Education, Edjukayshun, Edyerwhat?

So we've had another round of exam results come out and -- guess what? -- it's another record year! More passes, better grades, well, fuck me, that's just fantastic!

It couldn't possibly be that the exams are getting easier, could it? No ... our glorious leaders in Government have told us that they're not.

Well, I'm glad we sorted that shit out. Clearly, every year the teachers are getting better, and the kids? Gee, I guess the kids must just be getting smarter, then. That has to be the answer. No other explanation for it.

Unfortunately, that doesn't explain the problem I'm having just at the moment. You see, I'm trying to hire someone to work in my office right now. That means I'm reading CVs. Lots of CVs. From lots of bright young things with lots of A-grade GCSEs and A-levels.

So ... if standards are improving, if the exams aren't getting easier, then will someone please explain to me how these little bastards are getting through 12 or more years of education, are coming out with a better set of grades than I ever managed, and yet, somehow, are complete strangers to elementary grammar? Somehow, have managed to complete a decade and a half of schooling, but never learned how to spell or use the simplest of words.

One CV I've just read managed to use the words "there", "their" and "they're" and use each one incorrectly. Clearly, this well-educated youth had managed to complete his time at school without ever having it explained to him that these words are not interchangeable. Clearly, he had not the slightest concept of the difference between them or the context in which they were appropriate.

Possessive apostrophes float in and out of the text of these documents like quantum fucking phenomena. God forbid anyone actually ever manages to construct an entire sentence, containing a subject, an object and a verb.

So, why? Why are our children being churned out of school as illiterate little morons?

Why? Because the feeble, namby-pamby establishment has decreed that children can't be told that things are wrong. It might upset them. It might knock their confidence. It might stunt their emotional development.

You know what it might also do? It might mean that they FUCKING LEARNT SOMETHING.

I'm sorry to break it to the educational policy-makers of this once-proud nation, but some things are just plain fucking right and wrong.

When some friends of mine have a piece of their child's schoolwork on display proclaiming him to be a "top speller" despite this work containing the word "with" spelled "wiv", then I don't think we have to look very far to see the root of this problem, do we?

Enough.

Enough with this pussy-footing around. Teach the fucking kids. This is right. This is wrong. You got it wrong, kid. Stop fucking blubbing and get right next time. It's called learning and that's what education is for. Or so I thought.

Apparently, it's not any more. The teachers can't teach any more, they have to read a script from the curriculum, because the kids have to learn what's on the paper, so that they can pass it. No ... they're not allowed to learn anything else, because that doesn't help them pass the exams, does it? And the pass rate is what shows how successful the Government has been.

Ooh ... the poor kids are finding the exams too hard. Can't have them dragging the pass rate down. Don't make them study Physics or Maths -- let them do Media Fucking Studies and Applied Hairdressing and How To Tie Your Own Bastard Shoelaces.

If we make them do unpleasant things, like learn HOW TO FUCKING SPELL, they'll play truant, and that makes the figures look bad as well! Tell you what, why don't we let them use SMS abbreviations in their exam papers, because the kids like SMS and they all know how to spell m8 and l8r.

I've got a better idea.

How about we fucking don't. How about we worry a bit less about whether the kids are finding lessons fun and a bit more about making sure that they actually learn something. When did we, the adults, start giving a flying fuck about what the kids want? If we gave them what they wanted, then they wouldn’t go to school at all. They'd be at home on their Xbox 360s or in their chatrooms, or round at their mates' houses drinking cheap cider until they puked. They'd eat nothing but chips and watch TV until their brains turn to mush and dribbled out of their prematurely pierced ears.

For the love of Christ, they're fucking kids. We're supposed to know better than them. We're supposed to build character in the little bastards by making them thoroughly fucking miserable and teaching them stuff that they may not want to learn, but that we know they'll need in later life.

So ... how about we stop pandering to these spotty little shitbags and shake them up a bit? How about we explain to them that they're going to sit their worthless arses in school whether they fucking like it or not, and they're going to learn what we fucking well tell them to learn, because we're the adults and -- gosh! -- we know more than they do.

Or should we just sit back and let them pour out of the school gates illiterate, innumerate, but with a quite miraculous number of GCSE passes?

On A More Personal Note

Might I just interrupt the usual diatribe that fills this blog with a more personal interjection on the previously-covered topic of pubs, children and the combination thereof?

At a local hostelry there is an upright piano. I believe that it is present partly as window-dressing, and, perhaps, partly for the use of the many bands that perform there if required.

I am assuming that its purpose is not for small children to pound upon its keys repeatedly, creating a cacophonous racket and comprehensively annoying the fucking daylights out of all but the profoundly deaf.

I may be wrong on this last point.

On not one, but two occasions, my companions and I have sought refuge in said establishment with the intention of consuming a beverage or two after a particularly shitty day at work, only for the enjoyment of our (frankly, over-priced) pints to be comprehensively disrupted by the hamfisted battering of the piano keys by some snot-nosed little brat.

Don't get me wrong ... were I bursting into kindergartens and demanding that the children be prevented from having fun; were I objecting to the very presence of the kids in the pub; were in being in any way, shape or form remotely unreasonable, then fair enough.

But I'm not. I just want to sit in the pub, drink my damn pint, and be LEFT THE FUCK ALONE. This is not unreasonable. I tolerate these children running around the place, making aeroplane noises, shrieking, clattering furniture, and all the rest. I tolerate all of this despite the fact that this pub -- any pub -- is an adult environment.

So, please forgive me if I draw the line here, at your precious darlings banging away at the piano. I'm sorry. Don't whine at me, or look at me like I'm some kind of villain from a fucking Dickens novel. I just want to drink my fucking pint, OK?

Particularly, don't come over and try to have a go at me for stifling your little darling's fucking creativity.

"She only wants to play the piano for a few minutes ..."

Two key points here, madam.

One: she's not playing the fucking piano. She's making a discordant racket that's giving me a headache.

Two: she's already been doing it for several minutes. I've been waiting for you to do something about it and, now it's perfectly apparent that you have no intention of doing so, now I've complained to the bar staff. Speaking of whom, don't think I haven't twigged that in a splendid display of spinelessness, you've pointed me out to this drunken harridan and explained that it was me that complained.

If you want to indulge your child's creative impulses, then good. Fantastic. I couldn't be happier.

Find an appropriate environment and do it there, but keep it the hell away from anywhere I want to have a drink. Are we clear?

The Truth Is Out There

You know, I think I'm onto something with this whole Matrix conspiracy theory. If it's not true, then explain the uncanny similarity between Matrix-invading-virus-on-legs Agent Smith, and Channel-4-infesting-property-improvement-whore Phil Spencer ...

You want proof? I give you:

Don't say I didn't warn you ...

Second Life? Try Getting A First Life!

Am I the only person who finds a terrifying irony in the fact that the Wachowski Brothers were so near the mark and yet so very far off with The Matrix?

Isn't it just a little bit, just the teensiest bit fucking scary that it doesn't look like it'll take an entire army of machines and the aftermath of a nuclear war to confine the human race to a virtual simulation of real life?

No, all you need to do is offer people the opportunity to buy a house there and they fucking queue up to insert themselves into the Matrix.

No need for Agent Smith, just Estate Agent Smith.

An Alarming Development ...

Put down the chalk and step away from the menu board

A short appeal to sign-writers and desktop publishers everywhere. Get a fucking clue, you intellectually crippled crapheads.

Please, please, listen very careful when I say this:

There is no apostrophe in CDs, DVDs, PCs, TVs or LCDs.

No. There isn't. There really, really, really FUCKING ISN'T. It's plural. It's not possessive. It's not a contraction, so it therefore does not require an apostrophe.

It doesn't. Are you listening to me? Then stop fucking doing it. Just stop. For the love of buggering bastard Christ will you stop putting apostrophes into every word that ends in an 'S' and then leaving the cunts out when you're supposed to use them?

Case in point, from a pub menu board in my town:

There is no apostrophe in "Sausage and Chip's" but there is one in "Todays Specials" ...
Got that? Well, fucking change it, then. Don't make me hurt you.

While I'm at it, can I make it quite clear that there is not, under any circumstances, an acceptable reason for spelling the word "fair" as "fayre". Not one. It is not charming and Olde Worlde, not least because there is not such thing as "Olde Worlde." Sticking an "E" on the end does not instantly confer an authentic air of antiquity.

Neither does writing "Ye" when you mean "The." The word was never, ever "Ye" ... The "Th" sound used to have its own letter that looked a bit like a "Y", so it's not "Ye", it's not "Olde" ad it's not a "Shoppe".

Got that? Clear? You aren't tapping into the nation's rich linguistic heritage, you're making yourself look like an illiterate twat.

Pack it in, you fucking retards.

First they came for the Smokers, then they came for the Fatties ...

... then they came for the Meat Eaters, the Drinkers, the Couch Potatoes, the Rollerbladers, the People Who Don't Look Both Ways When Crossing The Road ... in fact, anyone who ever did anything might conceivably have a negative effect on their health.

Who am I talking about? Fucking Health Nazis, that's who. Bunch of intrusive, nanny-state, unwelcome bastards. You hear me? Mind your own fucking business, you sanctimonious, self-righteous, puritanical bunch of cunts.

They picked on the smokers first, because the public health campaign had already placed them somewhere just above paedophile on the social scale, so they were the easy target. It's the fatties next, it's already started, and they're lining up the drinkers after that.

Have you seen the latest Government guidelines on alcohol? Four units of alcohol in a single sitting is now classed as binge drinking. And, in case you missed the memo, they've been busily engaged reducing the amount of alcohol that constitutes a unit over the last few years.

If you still think that the drink/drive limit is about two pints, guess again. One pint of any premium lager is defined as containing 2.3-2.5 units of alcohol. Frankly, I don't think you should be anywhere near the wheel of a fucking car if you've so much as sniffed alcohol, but in case you don't get the message: one pint of Stella will cause you to fail a breath test.

Two pints, two pints after work and then a walk home for your tea and you are now classified by the Powers That Be as a binge drinker. I don't know about you, but at two pints, I'm barely warming up.

Drinking responsibly is now being represented as basically not drinking at all; no possibility that a person can sit in a pub with his mates and drink all night then go home without causing a nuisance or committing a crime ...

Except, of course, that you are committing a crime in New Labour's Brave New fucking World, you're automatically committing an act of harm on your own body and they know better than you. You don't get to be an adult, you don't get to take responsibility for your actions, they're going to take the matches off you, and the pointy objects, and the booze, and the fatty food, and, in all likelihood, your violent video games, your action movies and your porn.

Because -- and never, ever, forget this -- these things are bad for you and you aren't grown up enough to make an informed decision about any of these things.

But the question no-one wants to answer is this: why the fuck is the Government even trying to get us all to live longer? Seriously? Why are they bothering, when they make it abundantly clear that when you get to retirement age, you're nothing but a terrible burden on society.

Frankly, they should be encouraging us to eat badly, drink and smoke. One more early death is one more lifetime of National Insurance payments the Treasury gets to pocket and shovel back into the collective pot. Frankly, I should get a fucking rebate on my NI if I smoke. I should get a bonus if I smoke around other people for shortening their lives.

In an ideal world, we'd all drop dead of nice, clean heart attacks on the day of our retirement. Work nice, productive lives, pay all our taxes. Die before we get any benefit from them.

But the thing is, Tony ... The thing is, Gordon ... I don't work my arse off day after day, hauling my thoroughly miserable carcass into a dismal office to do a job I hate, just so I can pay my over-inflated mortgage, my extortionate council tax and see the rest of my salary creamed off in PAYE and NI ... No, I work because once all of that fucking money has disappeared from my bank balance, once I've shopped for food and paid my utility bills, on all of which you've creamed another 17.5% off me in VAT, once I've done all that ...

Then I might just conceivably want to spend the pittance that you've left me on something I fucking enjoy, in the full and certain knowledge that that thing is bad for me, fully understanding that I'm trading a few years off the end of my life in favour an earthly vice that gives me pleasure.

I don't believe in eternal life, I don't believe in Heaven or the divine rewards of virtue so leave me THE FUCK ALONE to squander my days exactly as I see fit.

As is my right, you snivelling, interfering cocksuckers.

Nature's Little Miracle

Miracle? Miracle? Fuck off! So you managed to breed, achieved that mighty feat that seems to have been mastered by almost every living thing on the planet ... ?

And now, this apparently gives you the right to get the best parking spots at the supermarket, the right bring people's busy working day to a standstill when you bring your mewling, puking, stinky bundle of skin into the office and thrust it under their noses.

Oh, and of course, the Highway Code doesn't apply to you any more. Oh, no, your vehicle can meander across multiple lanes of traffic; turn without warning; break at a whim; and why? Because you have a "Baby On Board" sticker in the back window. How about a "Cretin Behind The Wheel" sticker?

And when you're not in your damn cars (and, for the record, you do abso-fucking-lutely not need a 4x4 to buy groceries from cocking bastard Tesco) you've got those motherfucking buggies that you wield like armoured battering rams to get you wherever you want.

Need to cross the road? Wheel the little tank into traffic and watch everyone just screech to a halt. Someone in front of you in the supermarket or the bus? Just keep ramming them in the back of the ankles until they get the message.

Oh ... and once they've learned to walk and escaped the confines of the buggy, oh, that's even better!

Now, the hyperactive little bleeders can career around on their own two legs, shrieking and whooping and generally annoying the fucking bastard daylights out of everyone while you - the bloody parents - gaze fondly on and wheedle at them: "Caaareful, Nathan. Jocasta, don't pull everything out of the nice gentleman's trolley. Oh, look, Timothy, you've wiped snot all down that lady's dress."

And yet, if I should summon a slightly irritable response as your Ritalin-deprived offspring runs past me in the pub, screaming like a diminutive banshee, suddenly I'm on the receiving end of looks that couldn't be more disapproving if I'd stabbed snot-nosed bleeder in the eye with a pastry fork.

We need to let the smokers back into the pubs, at least they kept the bloody children out.

Help the Aged!? - Part 2

Well, allrighty then, you wrinkled old bastards ... so you've proved to me that you're not truly happy until you've subjected me aneurysm-inducing levels of frustration while I'm out shopping, but you've still got some more tricks up your sleeve.

Those fucking shopping trolleys, the ones that enable you to barge into my shins or ankles and then look at me like somehow I'm the one that's done something wrong ... where in bollocking bastard hell do you actually buy those things? I have never, ever seen one on sale so where do you get them from? And who trains you to use them as an offensive weapon?

In fact, where do you get all that old person shit from? Tweed hats and trousers that with a waistband that comes up to your armpits? Clear plastic headscarves? Vests? I have never, ever seen any of that crap on sale in any shop. Is there some kind of special mail order catalogue that gets sent to you with your bus pass?

And, when I'm on public transport and I offer you my seat, how about you accept graciously rather than looking at me like I'm a piece of shit you found on your shoe. Don't think I don't know why you do that. It's because you know that everyone else who now gets on and hasn't seen me offer you my seat is looking at me and thinking "You selfish prick. How can you sit there while that poor old person has to stand?" Thanks a fucking bunch, granddad!

Of course, the excuse you all use for not ever wanting to pay full price for anything is that you're only "poor pensioners". Fuck right off, will you?

Your parents moaned about never having any money when they retired, and their parents moaned about never having any money when they retired, and you sat there as a child and an adult and listened to them fucking moan about it ...

And you STILL DIDN'T SAVE ANY MONEY FOR YOUR RETIREMENT! What? How fucking stupid are you? How much of a fucking clue did you need? Were you banking on a massive lottery win on or around your 65th birthday? Did you think that your own parents, despite doing nothing but whinge like bastards about how skint they were, secretly had a fortune that you were going to inherit? Maybe you thought that when you had to get false teeth because all your real teeth had fallen out, you were going to make a killing off the tooth fairy?

Please, please, don't tell me that you seriously thought that there was going to be a State pension worth a damn, because that dementia had certainly kicked in early if you did.

And while I'm on the subject of dementia ... just fucking pack that shit in, will you? Like it gives you carte blanche to say whatever the fuck you want, particularly whatever loathsome racist crap happens to wander across I laughingly refer to as your 'mind':

"Ooh, I'm not being funny, but he was one of them Indians and you know what they're like."

"I never eat Chinese food -- they all eat dogs and cats."

"I'm not a racist, but you know how those blacks are ..."

You haven't got fucking Tourettes, so what comes out of your mouth is your responsibility. They're not chinks, or wogs, or pakis, or any of those other disgraceful linguistic throwbacks you trot out.

And the worst of it is that you then have the audacity to look pleased with yourselves, as if you've challenged the doctrine of political correctness, or somehow claimed back some small cultural piece of the Empire for Queen fucking Victoria.

You haven't. You're pathetic and you make me want to puke.

Help the Aged?! - Part 1

Old people. What's your problem, you miserable old buggers?

Honestly. Seriously. I need to know. Out of all the sections of society, the one with the least demands upon their precious time is the retired. So why, then, are you all so fucking impatient?

What, exactly, is so pressing in your busy schedule of watching the TV with the volume turned right up and boiling cabbage (for that all-important old person smell in your sheltered accommodation) that gives you the right to barge in front of me at the supermarket deli counter? Let's be honest, the only thing looming large in your future is your imminent demise and, if that happens, it's not really going to matter whether you managed to get a quarter of haslet five minutes earlier than if you'd just stood and waited your fucking turn, is it?

In fact, why are you even in the same queue as me? Why do I have to see (and, most likely, smell) you at all? You've got five days of the week when the shops are practically empty because all the poor sods like me who work for a living are toiling away at our jobs, so why the fuck are you shopping on a Saturday morning?

And then, after you've elbowed in front of me in your pursuit of reasonably priced cold meats, you're in front of me again at the checkout. You've got twelve items. You're in the "Ten Items Or Less" queue. And now you're counting out the correct money in fucking copper coins and extracting nine separate vouchers, one at a time, from your fucking purse.

Why? In the name of everything that I hold dear: why? You knew you were going to use these bastard vouchers before you even joined the queue! Would it have fucking killed you to have got them out and unfolded them at some point before actually handing over payment?

And, to cap it all, you haven't even bagged your fucking shopping yet! Oh, no, you couldn't actually bag up the shopping as it's rung through. No, you have to stand there and watch the checkout assistant to make sure they're doing their job properly. For Christ's sake! It's just about the easiest job known to man! Stop scrutinizing the cashier just in case — God Forbid! — something rings through at tuppence more than the marked price and pack your fucking shopping up, you doddering, stinky old bat!

Actually, I know exactly why you do it: it's so you've got something to fucking moan about. It's so you can achieve your twin goals in what remains of your dismal existence — annoying the living daylights out of anyone younger than you and then moaning about how anyone younger than you doesn't have any fucking respect any more.

Well, let's get this clear, then. If you served in the Forces, 'nuff respect. Taught in school for forty years? My hat is off. Raised a family of polite, respectful kids who've all gone on to become productive members of society? Good for you.

What you absolutely fucking do not get from me is my respect simply because you're not dead yet. Are you expecting some kind of fucking medal because you're still breathing?

"Do I get a discount because I'm an OAP?"

No. No, you do fucking not get a discount. In fact, you've got no mortgage, you get free travel, you get concessions on your Council Tax and your TV License. The government gives you money towards your heating and the local council brings meals to your door. Stick your fucking discount up your arse.

Whew. It felt good to unload that one, but don't think I'm finished with you yet, you vile old stinkwads. More to follow ...

Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Pants. Not the word our Merkin cousins across the water mistakenly use for trousers, but underwear.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask: what in the name of Unholy Lucifer and all his Demon Hordes is going on with men's underwear?

I was finally forced to admit defeat and accept that I was going to have buy some new pants, the old faithfuls being now in the final stages of disintegration.

There's a choice now? When the fuck did that happen? And more to the point: why?

For as long as I can remember, there have really only been two options where men's pants are concerned: boxers or briefs. Frankly, I have no idea why they even bothered making them in different colours.

Gentlemen, let's be honest. We've never cared about our pants. The only time we ever even think about the damn things is if there's a chance that a lady might see them. If you're at that stage with a woman, only two things really matter anyway: that they are a) clean and b) free of holes.

That's it.

So when did some metrosexual marketing department fuckwit decide that we needed a choice? A variety of styles? Different cuts? Fits?

What's next? Fucking frills?

Or are we now pandering to those retarded social incompetents who have concluded that the purpose of wearing trousers is not to keep your arse warm, and have decided that we are all so desperate to see their underwear that they keep their trousers at permanent half-mast, supported only by the hands that they have perpetually stuffed in their pockets?

Is that it? If so, Mr Marketing Guru, you're wasting your time because these people have the intellectual capacity of molluscs. Honestly ... for starters, they actually think that they look good.

Are you all out of your tiny, barely functional minds? You absolutely, positively do fucking not look cool.

You're also not making any statement other than: "Please mug me, because I will be unable to run after you, since my trousers will be round my ankles. Plus, of course, you know that I'm worth mugging because I'm precisely the sort of feeble-minded tosspot that thinks people are impressed by bling and a flash mobile."

So ... if that's what you're happy announcing to the world, if the statement you choose to make is "I haven't yet mastered the art of dressing myself, a feat usually accomplished by the average three year old" then please feel free to carry on.

Otherwise, look in the fucking mirror, you imbecilic cock-monkey. You look like a prize twat.

There's no helping some people.