Questions?

We play cricket on porridge pitches and in blizzard conditions in April; rugby in heat and on the bone-hard sward in September. We offer places at Universities before the results appear and then unpick the whole thing in the light of proper info. We spent years convincing ourselves that Jimmy Savile was a ‘warm and quirky personality’. We prefer the tawdry behaviour of hugely overpaid Premiership footballers to the Herculean efforts of a vast array of other admirable athletes. We buy the Sun newspaper in vastly greater quantity than any other national daily. Just how many more idiocies can we list?

Thousands – and I’m starting here so that everone can think up their own hit list and, like Desert Island Discs, review their favourites on a regular basis. There will be those based on nostalgia such as that strangest of times in the 70s when the miners couldn’t see that their cause was blighted by the selfish and self-seeking self-publicist Arther Scargill. Or the lukewarm milk delivered to primary schools in the 50s which parents and teachers thought was good for us after the privations of rationing.

The inexplicable list could go on forever. Why, oh why do we persist with: tattoos, cold calls, Keith Lemon, Big Brother….no let’s get rather more serious.

Why do people get paid bonuses for doing their jobs?

Why do we look back to learn lessons for the future, when the past tells us that we don’t learn lessons.?

Why are brilliant actors and other performers appallingly inarticulate when they receive awards?

What’s wrong with a coalition where two sides have to get on and sort out their differences?

Why are double-glazed houses still draughty?

Why don’t ladies drink port and lemon any more?

OK now it’s getting rather random so let’s start (once again) with something I should know about and then have lists of idiotic questions sorted by category.

A. EDUCATION

1. Have we decided what it is yet – and what it’s for?

2. Grading systems – these seem to be under debate (again). Go back to square one and admit that all anyone is interested in is which grades mean pass and which mean fail?

3. Is Literature as important as Physics? Is Art as important as Maths? Should we even rate subjects as more – or less – important?

4. Do children learn more out of school than in?

5. Why aren’t some degree courses allocated half the study-time? History for example.

6. If Ofsted and Mr Gove are essentially outcomes-driven (ie fixated on results), why are they bothered about parents taking children on term-time holidays? Private schools have weeks more holiday and seem to be the paradigm for much current thinking.

7. Why do teachers try to justify themselves?

8. Why don’t more headteachers cuddle their staff?

And so on…Send me your weird list, please.