statesman and was shortly afterwards interviewed by Jeremy Paxman who proved himself uncharacteristically unable to cope with Brand's novel take on don't vote, it only encourages them. Brand was like Bob Geldof at his best but has faded from our front pages (A mixed blessing in Brand's case).
By the end of the year, the hate-mail attitude reached epidemic proportions with the news that people from Romania and Bulgaria (combined population 27m), who were now allowed into the country like any other citizen of the European Union (population 500m), were going to flood in. Anyone would think that the Huns were at the gate but we let them in a long time ago and have lived to tell the tale.
Goodness knows why the Romanians should have been singled out; no doubt they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The racist overtones were horrid. The more informed might perhaps have been disguising their concern or confusion at the term Romanian with the title 'Roma': the semi-autonomous community of Central European gypsies who are a far-cry from the familiar British/Irish travellers. But if so, then no one was bold enough to say this.
A result was the delightful sight of Keith Vaz meeting a confused Romanian at the airport on 1 January. Well, you would be confused to be met by a random politician when you arrived at an international airport, would you not. Was he going to use the NHS? What is NHS? he asked. Another cheering insertion of reality.
A charming and random fact: with the admission of Romania and Bulgaria we can at last drive across mainland Europe without leaving the EU. Greece is at last joined to the rest of 'Europe'. It sounds worryingly joined-up.
Back to Keith Vaz. He and Margaret Hodge, respectively chairs of the Home Affairs Select Committee and Public Accounts Committee, have had storming years in the spotlight, grilling all sorts and conditions of random physicians about matters 'of public interest'. If they have occasionally strayed from their briefs or drawn unwarranted conclusions then they have certainly provided good copy, coverage and televisual moments. They are elected our parliamentarians of the year.
As well as quizzes, Christmas is a good time to bury bad news or fly a few kites. Lynton Crosby and the Spads were hard at work over the break.
The usual formula is to whisper in the ear of a journalist something speculative up to and including the confirmation that ministers are thinking terms of ...The journalist rushes off, writes an article and the Spad measures the reaction and coverage to see if the policy is worth working up. This also sends all the right messages to the backwoods that the party is thinking novel thoughts and is only held back by its coalition partner - spit, spit - from carrying out the sort of things that we would like to implement ...
Another journalistic technique is to carry out a 'survey' and then announce the results. This ruse was used with the idea that we might all be charged £10 to attend A&E with the money refunded if the need was genuine. This was wrapped around with more glib and pejorative cocktail party phrases such as the worried well and free at the point of abuse. Nearly one third of GPs agreed with the idea ... read the 'survey'.
Oh please! The idea is so manifestly absurd in an age when we are constantly being exhorted to speak to our doctor about anything that concerns us: that cough that has lasted one week might be ... that chest pain might be the early signs of ... that fever and rash sound suspiciously like ... and you need to get it checked out quickly. Will we all have to pay on entry - further delay before treatment as they take £10 from the man rolled in on an ambulance trolley, with blood pouring from his head wound? Still, collecting the money will pass the time during the four hour wait to be seen.
Though where the figure of £10 came from, goodness knows: less than a check-up at the dentist and barely a round of drinks. If a small administrative charge is generally around £30 then this figure seems strangely low and not much of a deterrent if the vast majority will get their money back.
With A&E under pressure all over the country, probably from the Lansley/Hunt re-organisations as much as the budget cuts. No one seem to have pointed out the obvious connection between the rise of demand on A&E and the difficulty of getting an appointment at a convenient time with your doctor. 750,000 patients a year cannot be seen because these doctors don't exist said a headline.
And talking of NHS re-organisation, we enjoyed the recent report that the Department had said that further efficiency savings were possible in hospitals in response to a report from consultants that no further savings were possible. Of course the Department is in a better place to judge such things.
The end of year flow of bright ideas continued with the floated proposal that the planning system might be amended in two areas. Firstly, making it easier for property owners to divert footpaths. The report that this was being proposed in response to requests from community groups was the least-believable lie of the new year when set against the well-known hate of major land-owners for historic rights of way.
It also reminds one of the titles to Have I Got News For You which thoughtfully show a new railway line - don't even think of asking why we need HS2, how it benefits the whole country or what the real cost will be - being diverted to avoid My Lord's estate.
The second, floated by our enlightened Secretary of State for the Environment, that land-owners could be given permission to destroy ancient woodland in order to enhance development, provided they replaced this with new planting elsewhere: and that elsewhere could be up to an hour's drive away. One hour away - why that would still be on their own estates or do they intend to buy up some wasteland near some plebs' houses so that they can get a warm feeling of having provided social benefit for others. Another absurd sop to the land-owning backwoodsmen.
What one never knows is whether these are serious proposals. If they are not then one can sleep at night. If they are, then effort will have to be put into objecting and campaigning, diverting energy from more productive matters.
One hate-figure, or hate-organisation if there is such a thing - is the BBC who, to quote the head of the Countryside Alliance, thinks we [people in the countryside] are all Neanderthals. He quotes the Countryfile programme as giving a metropolitan view of the countryside. Um ... is one of the presenters not a farmer showing off his own farm? He went on to say that the badger cull had not been a failure, and hankered after a lifting on the ban on hunting so the BBC might have been right. But he did praise the use of migrant labour on farms and so perhaps it seems harsh.
Some of us might argue that the BBC is actually a voice of normality in an increasingly mean-spirited world. Perhaps he really means that the BBC has dared to question things and has not slavishly and uncritically recycled party press releases or maybe he had in mind that title sequence to Have I Got News For You.
Mind you, the BBC has had its management problems this year and some of its management decisions, if that is what they were, seem open to question.
Talking of the BBC brings us back to the teaching of history for it was their Head of Religious Broadcasting who famously said during the year that people should study Religious Knowledge in order to understand the jokes in the film The Life of Brian.
There was an echo of the same idea at the end of the year when Mr Gove said that he was worried that people would interpret the history of World War I through films like Oh What a Lovely War! or Blackadder Goes Forth. It would be very wrong to imagine that the incredible death toll of the war was caused by an out-of-touch leadership.
Where does one start with such a comment? Is it the fear of the strength of mass media? Is it the recognition that the majority of school children will, under his new curriculum, never study World War I in their history lessons unless there is a specially-funded initiative to engage them; or is it simply a fear that parallels will be drawn between WWI generals safely eating smart meals disengaged from the mud and guts of the front line and the current generation of Ministers, insulated in their ivory towers? Perish the thought.
In practice, of course, the BBC is simply the most obvious whipping boy in the fight between the political classes and the media. Ever since the Telegraph, of all papers, broke the news about MPs expenses, the atmosphere has been even more poisonous than usual with each side desperate to be holier-than-thou. No one likes being caught with their trousers down and MPs were: comprehensively. The gloves have been off.
Of the print media the Guardian has borne the brunt of the pressure thanks to their work with Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. One boarding school even banned the Guardian, presumably on the basis of its left-wing views: quite something for the soft old liberal Manchester Guardian but maybe it shows how far right the 'average' view has moved in the country.
Leaks about our lack of civil liberties highlighted by the Guardian and others led even President Obama to wonder whether his country had perhaps gone too far; not just embarrassment at having his dirty washing revealed through leaks but the revelation that the USA had been monitoring the mobile phone calls of foreign leaders.
And another piece of breaking news is that a quango that has never been heard of is attempting to recruit new school governors: a voluntary activity which used to be fulfilled by the public-spirited person. We wonder why there is such a shortage when people care so much about children's education. Could it be something to do with the constant criticism from people like Ofsted and the Secretary of State for Education? Who would honestly want to give up their time to carry out such a responsible job when there was pretty much zero support from the centre? Pass the sherry and turn on the box, dear. Let's watch the golf.
But we cannot go on about the excellent Mr Gove and so let us introduce the new fall guy: our learned and apparently climate-sceptic Secretary of State for the Environment who openly states that his task is as much about enhancing the economic benefit of the environment as protecting it. Step forward the man who thinks we should cut down ancient woodland with all its well-developed eco-systems: Owen Paterson.
As we write he has been at the front of the news, trying to square the impossible circle of why the country is being inundated by storms of horrendous magnitude and large swathes of the country are without power, underwater or both. His task has been very simple: simultaneously to demonstrate that the government is in complete control and that all failings are the fault of everyone except the government.
The lack of power is due to the incompetence of the privatised energy suppliers - threats of a public haranguing by Parliamentary Enquiry is being held over them - who naturally do what suits them as they do not have a contract with the government. Maggie's revenge. The flooding is nothing to do with the cuts being imposed on the Environment Agency by the government as those cuts apparently only apply to behind-the-scenes activities. And the weather is nothing to do with a change in climate caused by our love of fossil fuels as climate change is not happening. But the government is on top of the situation and its policies are working.
Newspaper quizzes are followed by predictions for the year: the up-and-coming actors, presenters, models chefs, musicians and the like. Like many other celebrities, many of these will be despatched to the jungle of oblivion. So let's look ahead and make our predictions.
- There is the easy one: in the run up to the election the coalition will be come increasingly strained
- Government ministers will continue to undermine and denigrate reactionary forces objecting to their ill-thought through proposals: so that is the teachers, health workers, firemen, in fact any public sector worker and now even lawyers ...
- Foreigners - re-titled migrants - will increasingly be despised and the calls for a referendum on EU membership will continue to grow
- Scroungers, benefit claimants and migrants will continue to be the cause of most of our ills
- The global financial meltdown will continue to have been caused single-handedly by Gordon Brown and the Labour Party
- Scotland will hold its referendum on independence and, on present showing, the Scottish people will willingly shrug off government by Westminster through ineptitude of the 'No' campaign and frankly, what would your heart say if you were in Scotland? Historical note: Scotland is only happy when it is running the UK unless those Scots - cf 1997 onwards - go native and pretend to be Brits
- There will be a continued flow of ideas worthy of 12 year olds flowing out of Westminster as Spads climb over each other to out-Ukip Ukip
- No one will whisper Big Society or the Greenest Government Ever, or We are all in it together
- There will be an increasing and surreal gap between the rulers and the ruled
- The sense of two nations - the haves and the rest - inhabiting one country will increase. Ah, Madiba, how we need a man with your ability to unite people under a common cause
Have a good year.
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