Thursday 21 April 2016

School Sheds and Hotel Rooms


A dilapidated shed in Abersoch has sold for £153,000. You can buy a new one on eBay for under £900!

The only school in Knowsley to offer A levels has closed down its 6th form offering - and it's an Academy. 155 A level students don't provide the Academy system with enough profit. Education should not be about profit. This is the dark side of the Academy system that Cameron is determined to foist on the UK. It's blatant privatisation of our education system and lets the youngsters of Knowsley down. Academy status makes no difference to a school's performance. Dressing a poorly performing school up with a fancy name changes nothing, as independent anaylses have shown.

The bed headboard in my hotel room in Oslo had what must be about the most useless gizmo I've ever seen - a little control panel to change the hue of the fluorescent light surrounding it:




It's a hotel room, not a bloody disco! And I swear the only reason I played with it was so I can post it here...

Was at the Edinburgh Airport Hilton last night and wasn't in the mood for jokes. Got served this, which was listed as a main course at £12 - Portobello mushrooms with added verbiage that made it sound appetizing and filling (you'd expect a main course to be a meal on its own).


It's obviously a starter portion worth about £6 max, and a zig-zag squirt of brown sauce can't change that. After I complained they thought discretion was the better part of valour and didn't charge me for it. Instead I was charged an exorbitant £6.99 for a glass of mediocre red wine. It's strange, but I've never had good experiences with hotel food in Scotland. I still shudder at the thought of the food at the airport hotel in Aberdeen some 4 years ago.

The Hilton here in Edinburgh had what must be the slowest internet on the planet and a breach of human rights legislation - 1.9Mbps download. No idea what the upload speed is as I got fed up waiting for Ookla to perform the download measurement.

When I got to my room I was confronted by a TV schedule comprising a load of bastards just doing their job - it's pitiful what passes for entertainment these days. The TVs are getting more difficult to control too - they're all Smart TVs that are too smart for their own good. It's OK having one at home where you have the time to learn its operation and are confronted with the same TV day in and day out, but to have a different model every day when travelling is a bit taxing on your patience.

Played "find the bedside light switch" for several minutes (have you noticed how the hotels compete to utilise the most esoteric bedside lights that you just can't figure out how to switch on?). Waited five minutes for the bloody eco-bulb to ramp up sufficient lumens to actually read by.

Sometimes I love travelling, at other times it can be the most excruciating experience on earth.


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