Easter

Yes. It is spring

Happy Easter to All   

Here for a beautiful Easter and for Cambridge Word Fest.

Mark Logue and Peter Conradi spoke about their book on the life and diaries of Lionel Logue and the film The King’s Speech.  Later Mark agreed that, if the book and the film had been released ten years ago, they would not have had the current worldwide acclaim.  The reaction to a minor book and a minor film about an interesting but minor incident in the twentieth century has been extraordinary.

Why?  What is the reason?  My German Dachshund cousins have a word for it, zeitgeist, or the mood of the moment.  After the 2008/9 collapse of political, economic, and moral, trust, we all need to believe again, to have faith.

The King’s Speech is history.  A man, George VI, returns to us in film and on paper to show again that virtue, courage and honour can prevail.

Katherine Birbalsingh teacher and author of To Miss with Love is at Word Fest also.  Wow.   She has skills and vision as well as dedication and courage.  We agreed that you would not be permitted to treat a puppy the way we treat many of our children. 

Ordinary people at Ordinary School, parents, teachers, children, are sick of the failed bureauklatura.

We want an Archbishop who writes wise and loving explanations of God and religion for little girls, who prays, who himself washes the feet of men.

Rowan Williams, you are a good man; you have shown us; yes you can.

We do not want a prelate, wrapped in synod jargon, to tell our elected politicians to enact yet more otiose legislation instructing other people to go and wash feet.

We want a leader who wears with dignity, and listening humility, the office of the Queen’s Prime Minister and First Lord off the Treasury, who guides and controls the Queen’s ministers, who persuades a properly sceptical elected House of Commons.

David Cameron, you are a good man, you have shown us; yes you can.

We do not want a politician who dashes from one PR photo opportunity to the next, putting his foot in his mouth, spouting from briefing notes carelessly prepared by juvenile political wannabes.

We are ready

This is the life

We are off to see the lovely and caring Izzy Wiz in North Norfolk and then back for The Wedding.

Paws4Now

Jock.

At the Jubilee. 

Towards the Big Untruth

All aboard

Hi    

Now we are getting there

Moll and I took Him and Her on a canal trip.  That Brindley and those 18^th C folk were really something.  They took the Chinese 13^th C technology and mass produced it for an Industrial Revolution.  The wheel has turned again.

Young Neil Tweedie wrote in the Torygraph about university student fees.  Largely sensible, he both questioned the rush by all and sundry for the top fee rate of £9000 and he quoted the thoughtful views of Terence Kealey, the vice chancellor of Buckingham University.

He then let the Big Untruth pop out of the bag and wrote about the:

“Embarassment of twenty seven thousand pound price tags on degrees – things that used to be free when Britain was a lot poorer than it is now-“

Three for the price of two

Read more »

A Little Untruth

Hi All 

Welcome to the new enterprise based 

Cambridge West Campus.

The new world is here.

And this is where we are.

Contrast the young fogeys, in their gowns,      

outside the Old Schools, resisting

change.

Horace called them 

"Laudatores temporis acti."   

"Praisers of times past." 

The Easter vacation should clear their heads on student fees                                            

 Another silly nonsense is circulating.  “No Cuts” folk claim that George Osborne should just collect the tax that is being evaded or avoided and all will be well.  No cuts, no fees, are needed.

I do not blame “No Cuts” for trying it on.

But I do blame the likes of Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Neill, lots of reporters and even the sainted Stephanie Flanders for not challenging and demolishing this foolish untruth.

Read more »