Are We Safe Or Are We Sorry?

Isn’t it queer, that the more criminals we take out of society, the more measures against crime are supposedly needed?

According to them that study our ancestors, the brain of modern man has not changed physiologically for thousands of years. It is plausible therefore, that the proportion of ‘bad’ people in society should be a constant throughout the centuries; and due to evolutionary selection, that proportion would become minimal for a just society to thrive. Hence a society becomes evil, not through the composition of its people, but via the choice of its politics. Our prisons are over full, not because there are more bad men, but due to degenerate government, and its desperate laws; especially those sanctioned by a stagnant democracy.

Democracy sits upon a stool of three mutually opposed legs: freedom, equality in law, and Justice; whereby each depends on the others for integrity. If all citizens were truly equal at the human level, democracy would be redundant, since one clone would be as representative as any other, hence voting would become needless after the first opinion; and if one clone was true and honest, there would be no need of law, since all would be guiltless. In our natural world, individual freedom is a bane to synthetic equality; therefore democracy is a perpetual dynamic compromise between its constituent antagonistic rights. To make democracy purposeful, individual freedom is necessary; and to stem the risk of chaos, brought about by our vain identities, just laws are imposed to contain our free impositions upon each other. True Justice however, requires artificial balance to ensure fairness via reciprocity, thus the accused must have ‘equal status in law’ to the accuser; which necessitates the presumption of innocence, until proven otherwise. By its very nature of compromise, democracy can never be perfect, hence it is a contradiction to utopia; but nevertheless is the best real solution for a just society that aims to maximise fairness in accord with the weight of public opinion.

Utopians seek perfection, which is the enemy of the good, by trying to force the natural dynamism of democracy to fit their own manifestos; whether they seek more freedom, or more equality, or more Justice, or combinations thereof, they invariably must do so at the expense of one or both of the other democratic complements. Hence under utopian ideals, democracy risks losing its stability, for any position other than the natural equilibrium position, is unstable relative to it. Utopian systems have a nasty tendency to prop up their induced instabilities, by increasing laws in both number and severity, which in turn compromises both Justice and freedom, thence strains the natural dynamism of democracy until it becomes stagnant.

Ask the mediaeval Popes, or Stalin, or Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot, or Goebbels, or Harriet Harman, and they would probably tell you: “the best way to control the people with minimum resources, is to sell them equality, then persuade them through suspicion, to fear the heretic.” In an evil society, we fear innocence and celebrate guilt; and through the agency of false-witness: man denounces man; wife denounces husband; child denounces parent; and the feminist-Marxist government denounces the heterosexual family.

Meanwhile in our utopian feminist society, state propaganda has moulded democracy into a Trojan horse, subverting Justice into the mediocrity of synthetic ‘equality’, gained at the expense of men’s Justice and economic freedom. To achieve universal mediocrity, schools prescribe Ritalin for boys, and proscribe erudition for girls; whilst the colleges bulge with over subscribed pseudo sciences; and the rest of the people are coached on what to do, say, and think, by the scriptwriters of “EastEnders” and “The Jeremy Kyle Show”, as they chum the waters with cultural discord and false-witness in the name of the ‘new democracy’, trammelled by political correctness, at pain of legal consequence.

The enemies of false-witness, and the champions of truth, are the ever dwindling number of freethinking and outspoken men; who put truth and democratic principles above synthetic law, and their own safety. So it is inevitable that our quota-chasing police, who are armed to the teeth and ready for war, will pursue the remainder with extreme prejudice, and over 4,000 new laws. Typically, the first collateral casualty will be truth, as Justice, blinded by state sponsored paranoia from self-serving quangos, overlooks the evidence of men’s innocence; close behind will fall free speech, trampled to death under the Marxist bigotry of ‘political correctness’; and finally, just criticism, reclassified as the deranged obloquy of heretical ‘hate speech’.

Benjamin Franklin wrote: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I would add that this applies to the presumption of innocence also; for without that essential right, state malfeasance is free to reign unchecked, and ultimately inure a universal contempt for our democratic laws. The reason being that the guilty are associated by the uniqueness of their crime, but the innocent are associated with the legion of innocence; thus presumption of guilt for one, is the condemnation of presumed innocence for all. And what pull of Justice does a Wightman have if he is condemned pre-emptively: “People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.” [Edmund Burke].

Wightmen must wake up and smell the oestrogen of our stagnant democracy; Liberty is being poisoned in the cradle, left begging at the dole queue, and sent to rot in the prisons. Evil is not the shame of bad people doing bad things, it is the purchase of state-of-the-art political propaganda, that inspires false-witness. Without false-witness, evil cannot corrupt, and without either, what would goad good men to do bad Justice? Our prisons are not just filling up with more bad men, they are filling up with any men, accompanied by the paranoid utopian fascist chorus of “better safe than sorry”.

The great unpublished # 2

Some more ‘letters to the editor’ of the Isle of Wight County Press, some were deemed unprintable, some were printed:

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31^st August 2007 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Comparing the Goose with the Gander

Regarding the CP report “EXAM FIGURES SAID TO BE MISLEADING”, on 31^st August 2007. I would like to point out to Katy Leslie, the NUT, and the NASUWT, that the figures may well be more damning rather than less so, for Island comprehensives.

Due to geographic isolation, Island children will have less opportunity to enter independent and grammar schools, therefore Island comprehensive schools must suffer less from the adverse effects of cherry picking than do mainland comprehensives. Assuming that Island and mainland children are born with the same distribution of intelligence, hence Island comprehensives must have a higher average intelligence and thence greater potential for academic success than do mainland comprehensives.

So even if we compared “like with like”, the Island comprehensives would need to score higher than their mainland counterparts in order to prove that Island schools are meeting the potential of Island children to the same extent. Further, why are there differences between Island comprehensives, if like implies like?

The abject failure exposed by the A-level results means we should scrutinize the teachers and not the children; after all, the potential of children is the closest thing to a constant in this exercise of statistics.

Finally I would like to ask all the Island schools and the college, to volunteer the statistic of numbers of male to female staff, so that the CP can publish alongside the A-level results for each establishment. I ask this in light of the correspondence between diminishing ratio of male to female teachers over the last few decades, with that of the diminishing ratio of boys to girls regarding A-level success. If it turns out that ‘masculinity’ or its absence from schools and colleges, corresponds with A-level success, then we will not only have a basis for a hypothesis, we would also have the basis for a solution.

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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3^rd March 2008 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Buzz Off Love

If Emily Pearce’s article regarding the ultra-sonic Mosquito is true, have the Council completely devolved into misanthropic Morlocks, that they treat the young Wight Eloi with such ageist contempt? I suspect that with a working proportion of about 80% women, there is already an excess of feminist paranoia festering in the pits of County Hall. And this cult spills into Island schools, again overpopulated with feminist teachers, who regard the young as either “laddish thugs” to be dealt with, or as poor subjugated ‘potential rape victims’ to be nurtured into fellow man-hating Amazons. Maybe Stuart Love could improve his observations on anti-social behaviour if he stopped trying to be a six foot panty-liner, and looked into what causes innocence to become corrupted, if indeed they are guilty of anything. The solution Mr. Love, if you can bear the unfettering of apron strings, is to sack all the feminists, and give the jobs to Wightmen and women. This would terminate the feminists’ unbridled corruption of reality in schools, which is half the problem; and would decrease the amount of unemployment of Wightmen, which in turn should reduce the number of fatherless children, which is the other half of the problem. Failing that Mr. Love, you can always peruse the American CIA’s list of crowd control technology, and if you’re really worried about those horrible children, you could end up with your own ministry, The Ministry of Love. This rant was brought to you in light of the recent suicides of Bridgend, in Wales; let’s hope it doesn’t happen here… yet.

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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30^th May 2008 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Parlour Games

The Isle of Wight College has invented a new parlour game based on an old family favourite of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’; it’s called: ‘stick the head up the ass’.

I refer of course to the much vaunted BEACON status that the College has managed to wangle out of OfSTED in some review held in May 2007. To the average Islander who has sampled the heady academic delights of our one and only College, this may come as some surprise; did somebody glue the egg to the spoon? Then again, in a one horse race the three legged donkey is Red Rum; to which my critics would argue that the beacon status is based on national comparisons, and I would counter that other colleges would not have the captive clientele afforded to our Island College; Hobson’s choice.

Never mind the quality, feel the width; speaking of which, the College has seen fit to advertise a year after the report, the position of “Head of Quality”. Talk about closing the stable door after the mule has bolted; or is this a tacit admission of the Generalised Peter Principle by the Principal, in that the title of beacon status has exceeded the College’s capabilities?

Of course if I am wrong, which is not impossible, and my personal experiences of the College is somewhat skewed by reality, of which the authors of the 16 page OfSTED report, resplendent with 31 instances of the term “outstanding”, have seen fit to overlook, then please accept my insincerest apologies. But I am left wondering whether this is an £80 million con, whereby some clever people, or are we simply that stupid, have managed to hide their bushel under the outstanding light of a beacon.

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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18^th June 2009 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Educating Mother Nature

What would Mother Nature know about raising kids? She is blind, deaf, and stupid, with a woeful neglect for her own offspring that verges on abuse. And yet with her faults, she has managed to evolve our lowly ape like ancestors into the scientific and technological splendour that became the human race. Without so much as a certificate in Women’s Studies, she relied mostly on sexist prejudice.

Why is it then, that we allow the educationalists to outlaw the concept of the difference of the genders? Do they have a grudge against Mother Nature; or do they think they can do better than millions of years of evolution? The consequence of these educationalists refusing to acknowledge the natural differences between boys and girls, is that children showing symptoms of natural behaviour are being diagnosed and treated as if they had an ailment. If we treated tomatoes with the same arrogance, there would be civil unrest and questions in parliament!

Boys in particular are being psychologically compromised with Ritalin during their formative years, when they fail to behave like little feminists. The educationalists cover up this social experiment by inventing a behavioural condition called ADHD, of which Ritalin just happened to be available as a cure, a few years before the disorder was defined!? Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, has so many characteristic yet ambiguous symptoms, that if you watch anybody for long enough, they are bound to show signs of the condition. Imagine sitting through a whole term of politically corrected lessons, would it not be enough to drive a naturally healthy lad to distraction, thence into the arms of the educational psychologist?

No matter how qualified the educationalists think they are, they have yet to better evolution. The wanton feminisation of state schools has severely compromised the education of boys; and the use of Ritalin being nothing short of child abuse. I call for the total abolition of Ritalin, and any other psycho-active drugs used upon children; and for a public debate questioning the virtues of state sponsored feminism within our Island schools.

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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26^th June 2009 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Battery Parents

Feminist cabals have inveigled themselves into government positions, and feminism has become an unelected de facto political party. Simone de Beauvoir was the nucleus for the new Marxist Feminist movement, which swept through America and Britain in the sixties and seventies; spawning such activists as Eve Ensler, who wrote of the alcoholic seduction of a 13 year old girl by a mature woman as “good rape”.

Feminism began a three pronged attack on the family; firstly they invented the myth of exclusive male domestic violence, then they changed the laws on divorce; this was to remove the fathers. Secondly they remove mothers; initially by goading mothers to work, thus necessitating nurseries; or by direct abduction via the Social Services, when single mothers are accused of dereliction of care, should they fail to follow the new regimes. And thirdly, as the family was being shattered at home, the schools were being subsumed by feminist teachers, to indoctrinate the remaining children to be the new revolutionary guard, to destroy the last stubborn remnants of family life.

Just as parental significance is diminishing, so the multibillion pound Social Services industry is burgeoning, to fill the voids that it created. The latest initiative is same sex foster parents; one has to remember that Social Services keep books of all the children in ‘dodgy’ homes, so that as foster parents become available then children can be picked from a ready supply from the legion of single parent families that aren’t using feminist sanctioned nurseries.

In America the Social Services are given government bounties for every child taken from poverty, and given further bonuses for fostering, particularly to gay couples. In Florida, this practice has resulted in about 40% of the adoptions being same sex couples; it makes financial sense for this proportion to continue to grow. Does Britain have a similar financial incentive for forced adoption, and gay preference? If so, then we must see this as a continued attack by feminists to abduct children from parents.

Finally we might ask the question: what is the functional difference between Social Services creating a market for gay adoption, and a paedophile ring that grooms a family to yield victims like a battery chicken lays eggs for breakfast?

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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24^th July 2009 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Can We Afford The Police?

Despite over all crime dropping, or not changing that much, in the last few years, I've noticed a dramatic increase in the use of sirens. Are the police beating drums for business?

Here on the Isle of Wight - a seething cauldron of disorganised crime - many small festivals have to be cancelled owing to not being able to foot the policing bills. The extra costs, not being requested by the organisers, but imposed by the local authorities fear of the public.

Didn't the Mafia use to offer a similar deal? At least with the Mafia they had the good business sense to protect their 'clients', but the police lack this nous, and screw the client into closure.

Crime is expensive, and therefore estimable, just ask an insurance firm. If the police cost more than the crime, then we must consider their reduction.

And do we need an over-equipped police when we have a standing army looking for 'civil control' exercises? A soldier will have other concerns in their careers than bigging themselves up at the expense of hapless civilians, so potentially a soldier on the streets has less interest in making a career out of arrests, as for him it is just a temporary mission of many types.

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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27^th July 2009 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Where’s the College for Men?

Debbie Lavin has wasted no time in implementing Harriet Harman’s Parthian shot, also known as the ‘Positive Discrimination Laws’, at the Isle of Wight College. Is this an effort to bury the news of Debbie’s pay hike I wonder? Speaking of subterfuge, the “openness policy” at the College must be a new move also, for I have been repeatedly denied the information of the gender breakdown of employment at the College. Are the readers aware that Debbie’s brave management move of equalising pay between men and women by dropping men’s wages, is a petty spite, owing to the fact that male workers at the College are almost as rare as hens teeth. Does anybody know the actual figures?

If the Island is to stand any meaningful chance of facing the future with hope, it is imperative that we have an advanced education service. Whether the feminists like it or not, men have higher IQ’s than women on average, and the proportion of men with IQ’s over 125 (typical of a first class university student) is twice that of women [Re: Richard Lynn and Paul Irwing]. If the selection process of our schools and College were based purely on merit, then we would expect to have more male educators than female; I estimate that the College employs no more than 20% men. If I am right, then our hopes for the future of our Island have been compromised by selfish misandry.

In times of plenty, this blatant prejudice against Wightmen would be no more than the default of contract between public funding for education and the College embezzling that money for feminist hobbies; but in times of economic and political desperation, it is a matter of life and death. Islanders must put their educational need above that of feminist want, now, to delay and cushion the inevitable economic and social catastrophe that awaits us all. We need smart men and women of true merit in charge, and not token, castrated drones, ruled by parvenues.

Yours faithfully

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17^th August 2009 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Heil Hattie!

Nature is a wild and cussed beast, it has to be trammelled by fear, guided by the unblinking beacon of bureaucracy, and then caged with the full violence of law.

What do mothers know of child rearing, the impudent dames!? Get those whelps to the nearest Ofsted approved nursery archipelago, before they evolve into drug dealing rapists! If it’s correct enough for Haringay Social Services, then a glowing report from Ofsted is correct enough for the Isle of Wight. You there, Number 42, cowering at the back, why aren’t you cheering and clapping!? Are you being abused at home by your father? What do you mean no father, couldn’t your mum be bothered to go down to the dole queue, where most of the dads have been dumped. If you’re not being abused then you must be ill; let nursey wursey give you a nice big warm soft dose of Ritalin to make nursey feel better. And if you still don’t toe the line my boy, nursey wursey will send you down a dark place, where an evil eyed harridan will make you fill out your jobseekers agreement.

As our community is goaded towards equality and diversity, it is becoming less diverse, less equal, and less of a community. Raising glass ceilings by lowering standards means that the truly talented walk on the same level as the parvenues. Back in the ‘bad’ old days of Patriarchal elitism, any man, woman, or minority could rise by proof of their credentials. Today our society has devalued certification to the everyday perfunctory; therefore an employer must select by means other than skill, usually according to government quota, or familiarity of type. Hence we end up with an unequal and non-diverse public sector, dominated by white middleclass women. The bureaucratic Whitehall templates force a community’s economic and moral standards to the lowest common denominator, eventually we will lose the ability to care, from the cradle to the prison.

By eliminating our individual aspirations in favour of conformity, the government has sold our sense of ‘good’ to purchase their precious standard of ‘correct’. In this single act, we have allowed the orthodoxy of the political class to dictate to our very souls, for we have been denuded the ability to judge for ourselves. At best independent thought becomes trivial, by classing it as relative opinion rather than valid reason; at worst it is heresy, to be denounced and added to a database of deviancy. We have entered into a new dark age, without so much as a solitary goose step, we have been shuffled along in our comfortable shoes, toward a fascist state… Heil Hattie!

Yours faithfully

James McComb

The great unpublished # 1

Below is a collection of ‘letters to the editor’ of the Isle of Wight County Press, some were deemed unprintable, some were printed:

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05/04/05 (unprinted)

A Genuinely Positive College

Genuine congratulations to Sarah Snowdon for winning the top prize of best Manager for The Isle of Wight College’s Direct Learning centre (COOLSpot), as printed in the 1^st of April edition of the County Press. Did you get the highest score in the exam Sarah, or was it a straight forward knockout competition of managerial skills at the Cosham Learn Direct Managers Olympiad? I do hope that it wasn’t some tawdry show of social engineering, whereby a woman is chosen in the name of positive discrimination; that would be as un-genuine as fake hair colour.

As an unemployed scientist, I am genuinely pleased that the college has finally resolved its problems regarding ‘numeracy’ skills, as witnessed during my six month ‘training’ at the college COOLSpot. It bothered me at the time to see that those college staff, who had scored lowest in the numercy tests, were the women with the highest managerial positions. Now the college, led by Sarah’s exemplary status, has presumably resolved this quandary. The college can finally claim that their help in improving your numeracy skills will genuinely help your career prospects; especially if you are a woman.

Take the genuine example of the awarding of a show prize for the 1000^th enrolled student at one of the college’s COOLSpot centres. Unfortunately that was a man. But with Sarah’s exemplary skills in numerical manipulative management, the accolade of the 1000^th student went to the 1002^nd student; which was a woman. In case you are wondering about 1001^st student, well let’s just say that wheelchairs were a bit of a touchy subject at the time.

And Sarah is not the only one at the college with genuinely special numerical skills; take for example the Principal Debbie Lavin. After writing to her, complaining that the college’s practice of positive discrimination was a logical contradiction to its claim of “equality of opportunity”, and accusing the college of practicing “feminist job embezzlement” in lieu of the fact that there are more than twice as many women employed at the college than Wight men, she replied: “I would like to assure you again that we do not discriminate on the basis of gender or any other factor as described in our equal opportunities policy”. I guess I’ll need to improve on my old double first in physics and chemistry if I’m to be ‘assured’ that more than 70% employed women is a genuine sign of equality of opportunity.

Keep shining on girls, but be careful not to rub so hard that the veneer comes off. It will leave an awful smell...genuinely.

James McComb

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31^st May 2005 (printed)

Dear Sir,

Now that I’m culturally aware, thanks to the Isle of Wight College displaying to us yokels its African diversity on Saturday 21^st of May; I’m hungry for more. I’d like to see our only college spreading its diversity towards some academic subjects, like maybe ‘A’-levels in: Maths, English, Physics, Chemistry, History, Geography...

Maybe it’s my yokel outlook on things that limits my perspective regarding the value of subjects like “women’s studies” and the like. What happens when a woman fails “women’s studies”; is she less of a woman; does she get defrocked? Can a woman be completely valid without at least a lower second class degree in ‘woman’? Are all the legion of women without a Janet Street-Porter certified qualification in womanhood, mere lay women?

Or is it down to funding? Do the government have a slush fund for courses that aim to socially engineer us yokels towards the Utopian uplands of political correctness? I guess with my little country boy brain, that if the curriculum is geared to processing student funds through courses designed by Milbank, that there will be less need for academics at the college. Indeed, a photocopier, a fresh supply of application forms, and some “willing volunteers” from the unemployed on compulsory community programmes, is all you need to run a modern college for us yokels.

So how do you get rid of all those useless blokes with real degrees? Well you can’t just sack them for being educated; people might ask questions! Here’s an idea, why don’t you push them into subjects they are not comfortable with, and generally humiliate them for stinking the place up with all that dirty testosterone, until they raise their voices... then sack the bastards!

And if some dumb yokel newspaper wants to know why, remember the golden rule for all publicly funded institutions with a professed ‘open’ policy: NO COMMENT.

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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6^th June 2005 (unpublished)

Dear Sir,

Listen up ladies; your homework assignment for women’s studies is as follows:

(1) What is the incentive for an unmarried mother to seek a stable legitimate relationship with the unemployed father? (Hint: use the term ‘man’ as a pejorative)

(2) What are the difference/similarities between the terms: ‘equality of opportunity’, and ‘positive discrimination’, as found in a typical Isle of Wight College job application form? (If in doubt, use feminine intuition)

(3) There are three times more unemployed men than women on the Isle of Wight, yet three times more women than men work at the Isle of Wight College and Council. Is this a success or a failure? (Bonus marks available for using a culturally diverse font)

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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13/06/2005 (unpublished)

Sir,

For those who do not know of the Island Regeneration Partnership, here is their mission statement:

“To ensure that the Isle of Wight has a co-ordinated approach to economic regeneration, the Island Regeneration Partnership (I.R.P.) was set up in 1995. The aim is to ensure that the Island has a single purpose and shared vision that adds real value to the agencies engaged in economic and community regeneration. The I.R.P. partner agencies are: Wight Training and Enterprise, Business Link Isle of Wight, the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Rural Development Commission, the Isle of Wight College, the Rural Community Council, the Trades Council, the Private Sector and the Isle of Wight Council.”

As a Pan Estate yob, born and raised, it looks to me like a path of good intentions if ever there was one. The problem I have is that the statistics don’t seem to match up with the concept of community.

For example, when signing on, I notice there are 3 times more men than women claimants (as verified by the National statistics website for the Island). As a corollary, when I asked the Council and College, both agencies of the I.R.P., what is their distribution of full time equivalent employment for men and women, the Council replied that it is nearly 3 to 1 in favour of women. The College was more reticent, so I had to rely on observation during my 6 month ‘work experience’ at the college, and again the ratio is around 3 to 1 in favour of women.

Somebody in charge has a queer idea of the term community. Simply put (and assuming the lie of equal opportunity), it is at least 4 times more difficult for a man to get gainful employment in the Island Council or College, compared to a woman.

This is not a community solution, unless your community is a Sapphic vulvocracy!

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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2^nd of May 2006 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

Having recently suffered a learndirect course at the College COOLSpot, I’m left with a sense of astonishment with the general self deception the College runs with. For example, there are many notices strategically placed about stairwells and corridors, telling all about how various percentages of an ofsted report mean the College is doing so well because 8 out of 10 Colleges that showed a preference, preferred education to cat-meat. Or plaques announcing Ms Smiley-Dimples won the best area manageress award for coming first in an Egg-and-Spoon race using environmentally friendly wooden spoons, and prosthetic testicles for egg substitutes, so as not to offend chickens.

The need for self aggrandisement and political correctness is a sure symptom that the management of the College is suffering an insecurity complex.

The problem stems from the change in educational emphasis brought about by populating the College management with feminists. The evidence is fairly clear for all to see, as the majority of managers and tutors at the College are women; and the new courses are generally woman orientated (anybody for “Gender studies”).

Couple this with the fact that the courses are paid for piecemeal, or “bums on seats”, and you inherit the Stalinist paradigm of “Quantity is its own quality”. Indeed, most courses I’ve experienced at the College are designed for the slapdash acquisition of certificates which are difficult to fail, as the course targets the test, rather than the other way round.

With such diminishing standards, we might understand better the College slogan of “putting students first”. They possibly mean that staff no longer need a high education themselves; therefore Island students are beginning to get ahead of them.

With the present state of education on the Island, maybe we should be more honest with ourselves and replace the 3R’s with the 3P’s: Posing Perfunctory Parvenues.

Yours sincerely

James McComb

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8^th of June 2006 (unpublished)

The Wicker Woman

Dear Editor,

It has come to my attention that there is more than three times the number of men signing on for Job Seekers Allowance, than women.

Compare this with the large numbers of women employed in the council and the Isle of Wight College, both employing more than 70% women.

When I challenged Debbie Lavin to account for such disparities, she tells me that the College pursues a "fair and equal" employment policy.

As a mathematical exercise, is it really possible to be both fair and equal at the same time? If you force a disparity of numbers to be equal, you must take from Peter to feed Pauline, and if you allow an unbiased, open and fair selection of men and women, do you expect nature to favour a 50/50 split? In all honesty, are the men on the Island so dim that its highest academic position is awarded to a barmaid from Chorely in Lancashire?

Whatever your speculation as to the cause of this disparity, I hope you agree with me that the process of awarding gainful employment by large private and public corporations, which claim adherence to the laws of equal opportunity, should be completely open to public scrutiny, despite data protection laws, or the obfuscation by politically correct bigots.

My suspicions are that "equal opportunity" is no longer an honest aim for feminists, but has evolved into a smoke screen for job embezzlement.

This letter may well be assigned to the editorial paper basket, but I give fair warning, my experience from direct communication with some of the thousands of unemployed Wightmen, is that their chagrin at being disproportionately displaced in the job market on grounds of what is perceived as social engineering, may well result in overt misogyny, which will not be so easily dismissed.

Yours sincerely

James McComb

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15^th of November 2006 (published)

F6RM

Dear Editor,

Regarding the meeting about the proposal for a sixth form centre on the Island, held at the College on the 13^th of November. There were approximately 40 people present, including Andrew Turner, to listen to and debate the proposal, which was summarised by two 10 minute presentations, first by the LSC, then by Debbie Lavin for the College.

The LSC’s presentation was cogent, well delivered, and backed up by stats showing how woeful the Island’s A-level performance is compared to the national average. Most present agreed that change was necessary, and the promise of a £29M grant towards a sixth form centre, was nothing to be sneezed at.

Then came the cold douche to wake me from the comfy glow of shared communal purpose towards a brighter Island; a garish multimedia presentation, using out of date software, to deliver a handful of bullet points, advocating the College management as the ‘man’ to see the task done. There was no mistaking it, we were definitely at the Isle of Wight College; it’s the only place I know where the speakers hide in front of their presentations. And as if inspired by the numerous slogans hung strategically above stairwells and doorways, Debbie Lavin couldn’t resist adding that little chestnut “that the College was judged by OFSTED to be in the top 10%”.

Debbie Lavin was blinding me with maths, so I asked if OFSTED was measuring the quantity of passes, or the academic quality of the courses? I can’t remember the exact response, as Debbie Lavin delegated to her colleague who droned more numbers; I was put in mind of Joseph Stalin who regarded quantity as having its own quality.

Not all present appreciated my line of enquiry, but I felt it necessary to warn those concerned about standards of Island education, that the College has systematically dumbed down its curriculum to achieve better OFSTED figures by removing the very A-level courses that a viable sixth form would require. Indeed it is this mercenary ‘success’ in the eyes of OFSTED that should rule out the College management as the prospective body for controlling any future sixth form centre. In my honest opinion the closest the College will ever get to being a fount of knowledge, would be a little yellow floor standing sign, warning of a slippery surface ahead.

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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29^th of May 2007 (unpublished)

Equal Opportunity Commission

Dear Editor,

Do you feel equal yet? We are often asked to fill out questionnaires regarding equal opportunities, and most institutions wouldn’t be seen dead in public without some reassuring affirmation next to their logo stating that they are full to the brim with equal opportunity. There is even an equal opportunities commission to ensure we are all ‘opportuned’ equally, so it must be important to employ all those administrators to measure our equality and enact all those laws, right?

Presumably when we didn’t have the EO commission we lived in a society that was unequal, a dreadful unenlightened time in which children had fathers with jobs who actually lived in the same household as their families. A dismal time, when schools and colleges were infested with men that would traumatize the innocent with an in-depth education whether they wanted it or not, to take exams in which the student had less chance of knowing what questions to expect. A frightful time when too many men had wages and smiled more often than they do now, in a ghoulish display of contentment; how on earth did we as a community survive without the EO commission?

Luckily with the full benefits of a just and wise ethos, the EO commission have saved us from ourselves; we now live in free and equal times with more opportunities for everyone. Children can now visit twice as many households as before (dad’s restraining orders permitting), and with half the number of parents at any one time, they can take twice as much advantage, plus mum’s running the schools and college now (when not having babies), so class time is optional. And let’s not forget dad, he’s gratefully busy along with all his mates down at the dole office applying for all the temp positions to cover for maternity leave; all thanks to the EO commission.

Meanwhile the EO commission makes sure that there are just as many men as women claiming JSA on the Isle of Wight, for example according to the Department for Work and Pensions, on the 11^th of April 2007 there were 2915 men and 1075 women claiming, which must be close enough for the EO commission or they would do something about it, right?

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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25^th June 2007 (unpublished)

Dear Editor,

2 + 2 = 5

What costs more: 10 lb of apples or 10 lb of onions? Which is heaviest: £10 of onions or £10 of apples? What do you mean you need more information, you have the weights and costs given in the questions, so what’s stopping you from answering?

When I was doing work experience at the Isle of Wight College in 2004 in the COOLSpot section, I witnessed a very curious event. A student who was about to take her Numeracy test was nervous and voicing doubts. The manager chose to encourage her by pointing out that the certificate was a level 2 qualification and therefore equivalent to a GCSE in mathematics. Needless to say the student, who had no experience of a GCSE except second hand via her children’s school work, was convinced and proceeded to take and pass the test.

I will resist the image of said student skipping off down the yellow brick road brandishing her new brain from the Wizard of Medina Way. But the instance and others had left me in no doubt that there was a tendency to dupe Islanders via the “type token ambiguity”. If Jade Goody were to write on the blackboard the last sentence 40,000 times, she might have equalled the word output of William Shakespeare; but I trust nobody would confuse the sagacity of the two, unless we are an Island of Jade Goodys.

Nowadays the College gives itself rave reviews and convinces us that it’s the man for the job with regards taking all the responsibility of the Island’s education for 16 to 19 year olds. It doesn’t matter the fact that the College dumped its experience of A-levels years ago, because OFSTED’s motto is ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’. And just to be on the safe side they are planning to teach the international baccalaureate, so if they cock it up, who has any experience to criticize? My advice to potential sixth formers at the College: stay well clear of the toffee apples!

Yours faithfully

James McComb

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25^th June 2007 (published)

Dear Editor,

A grim tale

Once upon a time there was a drab little boy called Sandown High School. Each evening whilst his big shiny sister The Isle of Wight College was out boozing at the Trendy Club with her splendid girlfriends the Council and the LSC, little Sandy would be stuck at home diligently doing his boring A-level homework.

One stormy evening the girls came crashing in after a glittering night out and ordered little Sandy to prepare three bowls of sparkle. The girls wolfed it down without so much as a perfunctory grunt, and then threw up all over themselves. They admonished little Sandy, telling him it was politically incorrect to scrutinize what little boys should not see, and get to work cleaning up the awkward details, and don’t leave any breadcrumbs behind you because County Press will fly down and gobble them all up and you’ll be lost in the backwoods.

After the LSC had composed them self they looked up at the big shiny sister upon her £3 million prefabricated tower and said “I got a dirty girt load of grants dayn ‘ere; lower yer standards an oyl climb up and give you one.”

The big shiny sister stood before a magic mirror and uttered the invocation “OFSTED OFSTED off the wall, who’s the biggest shiniest College of them all?” To which the mirror replied “You’re the only College in a large catchment area… you do the maths!”

His big shiny sister recalled her level 2 certificate in Numeracy and announced that 2 + 2 = 5, because 5 stars are bigger and shinier than 4, so it must be the best answer! To which little Sandy corrected her via axiom and induction and the immutable laws of mathematics, but she interrupted: “Hark at the swatty little spod! We’re not drab like you and your A-levels in Maths, Physics Chemistry, History and Geography, because we do nice things like certificates in Gloss, Gleam, Shimmer and Twinkle. And for the boys we throw in a token course like Duraglit.”

So he was lead out to the water meadow, among the grazing unemployed busily shining cow-pats for their work experience, weighted down with a closure notice and drowned in the font of knowledge.

And they all lived blissfully ever after because they learned never to ask dirty awkward questions… or to risk performance challenging A-levels in their curriculum, unlike drab little Sandown High School which consistently outperformed all other schools on the Island for the last few years at this level according to data provided by the LSC.

James McComb