“Look,” said Little Nutter as I gave him a bin bag and told him to tidy his room. “I’m not usually a rule guy, but this is a biggy: No Cleaning and Tidying!”

That’s me told.

The standard measure of a great life is the achievement of great things.

I have decided that I disagree.

A great life is one that achieves mundane, ordinary achievements – but does so while carrying a great burden.

Achieving greatness while shoving the burdens of everyday life onto others is not great.

“I’d win,” she said.

“No you wouldn’t. You would have a lovely happy time building a peaceful civilisation until suddenly, and without warning, I attacked it from four directions at once and destroyed you. Then you’d cry and refuse to have sex with me ever again.”

“I’d win,” she said.

Why did you choose to buy this freezer today?

1. Brand
2. Environmental Rating
3. Style/Appearance
4. Build quality
5. Other (Please State) It is in stock, it fits in the back of my car, and there is £300 worth of meat in my dead freezer at home. Can I go now?

The GTCE has announced a new code of conduct for teachers in which they can be held professionally accountable for their conduct when off duty and not in contact with children.

And I’ve decided that I am in favour.

But you know me by now: I have also decided that there are preconditions to this.

1. Let’s apply a code of conduct for politicians and others in public life, too. If they do anything that "brings the profession into disrepute " then sack them, immediately. It would be fair.
2. Due diligence. It’s about time that the GTC and the teacher-bashing industry as a whole adopted this. Ofsted, as we know, described Haringey Council as "outstanding" just weeks before Baby P was murdered while under one of its child protection orders. Ofsted then complained that Haringey gave it "misleading" data. In an interview with R4 last week, the Chief Inspector of schools, Christine Gilbert, said that she had asked all authorities to "provide assurances" that they would not mislead Ofsted – and she was satisfied with their answers. Oh yeah? I can assure my wife that I will not look at another woman’s arse again – do you believe me? My point is that anyone who has endured half a dozen Ofsted inspections knows how schools and authorities mislead inspectors and, more importantly, how inspectors knowingly look the other way. It happens all the time, and denying it only makes those in charge look like two-faced twats.
3. How about a code of conduct for teachers when on-duty? In fact, let’s be specific – a code of conduct for headteachers when on duty. Did you know, for example, that a teacher’s complaint about their headteacher can only be made to their headteacher, and is investigated at the discretion of the same headteacher? Conflict of interest, much?
4. Repricocity. If a teacher can lose his or her job for not living up to the standards expected, let’s apply the same test to parents. Every school has them – parents who train and support their children to disrupt lessons, undermine the educational opportunities of classmates, and ruin the health of their teachers.

Shut both the Veluxes and both the windows of the attic bedroom for the whole day.

Sleep in that bedroom that night.

I was banned from watching it when I was a kid. Nice middle class families just didn’t talk to each other like that, and didn’t expose their children to that sort of role model.

Inevitably, that made it seem more exciting than it was – and by the time I got round to watching it the hype and expectation had built it up to an impossibly high standard.

Actually, by the time I got round to watching it I was a teacher in exactly the sort of inner-city school that the series tried to portray – complete with metal detectors on the doors and a police helicopter hovering overhead at the end of every school day.

And even the kids in the school agreed, Grange Hill just wasn’t real.

It was sexed-up. It dealt with ‘gritty realities’ in a way that safe, secure middle class kids thought was exciting – and their parents thought was unacceptable.

It was never a mirror on real life. It was real life through a prism designed to entice a very carefully selected audience.

Two years ago I bought a car in the dark.

Never, ever do this.

The colour ‘Pearlescent Sunset’ is not “a nice shade of blue” like the salesman said, but about half way between lilac and pink. And when it is a car you chose because the VED website said it is the most fuel-efficient five seat car available on earth, what you end up with is a little pink car you can imagine your granny driving.

However, during those two years I have driven over 50,000 miles – that’s the equivalent of twice round the earth – at an average of over 80mpg. And apart from normal maintenance, it has suffered an aircon failure (in England, so who cares?) and displayed an annoying tendency to blow light bulbs.

I’m not going to tempt fate by saying that it is reliable. It has been reliable, but that’s not the point. It has exceeded expectations. It was bought for one purpose – to be cheap. Yet it can accommodate the entire family, including the dog and a wheelchair, and still have room for a week’s shopping, and it is a damn sight more comfortable than Darling Wifey’s MPV.

The moral of the story: the best cars in the world are the ones that are developed for mass production. Anonymous boxes, designed to be cheap, reliable and easy to live with, sold by the million, discounted on the forecourt and intended to make no demands whatsoever; these are the most reliable cars money can buy.

The best place to see in the new year fireworks displays is…

…from bed in a loft conversion, underneath an open Velux, in a house in the centre of York.

Happy 2008

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/07/generation_selfesteem.php

“Self-esteem comes from the self doing something worthy of esteem.” Oh, if only the people who run our education system would realise this.

Hopefully, at some point in my lifetime, the backlash against the crap that has poisoned our education system will achieve critical mass. But I’m not that confident.