Pinkie and Dave

I've been asked to look at Conservative Party policy and do a presentation to senior members of the Party sometime next month (hush hush, top secret when and where!) on the future of Conservative Party policy.

This has come at a most inconvenient time as I've just moved into the spare room of a local couple here in Ludlow, and still have my various resources packed into boxes. My hosts are a young couple, called Pinkie and Dave. Dave is a mobile sales trainer for a well known company and I can't quite work out what he does, but I think he drives around the country to various branches of the store (I got that bit right; I've seen his travel allowance cheques!), where (I think) he teaches people how to stack shelves.

Pinkie is on maternity leave, having recently given birth to their first child, is from the Far East, and has a psotgraduate degree in nursing, whereas Dave has a Level 2 NVQ in retail display. I've been living with them for a little while now a token effort to give him a qualification., and I've only ever seen them argue once, over their qualifications, in fact. He reckons that his qualification has more value as it's equivalent to a degree (although a quick phone call to Connexions, the careers advise people, proved him wrong; it barely has equivalence to a GCSE), and it's from the UK, rubbishing Pinkie's long years of study and training in one fell swoop. It seems he was sold the idea of doing an NVQ on the grounds that it apparently has a lot of value in the workplace. It seems the NVQ assessors 'bigged it up' to him far more than it was actually worth....

Maybe I should speak when I talk on policy about addressing New Labour's disastrous education policies, giving false hopes, how it's failing the people? Mind you, Dave seems to be doing all right out of it, with his travel expenses cheques.

Some Conservatives have all the fun...

News has just reached me that a highly successful university branch of Conservative Bestiary spent a major proportion of its budget at the end of the last academic year travelling to foreign climes, before spending the majority of the university-provided funding indulging in the artistic undressing atributes of ladies of talent.

Ladies of the night? I prefer ladies of the Right. However, one must admire their principled application of the free market economy within the European Union. Some conservatives have all the fun....

Book review

I didn't blog yesterday as I found a fifty pound note on the floor in the car park, then to celebrate had a shot of banana flavoured vodka. It went straight to my head, and instead of saving £25 for my Tory party membership fee, I went on a twenty-four hour booze-up with Johan and Sweaty Nora around the pubs of Ludlow, and got so drunk that we somehow we ended up in Great Yarmouth and none of us remember how. Perspiration Betty came over in her car after a drunken text message and picked us up, and has now forgiven me for walking out on her the other day. I am a naughty little monkey!

To make up for it, and get back torying, I went shopping and spent the last of my money on The Big Red Book of New Labour Sleaze, edited by Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes, in order to improve my Tory education. It's a great book, a compilation of brilliant blog posts during Blair's reign of fire, and it's really entertaining. It brought back memories, and certainly will give me some reading fodder for the next few days as I reread it, as well as when I check out the various blogs of the writers contained within. I heartily recommend it.

Exam results!

After calling around the agencies to sign up (they'll contact me if there are any jobs), I headed down to Ludlow College.

Today was the results for GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) students across the land, and it's all over the news. For the last year, down at Ludlow College, I've been doing an evening class to improve my CV. I've got my MCSE (Monkey Certificate of Secondary Education) qualifications under my belt (or rather my rosette, as monkeys don't wear belts!) already, but I've been studying for a GCSE in the Alutiiq language. I thought I'd signed up for the Arabic language (as apparently I could earn good wages in Saudi Arabia), but I'd forgotten my contact lenses that day, so hadn't read it properly and misread the form. I couldn't get a refund; I'd signed up for the wrong class and was stuck with it, so I went along to the first class, and fortunately I was hooked. Only one problem with the course: I never did learn the Alutiiq word for banana, even though I used to eat them all the time in class.

I also did a day course in Home Economics. At first I thought this would be a good course to do which could ease me gently into understanding better numbers, the economy, and also the mind of Public Enemy Number One Gordon Brown, but it turned out to be a cookery class instead! There was no exam at the end though, it was an uncredited course, so no qualification at the end, but I did take home a nice banana cake. I should post the recipe on here some time.

There will be ongoing political debates about the worth of GCSEs in the UK, but let's not try and run the students down today. They've worked hard, and well deserve their day of glory. Let's leave politics aside for today.

Anyway, you'll be wanting to know how I did?

I got a B grade! Quyanaasinaq (thank you very much), exam board.

Tories and holidays

I know I'm looking for a job, preferably with good pay, bananas, prospects and an understanding for Conservatism, but like everyone, I would look forward to a day off when I finally get a decent job. There have been whispers that the Conservatives may look at introducing three new bank holidays, and I welcome this, although the policy forum hasn't published its findings yet.

So without further ado, here are my suggestions for three new bank holidays:

• Winston Churchill Day: (date to be decided) why not honour the great man?


• National holiday: England and St George's Day, Scotland and St David's Day, Wales and St Andrew's Day. (Northern Ireland has St Patrick's Day off already)


• Banana Day: (date to be decided) Let us honour the greatest fruit God has ever given us.

David Cameron, I hope you are reading this.

Addendum: I've just been informed I got Wales' and Scotland's patron saints the wrong way round. What do you expect from a good British education, where Wikipedia is seen as the ultimate authority? I've got thirteen MCSEs (Monkey Certificate of Secondary Education).