McJob Qualifications

Today's announcement that some businesses will be offering training that will end up with A-level equivalent qualifications came as a bit of a surprise.

I'm all for it. Having followed a fairly traditional degree I would say that route is unsuitable for most people - and in no way do I mean they are not capable, it is simply of no use. Yet the governments for the last 20 years have tried to inflate the numbers of graduates. That itself isn't a problem, what you were teaching them is.

I won't get into "easy" and "hard" degrees, truth be told a degree in Physics could be truly useless unless applied in the right career. I always thought the smarter people were the ones who knew it paid to study something which had some outside application. Although you can make an argument for degrees showing you have an aptitude for learning.

And this announcement today seems to indicate this is what employers are thinking. Given the state of education, I always think to myself could private enterprise do any better (it won't ever cover the numbers of course).

The downside? Well don't expect said hamburger firm to teach a course on healthy balanced diets.

CES Keynote

For once I watched an entire keynote from CES (Microsoft), mainly because it was the last before Gates stood down. Overall it wasn't bad, but it reinforced my belief that people into technology probably struggle to see why other (ordinary) people just don't get it.

The presentations had a few amusing things:

1. A car that calls 911 in the event of an airbag going off. How long before the emergency services ignore this if it becomes a standard on cars?

2. A social networking tool, the demo person showed herself booking an "appointment" with her mother!

It was ok really, but these people just felt like such cookie cutter employees, and had such weak examples of everyday use of the technology they were showing.

Organ donation

The PM has said he is in favour of organ donation by default for the UK. I think it's the right thing to, with an opt out for those who strongly disagree. The opt out might also disallow you from receiving a donated organ too.

But it occurred to me the government already taxes dead people during the inheritance process, so this is probably just a natural progression - the sort of thing Private Eye would write about.

Public sector wage restraint

The UK government is having a hard time persuading some public sector workers to take a tougher than usual pay round.

The PM has tried to show "we're all in this together" by pegging MP pay rise to 2%. Very laudable, but these people have gold plated pensions, very generous working benefits - how about no pay rise this year, no MP would have noticed - and the PR would have been gold dust.

HMS Diana

A rather sad story in the paper today about the use of a Royal Navy ship HMS Diana in the testing of the British nuclear bomb in 1956. For the purposes of "research" the ship was ordered to sail through the fallout area of the bomb detonation.

It's hard to think back to the set of circumstances that made this appear "a good idea". Britain was under pressure to get a deterrent? We wanted to know more about the effects? (surely WWII had provided plenty of evidence already).

Maybe that's just judging with hindsight, of course the story is most of the crew are suffering from cancers and now dieing off (or have died). The MOD won't provide compensation due to a legal argument about when claims can be lodged. It's shameful, I don't think there would be many people that would actually mind if taxpayers money were to compensate in some way their suffering.