Category: General

Learning Difficulties

I heard on the radio this morning that the government is thinking of turning various sectors of public service into John Lewis type employee co-operatives. The existing employees of, say, Bogsville’s Probationary Service will be able to come forward with a business plan and show how they can run the service better. This was presented as new thinking.

Really, have we forgotten British Rail already? That monolith was fragmented and flogged off at knock-down prices. Managers and staff were pressed to buy the bits and pieces, and some did. What happened? After running their bit for a year or two, they sold it on to some commercial outfit and made a mint. Did it improve Britain’s railway? Not really, but the new millionaires were happy. So, in three or four years shall we hear, ‘fancy buying a probation service, anyone?’

I wonder, is having learning difficulties an essential qualification in politics?

Musings on the USA after 2000.

This blog will be short. It is not because I am too lazy to write more, well, at least not only because of that; but because it is late and I have to work on a paper for a course.

There has been much discussion recently about the relative decline of the USA’s position in the world. In the past 20 years the USA went from the unrivalled hyper-power left standing after the end of the Cold War to a deeply indebted state unable to find competent leadership with unfriendly countries quickly losing patience with its profligate ways. There should be nothing especially surprising in this. It cannot be expected that a country can rely on sheer luck alone, as the USA has in effect often done in its history, to carry it through forever. It is equally impractical to ignore the sage wisdom of the fragrant Chinese Legalist scholar Han Fei Tzu when he wrote “no state is forever strong, no state is forever weak” before falling victim to one of the schemes he so enjoyed advocating. Continue reading “Musings on the USA after 2000.”

Hero Teachers

As another Remebrance Day fades into memory elsewhere on t’internet there is a thread about hero teachers. I had two – a housemaster who was previously a Pathfinder Wing Commander, DFC and bar and a French master who was awarded a MC for having both arms blown off saving his platoon from a badly thrown grenade. Others served without recognition or reward as officers and NCOs in regiments long since forgotten and amalgamated.

And you???

OZ