Your Opinion is Irrelevant

In the news this fortnight:
- A crazy Austrian does crazy Austrian things
- One million people tuned in to see Felix Baumgar-whatsit go splat on his landing to Earth (seriously - when his parachute opened safely, one million people stopped watching)
- A man goes and hits multiple people in an area of Cardiff I used to live near.
- A car bomb goes off in Syria, and people in Lebanon worry that the war could spill over to their country.
- Flooding happens on flood planes
- Half of the BBC may be taken out by Jimmy Savile alone
- Syria begin a ceasefire
- Berlusconi is sentenced to four years for tax fraud
- Complaints continue about GCSEs
- I finally choose my A-levels
- I have roughly a term to get my Maths grade up otherwise they may not let me into Physics and Maths A-level

Today, I'm talking about the vote at 16.

As Scotland want to do the independence referendum including 16-year olds, re-igniting the debate over whether or not the vote should be lowered to 16-year olds. As I will be just under 18 when the next general election rolls around, I'm naturally a big supporter of this.

I hear one argument that nobody under 18 would vote, yet a quick scan of two polls* indicate that turnout among the 18-24's is actually increasing from 2001 (31% turnout in 2001, 44% in 2010). Admittedly, this is still older than their elder counterparts, but looking at the trend it could be that the 16-18 year-olds would have a roughly 40% turnout. And I don't have a confirmation on this, but there's every possibility that the first time around could garner an interest in some 16/17 year-olds as wanting to vote in the "first one".

Another argument is "16-year olds are too immature". I remember one anecdote saying that a "19-year old said to me that she'd vote for Boris Johnson because she finds him funny". The thing is, these aren't the people who will actually bother to vote in the long run. Or, they'll turn up to the polling station, see the long queues, and bugger off again. The people who would vote, however, are people like my friend and I. While in Switzerland, we ended up discussing the merits of the Eurozone (I'm anti, she's pro). It's alright for her, she'll be old enough to vote when the time comes around.

There's also the fact that 16-year olds pay taxes to consider. Sometimes, the government's one-sided thinking amuses me. They believe that we're mature enough to pay taxes, to make a contribution to society. But we're not mature enough to have a say in who we think should run the country, who should represent our beliefs, who should speak for us.

Like everything, it's ultimately politics. No government wants to be the government who lost power because they gave the 16 year olds the vote. And keeping them quiet is ultimately the only way they can continue.
 
*Sources:
http://www.idea.int/vt/by_age.cfm (26 Oct '12)
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=2613&view=wide (26 Oct '12)

O television, O television, wherefore doth thou break my heart into a million little pieces whilst cackling?

Fortnightly round-up:
- Exam boards allow students whose dreams were crushed to retake English exams.
- A little girl goes missing in mid-Wales, and a man is charged with her murder.
- They finally manage to get the runaway maths teacher home
- Tensions in Syria/Turkey grow
- Spain are splitting apart at the seams
- And again with Greece
- Jimmy Saville is apparently not a tv legend but a rapist.
- The Conservatives say something unimportant
- They want to build another airport in the South East, thus possibly increasing my choice of airports within two hours to six.
- I go to CERN and begin to seriously doubt my potential A-level choices
- I check out a sixth form's prospectus and seriously doubt my potential sixth form
- I gain my very first A*
- I go to Switzerland (hence, CERN) and discover my slight fear of plane landings.

Although today, my topic of conversation today is television. See, I do have fun alongside all my complaining!

Well, no. I'm going to complain really.

Currently, I'm "watching" Firefly, which was cancelled after fourteen episodes. I put 'watching' in inverted commas because I'm avoiding the last episode. After watching the first thirteen episodes, I have grown so attached to the show that I cannot bear to watch the final episode and say goodbye to it. It shall, in short, break my heart.
Not that Firefly hasn't already done so. While watching Out of Gas (episode eight), I sobbed to the point of hyperventilating*. I have also been known to require a good half-hour to calm down after certain scenes.

Maybe I'm just susceptible to sobbing, but this isn't the first time I've sobbed uncontrollably at a TV show. I'll make a list (I like lists).
-- Chuck (season 1, episode 8)
-- Scrubs (more than I should for a comedy)
-- Doctor Who (like, every episode)
-- Supernatural
-- The Hour

I've also gone incredibly weak at the knees for both Lilyhammer and Borgen.

Do show writers enjoy watching our down-hearted tweets, generally in block capitals and saying "MY HEART </3 D:"?
Certainly, it does make for a better show.

I suppose it is my fault, really. It is a habit of mine, as is most people when they love a show, to get very included in the world. Hell, there are fanfictions that are many hundreds of thousands words long. And then the show will end, or be cancelled, or be forced into a very abrupt demise, leading to the destruction of any happy emotion I may feel for the next few days.

I'll watch Firefly tonight, I promise.

Education, Education and God knows what else

Fortnight round-up:
- A thousand parents make a thousand unfunny jokes about teachers
- The unfunny jokes relate to a child who ran away with her teacher
- They were both from a town covered by the same local news as the town I am in, hence knowing every single detail of the story
- Gove stops the GCSEs
- Canadian cheese smuggling rings are broken
- *Topless* photos of Kate where published everywhere
- Apple are useless
- My school promptly ban the ability to use time wisely, to the downfall of my BTEC

Today I talk of Gove.
No wait, I don't talk of him, I will talk about him and his hair-brained ideas.

As I've been in a bad mood all day (Apparently, you can drop a GCSE at my school, but not the IT you must take with Triple Science. I digress), I'll start with his good ideas.
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Okay, so that was mean. He does have one good point. The multiple exam boards. They were never going to work out, and it also makes it as hard as hell to buy second-hand revision guides (Oh brilliant! A cheap maths guide! Oh no wait, it's on AQA. Wait, which exam board am I on?*). However, the old system it does make quality control easier. If Edexcel reported an 80% pass rate in the English Language exam, whilst OCR only recorded a 30% pass, something is wrong. But of course, there would be no need for quality control with multiple exam boards, they would just do great exams. To attempt to conclude a minor-half argument so terrible it would reduce my Critical Thinking teacher to tears of pain, a rare glimmer of good idea sometimes crosses his mind.

I'm not denying that GCSE's have their faults. My Chemistry exam, taken in January of this year, was insane to learn. I was given four months to learn the first three units (Of which there seven, one is the equivalent of three units), which wasn't enough so it was all crammed in at once. I didn't revise, so on the day I was bullshitting it. Chemistry is not my strongest science, and yet I managed to get 86/100 UMS points, or an A. Yet in Physics, I had a year before taking the equivalent exam. I got a B. Admittedly, I'm even worse at Physics than I am Chemistry, but had the exams be switched around I'm fairly sure that the grades would too. Whilst I don't agree with the all-exams-at-the-end idea**, I do think they shouldn't be taken in the first January of the course.

And as far as I can see, there are academic-only subjects in the Ebacc. Yes, there may be an idea to introduce more "creative" subjects later (music/art/drama/dance), but I see nothing of vocational subjects. Gove forgets that not everybody is destined for Oxford. There are students, and I do know a couple of them, who will never get a decent GCSE. Instead, they take a vocational course in health and social care, or hair and beauty. Admittedly, they're not as great as 5 A*'s, but it'll get them a job. The English Baccalaureate will run their abilities into the ground, passing them through with bad qualifications and no life skills.

The GCSEs/BTECs have faults, no doubt. But they did encompass the range of students, and that's all that really matters.

*Edexcel
**Over the two years, I have to take more than 17 exams. Imagine having them all in one month. And all the revision.

Atos

Fortnight round up:
- Wales want the whole English GCSE saga cleaned up, while Michael Gove is being a stubborn little shit by not asking for a nationwide review.
- Topless photos of Kate Middleton are posted by a *regulated* French magazine
- "Sam" gets the US into a shitload of trouble
- Middle-eastern countries may *possibly* be using the dodgy US video as a front for a backlash against the US presence in their countries
- Brits are murdered in France
- My first week at school is full of homework and catch-up
- I start fencing and manage to injure myself before we even start fencing

Today, I shall talk about Atos.

For those unaware, Atos is a company hired by the government to sort everybody claiming incapacity benefit (and DLA - disability living allowance) into three groups: Those who can work, those who can't work, and those who can do a "work related activity" (working with extra support etc). The general idea is to stop people claiming the benefit when they can work.

However, there are questions surrounding the contract between the government and Atos. Some people believe that they are paid more to declare people fit to work - thus causing the government to have to pay out less.

Now, when the complaints first started (on shows like Saints & Scroungers, Rip Off Britain etc), I just thought it was one of those few that slip through the net, as always happens. A few stories of someone with severe asthma, someone with trouble walking, ones like that. These people had either worked for most of their life and then had to stop, or attempted to work but physically couldn't. They also have multiple health records from their GPs and doctors in hospital proving they are ill. Yet their assessors would look at them on one day, ask them a few questions and decide their capacity to work based on that short time. As one arthritis sufferer said, "I have good days and bad days. You can't judge based on a single day."

It caught my attention when these little stories popped up repeatedly did I think something was up. Looking into it, it seems that Atos have declared that nobody is disabled and everybody is fine. Woo! Good thing they've sponsored the Paralympics.

Wait, what?

Yes, amid all their controversies, they thought it was suitable.

But that is not a point I shall explore.

I find myself much without an ending, as anything I say can be said better in an old article by Mark Steel. See you in a fortnight.
http://www.independent.co.uk/hei-fi/views/mark-steel-odd-choice-for-a-paralympics-sponsor-8091782.html

I dislike making excuses.

But since Kingsoft Office:
- Threw away my work
- Refuses to now open

I cannot post until tomorrow (I type all of my posts into a word processor for spelling, grammar and formatting purposes)

Hate that this is the second time in a row that I've done this, argh! Might have to change posting day to Saturday at this rate.

Competition

A fortnight round-up:
- Apparently, the state of our country is so dull the BBC decide that both the state of American politics and weather are more important than something Nick Clegg said, and so in the morning I had to wait until the third news story before I actually heard about something that happened in Britain.
- Nick Clegg said something unimportant about tax, which doesn't affect me as I don't earn anything.
- Burma took loads of people off their blacklist
- Mitt Romney says so many stupid things I'm happy he's not running for PM in the UK
- Exam boards ruin children's future
- Lack of communication with my school means I don't know my results until the beginning of term
- Everybody buys Paralympic tickets before me :(

But today, I shall talk about statistics, sports and schools.

After the Olympics, in which Team GB won more or less everything when it came to cycling (the general consensus is that Rio shouldn't bother building a velodrome and just give us all the golds for cycling instead), the government needed to think how to build a legacy after hosting the Games, a promise which awarded the city the Games in the first place. And so, discussion of sport provisions in schools was brought up.

This is where Gove and I differ (as is the case on many education issues). He believes that, in order to get kids into sport, the minimum amount required is an hour per day. Per day! I agree that's good for personal fitness, but it has no place in schools. The average (state) secondary school has a six hour day. Five one-hour lessons and an hour of break (although I do know one school in the South East that does two three-hour lessons a day instead). Within a week, currently, two hours of sport are squeezed in. And in the GCSE years, few people ever participate in these two hours anyway, at least that's what the situation is for the two lower-set groups in my year. I'm a lower set, and whilst I don't fake notes, I haven't done full-blown participation all year either (I missed about a week of lessons to paint a flag, of all things). We're a sports college (apparently one of the first sixteen in the country), and so you'd expect the school to do something to tackle the fact that very little participation happens in the upper years both in general PE and on the sports day. But no, they cease to care past your third year. What they do care about, however, is the few groups that go to other schools and play. It makes them look good on paper, to the cost of most of the students.

What we need is a better variety of sport. If you're bad at a sport, you'll dislike it. If you dislike it, you're disinclined to play it. In my last school, I had to play rounders (Google it if you don't know. It's a little bit like softball) all day, every day for quite a few weeks during my final term. Of course, now I know how to play rounders, and so do many of my old schoolmates, but it doesn't mean we like it. We still groan and put little effort into each game. More hours of sport won't change that. The sports I choose to do are fencing, kayaking and snowboarding. I'm not a fast runner, particularly good field athelete nor can I swim very well. According to my school, I'm not a very sporty person. The only reason I ever managed to access those sports was due to enough personal drive to actually want to do something. I'll be honest, I'm not the greatest at any of the three, but I enjoy them enough to search out for clubs and opportunities to play them. If a student looks to be failing or disinclined to play in the sports the school has on offer, then maybe they'd enjoy an alternative sports. That way, everyone gets a chance to find something they like. And obviously, every school in the country won't have the opportunity to ferry multiple children here, there and everywhere weekly to do each and every sport that they excel it, but there can be compromises. If someone shows they participate in a club outside of school, and it's not a sport the school offers, then why not allow a child out of one lesson a week, or allow them to practise that sport within the lesson (if possible). There, you've got everybody involved in sport for two hours a week.

Making someone do something they dislike over and over won't make them enjoy it, however letting them do something they enjoy once will make them do it over and over.

Trains

So, I postponed a day, which gives me fifteen days to summarise (this may become a regular thing):
- Assange hides in a building and more or less messes everybody up
- The Olympics end and everybody cries
- Cameron/Clegg say something idiotic
- Milliband replies with something equally idiotic
- America messes in affairs it probably doesn't need to mess in
- Richard Branson stopped being smug about everything.
- I have a birthday
- I gain an addiction to iced gems
- I buy lots of books and am very happy.

But today, I was going to do something about YA novels but instead, I shall rate the state of our trains. For those not in the know, the trains (and possibly stations, but that would need checking) are controlled by private companies, with the rail lines themselves belonging to National Rail. On my way from one parent to another, I can travel on up to three companies (four types of train).

-- The Southern Service

I have always found their seats to be a bit worn, but at least they always have enough. I've never had to stand on a Southern train, and I have taken some pretty high-demand trains before. The train sometimes rocks a tiny bit, but it's barely noticable. They are also always quiet, and as they have few windows they have a good air-conditioning service, so yesterday I was quite cold despite it being horribly muggy outside. Unfortunately, there's no designated luggage holder other than above the seats, which I can't lift my suitcase up to. 8/10

-- First Great Western (Short-haul)

These trains are deployed when the journey is max an hour and a half. There are always newspapers on the seats, and there are either too many seats and I feel like we're being packed in like cattle, or there are not enough seats and I stand for an hour. They also rock a lot and I feel quite unsafe. In lieu of air-conditioning a few windows open by a fraction. As a result yesterday I was boiling hot and was actually tempted to add another change to my journey in order to get on a Southern train faster. However no matter how small the train there is always a luggage holder about mid-carriage. 5/10

-- First Great Western (Long-haul)

These trains are in service for journeys over about an hour/hour and a half. I've used this type of train about seven times, however only once have I found a train that gives you the four/six seat with a table set up, and even then it was only in one carriage. The taps in the toilets never work, and again it packs everybody in like cattle. I don't remember seeing many windows, so there was possibly air-conditioning. The train rocks and is so loud that I feel like I'm travelling in a tin can at times. There is a buffet car, although I've only ever bought water on them. As they generally get holidaying passengers, their luggage holds are very generous. My main gripe is the fact their is no "Open Door" button on the inside of the train, and to open the door you must pull the door window down, reach out the train and push the handle down. 7/10

-- Arriva Trains Wales

I have never wanted to travel on a train service less. The carriages are too thin to hold four seats and a decent walkway across, and so everybody is SQUISHED in. There are also never enough carriages and I rarely get a seat. Unlike FGW, they don't bother with a buffet car and instead try a trolley service. Of course, the carriages only fit the trolley if nobody else is on the train, so I spend most of the journey with overpriced sandwiches shoved in my face. The toilets are blocked and never work, let alone the taps. The tin-can feel is worse in these trains than in FGW ones. 4/10