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itmustbeajoke.universitiesandinnovation.org.uk
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www.guardianreadersrobthepoor.org.uk
www.actionagainsttranquillisers.org.uk
www.arestudentsmiddleclasswankers.org.uk
www.greeningthegreenbelt.org.uk
www.plannersattheodpm.org.uk
www.donttrustyourgp.org.uk
www.mediastudiesstrikesback.org.uk
www.theuniversityofplumbing.org.uk
www.smugbastardsatthebeeb.org.uk

Examiners whinge just like teachers

Funding and accountability constrains training.

Excellent oral and practical skills but ...

We need exams with less writing.

Schools Today

Filling forms instead of teaching

The Mail gets serioius

House prices and the end of the world

Keep selling the tablets

Benzos and smack: Sell the prescription or stop the rattling?

Student admissions

An idea from California.

Education gone wrong

Most undergraduates are dead wood.

NVQs and Residential Care

Forcing good people out of important jobs.

Found on Innovation.gov.uk

"You can't teach innovation, you can only constrain it by education.."

Education constrains innovation?

Does education matter?

"... the countries which have done most to increase the education levels of their population have, on average, grown less fast than have devoted fewer resources to education."

Who's afraid of Alison Wolf?

The Treasury and Software Development

Successful software development methods excluded.

The NHS

Diplomas for the working class, degrees for the middle class.

Benzodiazepine tranquillisers

"One in six [babies] had been fed benzodiazepine tranquillisers in the womb."

Government Software

Successful IT projects are small.

The NHS

Should the nursing profession be attracting these people?

Government Software

Assignment for the Treasury: Study the games industry.

CO2 concentration over the past 400,000 years

No more Norfolk? *** Essential Reading

Green Belts damage the environment

NIMBYs steal from the poor and destroy the Planet

NHS Solutions

With ref to the present crisis in the NHS....

Only the ordinary people are holding the straining
NHS service together

"The UK Treasury has abandoned hopes of recovering millions of pounds in compensation for delays in the new national insurance system because it needs to preserve the relationship with the system's developer."
- Computing magazine

Government locked in

"The human and environmental catastrophe in Mozambique is a result of climate change caused by pollution."
- Pollution Tax Association

Mozambique

"...my teenage years were all dictated through a barbiturate haze...
Without my parents knowledge or approval, I stopped. How I did it I can't remember. I was 14 or 15 at the time, all my life these drugs had been my constant 'companions'. It was not easy."
- Patrick Michael

The Prisoner

"The Knowledge Economy 1
(someone ought to tell him...)

(Algeria, in the 1980's)
The city of Algiers is awash with civil engineers and computer scientists who weekly migrate from the country to look for work as bottle washers, road sweepers and shoe shine boys."

February Prospect Advert: Notes

"Northern Unemployment:
Gordon.
They needed jobs. You left them heroin.
Any other ideas?
(We have)."

PE Advert: Notes.

"... eking out their life, killing the pain of unemployment and alienation with that most effective of pain killers, heroin."

Unemployment: So you think its all over?

"It should be clear from the above evidence that the [Minister's] statement 'no proven link' is at best unhelpful."

Benzodiazepine use and damage to developing foetuses

"I understand and am currently advised, that there is no proven link between benzodiazepine use and damage to developing foetuses."

PQs on Benzodiazapines. How do we get the answers?

"you are better placed than faxfn to make Blairite politicians and academic gurus (and Whitehall manderins?) answer questions."

Open letter to Nexus and THES

"Can Professor Smithers show us the research which shows degrees give employers the gold standard they want?"

Ask Smithers: "Degrees or Psychometrics?"

"academic cheating is a good thing ( if you can get away with it) because it gets you through the educational process to areas of life and work where you can really prove your worth "

MY DEGREE: 3 weeks work, 87 weeks drunk

"A full review by the Department of Health, of policy regarding BDZs is urgently needed and long overdue. With respect, the problem, far from diminishing, is increasing and a dangerous precedent is being set if nothing effective is done."

Letter to the Secretary of State for Health on Benzodiazepine - Susan Bibby

"You can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it's easier to hire a squirrel."

Exams and Qualifications

"we didn't have proper time to spend with residents, so often the chemical cosh was an easy solution"

The chemical cosh

" [research students] learn some from highly paid professors who now teach a way of writing that sounds clever whatever you are actually saying..."

Learn to spell. Forget to think

"they are generally institutionalised, overeducated, one-dimensional characters"

Are graduates up to the job?

"NVQs were a good idea until the academics got hold of them"

A pity about the NVQs

"the real scandal of this New Order is that Project 2000 is an empire created by a self serving clique"

Has nurse training failed?

"so it became an article of faith that awarding enough vocational certificates would somehow transform the nature of the UK economy"

Credentialism

"We increasingly have a situation where younger members of staff (now below 35) cannot solve practical problems."

Are graduates up to the job?

"remember that the open source movement is scoring some goals while 'traditional' software development in the government sector at least, is helplessly scoring own-goal after own-goal."

Open Source for government software?

"now nothing exists unless it can be measured and setting targets"

Where are the solutions?

"should we be spending resources to train students for jobs they will never get?"

Teaching Media Studies

"but I realised that I had probably written more programs in 4 years at school than any of the lecturers had in their lives"

Has IT education failed?

"Train a million hairdressers and we do not create a million jobs."

Does training create jobs?

"Q8. ... was it because
     1. no research done
     2. no interesting results
     3. turkeys don't vote for christmas"

What DO universities do?

"programmes of this kind make almost no difference to the level of unemployment"

The New Deal

"this scheme would simultaneously increase employment and reduce taxation"

Taxes and Jobs

"For years European citizens have been trained and retrained several times in a row with money from the Structural Funds without ever finding sustainable employment."

Training without jobs is pointless - Wim van Velzen, MEP

"according to the government's web site, the New Deal does not seem to have made any difference"

New Deal web site shoots government in foot - Kim Swales

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