School vacancies

If parental choice is highlighting poorly performing schools in urban areas due to the large number of surplus places available, when will those schools be shut or staff sacked!?!

With 792,000 surplus school places in England (and Wales?), is it still appropriate to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school as Gordon Brown has threatened promised!?!

Excuses excuses?

How often do benefit claimants use "unacceptable" excuses when missing their appointments to sign-on!?!

Blood money?

Should compensation for rape be determined by the rapist's individual wealth or the seriousness of the crime!?!

What would have happened if Iorworth Hoare had opted for anonymity after becoming a lotto millionaire!?!

The wealth of welfare?

Why is the NHS looking to "build-in" the extra capacity needed at maternity units to cope with increasing numbers of foreign mothers giving birth rather than calling for cuts in immigration to reduce their supply!?!

Does giving birth offer foreign mothers a wealth of welfare benefits and a British passport!?!

Cheese eating bankrupt monkeys?

Is the French Government allowed to threaten action against a hostile take over of Societe Generale under European Union law!?!

Some cynics might suggest the French would ignore any EU legislation conflicting with their national interest!

Careless England

Why are the disabled and elderly struggling to receive social care in England when it's free in Scotland!?!

What are the Conservative Party doing to highlight and challenge this gross injustice!?!

Unhealthy Service?

Why would senior civil servants want the UK to provide medical treatment for an 81-year-old Islamic cleric who defends suicide bombings and the execution of homosexuals!?!

Benefit cheats

What's the point in tracking down benefit cheats if they are not imprisoned or made to pay the benefits back!?!

"The 29-year-old conned benefits staff into paying him nearly £25,000 before his lies began to unravel. "

Despite all that 'tracking' technology, "An immigration officer spotted him at the wheel of a Mercedes wearing expensive clothes with his wife in the passenger seat dressed in a fur coat."

Would the fraud have been prevented if benefit claimants were forced to have biometric ID cards?

Hat tip: The Dumb one

Gordon's jobs

Will anyone want to employ Gordon Brown when he eventually leaves office!?!

"[Tony Blair's] appointment comes less than three weeks after [taking] a similar role with investment bank JP Morgan worth a reported £500,000 a year."

Raltegravir

Will the new HIV treatment Raltegravir be restricted to NHS patients living low risk lifestyles just as certain treatments are withheld from smokers or the obese!?!

Career pregnancies

Are condoms the solution to cutting teenage pregnancies when it's a career move!?!

"Mr Bryant said he had also been told by a teacher that a girl told her she was not trying hard because she planned to get pregnant the next year and would not be returning to school."

Dreaming Arches of Oxford?

Cookery classes to be compulsory
"The move is part of the strategy to tackle obesity, as experts believe 1m children will be obese in a decade."

McDonald's 'A-level' is launched
"Fast-food giant McDonald's has become one of the first firms to offer its own nationally recognised qualifications."

Giving, giving, gone!

Why would any member of the public want to give £3,000 to a candidate in Labour's deputy leadership contest last year!?!

"Bad Apples" at HMRC

What is Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) doing to identify and remove staff that cannot be trusted to maintain the confidentiality of taxpayers' records?

"The system is secure. We do trust our own people but as with all things there are bad apples" - HMRC spokesman.

If online filing is not good enough for MPs or VIPs, why is it good enough for the rest of us!?!

Banking on trouble ahead?

Just as old Generals tend to "fight the last war", banking regulations will never be good enough to prevent the next banking crisis, just the last one!

Afterall, civil servants are bureaucrats, not futurologists!

Striking amount of holidays!

Will teachers be striking for better pay during their six week summer holiday, one of three week long half-term holidays or during the two weeks holiday both at Christmas and Easter!?!

Resignation

Peter Hain has resigned to spend more time with his solarium...

Was he really that worried about an incompetent Police investigation!?!

All for free and free for all!

What prevents NHS hospitals from charging private patients in advance of treatment to ensure they have no bad debts to write off?

Not all overseas patients are charged!

Spendemic

"Five million people, or one in 10 adults, [and one Government] spend more than they earn on a monthly basis".

New IDeas!

Good news for IT contractors working on national identity cards, your contracts have just been extended for another two years!

Would the roll out of ID cards exclusively amongst benefit claimants reduce benefit fraud by more than current Department for Work and Pensions schemes!?!

Cooking the lessons?

Will school children be stealing knives from cookery lessons to avoid school metal detectors!?!

How many school children be able to read the recipes and calculate when different ingredients need to start being cooked if they are all to be ready at the same time!?!

School of Northern Rocks!

How is spending £825m of British taxpayer's money on India's poorest children "protecting British taxpayers"!?!

"He [Gordon Brown] said the money would be used to train 300,000 new teachers and build 300,000 new classrooms, meaning 4m more children would receive an education."

In other news: "UK public borrowing surged last month to show the biggest deficit since records began a decade ago."

Gordon, steady as she sinks!

Real world policing

How many private sector jobs provide a full pension after just thrity years of service and don't base pay levels on "skills or performance"!?!

Knives in the playground

What will the punishment be for pupils found carrying knives into school, a thirty minute detention or is that a breach of their human rights!?!

Holiday commitments

I'll be on holiday until January 20th so the lack of incisive or witty comments on the current state of British politics will continue for another week...

Hain the Olympian?

An Olympian is disgraced, imprisoned for six months and loses five gold medals for cheating the system despite "winning".

A politician is not disgraced, imprisoned or loses his office for cheating the system but has the Prime Minister's "full confidence"!

EU knows!

Is the 5% increase in EU students at British Universities last year when the number of English undergraduates fell 2% because the chances of EU students being tracked down to repay student loans in a couple of years are so low!?!

Ticket tape

Why should a secondary market in entertainment events be any different to the secondary market in stocks and shares?

Passing off failure?

How many schools would be below the "floor target" for GCSE attainment if GCSE pass rates could not be manipulated!?!

When the best school at GSCE level nationally last year was a grammar school, why are no politicians promising to create more of them!?!

Unhealthy Muslims!?!

A little alcohol 'can be healthy'

Low vitamin D heart health risk
"There are concerns that many people, including the elderly, pregnant women and those who wear all-concealing clothing do not get enough of the vitamin."

Beggars can't be choosers

If the stock market currently values Northern Rock at just 89.75p per share, on what basis can hedge fund SRM "warn" the Chancellor that he should only consider nationalisation at 400p per share!?!

"UK taxpayers are now exposed to the troubled bank to the tune of £57bn in direct loans and guarantees."

Thought for the day

Should Police Officers be expected to serve as Prison Officers for ten years rather than retire after just thirty years of service!?!

Their experience would be relevant, they would save the taxpayer a fortune in pensions and would reduce the risk of striking prison officers!

The University of British Life?

Why is the BBC worried about a "fake university" when the foreign students may also be fake overstaying their educational visas without consequence!?!

Benefits of Inaction?

How does Kate Green from the Child Poverty Action Group know that the level of benefit fraud is low when condemning Conservative proposals to reduce the number of benefit claimants?

Fraudulent claimants are caught not counted.

Public sector pay regression?

How many private sector workers knows their pay rises for the next three years!?!

As the economy sours, many private sector workers will get no pay rise at all!

"Mr Darling is expected to argue that the new longer-term agreement will guarantee earnings growth for 5.5 million workers [in time for the next election!?!]"

Sour sixteen?

If young people "can't know what they'll want at age 20 when they're 16" about a military career, why should they be allowed to vote at 16!?!

Student non-visas

Why bother issuing student visas when they can expire without consequence!?!

Are immigration officers allowed to choose which parts of Government legislation they wish to enforce!?!

"He [Border and Immigration Agency, director of enforcement Jonathan Lindley] said the policy on dealing with out-of-time applications was currently under review and asked that officers did not proceed with enforcing any student refusal cases unless "deemed to be a priority".

PS Is that better Mark!?!

Britain - the new Pakistan!?!

Would any 'white' bishop be allowed to say that "Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for people of a different faith or race"!?!

Will such areas become the new 'Pakistan' to Britain's 'India' in future!?!

Where is Dr Michael Nazir-Ali's evidence to support his claims!?!

UK's oldest emigrant

Lived through two World Wars, Ted Heath, Jim Callaghan, the winter of discontent and even Maggie, but after just six months of Gordon Brown......

UK's oldest emigrant sails to NZ

Migrant lessons

What are the economic benefits of allowing immigrants into the UK who have "low levels of literacy" in their own language or "without a secondary education"?

Why employ immigrants when you are expected to pay for everyones English language lessons!?!

Global Fellowship Programme

Will the new £1.4m "Global Fellowship" programme merely become a taxpayer subsidised recrutiment scheme for Shell, HSBC and Tesco amongst others?

"School and college leavers in England are to get the chance to compete for six-week educational trips abroad. "

"It has the support of some businesses, including Shell, HSBC and Tesco, which will show successful students their operations in the chosen countries."

PS Each trip will cost £14,000!!

Sharp Elbowed Middle Classes?

Will Michael Gove's "sharp elbowed middle class parents" use the new league table of gifted pupils to identify the best schools for their little darlings!?!

Can we assume Michael Gove doesn't want the "sharp elbowed middle class" to vote Conservative!?!

Number Crunching

'No two-tier NHS' under reforms.

NHS 'now four different systems'!

Protecting the Public?

"Those figures show that the murder rate is not soaring as a result of the abolition of capital punishment but remains remarkably stable." - Then Home Secretary James Callaghan on the abolition of hanging in the UK - December 1969.

"The rate of homicides peaked in the mid-1990s. In 1995 14.5 homicides were committed per million of population. Since the early 1960s the number of homicides per million population has more than doubled." - Page 15, House of Commons Research Paper, 'A century of change, trends in UK statistics since 1900.'

Kenya

Is Kenya another example of multi-culturalism not working!?!

"Most of the victims were members of the same Kikuyu ethnic group as the newly re-elected President Mwai Kibaki."

"Eldoret, in the Rift Valley, has witnessed some of the worst violence since Sunday's controversial poll and has a history of inter-ethnic tension."

Constitutionally speaking?

Why don't supermarkets need constitutions so that customers know what to expect?

Would Northern Rock have been saved if it had had a constitution!?!