distressing thing and my heart goes out to all those unfortunate people who must be worrying that they’ll have to let their parents move in with them. Staff said they’ve been kept in the dark. Something Southern Cross previously only did with residents, having them suckle a sedative paste until their direct debits ran out.
Cameron says he wants to give charities and community groups more power to run organisations such as youth clubs. Exactly how much power do you need to run a youth club? I’d have thought a Sony PlayStation and a box of biscuits, and you’ve pretty much covered all the bases.
Conservative MP and Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that teachers will be allowed to discipline unruly pupils outside of school. This should allow teachers to be assaulted even when they’re not at work. They’ll end up getting their heads kicked in, and probably their assistant heads too.
More than 100 state schools failed to enter a single person for GCSE history in 2010. Which sounds like a shocking statistic, but bear in mind in just a few years’ time it will have been completely forgotten. Along with the Holocaust and slavery. A report said there’s one bad teacher in every school. Of course there is. They can’t cut PE out of the curriculum altogether.
A teachers’ strike hit over 5,000 schools. Gove wants teachers to work an extra eight years before they retire. But look on the bright side, teachers – you’ll be on holiday for four of them. Maths lessons will be interesting with a teacher who’s nearly 70. ‘If there are two milk bottles on my doorstep and they are joined by another twelve milk bottles, how long have I been dead?’
Luckily, on the day of the strike they also shut the job centres and the courts, meaning Glaswegians could spend the day with their kids. Civil servants, court ushers and teachers – we couldn’t have had more ineffectual strikes if the dead had decided to stop decomposing for a day. But it’s nice for British teenagers to have the day off – watch some Jeremy Kyle, find out what all those girls who left at 16 are up to. The Sun interviewed a teenager from Gateshead who was worried that the teachers’ strike would ruin his future. How will he sign on if he can’t spell his name?
There’s controversy over the ballot, with the government saying that many who voted for the strike were simply marking the fact that ‘Yes’ was spelt correctly. How can it be a 24-hour strike when these people only work until 3.30? Or did they also take the evening off when normally they’d have been getting drunk in the local pub while trying to grope ex-pupils?
Teachers don’t have my complete sympathy. I remember turning up without my kit and saying, ‘I suppose I have to do it in my pants?’ and my PE teacher whispering, ‘That was last time … you’ve raised the stakes. This time you’ll have to do it in my pants.’ The cross-country run was much easier, but I confess the whole arrangement did make me feel a bit like a baby kangaroo.
That strike went against everything the Big Society is all about, which is ‘work constantly for free until you die’. I love the way the media pretends that the erosion of workers’ right to strike is some kind of advance. In the 1970s, we’re told, strikes were the British disease. I guess we’re supposed to be proud that it’s changed to chlamydia. I still remember the last miners’ strike, when a shortage of coal led to a terrifying winter of blind snowmen. Still, it’s clearly ridiculous for teachers to go on strike for a better pension. A teenager will have stabbed them through the heart ages before they reach retirement. Some people defended the strike by saying that it was only one day. Unfortunately, it was the day all the private-school kids got taught how to run banking software and pass the Oxford entry exam.
The General Election was a surprising result for Nick Clegg – he was bounding around Parliament with the joy of a bullied child who’d just changed schools. His first action as deputy prime minister was to make sure Jeremy Beadle was still dead. Never has someone so mediocre been so fought over – he must feel like girl at a Star Trek convention.
The Lib Dems found it very hard to decide whether they were Labour or Tory supporters, mostly because they’re Lib Dem supporters. I mean, had most of them agreed with one of the major parties they would probably have applied to join those parties, rather than spend their career standing at the back of town halls looking disappointed.
Clegg said he wants the British to experience a taste of the Lib Dems in government so that they will be confident to vote for a fully Lib Dem government. I know that reasoning. It’s similar to when you bring home someone for a threesome who smells like a goat.
During the coalition a few compromises have been made. The Lib Dems have had to agree to Tory policies on taxation, immigration and policing – but they will be presented in a nice yellow folder. The Tories have dropped their cap on immigration, but have axed £150 million from the local government housing budget. You can’t get rid of immigrants while you’re cutting social housing – who will we blame? Horrible to see Child Trust Funds have been scrapped. By the time they are 18 our current generation of babies will need that cash to forge their papers and bribe a Chinese camp official.
Of course, the Lib Dems didn’t even get the voting reform that they sold their souls for. The problem with the Alternative Vote was that it wasn’t a real alternative. They should just make the candidates do an It’s a Knockout-style course with their last year’s expenses in 2p pieces in a rucksack on their back. My idea of an alternative vote would be having the option of electing someone who isn’t a cunt.
The coalition is also proposing to cut benefits to heroin addicts. Surely it would be better to send them to Afghanistan. If the Taliban are between them and those opium poppies we might just win. And when Al-Qaeda blows up the Olympics there won’t be a TV left in the country for them to watch it on.
The Lib Dems aren’t totally comfortable with a new deterrent being ordered. But in this new spirit of political cooperation they’ve been given some options by their coalition partners. They can either shut up or piss off.
The Lib Dems say they want to give everyone in Britain the chance to fulfil their potential. What potential does Britain have? If you’re talking about young people, then it means they’d all get the opportunity to release a single, be on Page Three or finger Cheryl Cole. And when it comes to old people, think about your parents. What potential do they have to fulfil? As long as they get their two weeks in Lanzarote and can afford wafer-thin ham they wouldn’t care if the country was run by a military junta of humanoid gorillas.
‘It should be what you know, not who you know,’ said David Cameron’s mate, Nick Clegg. Mr Clegg admitted he feels ‘quite miserable’ that he does not see enough of his three kids. I suppose someone has to work to pay for them to get through university. He’s also admitted he doesn’t want his kids to see him smoking. Luckily it doesn’t bother David Cameron at all. Apparently he’s even put a little ashtray in Nick’s hutch. David Cameron has suggested patches. But Clegg wants to stick with the name ‘Nick’.
Clegg says he and Cameron wander into each other’s offices to chat. Well, Cameron wanders into Clegg’s to chat and Clegg wanders into Cameron’s office to be greeted with a tuft of black hair bobbing behind a desk and some giggly shushing.
Nick Clegg’s popularity’s slumped to just 18 per cent, but David Cameron leapt to his defence, saying he’s a great politician and work colleague. Good move, Dave – never slag off the guy who brings your coffee. Especially if you have froth on the top. Clegg’s even been getting flak for doing the morning school run. I certainly take my lad to the school gates whenever I can. Then whisper in his ear, ‘See all those laughing children? Improve your stitching around the instep and maybe you can join them.’
Energy Secretary Chris Huhne isn’t faring any better in the popularity stakes after he allegedly tried to get off a speeding ban by claiming his ex-wife was driving. I guess he’s got to switch to plan B – claiming that a bomb would’ve gone off in his Vauxhall Nova if he’d dropped below 80. I suspect he was just confused by events. As a Lib Dem Euro MP, when the camera flashed he would have had no idea what it was.
If Huhne really was the one behind the