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 1st 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 1000th 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 1000th student went to the 1002nd student; which was a woman. In case you are wondering about 1001st 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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31st 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 21st 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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6th 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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2nd 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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8th 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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15th 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 13th 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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29th 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 11th 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
__________
25th 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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25th 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
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