Three completely unrelated things

Embarrassing blogging

Yvette Cooper has an Msc in Economics.

Ian Dale doesn't have one of these but he does have a blog. He has also read 'The Laws of Economics'. We know this because he says, "Now, call me old fashioned but last time I looked at the laws of economics..."

It's a big book he has at home.

Survey the damage here and the doing he gets here.

I'm thinking our slogan for the next election should go something like: Vote Labour - the Tories know even less about economics than us.

Hardly a ringing endorsement, I'd agree - but it would be a refreshing change from all that messianic stuff Blair came out with, don'tcha think?

Bloody education

This article was actually emailed to me. It's not all crap but it's pretty much belongs in the usual rightwing denial school of educational thought. You know the sort of thing, incentives, paid by results, doesn't matter if you go to school dodging hails of bullets, what matters is a Good Teacher blah.

Anyway, I'll link some moderately sensible commentary on it because you certainly aren't going to get any from me. Instead there was a couple of things that caught my eye - one from the article itself that I missed the first time I read it...

"Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before..."

When you read stuff like that, you assume - or hope - that people simply don't mean what they say. I mean, do we really have to go through the experience of someone with a pulse and a college degree taking their first class stark naked with a chainsaw before people realise sometimes it might be a tad late for these 'apprentices' to be judged after they've started their jobs?

The other was from the comments in the post linked above:

"The Object of Education is to better yourself. It is a Competition as well as a warm fuzzy feeling that comes from being the best. A good teacher in any field Leads. and sets the agenda,places benchmarks for advancement, there does seem to be parallels between a good academic, and a quarterback as well as a Drill instructor."

The author of this comment had the 'warm fuzzy feeling' described to him, one assumes? Either that or he went to a really shit school with Bad Teachers in it.

Modern Dentistry

I'm unhappy with it. People tell me, "It's amazing what they can do nowadays." They can do a lot more, I agree - but this has led them, in my case anyway, to overestimate their powers.

Root canal, anti-biotics, more root canal, followed by more anti-biotics. Then cut gum open and set about with wire-brush and Dettol, more fucking anti-biotics. I'm no expert but isn't taking the damn thing out a possible solution here? But that's passé, apparently.

Just because it's at the front they avoid it, presumably for aesthetic reasons. Yeah, I really look gorgeous now, don't I - with the swollen face and the haunted look of a Glaswegian deprived of drink? Whereas with the space I could get a tattoo, grow some stubble and go for the whole pirate look. Although knowing my luck, the tattoo would get all scabby and infected and I'd have to get my arm amputated...