This blog is a (much!) less-than-formal outlining of recent travels, events, happenings, thoughts and comments which tend to have some occupational relevance, but are on occasion nothing more than a means of passing the time while waiting for trains, planes & automobiles...

Tuesday 30 March 2010

A distinction without a difference....

After spending the day delivering a critical thinking workshop at St James Park, I've now spent nearly two hours sat on a train parked just south of Newcastle.

Apparently, we (the passengers) aren't entitled to free food and drink because it's not our locomotive that's broken down: it's the one in front!

No wonder the likes of Stephen Byers (recently discredited MP) describe themselves as "like taxis for hire", since not even the most unscrupulous of our politicial elite would be daft enough to risk association with our rail network when they behave like this.

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Springing in the rain

Trying to drive back up the M1 after attending a JISC Project Assembly, I'm now parked in Leicester Forest service station due to the torrential rain which the local Midlands radio describes as "unseasonal".
As today is officially three days into spring, "unseasonal" would appear to be putting it rather mildly.
Unlike the weather, which isn't mild at all.....

Wednesday 3 March 2010

Bearing False Witness is a Highway to Hull...

Watching television in my Humberside hotel room (in the middle of delivering a two-day team building workshop), I've just seen a local BBC news article about a school due to open up the road in September called the "New Life Academy", which apparently claims to be "Ofsted approved".

Now feel free to send corrections, but to my knowledge Ofsted doesn't "approve" anything; it inspects and regulates. A quick Google has produced a website promoting the "Advanced Christian Education system of individualised learning" delivered in a school which is "Ofsted approved, and with an excellent track record".

However, since it won't open until September the New Life Academy doesn't have a "track record" in anything, so it can't possibly relate to the institution and must mean the curriculum instead? Nope, Ofsted doesn't "approve" curricula either.

Therefore, the New Life Academy's Christian Fundamentalists must have considered "Thou shalt not bear false witness" to be simply an option not an instruction and decided to ignore it.

Wonder if they've considered that making false public declarations might lead the inspectors to doubt the contents of their Self Evaluation Process when the day of judgement finally arrives - Ofsted that is; not Armageddon?