I heard the news today o.k., all about education in Ireland . RTE as usual are overpublicising a statistical article in the Irish Times (where else sez you !) this time concerning 'grind' schools vs ( presumably ) non-'grind' schools . The article , apparently , shows that despite perception to the contrary , non-'grind' schools ( oh heck..,lets call them ordinary schools ) outperform 'grind' schools as far as entry into universities is concerned . Now, this news did not either surprise or for that matter interest me , but what did surprise me was the reaction of the representitive of the teachers' union ,I think his name was John White , to this good news . Instead of simply acknowledging that this was something that he was aware of all along and calmly and in a dignified manner , congratulating his members , he engaged in a most undignified stream of triumphalist guff and verbal somersaults of joy the equivalent of a professional footballer having scored a goal .
Who is this guy ? Does he not realise that we , as tax payers , expect our overpaid teachers to perform ? Why was he so obviously surprised that the 'ordinary' schools came out so well in this statistical report ?
Incidently , when asked how many incompetant teachers were actually fired during the past number of years , he refused to answer , instead turning the question back on the representitive of the 'grind' schools . He used the answer that no teachers were fired for incompetance by the grind schools to somehow bolster his case . So apparently there are no incompetant teachers in his union.........what a wonderful world we live in......
Monday, December 17, 2007
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Kathy French
Maybe the tragic death of a young fashion model will finally jerk our post-Christian -Irish society back to reality.Our free-fall from what used to be called a Christian society , ( assuming that it is still permissible to use that term in our new 'religiously - correct ' one ) , seems to have begun with the 'outing'of the perversion and hypocricy that existed among those members of the clergy in whom we had a naive and absolute trust .
The danger signals have been there for many years , we were becoming a country where , having practically abandoned the practice of our religion we also began to abandon our basic morals and clasped the new 'liberal agenda' to our bosums . Then we began to get rich .
Our new mantra was Gordan Gekko's..."greed is good " and we added our own "money is God".
Having abandoned our faith and morals we then began to work at the edges of the principles of honesty and justice.
Our politicians in power and many marginally-honest business people used the state-owned resources to make themselves rich.As time went on the line between right and wrong was clouded in their minds . They were not bad or evil people in the main , just greedy .
And then came the real gangsters , many of whom felt justified in following a life of crime because they came from a section of society that was marginalised and deprived.
The criminals moved , inevidibly , to the easiest way of becoming rich ....drugs...
All this reached a peak , as we naively thought at the time , with the assination of the journalist , Veronica Guerin , about 10 years ago .
The Gardai were given extra powers , as were the courts ; crime gangs were broken up and criminals imprisoned . As a society we had taken back the control of our state.
But we soon saw that control slip again , either through laziness or ineptitude on the part of what we shall call the ESTABLISHMENT....that is not just the politicians , public servants , other civil and religious leaders , media , business etc , but the lack of co-ordination and moral example from ALL OF THE ABOVE . These people occasionally refer to themselves as 'the movers and shakers', (without meaning to be rude but the only things many of the above are capable of moving or shaking are their bowels or their genitals respectivly .)
We knew for many years that drugs were becoming freely available among certain classes , ironically even at the level of drug abuse there appears to have been class distinction , wlth 'lower classes ' using heroin , and the upper set using cocaine . Media people boasted about use , even politicians , according to some 'exposes ' and at least one well-known businessman has been at it for years and the dizzy-blond journalists in the Sunday papers keep telling us that 'cocaine is everywhere'.
A young girl , in many ways innocent , certainly naive , has died because those older and , supposedly wiser did very little to prevent it .
Kathy French was only one of three young people who died in the past week ,the names of the two young men from Waterford will not be as easily remembered but they also were in their early twenties .
May God look after these young people and those they leave behind.
May those in the establishment be moved to set an example in their own lives and do something to protect our young people from the horrors of drugs.
We need someone of the calibre of Dr.Noel Browne.....urgently !
The danger signals have been there for many years , we were becoming a country where , having practically abandoned the practice of our religion we also began to abandon our basic morals and clasped the new 'liberal agenda' to our bosums . Then we began to get rich .
Our new mantra was Gordan Gekko's..."greed is good " and we added our own "money is God".
Having abandoned our faith and morals we then began to work at the edges of the principles of honesty and justice.
Our politicians in power and many marginally-honest business people used the state-owned resources to make themselves rich.As time went on the line between right and wrong was clouded in their minds . They were not bad or evil people in the main , just greedy .
And then came the real gangsters , many of whom felt justified in following a life of crime because they came from a section of society that was marginalised and deprived.
The criminals moved , inevidibly , to the easiest way of becoming rich ....drugs...
All this reached a peak , as we naively thought at the time , with the assination of the journalist , Veronica Guerin , about 10 years ago .
The Gardai were given extra powers , as were the courts ; crime gangs were broken up and criminals imprisoned . As a society we had taken back the control of our state.
But we soon saw that control slip again , either through laziness or ineptitude on the part of what we shall call the ESTABLISHMENT....that is not just the politicians , public servants , other civil and religious leaders , media , business etc , but the lack of co-ordination and moral example from ALL OF THE ABOVE . These people occasionally refer to themselves as 'the movers and shakers', (without meaning to be rude but the only things many of the above are capable of moving or shaking are their bowels or their genitals respectivly .)
We knew for many years that drugs were becoming freely available among certain classes , ironically even at the level of drug abuse there appears to have been class distinction , wlth 'lower classes ' using heroin , and the upper set using cocaine . Media people boasted about use , even politicians , according to some 'exposes ' and at least one well-known businessman has been at it for years and the dizzy-blond journalists in the Sunday papers keep telling us that 'cocaine is everywhere'.
A young girl , in many ways innocent , certainly naive , has died because those older and , supposedly wiser did very little to prevent it .
Kathy French was only one of three young people who died in the past week ,the names of the two young men from Waterford will not be as easily remembered but they also were in their early twenties .
May God look after these young people and those they leave behind.
May those in the establishment be moved to set an example in their own lives and do something to protect our young people from the horrors of drugs.
We need someone of the calibre of Dr.Noel Browne.....urgently !
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