http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman Just another Asdfriendly.org weblog Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:52:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Education and Skills Bill had its Third Reading last week - and a Lib Dem amendment was accepted by the Government: schools must, "seek and take account of pupils’ views on policies on the delivery of the curriculum, behaviour, the uniform, school food, health and safety, equalities and sustainability ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/11/16/soon-children-will-have-more-power-than-most-of-their-teachers/ Several local councils in the UK want to stop people from using Latin idioms (I'm allowed to say 'idiom' because it's Greek) because, and I quote, "some people might not understand it" Let's just remind ourselves of the clear English that local councils would prefer us to use: Luton Council: "A multi-agency ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/11/03/local-councils-are-taking-the-piss/ Great Britain has a new enemy - thanks to Gordon Brown's wise and diplomatic use of legislation labelled as "anti-terrorist" when seizing the assets of failed Icelandic banks. Serious times, he said, call for serious men. He's right - this is not funny. So when Reykjavík declares war, how will we ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/10/15/war-with-iceland-who-would-win/ The HDD on my MacBook Pro isn't quite as big as I thought it was. The spare space was filled up by a piddling 6,500 high resolution photographs. http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/09/21/215-gigabytes/ When I picked the kids up from school this evening, I was in a pretty foul mood. I had just had a long conversation with Darling Wifey during which "dawning realisation" happened: a job I volunteered for at work turns out to be one that will involve a couple of weeks ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/09/16/guilt-trip/ Christine Gilbert, head of the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), said teaching rated as "satisfactory" was not good enough (BBC report .) Which means that "satisfactory" actually means "unsatisfactory." So glad she cleared that up for us. **Edited to add** This rendered me speechless for almost thirty seconds: you can now get a ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/08/31/more-stupidity/ Much to the BBC's amusement (and mine, too, I have to admit) it seems to be bothering the Ockers that Team GB is ahead of them on the Olympic Medals Table - as the Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning, "Poms are winning, call an inquiry. " I think that they ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/08/19/olympic-propaganda/ If you got your A' Level results today, congratulations. (I hope that there is no need for commiserations.) However, let's try to avoid jumping onto one of the many bandwagons associated with the ever-rising pass rate of the old-fashioned 'Gold Standard' of British education. First, let's look at the difference between modern ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/08/14/muddled-thinking/ Three months after we started, including visiting dealerships for every major car manufacturer in the area, after ordering and then cancelling a perfectly good Volvo estate, after test driving damn near everything available within budget, after agonising about choices from the unbelievably mumsy (another MPV) to the ridiculously impractical (a ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/08/09/women/ This is a brilliant idea. According to Professor Ken Smith at Bucks New University (where?) "teachers should simply accept as variant spellings those words our students most commonly misspell." So instead of there being a 'right' and 'wrong' way of spelling, there are only 'variants.' Or perhaps that should say, "they're our ... http://asdfriendly.org/blog/grumpyoldman/2008/08/07/variant-spellings/