Joke of the Day: New Security Levels

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved."Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to a "Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588 whenthreatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get theBastards" They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide". The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability. It's not only the French who are on a heightened level of alert.

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout loudly and excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose".

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Americans meanwhile and as usual are carrying out pre-emptive strikes, on all of their allies, just in case.

And in the southern hemisphere...

New Zealand has also raised its security levels - from "baaa" to"BAAAA!".
Due to continuing defense cutbacks (the air force being a squadron of spotty teenagers flying paper aeroplanes and the navy some toy boats inthe Prime Minister's bath), New Zealand only has one more level of escalation, which is "I hope Australia will come and rescue us".

Australia , meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be right, mate". Three more escalation levels remain:"Crikey!', "I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend" and"The barbie is canceled". So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

Pointless School League Tables

The school league tables have been released today and as usual make for some interesting reading. I note with interest that my school is performing considerably better than it was in my day, though I hope that's not entirely down to my departure.

Still, these are the official government statistics, so will probably be manipulated in such a way to cover up the real positions (or more likely, the real failings of the state sector).

Let's have a look at the methodology.

The rules are detailed here and here, but I'll summarise the interesting bits:

GCSEs:

• Schools are ranked by the percentage of pupils gaining at least five A* to C grades, including the key subjects of English and mathematics, which is the Government’s preferred measure of achievement.
• In the event of a tiebreak, schools are ranked by the average GCSE points score per student. For the purpose of the table, a student with an A* gains 58 points, A = 52, B = 46, C = 40, D = 34, E = 28, F = 22, G = 16.

A Levels:

• Institutions are ranked by the average points score per student. A student gaining an A grade scores 270 points, B = 240, C = 210, D = 180, E = 150.

The first rule there is clearly bloody useless for differentiating either good or bad schools. Sure, you can assume that a school with >95% of pupils getting 5 "good" GCSE passes is quite good, this doesn't give you any of the detail you need when selecting a school for your children. It is completely useless at showing you which school managed to get their children to 5 Cs and which pushed the children harder, until they all got 10 A*s.

Worse still, having this as the Official Government Measure of school success (at this level) means that state schools are severely hampered in their attempts to actually push excellent children to perform as well as they can. If you're an over-worked teacher, with highly limited time to pay attention to the 35 children in your class, are you going to spend your time helping the bright kids move from a B to an A*, or the thick children from a D to a C. Only the latter actually 'counts' as being worth-while in this Government's eyes.

This might explain why for A Levels, schools are graded on average points per pupil. One thing that confuses me as well, is why these point systems seem so different to that which I remember from my youth. As I recall, the old system gave you 10 points for an A and 2 points for an E (at A Level). This looks a lot different.

With the current rules for GCSE, a child who is able to get 2 Es has more points than one who only gets a single A. A D and and E outweigh an A*. The rules are similar for A Level, where again two Es outweigh a single A. A Child who gets 4 Cs is "worth" more to the government than one with 3 As. Under the old system, a child would have to gain 6 C grades to be in excess of another with 3 As. I for one would prefer my child to have 3 As at A Level than 4 Cs. I think most people would agree with that. Most people would , apart from the government.

The effect of this rule is similar to the 5 A*- C ranking. Once again teachers and schools are being pushed by the government into making teaching decisions that are less good for their charges. I have no doubt whatsoever that most teachers and schools do the best they can with the limited time and resources but there will always be cases where they know that it's "best" to persuade an average child to go for more exams, and get lower grades rather than specialise in one less exam and leave school with shining qualifications.

I'm ignoring the usual level of government meddling, such as removing IGCSEs from the rankings. Personally, if the schools that are universally acknowledged as the best in the country stopped taking my "official" exams in preference of another, more rigorous qualification, I wouldn't dismiss them as "fatuous". I would be much more inclined to learn why they dismiss the National Curriculum and what steps they suggest should be taken.

The thing that amazes me is that despite every effort made to boost the "performance" of under-performing children and schools the state sector still can't match the private sector on performance. I count only getting three state schools in the top 50 at A Level (all Grammars by the way) as a pretty miserable failure for the sector. I have no doubt that with rankings that were actually fair, the situation would appear even more dire.

Maybe if the tables were fair, and as a result the government rewarded excellent teaching rather than merely getting the most beneficial set of results the quality of the results from the state sector would improve. Maybe if teachers were able to teach in such a manner that ensured the best results for their pupils, rather than being pulled down to an "acceptable" performance across the board, then the rankings would rise.

As these tables stand the government is demonstrating once again why it has failed the country and excels only in promoting mediocrity.

Met Office Incompetence

I actually started this post a few days ago, after shivering continuously on my walk into work. I was reminded of the Met Office's prediction of a mild winter and the fact that at the start of this cold period the weather forecast seemed to be far too warm compared to what I was actually feeling.

I've actually started using American weather forecasts for my daily life, as they appear to match my observations much more closely than the Official BBC / Met Office forecasts. I've actually been wondering why this is the case.

I swung by the Met Office website a few days back (Damn, I really should have taken a screen-shot!) and the News section was full of stories of "Climate Change". Not the snow. Not the inclement weather. But instead they were focusing on how much warmer it is.

I also had a look at their predictions for 2007, 2008,2009 ,2010. Each predicting, if not the hottest year of all time, then unusually hot weather. Think back over the past few years and tell me if you thought the weather was unusually warm. I doubt you'll find many people agreeing with these predictions.

I had a look at how they get to those predictions. One of the details is "Each January the Met Office, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, issues a forecast of the global surface temperature for the coming year." Well, call me a Cow Sucker and Spin me on a Stick, but aren't the temperature predictions from the CRU pretty much rubbished now? Using models that force warming trends from flat data might explain why you always end up predicting that it is just going to get warmer and warmer.

This actually got me to thinking (rare, I know). Is it possible that the Met Office doesn't just have warming on the brain, but actually in their short-term computer models (For short-term I mean 3-6 months, as opposed to 50-200 years for climate models)? Are they so obsessed with the "Warming Earth" that they are predicting milder Winters and hotter Summers despite all evidence to the contrary.

Of course, these predictions would be useless if you couldn't prove that they were right afterall.

Surprisingly, an alleged Met Office worker has explained how they calculate seasonal temperatures (quoted here and from here, though it's a little tricky to find in those comments)

I'll quote it, just to save you from opening a new tab:
“This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings. And not to reveal too much , the data does show that the average over those 15 readings will make it a very warm reading. You cannot accept that a weeks snow will affect the outcome.”

I'm astounded! I'm flabbergasted! There are so many holes in this "method" that I hardly know where to start. A quick run through and no doubt readers will be able to provide a few more:

1. November? Winter runs from the 21st December! Picking dates in November will probably mean you over-estimate by some measure
2. 15 readings to represent some 90 days? Discarding over 80% of your dataset is hardly good science.
3. Highest readings?!? So we're now not only discarding almost all the data, but we're discarding the data that doesn't agree with our orthodoxy. This is sheer madness.
4. Being able to just use one month of data? Ignoring the points about small sample sizes and November not actually being IN winter, but you can't take your entire sample from one month. I wouldn't be surprised if under this method every Winter was represented by samples from November or March (Afterall, one or other is likely to be warm).
5. Weeks snow?! Even the bloody Guardian suggests that it's the coldest winter for 30 years.

Like I said, I'm sure there are more flaws with this method. But it demonstrates what more and more people are starting to suspect.

The Met Office is so addicted to the "Climate Change" orthodoxy that it is unable to produce usable predictions of future weather. I've got no problem with them producing whatever models they want to, as long as they can still do their bloody job, telling me what the weather is going to be!

Why are the Tories protecting the NHS?

OK, let me lay my stall out here. I like the NHS. I think it was a fabulous concept and generally is staffed by exception people doing their best to provide a fantastic service.

However, I'm not blind to its faults or the faults that have been forced onto it in recent times. Dave has today announced (again) that the Tories will protect all NHS spending.

Maybe the Tories just don't have a bloody clue about how much the NHS budget has increased recently. Have a look at the graph below, showing how the budget has increased (I nicked it from Civitas and added a figure for 2009 from the NHS site and a figure for 2010 from government projections).

During the decade from 1998/99 to 2008/09 the NHS budget grew to over two and half time its initial value. In real terms that's more than a doubling! Can anyone seriously say that we've got value for money for this massive increase? Have waiting times genuinely fallen by half? Are people living twice as long?

The problem here is that Labour have just dumped a vast chunk of cash into the NHS and expected results. They've introduced a myriad of managers to monitor what's happening with the new money and define meaningless metrics to demonstrate "Value for Money". Well, what happens if you give someone a pile of money and tell them to spend it, or they won't get it again next year, is that they will spend it on whatever they can. Not necessarily what's needed, or what's the best value but whatever they can spunk the cash away on.

I find it impossible to believe that the NHS is as efficient this year as they were with half the budget ten years ago. Protecting the budget is pointless, the Tories should be protecting the important services.

Is it be possible to cut the NHS budget by 25% and maintain 95% of the services? Can that £25Bn be better spent elsewhere?

The Tories should be talking to all their smart Management Consultancy friends about where cuts need to be made. The can then present a fully costed view of their proposals (We cut 10% here, 25% here, saving £XBn, of which £YBn is fed into ABC, etc etc etc). This sort of proper planning is seriously overdue in Government Spending and would actually bring a sensible picture of what effects cuts (or investment) will have. In my blog I've shown pretty much every figure that the Government has quoted in terms of what else it will buy. If we know that a 25% cut in the NHS leads to the loss of two hospitals in oversubscribed areas, but enables us to open 120 schools in deprived areas then we'll actually be able to have a debate over which is better for the country.

Of course, at the moment, the Tories are too busy playing politics to actually lead the country. Pity.

£34Bn is less than £174Bn

Was in the canteen for lunch earlier when a colleague remarked

"The Tories have a £34Bn blackhole? Well, that's got to be better than the £170Bn hole that Labour have got us into"

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. I've been on holiday and am finding it somewhat tricky to be angry. I'll try and find something I'm properly angry about to blog about soon!

Gordon: Another pointless political defence decision

What the hell?

We're going to buy 22 more Chinooks? I know Gordon wants to demonstrate how he "gets" Defence all of a sudden (Hey, is there an election coming up?) but why the hell are we buying these?

Lets assume that we need them. If that's the case, we need them now. We need to get more helicopters out to Afghanistan as soon as possible. Instead we're buying these and getting them delivered in 2013. We're planning to start withdrawal next year. By 2013 we'll have much fewer troops in theatre and will probably have enough SH (Support Helicopter) assets in theatre to keep them all happy. Well, reasonably happy anyway. But these will not arrive in time to make the Military situation any better, all they will do is make Gordon look politically better.

But do we actually need them? I don't think so. I believe that Gordon is making a political decision that just demonstrates his complete lack of understanding of how the military works. He has been told that we don't have enough Helicopters in Afghanistan, so has decided to buy some more. Whilst this seems logical at first blush, it isn't. We don't have enough helicopters in Afghanistan because we don't have enough helicopters, it's because we don't have enough crews.

I'm told that you need roughly 5 crews to operate any given Chinook properly. That's 10 trained and qualified pilots for each airframe. We have 262 trained Chinook pilots. That means we can fly about 26 helicopters. We currently have about 46 Chinooks, of which 8 are being converted from the failed Mark 3 standard. We don't have anywhere near enough pilots to even run our current number of Chinooks. These airframes will sit in a hanger for most of their lives, unless we spend a hell of a lot of money quickly training up more pilots. Just to run these additional helicopters, we'll need about another 220 pilots, nearly the same number as we've already got trained. Where will the money come from to double the number of Chinook pilots? Where will the money come from to double the number of engineers and mechanics?

So, they won't arrive early enough and we can't use them when we get them but are we at least going to get a decent deal. Recently I looked at the Canadian purchase of 15 Chinooks for $1.5Bn, with ~$2Bn of support costs for 25+ years.

We're looking to buy 22 Airframes for £1Bn, though the deal hasn't been done and I seriously doubt it will for that amount. The Canadians are paying £61m per airframe, or £143m with support costs. If we can get ours for the same price, we'll be looking to get 16 helicopters, or if we buy all 22, we'll be paying £1.35Bn, a mere 35% over what we're estimating now.

With support costs that rises to £3.15Bn, 315% more than we're estimating. And that's not including Pilots, Mechanics, Engineers, Loadies and the rest of the people we'll need to run them. They'll drive the price up even further.

So, to summarise, Gordon is buying something we won't get soon enough if we were able to use them, which we're not. And he's not even being honest about how much it's going to cost us.

Defence cuts? Not needed!

I'm hearing increasing amounts of news about defence cuts recently, with some suggesting 16% cuts ahead. This will let the Government protect "Front-Line" services, such as the NHS and Education. I might be a little bit old-fashioned (in fact I almost certainly am!) but I'm pretty sure it doesn't get much more "Front-Line" than one of our troops in the mud with a gun.

So, it looks like Defence will be getting hit by ~£6Bn of cuts (more than an aircraft carrier). That's quite a lot of money. If only we had some other areas of spend that we cut first. Lets assume we have to continue to protect schools and hospitals. I'm just going to look at the spend commitments that most people will agree we don't need to be spending cash on.

Gordon has pledged £1.5Bn recently to combat climate change. Actually, what he means is that he wants to give this money to poor countries to help them deal with our post-colonial carbon guilt. OK, that's over 3 years, but we're still looking at £500m each year, or as much as the Banker Tax will raise this year.

We could look at the Department for International Development, who in 2010 has a budget of £7.8Bn, up from £5.3Bn in 2008. From 2013 the government has pledged to increase the budget to 0.7% of Gross National Income, doubling from 2008 (so we're looking at the wrong side of £10Bn / year).

We could actually keep the budget where it was in 2008 (0.36% GNI) and use the £5Bn to help fill the hole in our defence budget.

Gordon has just returned from a trip to Afghanistan and there have been numerous stories recently about how he's finally "getting" Defence. Yet his plan is to cut Defence's budget by much the same amount he's raising our budget for international aid (Yes, the same aid that has sent roughly ~£1Bn to India, a country rich enough to launch their own rockets to the Moon).

Supporting poorer countries is important. But we can only afford to spank Billions around when the country is doing well. Surely the average person in the street would prefer Labour to focus on reducing the Debt (not just the deficit) and cutting the taxes that punish them for working than spending their money on other, increasingly rich countries?

Most of the £6Bn spent on Defence remains in this country, it flows from the government to the contractors then their workers, who spend it, boosting local and national economies and pay tax back to the government again. Can we say the same about International Aid?

How can Gordon justify boosting that budget whilst cutting Defence?