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.

Panus Barmicus

Conservationists warned today about the catastrophic collapse in Liberal Democrat (Panus Barmicus,) numbers. Nationally they have seen a decrease of 20%  in the resident population. In some parts of the country, their numbers have declined by up to 40%, in just one year alone. As a species they are in serious danger of extinction by May 2015, unless something is done to help them. Their only hope may be a captive breeding programme, but experts doubt that they could find willing specimens to breed from, as many consider them to be unattractive.

A payment of just £12 per year, could help fund a Liberal Democrat in a wind farm near to you and you will receive a regular pamphlet on just what these shy reclusive creatures are up to. If you can't manage £12, then please send what you can to help save them to: Nick Clegg, 8-10 Great George Street, London. SW1P 3AE

Thank you. Your help could make all the difference.

Rich Pickings

Was shocked this morning, to discover that David Cameron is worth a paltry £4 million. How the Prime Minister of our nation is expected to rub along on such a paltry sum, heaven only knows. I think I might take up a collection on his behalf. The big surprise for me was that the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg is worth an eye watering £2 million. Clearly I have been adressing my begging letters to the wrong person.

I nearly entered politics myself at the last election, but decided that the game wasn't worth a candle, when I found out just how miserly the parliamentary expenses allowances are. I abandoned the idea when I realised that I couldn't claim back the employments costs of my 2nd pastry chef. If a fellow can't have a biscuit when he wants to, there is no point in bothering with public service. No wonder Baroness Warsi has got herself into such a mess. She should have claimed that her main residence was her sisters back bedroom, like Jacqui Smith did.