Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Some adjustments necessary

The world seems to have been turned upside down and inside out here on Tyneside simply because of the 130th. Tyne Wear derby match between Newcastle United and Sunderland at Sid James Park tomorrow afternoon. HMS Ark Royal has arrived in the Tyne for a few days, probably on a “peace mission” in case we all go mad at the the result of the football match, after all it’s far more important than anything else this weekend. Somehow officials at the Toon have found 20 free tickets for the crew, so presumably the game was not a sell out.

And it probably explains why a lunar New Year will not be taking place, and their will be no oriental celebrations in Newcastle’s China Town tomorrow, the police having advised that they cannot handle the thought of 52,000 Toon fans and four thousand New Year revellers all mixing together on the same streets. Sunderland fans (well the 2,500 lucky enough to have tickets) will be driven in and driven out in a controlled convoy of buses and will be lucky to see anything of the city at the breakneck speed that Northumbria Police will insist upon to get them in and out of the ground quickly and quietly. Anyway, Chinese New Year in Newcastle will be one week late.

Toon fans will be looking for their 50th. win over The Lads, whilst Mackems will be wanting a first home and away double win over their bitter rivals since George Mulhall scored in both games in the 1966-67 season.

If you live in South Tyneside where the following is split almost 50/50 then once again you will have to choose your attire, or your watering hole very carefully after 6:00 p.m. tomorrow evening. Police have once again advised publicans to refrain from serving alcohol to persons wearing either Sunderland or Newcastle shirts, I WILL be wearing mine (as I did last year) and I will be careful how and where I go. I am no trouble maker and refuse to labelled as one simply because I am happy to wear my team’s shirt. I found plenty of others like me last year and I sat and had a good laugh with one “Mag” in his shirt in a South Shields bar a few hours after the match, we enjoyed the chat and proved it is certainly easy to be hospitable and good humoured, even when your side has lost.

There were one or two arrests on the Saturday evening after the match in South Tyneside last year, but I’m told that the figures were no worse than any other weekend.

So some adjustments are necessary, to try and keep the peace, it’s been going on for over a hundred years of course, but we don’t want this year to be one that is remembered for some reason do we?

Oh yes we do, the year we beat them twice!

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Subtle shift in government’s language

One or two articles in this morning’s Daily Telegraph suggest an ever so slight shift in the government’s language and position on the recession, not quite an admission of abject failure, but more a quivering of the lip like naughty schoolboys facing the headmaster after being caught with their hands in the sweetie jar.

It would be almost impossible to believe that Gordon Brown could be upfront and apologise to the British people for the plight that he has helped design for us (almost single handedly) one suspects that full blown apologies are not yet in his make up, yet being a religious man he may be tempted at some point to see the error of his ways and at least acknowledge some part in Britain’s downfall. In this first article he calls on Britain to show confidence in itself, we’re all in this mess together you know, the war spirit and all that, after all he doesn’t want us to believe that it’s all his fault. Then he spins into the usual mantras :

• I have utter confidence in our ability to come through this (Britain is best place)
• We are adamant that we are going to deal with that problem(getting on with the job)

Thankfully in the interview he doesn’t call on the British people to show confidence in him!

Next he goes on to remind the economic powers in the world to beef up international institutions, a sure sign that by time he applies to the IMF to bail out Britain it may well have ran out of resources of it’s own (can’t beat planning ahead Gordon)

“We need to reform and strengthen international institutions, giving them power and resources to invest at a global level,”

The IMF has already stated that a number of nations are calling upon it for financial assistance, and at the rate that Brown is building public debt there is an outside realistic chance that we may have to join the queue, this is probably the reason why the seller of snake oil, Lord Mandelson, is warning that the UK government needs to prove that it can repay it’s international and foreign debt, otherwise investors will withdraw from the UK, the pound will plummet even further and the economy will run the risk of total collapse. Whilst Brown and Mandelson are away in Davos they will not have been warmed by the reports of British energy and refinery workers demonstrating against Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” policy, which has seen an influx of new jobs over the past ten years going mainly to migrant workers, the government will be wanting these demonstrations to quietly go away, however, so long as we keep seeing pictures on our TV screens of rioting Greeks and French protestors on the streets of Paris, then workers in key UK industries will feel even more encourage to continue their protests.

Brown and the Prince of Darkness seem to be saying this weekend that they know they are in pretty much a mess, that they are not quite sure how to get out of it, they’re pretty sure of how we got into but don’t want to make a full admission of culpability yet, but please Mr. Headmaster don’t be too hard on us after all it was their fault not ours.

It’s a very subtle change of language indicating regrets without confessions, but the plan is still clear – make sure there is nothing left for the Tories to work with!

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Randall discusses ghost writing

Brown is a busted flush, and he’s taking us down with him.

Jeff Randall has a snorter of a piece in the Telegraph, if you have ten minutes to spare you can read it all here.

One or two tasty morsels to whet the appetite:

You have to hand it to Tony Blair. As the foundations subside beneath the New Labour project, rocked by a crumbling economy, the timing of his exit is looking more and more like a chronometric masterpiece.

The penny is dropping, even in some Labour strongholds, that for all his crude social engineering, stealth taxes and raids on pensions (with the likelihood of yet more punishment to come in the Budget), the Prime Minister has over-promised and under-delivered.

Education standards are going down. The gap between private schools and state comprehensives is widening. Last week, I dined with half a dozen teachers and professors from one of the country’s best universities, all of whom insisted that A-levels had been debased.

Getting Mr Brown face-to-face with reality is no easy task, but the Institute of Fiscal Studies did its best this week with a damning analysis of the country’s prospects. At the rate we are going, Britain faces a £20 billion-a-year “double whammy” of tax rises and spending cuts to restore order to public finances. It could take until 2029 for government debt to recede to “normal” levels.

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Stay at home politicians could still claim allowances

Councillors will be able to skip meetings and vote from home – and still get paid thousands of pounds a year, under new plans.

Ministers are set on pushing ahead with plans to allow “remote” voting at council meetings, despite the Government admitting there is widespread opposition to the measures.

The Conservatives said the plans meant that councillors will be able to vote from home and still claim expenses of around £10,000 each.

The only commitment will be for the councillor to monitor the local chamber by phone or over the internet.

Oh goody! What a wonderful idea!

What would this scatterbrained plan mean for us in South Tyneside?

Firstly, South Tyneside District council would have to install that tiny little £25 webcam in the council chamber that I keep talking about.

Secondly, those councillors who hate the sight of each other would never have to come face to face again.

Thirdly, the chances of a punch up involving Cllr. Khan and Cllr. Potts would be much diminished.

Fourth, the chances of you ever recognising your ward councillor again would dip to zero, never seen in South Shields Town Hall and only seen at your doorstep during election campaigns means your interest in local politics will vanish too.

Fifth, costs, and your council tax bills, would soar once more as the technologies were sourced and installed in councillors homes and the Town Hall.

Sixth, committee meetings would become redundant and Cabinet would feel more powerful, knowing that elected members would hardly bother to read reports via the council’s website.

Seventh, Independent Alliance Cllr. Allen Branley wouldn’t need an excuse to turn up every now and then just to hang on to his seat for another six months. What’s more he could stay away and legitimately claim an allowance for it if he wanted. We could probably mention one or two others but the council’s website is rather poorly today.

Eighth, the council would require a website that worked and was easier to navigate and search.

Ninth, there would be no need for training sessions for councillors wishing to improve their presentation or diction.

Tenth, no need for “Brenda” to prepare cups of tea, coffee, and rich tea biscuits.

It does make you wonder about which juvenile in The Department for Communities and Local Government, with a spotty faced picture on Bebo, thought up this nonsense.

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British jobs for British workers

Seems I was a couple of years ahead of everyone here, but the issue is the news of the day.

I humbly re-submit my post of  May 2007

Dizzy, Scoop, and Muck threaten strike action!

In a shock move calculated to halt the emerging ambitions of new builder MacCavity Brown Ltd. a vote amongst the workforce has recommended strike action over plans to rebuild five new towns on brownfield sites in the U.K. MacCavity Brown had proposed the creation of 200,000 new homes to be named Miliville, Beckettham, Old Blairum, Sith City, and Ballston using the latest eco friendly construction methods and additional Polish labour. This was enough to worry the current workforce who held a meeting yesterday to discuss the crisis at the emerging Scottish builder. Spokesman “Dizzy” said;

“We are all agreed that building electricity generating windfarms on the edge of town is a severe health risk for our workforce, neither Scoop, Muck, Rolley, or myself are going to be blown away by these silly ideas. As for drafting in the Poles, it’s about time this company was starting to do something to protect the jobs of British workers, if he doesn’t drop the idea we have agreed phased strike action, either that or it’s a serious complaint going in to Wendy!”

Fellow worker “Muck” added;

“This can’t be for real, it’s nothing but a stunt designed to attract votes from the shareholders. MacCavaty’s planning to take the President’s job, it’s a scam putting people into cardboard houses with solar powered televisions tuned to his channel. We really need to raise the public’s awareness to this man’s plans. On top of all that he’s downgraded our pension plans, and not by a few bob either, he’s stealing millions from our retirement, the man is a menace to society! If these plans get the go ahead, we’re out – for as long as it takes!”

Further talks are planned over the coming weeks to diffuse the situation at the fledgling company.

Great news, MacCavity Brown Ltd, has announced plans to build thousands of new council homes, more or less just in time to rehouse the thousands of British workers declared homeless after a massive rise in the rate of  repossessions, just the latest worrying indicator of the bust that followed the debt fuelled boom.

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Comedy Gold from flawed software

Via Timmy

Incredible how a piece of awful Microsoft beta software can cause such a stir

SongSmith has been widely panned as inferior to Apple’s popular virtual music kit GarageBand, but internet wits have discovered an alternative use for the programme and its musical limitations: creating dreadful reworkings of existing hits.

When the vocals of famous songs are run through the software, the backing tracks it adds are so unlikely that the end results often turn out as surreal reinventions of the originals.

Yes, how highly amusing, you can download your copy of Songsmith here (it’ll give you 6 hours of awful music time as a trial period.) It should keep your minds off the recession for a while.

Just so you can appreciate how bad/good it is, here’s a Songsmith version of  Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”. It really isn’t Pan Tang!

[YouTube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_V1DuHUs22Q&fmt=]

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Former Tyne Wear Tory faces further rebuke

The independent MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup is Derek Conway, the former leader of the Conservative councillors on the old Tyne Wear County Council, I refer to him as the former Tory because that’s what he is after David Cameron rightly removed the Conservative Whip from him a year ago. Conway has already announced his decision not to stand at the next general election thus removing his embarrassing features from the newspapers whilst the campaign goes on.

No doubt George Smith will be sniggering behind his hand in South Shields this morning,(George took over the leadership of the Tyne Wear Tories after Conway’s ambitions took him out of the region.)

Today the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee has decided that Geordie Derek (son of a  Gateshead gardener) must write them a letter of apology and cough up another £3757 of tax payers’ cash that he used as part of the payment to his son Henry for work that it seems was difficult to find hard evidence of. This is the second repayment that the scheming MP has had to make, yet it only covers 10% of the amount paid to young Henry over the course of three years (the time it took to complete his degree). Conway has already been ordered to repay £13,161 over the similar “work” on behalf of his other son Freddie.

Considering that the costs to us, on behalf of his whole family amount to over £1.5m, Conway can consider that he has been reasonably well treated, perhaps if he’d been claiming such expenses from a private company as part of his employment, he may have been sacked and facing a fraud trial by now, who knows?

I guess the arms of the Standards and Privileges Committee are not quite as long as the depth of Derek’s pockets then?

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Gordon Brown, the student

Still not grown out of student politics.

I wonder how Gordon Brown is still in denial? Is he still insisting on repeating the same old mantra that Britain is best placed to weather the storms of the economic downturn, still insisting that he has beaten the boom and bust cycle?

It beggars belief that he continues to contradict all of the economic indicators from the world’s pre-eminent forecasters as we see that this country is far from best placed to beat the recession. After more than eleven years stewardship of UK PLC Brown is no nearer to admitting his part in our economic downfall, no nearer to learning that his debt driven boom has led to bust, and that his selling of our gold reserves at the bottom of the market was a complete disaster.

The IMF says that world economic output is due to grow by just 0.5% this year, the lowest growth rate since the second world war, and that the UK economy will shrink by 2.8% next year, the worst contraction among advanced nations. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the UK will have critically high government debt for at least the next twenty years, and that we will neeed to either cut government spending or raise taxes by an extra £20 billion to repair the public finances.

But Brown knows precisely what he is doing, shares in Labour are as popular as shares in banks right now, and they don’t look likely to recover, hence the scorched earth policy as Labour prepares to leave the worst possible sort of economy to the Tories and cripple David Cameron’s first term of term in office. Hang the consequences for the rest of us! This is cynical. yet symptomatic of his level of “student politics”, hoping that the public will blame the Conservatives for the mess that Britain will find itself in.

I missed PMQ’s yesterday but understand that Brown stuck to the worn out script (best placed, taking the right long term decisions,  do nothing, blah, blah, etc.) it’s time that someone in the Downing Street bunker told him that it’s no longer working – oh, hang on, it’s someone in Downing Street that feeds him the brief! Apparently the Prime Mentalist accused David Cameron of applying “student politics” but the Tory leader shot him down with this response:

Only one of us was a student politician, and he’s never grown out of it.

Guido reports there is a rumour that Brown had wet himself during Monday’s disastrous press briefing, hopefully somewhere there will be a picture or a video clip floating about that we can all have a good laugh with, these are dark days indeed and any light relief would be welcome, to us and the PM it seems.

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Erm….should we actually be that proud?

Just two weeks ago we read that South Tyneside schools were celebrating after confirming that last August’s exam results for GCSEs were their best ever.

Coun Jim Foreman, lead member for children and young people, said: “Once again the performance of our children and young people has given us a great deal to be proud of.

“These tables are further proof that our pupils are making genuine improvements during their time at school.

I don’t think that South Tyneside is untypical of many areas in the UK when it comes to education, we have some great schools, some good schools, some great teachers, and a lot of hard working students, but we have policy makers and spin doctors telling us that things are getting better and better every year. It’s so good it must be untrue true!

Today I learn that almost 24 million UK adults (over 18s) can hardly read or write or do simple arithmetic, as if I need a newspaper to inform me of this fact,  and that Exeter University had made the lowest score on University Challenge for 38 years. Now my powers of logic may be waning as I get older, but if our schools are churning out “best ever” exam results and those who have recently left school are unable to effectively communicate because they can neither read nor write, and those who make it through to certain universities don’t have a strong basis in general knowledge, then we are in a pretty sad state.

The educationalists keep screaming that exams are not dumbed down, they are not easier to pass, that lots of hard work goes in, yet as each year passes we see more and more students gaining the necessary qualifications needed to fill our universities with illiterates. It is a known fact that many higher educational establishments have introduced remedial courses for those who cannot string sentences together, and that’s after passing A levels! Of course it’s far better to keep them all in school until they are 18 (and pay educational maintenance allowances as an inducement) then fill the universities for the next three years, than allow them to fill the ranks of the unemployed.

Trouble is, we are all looking at the top half of the group, little attention is paid to the remainder:

Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, fewer than half of teenagers gained five A* to C grade GCSEs, including English and maths.

The report said 51,000 left school without at least a G grade in maths – the lowest grade – and 39,000 failed to pass GCSE English.

This is where the problem lies, and making these students stay in school until the age of 18 without producing a massive improvement in the basic three Rs will be a complete waste of a policy designed to keep them out of the diminishing workforce. Perhaps it is time to start investing now, whilst we are in recession, in some sort of modern apprenticeships that will be modelled and fashioned on the industries, services, and functions that we will be using in the next thirty years. However, even then we are still going to need communicators, and that means bringing up the standards of ALL students, not just the “improving” half.

Over to you Mr. Balls and remember what Labour said in 1997 – education, education, education.

End of rant.

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Pity Virgin

This has to be the funniest letter of complaint I’ve ever seen, if it’s truly genuine I hope Branson invites his traveller to a slap up feed at The Ritz!

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