Boss Radio

I couldn't believe it, there I was, listening to the news, and suddenly the newsreader says "Let's not forget that every silver lining has a cloud". Am I seriously expected to believe that he hadn't just read yesterday's blog and stolen my joke? Pah! What're the odds?

He was interviewing some poor happless minister who was trying to explain that, contrary to popular opinion, crime was going down. Well, I say "Popular opinion", the truth is that according to recent surveys that covered this particular scenario, readers of tabloid newspapers are far more inclined to believe that crime is on the increase than those who read the grown up press, or who don't rely upon the papers for their opinionsnews at all.

I don't know if this is a reflection upon the tabloids, or upon the people who read them. All newspapers print bad news, and bad news is usually crime related, so in theory all newspaper readers should be garnering the same impressions, therefore either tabloid readers are stupid or the tabloids are over-egging the news.

Me, I'm far more interested in where the term 'over egg' originated. Note to self: Write and ask the lovely Susie on 'Countdown'. She's sure to know.

One of the more interesting items in today's news was a school complaining that too many of its pupils had passed a particular exam. It would seem that this particular establishment is very proud of it's prowess in the field covered by this exam, and was hoping for maybe even a 30% pass rate. When the result came in and they had an over 50% pass rate they knew something was wrong, but instead of keeping quiet and basking in the glory and subsequent lack of attention from government watchdogs these results would bring they became incensed. What is the point, they wanted to know, of passing an exam and getting a piece of paper to prove it, if people who hadn't really passed it also had bit of paper saying that they had?

So then, I guess the realisation that if they only got a 30% pass rate next year people might think they were letting the ball slip through their fingers, so to speak, had nothing to do with it. Well done, gentlemen, that was most British of you, and Britain is, accordingly, proud of you.

Yes it is.

Less welcome news was that my gas bill may be going up by anything up to 70% over the next 6 months. This is, so they say, because our head honchos in the field of gas supply didn't invest in gas while the prices were low and now everyone else has snapped up the cheap gas and we're left with the expensive stuff. What I don't get is why that means my bills are going up. The companies screwed up, let them pay the extra.

It doesn't work that way, you say? I think it simply doesn't work. Period. The idiot Thatcher sold our utilities to the private sector because she believed that they would give us the best deal. Instead they sold all our newly discovered natural gas overseas because the government's overseers (If Thatcher thought the private sector would give us the best deal, why did she think they needed overseers? I think we should be told.) had made sure we were paying only a fair price, and those sneaky guys from faraway places were willing to pay a little more than we were paying. The net result of this is that our gas (And oil) fields, which should have lasted another 10-20 years, are now running out. Now stripe me pink if I'm being stupid here, but I don't think the nationalised utilities would have done that, just as I don't believe that they would have put all their eggs in one basket (There's those eggs again...) and built only gas powered electricity generating sites. Yup. That's right. If gas goes up, so does electricity...

Another item in the news said that when Thatcher dies she will have a state funeral.

It'll be nothing compared to the state she'd be in if I had a rocket launcher.

So the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death is also the 100th birthday of the brassiere. Which to celebrate? Without the pelvis there'd still have been rock'n'roll, but maybe not so much of it. But without the bra there'd still have been boobies, just not quite so well presented. Then again it seems a tad weird to celebrate someone's death...

Fortunately I don't have to choose because today is also another great annual event.

Exam results.

Yes, once again it's that time of year when more kids than ever before get higher marks than ever before and everyone says that exams are getting easier. Everyone except the kids, who of course don't actually have any way of knowing, and the people in charge of the system, who once again wheeled out some old guy to say that "I am really stupid when compared to the geniuses that are the children of today". Well, he doesn't quite put it like that, but that's what it comes down to.

Every year more records are broken. Last year's kids were apparently not as clever as this year's kids, but they were better than the kids of two years ago. The old guy they wheeled out must have been at least 20 years away from his exams, which means that he is twenty generations more stupid than this year's output.

Now I realise that this makes me into a really really stupid individual, but even I can see the flaws in this logic, after all, it's these older stupider generations that are posing the exam questions.

And marking them.

So if they're that dim then they're probably doing it all wrong anyway and the record breaking statistics are completely invalid. Today's kids are just as dim as the rest of us, and in 20 years time they'll be the ones asking the questions and shouting about how clever the generation of the day is.

Meanwhile let's think on this. If your education was completed before decimalisation in Britain, then there were 12d in 1/-, and 20 shillings in £1. There were 16 ounces in 1 lb., and 14 lbs. in a stone. 8 pints in a gallon... I shouldn't need to go on. Exams got easier after decimalisation.

Then came the calculator. They got easier still, especially after calculators were allowed into the exam room. And so it's gone on. Television, computers, the internet, they've all done their bit to make learning easier. To me it's immaterial whether exams have got easier.

Taking them has definitely got easier.