This page represents only my own views, and not those of any university or other body.
Posted Saturday 25th January 2014 at 9.31pm
Schmatistics
This letter, published in the Independent, neatly sums up the current Government's attitude to statistics.
"It is unfortunate that in your editorial you placed such a strong emphasis on comparing the improvement in the number of students who achieved the English Baccalaureate in 2013 as against 2012.
It was not until September 2010 that the current Secretary of State introduced, as a measure of a school’s success, the notion of the English Baccalaureate. He did this with little or no prior warning and at a point when curriculum planning, staffing decisions and option choices for the 2012 examination cohort had already been made. Indeed, the 2012 GCSE cohort had already started their courses.
It is therefore no surprise that more students achieved the English Baccalaureate in 2013. For the 2013 GCSE examination cohort schools knew this was one of the minister’s chosen measures and they had the time to adjust their curriculum, option choices and staffing structures to reflect this. As a result more students, totally unsurprisingly, achieved this new measure."
Pete Crockett , Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire
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Posted Friday 10th January 2013 at 3.03pm
Bongo bongo land
I wonder if Godfrey Bloom has seen this?
Also, I love the description here of Roger Federer as "a humble guy" by... Sachin Tendulkar.
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Posted Wednesday 18th December 2013 at 1.28pm
Triggers
A nice piece from Sanjay Manjrekar on trigger movements in cricket. I don't have a trigger movement, preferring to concentrate on keeping my head still. I'm not sure his claim that a backward trigger movement is a weakness is fair; more likely it's a weakness against certain bowlers or in certain conditions, and a strength in other situations. Like the recent resurgence in off spin, there's probably a cyclical element. After the invention of helmets, it became possible to have a pronounced forward trigger movement; bowlers adapted by pitching slightly back of a length; batters adapted by moving their trigger movements back again; and bowlers are now adapting by returning to a fuller length.
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Posted Friday 29th November 2013 at 8.11am
Holding the baby
Woooo hoooo!!!
Who cares whether it's a "nightmare for employers"? It's clearly the right thing to do.
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Posted Sunday 6th October 2013 at 4.58pm
Sunset in Bath
The weather yesterday was unbelievable.
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Posted Friday 4th October 2013 at 12.18pm
Help!
The help to buy scheme has to be the one of the most blatantly idiotic policies ever to exist. There are more damaging policies, for sure, but this one is definitely one of the most bafflingly ridiculous. From Mark Steel in the Independent:
Maybe other ministers have tried to explain to David Cameron the complicated mathematics around housing, looking him in the eye and saying slowly "If there are more people than fit in the houses, we need more houses". This is possible, as he appears to have the same difficulty with the issue of jobs, believing that if there are more people than jobs, you can get everyone into work by yelling "get a job" at people without one.
This means he’d be a fascinating man to have a game of musical chairs with. After the first chair was taken away, he’d inform everyone "I’ll make it easier for the chair agencies to sell the chairs that are left, then there’s no reason for anyone to be left without one."
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Posted Monday 30th September 2013 at 8.13am
Highlighting
Apparently I'm not the only one who does this!
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Posted Wednesday 25th September 2013 at 10.05am
Energy
The argument of the energy companies that their price hikes are necessary for public investment in energy infrastructure, and a price freeze could cause blackouts, must be baloney. If the price hikes are being fed into investment, why have profits risen by 74% since 2009?
The natural answer, rather than a price freeze, would appear to be a profits cap. Any money made beyond £x must be reinvested or returned to the government. Unfortunately there are a million problems with this, all reflecting the fact that energy policy is a public concern and energy companies are private entities.
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Posted Thursday 19th September 2013 at 12.47pm
The best tumblr ever
I really cannot recommend "Terrible real estate agent photographs" enough. The photos are bizarre, and the commentary is hilarious.
When I was a child, my favourite fairytale was the one about a front door doomed to gaze down on its original position from an upstairs window.
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Posted Monday 9th September 2013 at 10.18am
Juxtaposed with U
Today I'm imagining an alternate dimension in which this is Labour's campaign song.
You've got to tolerate
Some o' those people that you hate
I'm not in love with you
But I won't hold that against you
Just suppose I juxtapose with you...
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