Throwing a tantrum

Sometimes I feel like an alien just landed from Mars, such is my utter incapability of figuring out what really the point is...

Take, for example, the recent news from the Times (as reported by the BBC) that Dr Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), is advocating scrapping exams for the 11- and 14-year-olds.

This follows, by only a couple of weeks, an announcement that 4- and 5-year-olds would be "assessed" prior to entry to pre-schools.

Now, let's get this straight. The Government is actually proposing to assess a child's abilities on the basis of some assessment criteria (no doubt, thought up by some highly experienced and knowledgeable academic) at the age of 4, but is happy to consider scrapping exam test for older children (and replacing them with 'random samples').

As I said, I really do struggle in seeing the point.

For a start, what is the point of assessing 4- and 5-year-olds? who will benefit from it? what will the use be? what are we doing with the ones that turn out to be dimwits? what about those who would score highly? shall we fast-track them to GCSE? (well, given current standards, they might actually pass them!)

As for scrapping exams, I can see why teachers are doing somersaults of joy at the sole thought: it was the only glimmer of accountability for a profession that has been remarkably left untouched by centuries passing.
The fact that now parents had a more reliable (and objective) metric to measure a teacher's perfomance (as opposed to relying simply on the darlings' comments) must have kept the entire profession on the verge of nervous breakdown.

We, the normal people, those who measure ourselves daily against competitors, the market reality and customer expectations, know all too well what it means to be accountable, to have one's performance assessed against (and, usually, by) peers and to accept the possibility of failure.
Teachers, academics, and public workers in general, live in this rose-tinted world where performance is optional, no objective assessment of one's capabilities is ever possible (or even considered acceptable) and where one's career progression is based on seniority, political acumen and connections, but never on ability or achievement.

Objective exam tests (with all their shortcomings and the disgraceful "dumbing down" sham so shamelessly exercised by Blair's officials) were a means (albeit a timid one) for parents, and other stakeholders, to assess, on a supposedly objective basis, a school's performance and a teacher's abilities - unconstrained by the individual pupil's abilities.

It was too good to be true, and it was only a matter of time for the lethargic, yet powerful and (lest we forget it) Labour-funding, teachers' establishment to fight back to try and revert to "good old days."

It may be too late, however: we, the parents, have now tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge, and may be quite unwilling to let go of it...

Time 2 Lv ?

So it looks as if, after many disappointing starts and outright failures, we have finally found the solution to the problem of illegal immigration.

Yep, the Home Office cracked it - a stroke of genius or the result of long hours of analysis and extensive consultants' studies, we are not given to know - but it is at long last with us: the ultimate solution in forcing illegal immigrants to face up to their despicable behaviour and convince them to abandon their ways (and the Country) for good.

And it was all so obvious; we had been staring at it in the face for years, and yet nobody realised how powerful this would have been - it took the indefatigable dedication, professionality and inventiveness of the Home Office staff to figure this one out.

So, starting from an as yet unspecified (but we all hope imminent!) date the Home Office will start sending text messages to "foreign visitors" (apparently, "bloody immigrants" was deemed too strong a language) reminding them that their visa is to expire and they should make preparations to leave the UK.

I can already picture them: scores of illegal immigrants, all of them anxiously peering at their mobile phones (was it a text? is it Abdul at the pub, or the Home Office? should I open it?) and then rushing off on the first Piccadilly tube heading off to Heathrow, without even bothering packing up...

Maybe not.

A more sane person (read: someone not working for the Home Office and not desperate to find some ways to make it look like they are actually doing something) would have had a few doubts about the scheme.

For example, given that they do not even know the names of most illegal immigrants, how on earth are they supposed to know their mobile number?

And even of those whose names are known (the mind springs to the 7,000 "foreign criminals" whose files were left to rot in boxes in some Home Office basement) they are hardly likely to be on some sort of computer system so as to enable automatic sending of those messages.

I can already see scores of "temporary" Home Office employees, sitting at their desks and furiously typing the texts to thousands of foreigners....

The other pitfall being, obviously, that mobile phone companies (being just a tad more astute than the Home Office) are quite unlikely to give a contract rental to people without the necessary paperwork - hence, most of them will have pay-as-you-go contracts (critical for them to manage their prostitution ring or crack dealership or whatever else it is that foreigners get into when in UK - I personally started two businesses, both of them engaged in legal activities, I hasten to add) which make them just a trifle difficult to trace back to the real owner.

Hence, even assuming the Home Office to be vastly more efficient than we know it to be - even assuming that they can actually trace a mobile number to a "foreign visitor" overstaying her welcome - even assuming that the computer system in place, in a complete break with tradition, will work as intended - it is rather obvious that even the more anxious of the illegals, wanting to go beyond just having a laugh at the Home Office and its hapless Minister and just delete it, can simply take out the SIM card, throw it in the Thames and buy a new one at the nearest Tesco store, all for a tenner!

In the meantime, we, the taxpayers (yes, sadly, despite being a foreigner I do pay taxes and a shedload of them - in fact, a lot more since bloody Gordon decided to squeeze Middle England's pips) will be facing a bill of several £m's completely wasted in a useless scheme.

It is in days like these that I start to believe in the Original Sin - there is, in fact, no way I can have racked up enough evil deeds in my life to deserve such a desperately superficial and hopelessly incompetent bunch of dimwits to govern the Country I live in.

Delivering the goods (not)

As mentioned several times in this blog, bureacratic non-sense and obtuseness is not only to be found in EU and public sector offices, but it happily lives and festers in large (and not so large) corporates as well.

This is a well-known fact and one I am somewhat resigned to - what, however, really depresses me is when "technology progress" gets hijacked by those who just can't really tell their elbow from their, well, keyboard...

Take Amtrak, for example.

They have a fantastic web tracking facility, and if you place an order with an online retailer who uses them (and the retailer is clever enough to provide you with the parcel tracking ID) you can follow in almost real time the progress of your goods from Amtrak's website.

I used it and was quite impressed and rather pleased - how naive!

It so happens that if you are not home when they make the first deliver attempt, an automatic re-delivery attempt will be made on the following working day, and failing that one too, goods will be kept at their depot for two days only, before being returned to sender.

Now for the non-sense:

1. there is no way to contact Amtrak and tell them: "sorry, I won't be home tomorrow, can we do the day after?";
2. worse yet, it's not even possible to tell them "sorry, I won't be home tomorrow. Don't bother calling, save yourself time, money and, ideally, some air pollution too";
3. finally, you can't even tell them "sorry, I won't be home tomorrow: can you please leave the parcel with my next door neighbour? He looks odd and I do disapprove of his singing habits, but all considered he's a reliable guy and unlikely to nick my parcel".

Nope. Niet. Zilch.

We are Amtrak, we deliver and we'll be at your door tomorrow, come hell or high water.

Apparently, there is a way to avoid that: to call the online retailer, explain to them that, no, you won't be home tomorrow, then have them contact Amtrak to re-arrange delivery.

Now, if anyone has ever tried to get in touch with an online retailer's Customer Service call centre and tried to explain to them even the most basic change (it once took me half an hour to convince a guy that my postcode change was not because of my whim, but RoyalMail's decision over which I had, regrettably, very little influence) you'll know why I shuddered at the thought.

To me, the infuriating part is the sheer nonsense of a system that allows no flexibility whatsoever, whilst it would be really trivial to make a minor modification to their IT systems and business processes to allow customers to pick, online, a more convenient date: this would result in greatly more satisfied customers, great cost savings to them and, lest we forget, less environmental damage from so many missed deliveries.

They already have all the systems in place (witness the tracking system) and the facilities to manage that flexibility - it is not a matter of re-designing it or implementing it from scratch.

I can only conclude that their IT folks never talk to "the suits," who, for their part, can't be bothered to talk to their call centre staff who would undoubtedly explain to them that probably 30% of delivery trips are in vain.

So much so for technology progress...

To France, to France!

Apparently, should Ms Royal win the presidential elections, the French can look forward to a €1,500 minimum wage - and unemployment benefits of up to 90% of previous salary.

Not bad, eh?

Especially considering that, should Mr Brown tragically become Prime Minister in UK all we can expect here in Britain is more taxes and misery.

Of course, Ms Royal's Socialist policies are so completely non-sense that it won't take long for the Country to self-destroy, but, hey, so long as it lasts, I can live with a €1,500 minimum wage to stack Primtemps shelves in Cannes... that would be more than what I used to earn as a PhD Technical Director in Italy about 10 years ago!

Vive la France!

Red Tape Galore

Apparently "If stacked up, the total amount of legislation passed since the start of the EU would be nearly as tall as Nelson’s column." (source: Open Europe bulletin: 19 February 2007).

Having read that, I was somehow overwhelmed by a sudden sense of impotent rage: how could one possibly deal with such a staggering amount of regulation is honestly beyond my comprehension.

But that's beside the point - what really enrages me is the reflection that:

1. it is virtually impossible that ALL of that legislation is about matters that are relevant and, in some meaningful sense, "useful" - in other words, I expect a large part, possibly the majority, of it all to be about irrelevant or otherwise trivial matters.


2. all that paper was produced at great expense by incredibly well-paid obscure bureacrats who were busy just creating work for other well-fed bureacrats (thus achieving Keynes' vision of "50% of the population digging holes and the other 50% filling them");


3. hence, the waste of money that could have otherwise been put to some productive use must be staggering and, almost certainly, still ongoing - if anything, at accelerated speed.

Not to mention, the amount of wasted effort that that red tape causes to EU businesses, estimated, by the EU commissioner Gunter Verheugen himself, at more than €600bn a year.

Is it possible that nothing, ever, can be done about this?
How long will we stand such abuse by faceless, unelected, unaccountable paper-pushers who have no interest whatsoever in giving EU businesses, men and women, half a chance to compete against the rest of the world?

Flashing it

Apparently, in the "Television Without Frontiers" directive currently undergoing negotiations there is a "requirement to flash a warning on the screen every 20 minutes whenever product placement is used in programmes."

Quite apart from the absurdity of the obligation, I can already figure your average family, slouched on the coach and having a competition, following the flashing on screen of a "Product Placement Warning," as to who will be the first to actually spot the product.

Was it that can of Coke? the box of Trojan condoms apparently left lying on the floor? the lady's underwear from M&S?
and, come to think of it, should I flash a warning here too?

I have also little doubt that our ever resourceful Eurocrats will already have defined in excruciating detail the size, colour, frequency, font, pitch, positioning, and about other 20 parameters for the warning's placement.

The most amusing bit, as all the non-bureacrats amongst you will have spotted, is that, it will achieve exactly the opposite effect than intended: rather than warn a supposedly dozed and half-witted consumer to beware the evil forces of consumerism are at work, it will, in fact, attract attention to the "placed product" and away from the dramatic tension (if any) of the movie.

Who needs plots and drama and creative tension any more?

I am just about wondering whether there will be a business opportunity in creating a clandestine market of "non-spoiled" movies here... I can already see those cinephiles, wearing dark glasses, fake beards and upturned collars approaching you on street corners offering you "a good one, mate"

Online downloads, anyone?

Bums on seats

That at least seem to be the latest education policy trend from the UK Government.

I will explain, if I may.

Apparently, there is now a new regulation (yep, another one - not one day of rest for our Whitehall valiant guardians of our children's welfare) that essentially forbids parents to take children away from school for, say, a holiday, outside school half-term breaks.

Now, that would be something to applaud were it applied with some grain of common sense: after all you don't want children wandering around or, God forbid, catching flights for holidays abroad left and right (by the way, what's all this fuss about flying? are you all falling prey to Labour's misinformation propaganda machine? I would have expected my readers to be more clued up... but I digress!) leaving teachers to cope with an ever-varying classrom attendance.

However, one would also expect that the policy were applied with some degree of common sense: in other words, if the child is achieving top grades, shows no signs of falling behind and is prepared to do some extra work before and after the week's absence in order to catch up with the others, well, maybe some allowance may be made.

After all, isn't that what we all deal with either as managers or as staff? So it would be good to somehow responsibilise the kids early on: "If you want to take a week off, well, you may, but be prepared to work harder to compensate for that."

Well, not if you are dealing with our schools' headmasters: 'no' means 'no', and there are no derogations to the rule - no matter how sensible preparations one makes, how much planning effort the child puts into it: take your kid away for a week, and that will be regarded as "unauthorised absence."

(The amusing bit here - that seems however to completely escape to our erstwhile bureacrats - is that they even have a form to let you apply for extra holidays. You can certainly fill it in and submit, they'll just refuse it. Isn't that sublime?)

What the consequences may be, I do not know. Terrible, I suppose, and unerring: probably Social Services (that bright example of efficiency, competence and, above all, never missing a day at work) will be called in, the child may be put up for adoption, most likely parents will face fines, possibly jail sentences.

I don't know - I will find out when we come back from snowboarding :-)