Are the Guardian's League Tables Nuts?

This morning I woke up early and looked at the Gaurdian website. Whilst idly browsing I came across their university league tables. To my surprise APU came seventh in Maths and UEA 30th.

Thought it would be a good idea to see how this was arrived at so tried to look at the HESA statistics. The problem is that you have to pay for the more detailed data. So decided to look at APU's website. Under courses I typed in Mathematics and to my surprise there were no entries!

So where does all this mysterious data come from? Any ideas?

After the flood

We now have the election results in the UK. Interesting, of those voting only 36% voted Labour and thre leaders say this is an overwhelming victory. What is actually means is that 64% of the electorate can't stand them.

I must admit to voting Labour, but I now feel ashamed, unfortunately the right wing leopard does not change its spots even when humiliated in public. For, surely, to get only 3% more that the Tories under Michael Howard is humiliation, and I would suggest, defeat.

Why do I say right-wing, because evrthing they are proposing would sit happily in the manifesto of almost any right wing party in Europe, though a bit extreme for some of them. They trumpet their proposals as meaning more choice BUT what it means is more competition, and who suffers with competition those who can't compete. When a company goes bust, some people lose their money, a small business, the owners lose BUT when it is a large comapny, the workers, the customers and the small businesses who are owned money. It can be sad but not life-threatening.

Now transpose the situation to a school or hospital! It doesn't take much thought to see that those who will suffer wll be the less able left in failing schools or hospitals because competition will drive them out of business. Of course since schools and hospitals take a long time to build and expand, whilst the fialng institutions fail people will still have to go there, but would they be proper places to go to.

Again the whole approach leads to managerialism, a hang over from the eighties and Thatcherism. There wa sa wonderful example today, discipline is schools, more training for teachers and more power for heads. My own view is that it should be the other way round, more tarining for heads and more poer for teachers. Of course Tony Blair supports such plans because he, after all, is the manager, so he needs more power and the cabinet needs more training.

I could go on and on picking to pieces the Queen's Speech but what is the point, the one thing you cab be sure of is that Blair won't listen and his bunch of craven fools, he calls his cabinet give in to him.