Gogwit's Blog

I am a fan of the World at One news programme on BBC Radio 4, and listen to it with interest on holidays and on Saturdays. I’m one of those people who yells at the radio in disagreement, or applauds the speaker as the situation demands (and yes, I know the radio announcer can’t actually hear me!). And the fact is, I usually hear the name ‘Ed Balls’ and prepare to murmur agreement with the shrewd ideas of the Shadow Chancellor.

Unfortunately, I didn’t anticipate the panic that Labour’s slip in the polls has caused in the distant leadership of the my party. Now that a poll lead of 11 points has fallen to 7 points, in what was a temporary fluctuation, the two Eds are issuing a flurry of policy announcements, designed to prove One Nation Labour’s ‘responsibility’ on matters such as the budget deficit and the welfare state…

(satire – I think)

Speaking in House of Lords debate on happy marriage, Justin Welby says cheerful people who never bicker about anything will undermine miserable marriage as basis for rearing children.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has accused the government of attacking the institution of miserable heterosexual marriage in order to promote the rights of people with a happy disposition to get married.

As peers embarked on a two-day debate in the House of Lords, Welby said:

Allowing marriages to be gay, happy and jolly would cause deep divisions in society and goes against our Christian inheritance of having miserable marriages where we constantly fall out with each other over the slightest things.

Welby joined several other peers who criticised the government’s plans to allow happy marriages and protested that neither the Lib Dem nor Tory 2010 manifesto included a pledge to allow cheerful weddings in their manifestos.

In his speech, Welby said:

The ancient…

The launch of The Church pub and restaurant meant that I was back in my favourite part of Birmingham – the Jewellery Quarter. You’ll find my recommendations for bars, pub, cafés and restaurants in the Quarter in a new eating and drinking guide on the Destinations page.

(satire?)

Far-right groups the EDL and the BNP have joined forces this weekend to launch their biggest mobilisation for 30 years against English spelling with more than 50 demonstrations of appalling syntax and grammar planned in towns and cities across England. 

EDL leader Tommy Robinson launched the campaign against correctly written and spoken English earlier today by tweeting he was planning to lay a ‘reef’ at the War Memorial while carrying a banner saying “Sport Are Troops”.

And the BNP for its part started the campaign off with a warning to its members that auntie fashists may try to prevent them from protesting against terawrists, imogrunts and forynas.

Activists from both far-right groups also revealed the official slogan for the campaign:

Not to be outdone by the demonstrations of tortured English by their fellow far-right activists, the UKIP also released a statement in support of the campaign saying all terrorist’s should…

(satire – probably)

David Cameron has held crisis talks at Downing Street after being told of stunning allegations that he has been having a love affair with himself.

For legal reasons, Pride’s Purge cannot disclose the identity of the serving UK prime minister that Mr Cameron is alleged to have been involved with – however we can reveal that when aides told Mr Cameron he’d been shagging himself for the last 2 years he was ‘stunned’, and, according to sources, ‘immediately realised the importance of the story’.

The Prime Minister and his aides also discussed the possible fallout should details of his affair with himself become public – and how such disclosure could ‘blow out of the water’ any major political set pieces planned by the coalition by making his present bit-on-the-side Nick Clegg extremely jealous.

However, Mr Cameron has so far refused to comment on the sensational allegations apart from…

The University news feature on page 28 of the current Private Eye (No. 1341, 31 May – 13 June 2013) focuses on MOOCs – “massive open online courses”. Several prominent universities are offering these courses free of charge to anyone, anywhere with internet access. Many people are only likely to stumble upon these courses if they’re directed to them, but the options seem very attractive in light of rising fees in higher education and a decline in participation by mature students.

The article includes statistics that are surprising in this context and very disappointing if taken at face value.

• Only 10% of people who start short courses with Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) ever finish them. (Source: New York Times)
• There was an average completion rate of just 6.8% for students on 29 MOOCs run by prestigious universities in various countries (Source: Katy Jordan, PhD student at the Open University)
• A mere 2.2% of people who enrolled on a…