Exam fever.

Whilst Nick Clegg has been sunning himself at taxpayers expense in Rio, Michael Gove has been setting the educational cat amongst the pigeons. His proposed changes to the school examination system, has elicited the usual Pavlovian reaction from the opposition benches and the teaching profession. "It will divide children into winners and losers."

He has incurred their wrath by proposing to abolish the current GCSE's and return to the more rigorous GCE's, as a way of raising standards.

To help my readers understand the implications of these changes, I have managed to obtain a draft copy of the new GCE sample maths examination questions, so that we can compare it with a real GCSE maths question, from 2008.

2008 exam question.

Q1. Here is a sequence of multiples of 3.

3 6 9 12 15 __  __

Write down the next 2 numbers in the sequence.

This kind of question will be replaced by the following draft sample question, from the new GCE's

Q1. At 10 am this morning, the UK national debt stood at £1,053,531,170,830. Calculate how long it would take you to pay back your share if:

A. You work for 24 hours per week filling shelves at minimum wage in your local supermarket. Or

B. You have invested £3,300,000 in a K2 Jersey based fund.

Summer solstice

Unable to sleep for worrying that David Cameron might be planning to reassert the right of prime ministers to choose two candidates to present to the Queen, for the upcoming vacancy for the Archbishop of Canterbury. He would be bound to try to show how inclusive he is and make a complete hash of it, by choosing Peter Thatchell and Richard Dawkins. Neither of them would do. Dawkins, though having the gravitas for the role, is particularly unsound on doctrine, and Thatchell as we all know, is unreliable regarding ecumenical matters. So as I couldn't sleep, I resolved to drive down to Wiltshire, to see if I could find Rowan Williams and sound him out on his view as to who should become the next primate.

To my surprise, he wasn't watching the sun come up over Stonehenge as I had expected him to be. Apart from a few damp and dispirited hippies, there was just a rather splendid chap who professed to be Uther Pendragon, and that man who seems to spent his life in Coronation Street.

As none else seemed to be doing much, I blew on my rams horn to greet  the dawn, then sacrificed a goat on one of the sarsen stones. But the Auguries were against us, I have never seen a less propitious set of entrails. The future of the Church of England does not look promising, if my goat is anything to go by.

Tax that

In an effort to boost flagging readership numbers, newspapers often drip feed what should be minor stories, to eke them out still further. So it is with the story of tax avoiding celebrities. Rich people have dodged their tax bills and failed to render unto Cesar, that which was cesars. This is scarcely a shock horror story. People have always  tried to lessen their tax liabilities, companies do it and so do even newspapers.

The latest victim of this faux outrage, are the members of the ex teen heartthrob singing group, Take that. They are alleged to have sheltered £26million in offshore banking. In particular the focus of the ire seems to be Gary Barlow, who recently received an OBE for organising the Queens Jubilee Concert. There are even calls for her majesty to take that back. Oh dear, bang goes the knighthood that singers seem to get if they hang around for long enough.

The concert seemed to be a rum do, but I decided not to comment at the time, as I did not want to upset an 85 year old on what should have been a happy day for her. Whilst her 91 year old husband was recovering in hospital, Mr Barlow had some very strange ideas about what might cheer her up. Firstly there was a 71 year old Welshman  bragging about killing someone with a knife. Then, we had a Jamaican lady, also called Jones, who was most notably famous for hitting a chat show host with her handbag, her contribution seemed to consist of practising her hoola hooping skills. The Queen, it is understood, prefers to listen to classical music. It is no wonder that she took the precaution of wearing earplugs. Take back his OBE, she should have sent him to the tower!

Taking the Mickeyleaks

Tiring of living at Ellingham Hall, a grace and favour mansion in Norfolk, Julian Assange has decided that he would prefer a nice long holiday in Ecuador instead. I can understand the attractions of the country, after all it is home to some of the Andean Condors, a distant relative of our own dear Lammergeiers.

This change of scene however; has left some of his celebrity chums in the lurch, as they will now be expected to pay the £200,000 cost of his stay here.

Spoilt for choice, he has apparently turned down the opportunity for a holiday in Sweden, worried that it might as these things do, get out of hand and end up finding himself stuck in America, a country that he has said on numerous occasions that he does not want to visit.

Australians are very often noted for their unorthodox methods of travelling the world and Mr Assange is more unorthodox than most. You or I might contact a travel agent and book our holiday through them, some people these days book theirs through the magic of the interweb. Perhaps he is frightened that they might go bust, as some of them are wont to do at this time of the year, so he has come up with an ingenious solution to his dilemma.

He simply turned up at their embassy in London and demanded that they give him a free trip there. The Ecuadorians are said to be considering the implications of offering him the equivalent of a deluxe package tour.

He may simply have been put off from returning to his native Australia, by thinking it is not safe. Recent reports of dingos eating babies may have coloured his thinking. But the case that they are referring to is over 30 years old and he looks too big for that fate to overtake him. 

My advice would be for him to go  back home. Providing he keeps away from the outback and some of the spiders, he should be perfectly safe.

Laughing all the way to the offshore bank.

Poor Jimmy Carr. It is symptomatic of the profligate times that we live in, that he is being pilloried for trying to save some money for his old age. Out of 1,000 people who have used a Jersey based tax avoidance scheme, he seems to be the only one who has been named and shamed. Thank goodness that I remain largely anonymous and that the papers don't know where I keep my money!

I hadn't realised being a television comedian could be so profitable. £3,300,000 is the figure he is alleged to stashed away.That's 50% more than a Clegg and nearly 3/4 of a Cameron! I shall have to view his tv appearances in a new light after today. Perhaps he would have been left alone if he had invested some of his money in one of Georgie Osborne's exiting new infrastructure bonds.

 But if a man who is involved in tv can manage to save so much money in such a relatively short period of time, then he must be the ideal candidate for the vacancy of Director General of the BBC. I shall await his appointment with interest!

Baracking Obama

For those of us 'Brits' who still admire America and what it came to represent, the most recent news about their fantasist in chief, will sadly come as no surprise. We became used to his studied insults and betrayals, a long time ago and now cease to count them all. From his very first act of sending back the bust of Winston Churchill. to the ultimate treachery of giving the Russians the serial numbers of our nuclear weapons, we despair quietly of the ill mannered oaf who talks over our national anthem.

Now it seems that his antipathy towards us has been based upon a lie. It has been claimed that during the Mau Mau rebellion in in his native Kenya, the British tortured and imprisoned his grandfather. This was supposed to be the basis of Obamas coolness towards us. Despite his claims, it never happened. We didn't imprison his grandfather and we certainly didn't torture him. I don't suppose we'll get an apology.

Meanwhile, today we welcomed a fellow Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, returning after 23 years or so away. The difference between him and Ang San Suu Kyi, couldn't be more striking. Throughout the long years of her imprisonment under house arrest, she impressed the outside world with her quiet dignity and humility. So perhaps he could earn his award by spending a similar amount of time under house arrest, when he is ousted from office, later on this year.

Or, if he wishes to emulate another recipient of the Nobel Prize, Nelson Mandela, who also spent a similar amount of time, 22 years, imprisoned on Robben Island, I'm sure it could be arranged, if it was the will of public opinion. After all, there is a ready made island jail in San Francisco Bay. It shouldn't cost much to reopen it again.!

Back of the hairnet

After our nail biting, historic and sensational draw against France, tight lipped England manager, Roy Hodgson, was in a voluble and buoyant mood. "Footballs coming home and so are we, we already have our flights booked," he told a packed press gallery. "Soon our Toad in the hole, Wayne Rooney will be back and then there will be no stopping us."

I remain optimistic, but slightly sceptical about his claims for success for the tournament. Wayne Rooney may be coming back after his suspension, but there may be trouble brewing already. His much vaunted £30,000 hair transplant may be thinning. The photographic evidence may be conflicting, but dare he risk the threat of Lammergeiers mistaking his bald head for a rock. As he runs towards goal, he doesn't want to have to keep glancing skywards to make sure that a tortoise is not about to drop on him, like the terrible tragedy that befell Aeschylus. 

The Wags joining the England squad may prove to be a blessing. Let us hope that they provide a distraction, but I am not entirely convinced that it will fool a Lammergeier.