Stunning weather!

This weekend the weather has been stunning! In fact, most people at the marina think it's been the best day of the year!

Friday evening gave us an amazing sunset and sky...

....with the rest of the weekend looking like this....

Still, cloudless blue skies with a very hot sun meaning a mass exodus of boats leaving for the weekend with a few venturing out to chance it for a week or more and equally as many people visiting their boats to simply sit outside or by the pond and use their boat as a base to enjoy the rolling countryside and the incredible array or colours beginning to be present in the surrounding trees and hedges.

As for me - I mowed the grass, (we have our end of season BBQ coming up soon and so we want to keep on top of the grounds,) and spent some time in Little Foxwood. Talking of railways, yesterday I had a loud bang and real smoke coming out of my City of Sheffield! Somehow the sound module managed to blow up. A quick phone call confirmed that it was still under warranty and so I took it back to the shop to be sent back to Hornby for repairs.

Becoming a habit!

Not an everyday sight on my way home from work but I have to say it's becoming increasingly common!

Driving home from work the other day and I had to brake hard as my peripheral vision caught sight of a car on its side in the canal just up from All Oak's Wood.

You can see how it got in by looking at where I parked my car to photograph it. Obviously stolen and festooned with 'Police Aware' tape the 2004 Ford Focus Zetec was obviously crashed and then pushed into the canal in an attempt to get rid of all evidence. Let's just hope the little delinquents didn't succeed and are soon rounded up, (probably only to receive a little telling off by some pompous and out of touch QC!)

It was gone by the following day so someone must have received the bad news about their pride and joy.

Fed up with quangos!

I don't know about anyone else but I am utterly fed up with Government quangos that have no purpose! My brother mentioned the frustrations of a rediculous canal related one in his last post relating to the Ashby Canal.

Here's my contribution relating to an educational one - The General Teaching Council, (no link given as they don't deserve it!) Huge amounts of money have just been spent setting up a Code of Conduct for teachers; a sort of playground charter for the people who manage the playground. I have just emailed them to ask them to clraify their status and the following extract sums up my frustrations.

I have scoured their website and contributed to the consultation of the 'code', (all of my comments were completely ignored incidentally,) and I am still totally at a loss as to what exactly the GTC does to enhance the professionalism of teaching. It would now seem quite evident that the GTC is yet another pointless Labour government initiated quango set up to further undermine the professionalism of the status of teaching in any way possible with little, if any, positive benefit to teachers or educators. Furthermore, subscription towards our own demise as a profession is forcibly taken from our salaries and registration is compulsory. I would suggest that the implementation of the new ‘code’ actually has implications that could soon be tested through the human rights courts and certainly leaves the readers and enforcers open to the widest interpretations that will inevitably lead to enforcement abuse.

I understand that the GTC has to fight to confirm the validity of its existence, indeed in this current economic climate the creation of any employment is an admirable notion however, having given the GTC evaluative time since its conception, it would now be quite apparent that its existence and worth is, at best totally pointless and at worst highly corrosive and detrimental to the last vestiges of teaching as a noble ‘profession’.

The biggest mistake the GTC do is to stamp 'GTC' across all the mail they send out to teachers - it gets put straight in the bin without even being opened - including my membership card! When they were set up, there was such an outcry amongst teachers that we all refused to pay our subscriptions - they now have a law that simply extracts the money from our salaries and there is nothing we can do about it!

I know there is a medical equivalent and has been for some time - perhaps someone from the medical profession could tell me how it is perceived for them. I guess I would have doubts as to the validity of that one too but that's not my field so I can't comment; all I know is that the GTC does nothing positive for my profession whatsoever!

RANT OVER!!