Dispatches – do you know what’s in your breakfast? (warning rant imminent)

 

This was possibly the most ridiculous show I have seen in a long time and I can get Sky 1 I know ridiculous. It could be summed up in three sentences Do you know what’s in your cereal? Want to? Read the label. Instead it went on for a hour about how evil the cereal companies were for trying to hide all the horrible salt and sugar content of things like ‘Frosties’ now forgive me for being a little cynical but when I open the packet and icing sugar falls out with the product I don’t think to myself hmm I wonder if this is healthy. Failing that these day’s they even write it on the front of the sodding packet as well. Now admittedly some of the points they make about the packaging being misleading is true – Special K does brand itself a healthy breakfast and granted it does contain a hefty level of sugar but again all this is declared if you had bothered to read the packet!

 

Moving on from their insane start to the way the show was put together. Firstly they state that the market leading brand maintains that they add salt and sugar because people like the taste, so they do a taste test in a shopping mall. From the results we are show we are supposed to believe that people actually prefer the shop own brands that have less of these things. Right all well and good, but then they go on to rant and rave about the fact that the same market leader is advertising their sugary wears to children who ‘prefer the sweeter taste’ hang on back up, if people don’t like ‘em what the problem? Let them advertise because the flavour of the others it better right? And surely if on the whole the general population really did prefer the less sweet, less salt equivalents then the leading brand in house testing would have shown this and they would save themselves a fortune by NOT adding it???

 

This is not even mentioning the insane supposed scientific test they ran on a ‘everyday’ family in which 3 children are forced to substitute their cereals for ’sugar and salt free’ breakfast while mum starts drinking Atimel and dad takes up the drop a jean size in two week challenge. First off who ever decided on the substitute breakfasts is an idiot if they think that either porridge or eggs have no salt or sugar in or bread for that matter coupled with that the porridge was certainly not made right no wonder the kids didn’t want to eat it! Onto dad, who was eating less then 1000 calories a day and surprise surprise didn’t lose weight. The average calorie requirement for a male on an average day is 2500 by eating less then half that the body will go into starve mode and conserve any calories it can. Something any dietician would have told them, had they bothered to consult one. Now the show used this as proof of ‘all these things are lies’, so what did they do when mum said she felt better on the Actimel? ‘well there’s no real proof anyway so it’s probably something else’. Now don’t get me wrong I have about as much faith probiotics as I do in sticking a toad on my head for headaches and seaweed as a cure for cancer but the point is you can’t have it both ways – you cant say look the observational evidence on one person says what we want so we’ll use it and on the observational evidence on the other say what we don’t want so we’ll ignore it that’s bad science. Not that there was any good science in the whole thing. If they wanted to prove their point about probiotic why weren’t they asking the company what this ‘Scientific proof’ was? And then testing it? Why didn’t they take a white blood count at the beginning of the two weeks and then at the end if they were looking at immunity? Why didn’t they run fitness tests? And why didn’t they insist that mum keep the rest of her diet the same during the time period instead of suddenly starting to eat healthy? Because the sudden influx of fruit and veg might just might also have had an effect.

 

In the interests of fairness there was one point it made that while I was aware of I will acknowledge is not in the public domain and that is that companies can buy approval from things like the Heart charity to put approval stickers on their products. These stickers do not necessarily mean that the product lowers cholesterol merely that it may not harm those with high cholesterol.

But seriously folks just GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR *rant over*

You can’t make this stuff up…

Seriously, schools been in (avec kids) for two weeks now and in that time, the students have started to rip the top button off their shirts so they don’t have to do them up. The Head’s solution ‘well we bought cotton and buttons so the LADIES in the office can sew them back on. Our solution, the kids tore them off so they can bloody well sew them back on and we are not ladies, we’re woman and we do far to much work for you anyway ya sexist bar*d… !

According to said Head ‘there are too many seagulls on the school field’, his solution to go round with a little picker and pick up after the kids thus getting rid of the seagulls. Kid’s solution drop litter (when they never used too) and run a book on how long before in their terms that overpaid glorified cleaner (the Head) comes along and picks it up. Our solution: walk behind kids and shout at them until they pick it up and put it in the bin.

By the order of the Head – all students will be ‘sorted’ into chapters each with a predefined colour… except all the uniforms are identical, so the kids are not really aware of it. Kids solution: scrawl HOGWARTS in 2ft high red letters on the brand new patio outside his office. Our solution try to stop laughing long enough to breathe.

At the insistence of the Head: Lunchtime meals should be displayed on the internet for all to see. Our solution – you want it you do it. His solution to announce to the world that the options for lunch are chicken fajitas of VAGGIE fajitas. Our and the kids solution, don’t tell him just laugh manically every time it appears.

Head (and the sponsors to be fair) freeze the budget so we have no petty cash, so no dissection meats, no garlic or onions for plant sides, no stopwatches or thermometers for GCSE ISA exams. Our solution, to express the science syllabus through the medium of dance.

Seriously this guy thinks he can run the school??? The kids are running a bet on how long he’ll last. I might just have to have a punt on that. ..

Supoermarkets Seasons

I have to wonder who decides on the merchandise that supermarkets put into their obligatory ‘seasonal’ isle. For the most part what is there makes some sort of sense, even  supermarkets put into their obligatory ‘seasonal’ isle. For the most part what is there makes some sort of sense, even if they do start displaying the Christmas wears in September (which leads to three months of me squawking ‘IT’S NOT CHRISTMAS’) and I know for a fact – having worked in a supermarket that the first Easter Eggs arrive on boxing day. Even so, giving the little foibles of the commercial industry try to encourage to spend, spend, spend … or possibly remind us that there is a celebration coming up so save now – someone please explain to my why my local branch of Tesco has a big seasonal isle, with a third dedicated to bar-be-ques and the rest filled with nappies and babies bottles. Is it suddenly the season to procreate? Was there some memo 9 months ago I missed that said that this September was THE time to pop a sprog? Why wasn’t I in on this?? and more to the point what is the name of the season?? I don’t understand are we in ‘recession time’ where people came up with uh hem cheaper forms of recreation then the cinema? Or possibly ‘economic crisis holiday’s’ someone tell me! I missed this… or maybe it’s just because the schools are going back, and girls that planned ahead have come up with a cunning plan not to return to class. I certainly hope it’s not done to give them ideas!

School’s in for autumn

School’s in for autumn

And don’t I know it. I’m not sure what had been the most useless and mind numbingly boring… the endless meetings, the computer system that doesn’t work or the sheer annoyance that the new head thinks that it’s 1984 and he is Big Brother. Every step we take every move we make he’ll be watching us… because obviously we can’t do the sodding job and haven’t been doing it for years.

He has been making two steps forward three back for the entire of the past two days, listening to him talk is like being covered in a mucus layer from head to tow and leaves you feeling like you’ve caressed a slug. I truly feel the need to bath in acid after being in the same room as him. He also has no concept of what is and what is not humanly possible. From the obvious statement of ‘all classroom doors will be left open’ because a. the students won’t distract each other and b. they don’t have ‘fire door keep shut’ stapled all over them this is a flawless plan.. to the more interesting ‘I want you to be on duty at the gate and on the other side of the (3 ARCE!!!!) school to greet your class at the same time… he didn’t take too kindly to having pointed out that until someone arrived with a Tardis or the invention of human cloning this was in fact impossible, so maybe he should prey for a miracle as he was that way inclined.

He also didn’t like the answers we gave to ‘what is the purpose of life’ apparently he disagrees with 42, and that the man in the picture on top of the world was just looking for a good place to jump off.

Nor did he like the implication that the pic of the hands holding baby feet (below) was a crime scene photo used in the trial of the baby dismemberer. He apparently missed the sense of humour queue, come on we had been in meetings for 5 hours by this point for f’sake!

So what had we learnt at the end of this two day inset? We learnt that the students didn’t have uniform because they hadn’t ordered enough of the right size off the internet supplier, that the new school looked remarkably like the old one with a coat of white paint, the new computer system does not work (I’m shocked are you?) and that removing all the old room numbers and coding them all classes, labs and support room in a way that makes no sense to anyone who can’t work an enigma machine not only confuses the students when they arrive (and the will be confused) but also the staff. All the time wondering why you couldn’t just go plan your lessons in the sanctity of your own room, providing you could find it.

Constructive huh? And to cap it all I can’t work from home as the portal to let me in doesn’t work… oh well it’s only teaching without prepping – how hard can it be?

I do not have swine flu!!!!!

Nor do I intend to get it. I have a cold, plain and simple and no matter what people at work say I’m not the ‘latest victim’ this is insane! Since it was first announced that we had the sodding thing in the school last Monday we have by percentage more staff off then students. Now listen up people when the 15 year olds in year 10 that can’t spell their own name and think that fart noises are this funniest thing since the invention of the dribble glass are making more sense then you are it’s time to step back and evaluate your behaviour.

Swine Flu has become the ultimate Boogie man, and I am frankly sick of it, (OF it not FROM it). Anyone who sneezes has it; you didn’t wipe that keyboard down oooh dodgy you don’t know what you might get. You ran out of tissue in your room well you better replace them quick else you might catch it… I have a better idea why don’t we make the taps in the toilets work and provide the kids with soap – one of them surely must know how to use it.

I like the graffiti found on the desk in the exam hall ‘it’ll be Honey Badger flu next…’ The sad thing is they’re probably not far off the mark.

On a happier note…

Something I found out at work recently…

I love labels, no seriously I do. It’s not that there particularly exciting or anything it’s just that there is something particularly satisfying about using the Dynamo label maker connected to the office computer. You boot up the software, type in your desired label, hit the print button and hey presto a label pops out, no fuss no muss. I think the reason we – my entire department that is – loves making labels is that it’s the only bloody thing in the entire school that works efficiently and does what you want when you want and doesn’t ask you to fill out a form in triplicate before considering your proposal before getting back to you a week later with another form that tells you where you went wrong filling out the first one.

Seriously I love labels.

Rain drops keep falling on my head…

And I wouldn’t mind except i’m still in my house. In the past two weeks two isolator valves in the kitchen have given way – but of course not at the same time so you pack the tools up only to have to get the whole lot back out again, the washine machine and dishwasher had an argument over the shared drain and came to the agreement neither would use it and poured the water all over the kitchen, the taps in the bath leaked through the new kitchen ceiling and just when i though i’d fixed it all… the roof leaks horray! striaght through the old plumber and startted to merrily drip all over the new boiler.

Just what you need at 10 at night, so I go down into the kitchen to hide from the rain – note self invest in umbrella hat it’s cheaper then replacing the ceilings – to find that the washer dryer is not longer a washer dryer but a washer flash little red lights that mean NOTHING and refuse to do anything.

So I go online to find out what’s wrong, well it seems the self cleaning filters are not self cleaning (what a surprise) and because Hotpoint recon they are, the instructions don’t tell you where they are or how to clean them. So off to the web posts I go, only to find that you need to pull out the machine, remove the top, reach under the pipes and disconnect the filter, clean it and put the whole thing back together again. You kow what bugger it that can wait until i’m on holiday oh what an exciting life I lead.

You know having delat with this lot the school being struck by lighting really doesn’t seem that big a deal…

Hot Under the Collar

Hot Under the Collar.

Today, due to a distinct need to fit something other then a kitchen, my uncle started to strip out and fit my new boiler and hot water system. Just once I’d like one thing – just the one to go smoothly! What actually happened was that we discovered was the upstairs water tank was leaking (which at least accounted for the dubious smell emanating from the airing cupboard) and there was enough crud in the pipes to fill in my pond…. Which is more impressive when you realise there is 10 tonnes of water in the pond. Apparently someone at some time had tried to flush the system but had only succeeded in pushing all the crap into the tank, which is a perfect place for it I’m sure. Still after a lot of cursing when it was discovered some moron had fitted the tank and then built the cupboard round it, my uncle scored first blood and removed the water tank…

Unfortunately this revealed what we previously thought was water damage that had bowed the ceiling below was actually bent because the aforementioned moron had used around two buckets of sand and cement to secure the floo into the cupboard from the kitchen. I asked myself what complete and total idiot with no common sense would keep pouring concrete onto plaster board?!!?! And then I remembered it was installed by British Gas…

So some hours and a Cole chisel later he’d freed the floo and would you know it the kitchen ceiling looks a lot better! This lead to the last interesting discovery of the day – and I use the word ‘interesting’ as a metaphor, because the people who had done such a wonderful job so far of installing this system had gone on to try and connect a 22mm pipe to a ¼ inch pipe with just solder… a bit further up where this had failed they had tried to use a compression fitting… further on still they had just meshed the two together and hoped for the best… I can’t imagine why it’s leaking. Again it’s been removed and put on display in the ‘how not to do it’ category.

Fun this DIY stuff I can’t wait for tomorrow.

On the plus side we cleared the pond and you can see the fish!

Worst week ever

Worst week ever.

And I’m not talking about Swine Flu – can anyone say global over reaction??? A flu that’s killed a grand total of 44 people see here . Shocking, really does anyone know how many people died in car crashed this week? I’m sure it was more then 44, or to put it another way how many people in the UK were killed by standard flu last winter? But I digress.

The reason it was the worse week ever is due to work. The new boss has had my department chasing their tails and most people up for interview since Monday and it sucks for everyone. Yesterday four – yes four members of the department were up for the same job, so no tension running there then. After a long and hard day they were told they would have to wait until today to find out the outcome. This is unheard of in teaching, only to be told at the end of the day that no one had it and they have given the position to some one else entirely!!!! – the current theory being that it was the unsuccessful candidate from earlier in the week for the head of department job. Way to make people feel valued. It also helped that we were told that we would have a dress code next year. Can’t wait for that one *puts away satanic symbols* because we apparently can’t dress appropriately without being told….

To cap it all off I got all may reports bounced back – that’s 60 of them because they didn’t like I told kids to write conclusions to practical’s apparently I should specify to which practical I want to conclusions written – but that’s sort of the point I want them to write conclusions to ALL OF THEM! They also wanted me to not have an identical target for all the kids – really so some of them should review their work because it enforces their learning but apparently it won’t do that for all of them. Honestly this just proves that the people in management haven’t been teaching for a long time and are complete morons, because I have so much free time to do this nothing else matters of course, why bother actually teaching kids, who cares that the department air can be cut with a knife so long as the management is happy.

Fucking morons.

Another POV….

Good girls keep diaries, (or in this case blog posts) because the bad ones don’t have time….

This is because they’ve made the tragic error in judgment of buying a house. and have to be driven to writing new post by some external factor. The external factor in this case being my housemate’s recent blogs (See here). I feel it’s only fair that I retort.

So in order

‘Say it with lead’

What more could a girl want then 16lbs of lead on a chain, I’m sure if anyone tries to rob the place it can do triple duty as an anti-burglar device. It’s doing a remarkable job as a doorstop right now, believe me the kitchen doesn’t open unless you intend it too!

‘Magnolia’

I will say this once and once only (well type as I’ve said it a lot recently) I like duct type, it’s brilliant stuff and at 2am I challenge you to come up with a better solution to stop the lights falling out the ceiling and landing on your head, quite possibly taking a large part of the plaster with it because lets face it the guy who previously lived here had the best of intentions but no clue how to do DIY – unless that stand for destroy it yourself.

Duct rocks – it adds character unlike the rather bland Magnolia palace you have. At least I didn’t NAIL my net curtain up!

‘Influence’

I make our count 2 Pan Galatic Gargle Blasters each… admittedly that’s 2 litres each but nowhere does anyone state what quantity the two should be in. You say 6 little ones I say 2 big ones, and as for being a bad influence it’s not my vodka in the freezer….

‘Busy busy’

Making anything other then dust from ‘free from’ stuff is just on this side of impossible and it was good J

And as for the toffee its genius I’ve never seen my brother that quiet for that long, even if it does make like glue to the roof of your mouth and then attack your teeth with the ferociousness that hasn’t been seen since the time of the T-Rex. Only to lull you into a false sense of security by going liquid if you stop chewing and then to gum right back up if you start. Guaranteed to make even PhD physicists drool like babies (and yes this was tested and no I couldn’t breathe I was laughing too hard).

‘Orange’

The syrup is nice and I’m used to it *sigh* at some point I’ll pick up some dairy free ice cream not the lard people pass off as ice cream and try it on that! Yum!!

As for the hydrophobic fish I’d be happy if it only jumped out the once but this continual suicide attempt is getting rather annoying – to the point where we have incarcerated the fish in net (ha jump out of that!) now it just gets a headache!

‘Guess the word’

This book only exists to prove that however dull and sad you think your life is there are in fact people who are duller and sadder then you are. Not only that, if it weren’t for the fact they had to be in the open air to conduct their – for want of a better word – research you would swear that they had never been outside in their dull and boring lives. These are the men in fact when approached by a life form in a dress have to be inform that it is in fact a ‘woman’. Not that this is ever likely to happen mind because these people don’t even have TVs…. Or radios…. They do have lots of pens in a pocket protector and I marvel that none of them are actually called Dwayne Dibly.