politics

Dawkins as always provokes a response: he seems to me to be religiously anti-religion. Disecting religion as though it were a lab-rat, he misses much recent research. Religion is not irrelivant or the evidence of belief alone can cure: no matter what the belief is in. Recent evidence has shown this.

The Mayor of London was recently suspended for a month by an adjudication panel over comments he made to a Jewish reporter. He likened the reporter to a concentration camp guard. It appears that Livingstone felt that he was a fascist, or at least the Evening Standard is. This case is not as simple as it first seems, the reporter may well have been a fan of Livingstone.

Education is close to every parent's heart. I can remember when I was at school, education was just as important then--- parents seemed often dissatisfied with the quality of education on offer. Consistently wanting the best schools for their children. It may be that there is no such thing as a perfect educational system. But parents always seem to cringe when the subject of problem kids are brought up. Why is it that there are a great number of schools where students aren't there for learning. The reasons are complex but one reason must be the culture; classrooms might end up in a shambled for exactly the same cultural reasons as city centre's turn into a brawl on a Friday night. It's not purely the school, although it contributes. If schools act as a stand-in parent when the real parents are out at work then there needs to be co-operation between the parent and the school. As far as "problem" kids go, if the parents have no ethics then how likely are children to have them. Pushing the limits is what children do though, and some of the worse behaved become the key contributors to society. It is important though to distinguish between not doing well at school and being disruptive--- you might not be doing to well, but don't drag the class down with you. There were notable underachievers at school; I heard for instance Einstein was not considered to be a good pupil. Partly because he was already preoccupied with what he was interested in. Everything else that the school demanded he learnt, he wasn't interested in. There is a difference from having a direction and no direction at all.

Tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen
Pour myself a cup of ambition
And yawn
and stretch
and try to come to life.
Jump in the shower
and the blood starts pumping
Out on the street
the traffic starts jumping
With folks like me on the job from nine to five.
Working nine to five
what a way to make living
Barely getting by
it's all taking and no giving.
They just use your mind
and they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy
if you let it.