Feeling a bit flat.
Wheelie bins weren't around during my homeless period, but covered skips were always a good find. Especially if it was really cold and windy. Finding a place out of the rain (without too much wind) wasn't too hard but finding a place out of the cold could be difficult. Unfortunately, those covered skips were - and still are - often padlocked which is just selfish. I'd suspect a wheelie bin with a person in it would be a wheelie bin that wasn't too full of rubbish. They aren't all that roomy inside. Since most collections are now fortnightly, I'd also have to consider that if there's room for a person in the bin, the collection isn't likely to be due any time soon. So how come a

Education: another rung down the ladder.
A few posts back, I mentioned that OFSTED gave the education system a ticking off for being, well, pretty crap. Further to this, the bosses of Tesco and Marks & Spencer are complaining that the school leavers they are expected to employ are pretty much illiterate. They're no use to supermarkets so you have to wonder what the rocket science labs think of them. The climate change labs will take them on, especially if they're unable to spot dodgy numbers. Our government deny it all. Those school leavers are exactly as they are supposed to be. It's the employers asking for unreasonable skills, like ope

If you don't want to do time, make sure you do the crime.
This wasn't rape. Immoral, certainly, illegal, yes, but not rape. Nobody was forced. The woman was sentenced to 32 months in jail.This was attempted rape and violent sexual assault on an eleven-year-old girl. The boy was given a twelve month referral order, which means he goes to meetings now and then for a year, and told to apologise.'Contempt of court' should no longer be a crime. It should be a duty.

Find a loose thread, and pull.
It's all falling apart. Righteous schemes are collapsing all over the place.There is no longer silence from the media about the dire state of education, nor about whose fault it is. It's due to an OFSTED report, yes, but OFSTED are not a new organisation. They must have watched the decline of schools over years but said - and did - nothing. Now, it's all a shambles and it's Labour's fault. No question, no excuse, no 'lessons learned' by anyone in the education system. Yesterday the Daily Mail carried the story of

Heavy Van Rumbles.
Herman Remploy-van is a great name for a president. So many ways to twist it. Better even than the Brown Gorgon. We'll have to make the best of it before Rumpole of the Belgians makes it illegal to poke fun at him.Even so, having a president at all is a bad thing. Having an unelected president is a very bad thing. Having an unelected president who rose to be Prime Monster of the land of chocolate and beer on a specific set of aims, only to ditch all those aims and embrace the EU's anti-democratic ways, is a terrible thing indeed. I didn't know Belgium was an entirely constructed state that was devised in 1830 for purely political reasons. There's a lot more I didn't