What is to be done?
Filed under: International, Journalism and News Reportage, Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, John Whittingdale
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What a depressing day this is, despite the sunshine. I have been trying to hide from the reality of Donald Trump being on the ballot for the US presidential election in November. But last night’s victory in Indiana and the withdrawal of the two remaining opponents from the Republican nomination guarantees his candidacy. And with it, the very real prospect of power.
Back in the UK, the punitive Trade Union legislation entered the statute book. It is a bare-faced attempt to outlaw strikes (in the public sector) by forcing a minimum of a 50 per cent turnout for strike ballots and a 40 per cent positive vote amongst those eligible to vote. Let me get my head around that. 40 per cent of the eligible voters have to be in favour even if they choose not to vote. Basically, choosing not to vote counts as a “no” in a strike ballot. Put another way, very few of our Members of Parliament meet those criteria for their own election.
What else? Ah yes, another unsavoury character, John Whittingdale (right), the inappropriately appointed Culture Minister, is
desperate to abolish the BBC. Now I’m no lover of the BBC – with the exception of its factual output, essentially BBC4 – but abolition leaves us to the mercy of commercial media and commercial agendas. Whittingdale has already been kite flying arguing that the BBC should not be able to go head-to-head with commercial rivals; for example, Strictly Come Dancing against the X-Factor on a Saturday evening. He wants to top-slice the BBC licence fee to give to commercial broadcasters in the interests of fairness. The BBC has already had to subsidise pensioners with the free licence and take on the World Service, traditionally the responsibility of the Foreign Office. But last week during a Cambridge Conservative Association speech he described the demise of the BBC as a “tempting prospect”.
Pictures: Donald Trump By Michael Vadon (Wikipedia)
John Whittingdale – johnwhittingdale.org.uk
The Gauloises naughty couple in a bath are back
Here’s a thing, this week I walked past a cigarette advertisement for Gauloises, as you do (in Germany, that is). I dismissed it as one that I already have cataloged and lampooned. But yesterday I was stood on the platform at a S-Bahn station in Munich and read the tagline on the displayed poster and thought perhaps this was not the original advertisement. And so it has proved (see below right). My take on the original was
that death by toxic tobacco seemed not to be enough for this couple, maybe a STD might help. This is because the tagline suggested they had just met and decided to have a bath together in a hotel room, as you do.
The revised tagline suggests that they already know each other and they have decided to have a bath together because of “stau in Badzimmer” – translated by me as congestion in the bathroom. I am wondering if this is evidence of the impact of this blog on the advertising industry. So shocked were they at my interpretation that they have reworked it to make the main characters seem a little less promiscuous? Or not.
It nearly slipped past me.
On the plus side…a rant
Leicester City today or next week will win the English Premier League. Good for them. The league does not lie and it is so refreshing to see a real team challenge and win. On the downside, my team, Hull City, trying to get back into the Premier League (having been dumped out of the league by Leicester’s failure to be relegated last year) cannot even beat an already relegated side in the run-off to the play-offs in the second league. For non-English readers, worry not, this is all irrelevant to life in general. However, it is clear that my team’s coach cannot motivate his squad of players like Claudio Ranieri can his. Lessons there.
Good also for the mis-named junior doctors striking in the UK. The amount of vile verbiage
coming from the British Government at the moment against doctors is par for the course, but good on the doctors for standing up for principles – their’s and our’s. The British Government is dismantling the National Health Service and handing it over to private sector cherry-picking businesses. Jeremy Hunt (right), the egregious English health minister accused the doctors of making the strike political. If I am not mistaken, his government has outlawed political strikes, so by virtue of it happening at all it cannot be political. Equally if anyone has made it political it is Mr Hunt. This is turning out to be a battle of wills between right and wrong. Next thing we’ll find armed police trying to break through pickets just like Thatcher did in the 1980s against another class of workers fighting for their rights and livelihoods.
Talking about strikes, last week those of us in the south of England had our journeys to work disrupted by a strike by conductors on the trains. A 24 hour strike straddling two days caused chaos and major inconvenience. Just like strikes are supposed to do. Good for the conductors trying to block attempts by the train company to change their terms and conditions and turn them into revenue protection officers rather than train managers – responsible for safety and customer service on board. As a season ticket holder on Southern, I favour the conductors absolutely. This is a company that treats its customers with utter contempt. By that measure, employees must be utterly despised.
There is a new phrase going around at the moment like a bad smell. I’ve heard it from my own employer and people involved in the junior doctors’ strike. To paraphrase: “This is a democratically elected government, so…”. To translate, this Government led by a bunch of thieving, self-seeking, lying white men, can do whatever they want because they secured 37 per cent of the national vote a year ago. Please, democracy is not just a vote every 5 years. Democracy is a process. A manifesto commitment is not law. We have two chambers of Parliament, scrutiny committees and courts to test the robustness and fit-for-purposeness of proposed laws. Bad law is untested law and comes from Parliamentarians who do not understand process or those who are self-serving. Or both. It is a duty to oppose poor law whether it was in a manifesto or not.
Pall Mall couples and trite taglines
Apologies about the quality of this photo, it even has my image in the reflection, but for the time being it makes the point. Advertisers are so inconsiderate putting their posters behind plastic.
Pall Mall again has a couple – handsome bearded man with cigarette and blonde woman. From what I understand of the tagline, the hole in the filter solves most problems, all wishes granted. Seemingly.
The wish of longevity, I sense, is not granted by this toxic innovation. But there you go.
More on privatising schools by stealth
Filed under: education, Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: Nicky Morgan
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A few weeks ago I wrote a piece on the UK government’s assault on schools in forcibly converting them into Academies and then, by default, passing them, their assets and their curricula over to the private sector. Seemingly, there has been a lot of opposition to this, not least from local authorities whose schools they are. Nicky Morgan, the education secretary (left) for England told the UK Parliament on Monday that she is listening. So the new idea is to force schools to be academies, but for local authorities to manage chains of academies. Best of both worlds, it seems?
Hang on a minute. One of the objections was cost. Conversion costs money. So far, £32.5m has been spent on conversion. Another £100m is required to finish the job. So no. Second, conversion is the precursor to privatisation. Schools cannot easily be privatised without conversion because, presumably, ‘academisation’ is just converting the school into a bundle of assets and contracts. The kind of stuff that private companies understand. So, even if in the short-term, local authorities run academies, it is the conversion that is critical. We must ask ourselves why this is a suitable compromise for an ideological government. Because it is the academisation that they want. Eventually they will be sold/passed on to their friends to make risk-free money from.
Picture: Wikipedia
Born that Way, JPS latest
Maybe the translation does not work, but JSP‘s latest “always upright, never overbearing/presumptuous” is a curious tagline. Three men, one woman, two visibly smoking. Clearly an engaging conversation, but as usual it is a bearded man leading the important discussion and discernibly impressing, if not charming, the woman. Bearded man at the back is the person when four people try to walk a pavement together who has to move to the back in order to avoid being run over by a car. Or maybe he is the poor one who cannot afford cigarettes so he stands behind those who can in order to get a passive hit? Just a thought. Not much else going on.
Marlboro’s You Decide goes raddled old man
Filed under: Cigarette advertising, Uncategorized | Tags: marlboro, You Decide
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Naturally I thought the point of advertising was to sell products. So, use beautiful people doing interesting things in the sunshine. Clearly, I am no marketeer. However, I need some guidance on the logic of Marlboro’s latest use of a raddled old man lighting up a cigarette (left). As for the strapline, will the world care what your name was (assuming he does not have too much life left in him)? No idea!
Marlboro has another You Decide poster current (right). This is more like it. Handsome, fit, bearded man with
cigarette looks into the camera. Another seemingly meaningless strapline, ‘Will you stay real’? ‘Will you turn into the raddled old man?’ strikes me as being more appropriate.
Das Brauneck from Lenggries
Das Brauneck is a mountain of 1540m accessed from Lenggries (left), a classic wealthy rural town in southern Bavaria. It does not have a pointy peak but in the winter it hosts a ski slope. And in the spring it persists as a ski slope, facilitated by snow-making machines dotted along the piste. 
Ask at the cable car ticket office and they will tell you that there is no open path to the summit. Walk the 30 minutes to the Reisealm (910m), a delightful eatery and hotel through the forest, and they will advise the same. My advice, ignore them, but be prepared. There is the false sense of security when one leaves the 
Reisealm. It all seems benign (right). But the snowline is around the corner. Unlike our walk on Monday, the gradient is starker. At various points one essentially has to climb the piste (left) and that takes considerable energy, poise and a bit of nerve (at least for a novice like me). It is also clear that there is no way back! And the signage is largely non-existent. There are yellow signs at the top and base, but the route is made up as one goes. Fortunately at this time of year, the piste is quiet. Seemingly the snow is just a little too wet. This is the time of year for higher altitude skiing.
Talking of which, it makes a difference. A number of years ago I hiked in the Moroccan Atlas 
Mountains. We peaked at 4000m. I suppose on that basis I thought 1500m would not cause a problem. I was wrong. The photo on the right is a relieved hydrated man at the peak with a sandwich inside him.
Getting back is a cinch, though not cheap. We took the cable car, itself pretty spectacular (left).
Equipment wise, I am wearing North Face Northotic Pro boots. My partner wears Salewa Blackbird Evo GTX (both bought as last year’s model – North Face from Millets in England, 
Salewa from TK Maxx in Gemany).
A couple of sticks are essential kit. Crampons maybe next year.
Privatising schools by stealth
Here we go again. George Osborne (left), the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer – otherwise known as the finance minister – took it upon himself to announce in his budget last week that all Schools will be forced to become academies. This is to rid them of fiendish local bureaucracy and hand them over to private-sector “trusts” where no such bureaucracy can get in the way of delivering first class education to children across the country.
First of all, I was a little confused as to why the finance minister rather than the education minister would make the announcement. Even the Prime Minister is a more likely bearer of such policy news. Who is making policy here? Oh, and while we are at it, let us abolish the right of parents to be governors on school boards. They seem to be part of that unnecessary bureaucracy that gets in the way…
Let us look at the rationale. First, Osborne links local bureaucracy and poor global performance of schools (on very limited instrumental metrics). Simply not demonstrated. Not only are local authority-run schools high performers in some cases but academies also fail – take AET, as just one example. Second, centralisation is an attempt to micromanage education. The national curriculum does not hold in academies, but the testing regimes do. And less-than-exemplar exam companies such as EdExcel (a subsidiary of Pearson) run the show. A far cry from my own secondary education certificate from the Joint Matriculation Board, a lofty university accredited outfit.
The local authority monitoring – sorry, bureaucracy – will be replaced by a highly efficient and non-bureaucratic schools commission. Conveniently accountable to some oblique central authority, not locally-elected representatives or accountable local civil servants.
More pertinent, it seems, is money. There is money to be made for academies not possible under local authority control. So, Knight of the Realm Sir Greg Martin – boss of Durand academy chain, apparently notched up a tidy salary of £390k and management fees of £508k while also running a dating website, a health club and an accommodation business (as if running schools was a part-time business opportunity).
Then there is the land. Oh yes, now we are getting to the nub of the matter. Local authority schools occupy public land. Academy schools’ assets are handed over to a “trust” (if ever the word trust was misused it is here, surely?). Wait and see the terms of use of land held in “trust” change.
Then there are the children who have learning difficulties or behavioural problems. Academies have to be target driven and non-conforming children are removed and ultimately become the responsibility of local authorities, those democratically-controlled entities that bureaucratically hinder educational achievement.
And then there are the teachers. Academies are not bound by national terms and conditions. The current Education Secretary’s predecessor, Michael Gove, already freed up academies to employ non-qualified staff and to replace them with software programs. Really. Now there will be no national negotiations over pay. That is another attack on organised labour and another good reason for conversion.
Talking of which, The BBC reported recently that to date conversion has cost local taxpayers £32.5m. According to Michael Rosen writing in the Guardian, 2,075 out of 3,381 secondary schools and 2,440 out of 16,766 primary schools are academies. That is a lot of conversion money still to be found.
The rationale now makes sense!
Hiking in the Alps
Regular readers know that I frequently travel to Munich and elsewhere in Germany. But despite being only an hour on the train from the Alps, a hike has been elusive. That has now been rectified (left).
It is March and there is still snow at quite low levels. Our starting point w
as Tegernsee,
south of Munich. An easterly path – nicely stepped – takes hikers up into the forest and to the snow. First stop conveniently timed on the ubiquitous route signs (right) is Neureuthaus; essentially a busy cafe 1200m up.
Wander further (left) towards Gildenalm along a ridge that allows the view north towards Holzkirchen and Munich. On a clear day, that is. Gildenalm (1355m) was open, unexpectedly. Tea and cake and the experie
nce of a torch-lit gravity toilet (right) renders the ascent (left) to Kreuzbergalm (still closed) feasible. Whilst this is by no means mountain climbing, the ascent does feel 
like it. One really has to strain one’s head back to see the top. The obligatory crucifix reassures hikers that the top has been reached. Safely.
From Kreuzbergalm the path descends and enters the Alpbach valley. At first a stream, by the time Tegernsee is again reached, somewhat more swollen.
It is only about 12km in all, but it is not to be rushed for novices. Having just bought some new boots, feet were returned dry. Signs are regular enough to navigate without detailed map. Out again on Saturday. Hopefully.
Be informed 
