Dream School?

British people will no doubt be aware that chef-cum-Superman Jamie Oliver, who in earlier series has saved us all from the evil Twizzlers of Turkeia, who zoomed down from outer space to defile our children and destroy the nation's health, only to be vanquished by the Crepe Crusader, has recently turned his attention to the failing education system, and has taken to trying, in his own inimicable way, to solve its problems.

Oliver's plan basically rests on the idea that celebrities can teach subjects they claim to know about far better than so-called professionals. Predictably, however, most of them were catastrophic failures - David Starkey alienated the entire section of the population that Oliver had earlier tried unsuccessfully to humiliate and segregate by calling a boy "fat", and then proceeded to carry on with the ensuing argument for so long that I had to check he wasn't actually one of the children. After all, as Connor reminded us, he is "only four foot tall". Alastair Campbell gave splendid advice as to how to follow in his footsteps: to become a lying, sycophantic apologist for a war criminal, and, rather imaginatively, simultaneously aroused the homophobic sentiments of some of the class, leading to an outright brawl of words of the kind not seen on Channel 4 since Brookside was cancelled.

As far as I can tell, the kids seem about as interested in this scheme as Nick Clegg is in listening to the electorate, judging by the amount of time they spend on their gadgets, hiding away from doing any work and wearing the now-patented gormless hangdog look that has become so associated with Clegg over the last year. This whole programme seems like a propaganda exercise for Michael Gove's Free Schools project. No, you don't need specialist or trained teachers, any old C-list celebrity will do! I can only imagine the sequels:

Jamie's Dream Hospital, where Hugh Laurie carries out emergency heart surgery while Ducky Mallard sets 80% of the commissioning budget...

Jamie's Dream Forestry Commission, where TV's Robin Hood Jonas Armstrong carries out the demanding task of keeping ramblers off land that is rightfully theirs while Bear Grylls and Ray Mears show us all the proper way to tend to 5% of our national area...

Jamie's Dream Foreign Policy Crisis Unit, where Ross Kemp solves the Libyan problem by having a mealy-mouthed shouting match with Gaddafi from the top of a Chinook while Jack Osbourne tells the search-and-rescue operatives of the day how to correctly throw yourself out of a plane at thirty thousand feet.

(Although in that case I still might consider them over William Hague.)

There is a real issue here. We seem to have been sucked into the vacuum of assuming that "celebrity" equates to "worthy", that fame and fortune and everything that goes with it are substitutes for training, hard work and a real focus on doing your job properly. In their continuing war against the state and what it stands for, the coalition government seem to be following a very dangerous paradigm that suggests that anyone who actually does a job for money (in the capitalist tradition) is some kind of scrounger off the state - hence why we apparently need to cut all the real staff at libraries and post offices and run the bleedin' things ourselves, in our spare time. I'm not sure whether this is stupidity or arrogance, because the two are never too far apart within the Tory party.

It seems that in this age of 24-hour news and instant gratification, we only want stories that can be tied up neatly into bundles. No-one wants to hear about the teachers who work day-in, day-out to slowly improve the standards of less talented kids in their schools - we'd all much rather some televisual superhuman waltzed in at the eleventh hour and saved the day with moments to spare. So this is the real message of Dream School for me, and I hope the producers will be honourable enough to make this their ultimate conclusion too. Very little outside the goggle box happens in a scripted order, with climaxes before the ad breaks and a neat conclusion at the end. Life is messy and inconsiderate, and so our TV companies, and, more importantly, our elected representatives, must stop looking for elegant and quick solutions to our nation's woes and concentrate on what really matters - helping people to live their lives in a better, fairer and more understanding society.

CREDITS: The idea for this comes from Charlie Brooker's Guardian column and commentators thereon. It's alright.

30 Day Song Challenge

One interesting way to learn things about people, so I'm told, is to look at what music they like. With that in mind, on FB (Visigoth as I am, I do use it) I'm doing this 30 day song challenge. I'll post up the songs here, partly so I don't forget, but also because it will be jolly illuminating, I hope.

Day 01 - your favourite song. Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade of Pale.
Day 02 - your least favorite song. The Gummy Bear Song.
Day 03 - a song that makes you happy. The Monkees - I'm A Believer.
Day 04 - a song that makes you sad. Miles Davis - Blue in Green.
Day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone. Elvis Costello - Red Shoes.
Day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere. Buena Vista Social Club - Chan Chan.
Day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event. Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Day 08 - a song that you know all the words to. Devo - Jocko Homo.
Day 09 - a song that you always sing along to. Hank Green - A Song About An Anglerfish, a.k.a. The Anglerfish Song Regarding the Human Mentality In Respect To How to Interpret Perpetually Felt Emotion While Educating You on the Subject of Anglerfish.
Day 10 - a song by someone you want to see live. Villagers - On A Sunlit Stage.
Day 11 - a song from your favorite band. Led Zeppelin - Misty Mountain Hop.
Day 12 - a song from a band you've just discovered. Lone Wolf - The Devil And I.
Day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure. 10cc - The Wall Street Shuffle.
Day 14 - a song from an artist you think none of your friends have heard of. The Mountain Goats - Love Love Love.
Day 15 - a song that no-one would expect you to love. Kenickie - Nightlife.
Day 16 - the song that contains your favourite lyrics. The Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words.
Day 17 - your favourite instrumental. Wipe Out - The Ventures.
Day 18 - a song you wish you heard on the radio. Television - Marquee Moon.
Day 19 - a song from your favorite album. The Beatles - She Said She Said.
Day 20 - a nostalgic song. The Kinks - Days.
Day 21 - your favourite cover. Traffic - Feelin' Good.
Day 22 - a song you'd listen to in your car. Driftless Pony Club - House of 1982 Built Like A Ship. 
Day 23 - your favourite song with an animal in the title. The Bees - Chicken Payback.
Day 24 - your second favourite song with an animal in the title. Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.
Day 25 - a song you play air guitar to. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb.
Day 26 - a song that makes you laugh. Tom Milsom - Catsongs II: Livia Deliberated.

Day 27 - a song with a great music video. Ultravox - Vienna.

Day 28 - a song that you wish you could play on an instrument. Focus - Hocus Pocus.
Day 29 -  a song that reminds you of your country. PJ Harvey - The Last Living Rose.
Day 30 - a song that is worthy of being last in the list. Simon and Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence.

Introduction to antmoorfield

Hello world. I'm takin' you on, y' hear me?

And with that out of the way, maybe I should talk about myself like the conceited egotist everyone seems to be on this entity we like to call the Web of the Wide World, which sounds suspiciously like a Christian popular hymn / sermon. "Oh Lord, blesseth thou the nerds that do inhabit this place. Give them eyes to see that their emotional retardation, paling skin and sexual starvation affecteth not their ability to be human beings or to engage in civil society. And keep a place in heaven for lolcats."

OK, so I'm in my final year of school, furiously studying to get to Cambridge uni (at least when I'm not wasting countless hours on youtube watching people talk about their oft-insignificant lives, in a bizarre parody of communication which suggests only that the plum species may in fact be human beings' evolutionary goal. Oh, we're getting there).

Things I like: comedy novels, music that doesn't celebrate hegemonic capitalism or war, comfy chairs, obscure things that no-one else has heard of, cats, Harry Potter, oranges, literature, reasoned political debate, sociology and the usual peace, love and mutual harmony between all people.

Things I don't like - irrationality, music that celebrates hegemonic capitalism and/or war, those awful chairs that have holes in the back which as far I as can see can only be used for oh-so-amusing fart pranks, blind adherence to something, romantic fiction, Jeremy Kyle, Glenn Beck, Rupert Murdoch, the institution of monarchy and when people are cocks.

I suppose I'll try and update this blog with something interesting once in a while, at any rate.

Give it a whirl, at least....?

antmoorfield

PS. Oh, and I was kidding about the oranges. Me and green apples have a thing goin' on.