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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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“Don't bother getting a good degree: Now PC brigade says bosses shouldn't just hire best students as it discriminates against average graduates” screams the headline above Emma Reynolds' article in the Daily Mail. She is referring to the government-funded review by Professor Tim Wilson and the report he has delivered to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
 
The Torygraph put it a little more calmly - “Recruitment programmes that filter out candidates who fail gain at least 2:1 degrees run counter to many employers’ duties to hire a “diverse” workforce, it is claimed. It is believed as many as three-quarters of top employers currently require good grades as a minimum threshold for an interview”.
 
Well, that's great. We totally agree. If it's illegal to discriminate against people on grounds of race (unless they're English), or religion (unless they're Christians), or sexual orientation (unless they're straight Anglo-Saxon males), or gender (unless they're men), then why should employers be allowed to discriminate on grounds of ability? We look forward to the day when football clubs no longer pick players who can actually play football, and when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is forced to accept a proportion of applicants who can't actually play the violin.
 
In fact, why not follow this thought to its logical conclusion and abandon all forms of selection? Drop exams in school, forbid schools to stream their pupils, close all special schools for those who are ... shall we say, “less able”, open the universities to everyone regardless of how thick they are (oh, sorry, that's already happened)?
 
And as for the jobs market, how much simpler it would be if employers simply chose people by lot? The adverts could be admirably concise: “Required, CEO for major multinational financial institution, no experience necessary, candidates must be able to accept a six-figure salary and annual bonus of £1m plus”. And think how easy the interviews would be: “Now, Wayne, thank you for applying for the post of General Manager here at Network Rail. Can you tell us a little about your previous experience? You've spent three years flipping burgers and before that you were unemployed for fifteen years? And where did you flip your burgers – was it somewhere in the rail industry? No? I'm sure a kiosk on Southend Pier was just as fulfilling. And were you any good at it? Not really? That's wonderful. Yes, those kiosks can be terribly inflammable. When can you start?”
 
Just think, The GOS could at last fulfil his long-held ambition to play cricket for England. After all, it's his country and he knows which way up to hold the racket, so he's as much right as anyone else. And almost anyone could apply to be Professor Tim Wilson.
 
But to be fair – which is something we always endeavour to be, and which the Daily Mail doesn't understand – when you read some of the Prof's other recommendations, he makes a lot of sense. The Torygraph again ...
 
”... Prof.Sir Tim Wilson ... said that focusing on students from a small number of universities – often leading research institutions – was “too narrow”. He called on graduate employers to carry out a systematic review of screening policies amid fears companies could be missing out on talented candidates from non-traditional backgrounds.
 
Sir Tim, former vice-chancellor of Hertfordshire University, also suggested that companies should make greater use of new-style graduate report cards that mark out students’ achievements in a range of areas including extra-curricular activities in addition to raw degree grades.
 
The conclusions are among a total of 54 recommendations made as part of a wide-ranging analysis of the relationship between universities and the world of business. His report – delivered to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – admitted that many businesses had concerns with graduate skill levels, particularly poor “commercial awareness”.
 
The review recommended:
• Allowing every full-time undergraduate to have the chance of an internship during their degree course, with universities using cash from the Office for Fair Access to fund students through unpaid placements;
• Lifting strict controls on student places to expand the number of four-year “sandwich courses” – in which undergraduates spend up to 12 months in industry – to boost graduates’ employment prospects;
• Introducing modules on “employability skills” as part of standard degree courses to ensure students can apply their knowledge in the world of work;
• Allowing consortiums of further education colleges to award their own two-year foundation degrees in response to the employment needs of local communities.
 
Figures published last week by the Office for National Statistics showed that almost a quarter of university leavers were unemployed last year. The race for jobs at Britain’s biggest employers is already hugely competitive, with data released last year showing that 83 graduates were vying for every position.
 
Sir Tim’s report said: “A filter that limits recruitment to a particular set of universities, a 2:1 standard and defined UCAS entry threshold to the corporate sector are not uncommon requirements, but it has flaws”.
 
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said the world's best universities were building deeper links with business, adding that the Government would now "carefully consider" the report's recommendations.”

 
What neither Vince Cable nor Professor Wilson have said is that the mess they're trying to tackle is down to the last Labour government. To put it in a nutshell, far too many young people are going to university. Many of them aren't suited to it and would be better off with apprenticeships, most university degree courses aren't at all useful, standards have had to be reduced with the introduction of ridiculous degree courses like “Surf Science and Technology”, “Stand-up comedy”, “International Football Management” and “Stained Glass Window Studies”, and far too many of them are leaving university for a life of shelf-stacking and a mountain of debt.
 
As we've said before, Labour really believed that because most successful people from posh families go to university, all they had to do was send everyone to university and they'd automatically become successful and posh.
 
How odd, then, that they didn't apply the same thinking to schools. You'd have thought that if successful people from posh families go to public schools, the obvious move would be to make state schools as much like public schools as possible. Instead, they did the opposite – attacked grammar schools and did their damnedest to squash everyone into the same lowest-denominator, comprehensive mould.
 

 
The GOS says: Not that there's anything wrong with comprehensive schools per se. I taught in several, and they're perfectly OK so long as those running them recognise what all sensible people and very few Labour politicians do – children and young people are not all the same, and don't all need the same things.
 

 
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