No places at the inn...not even with straight As

You may recall that I have had a thing or two to say about the education system. I have, indeed, been known to say it loudly whilst banging my fist on the bar at the Surfeit of Lamprey.

It came as no surprise, although I was still deeply disappointed, to see that up to 150,000 young people will not get a university place, this year. Moreover, there are students from state schools with damn good results who won't get places.

How can this be when successive governments have said how important it is that everyone gets a chance to go to University and how we wanted to encourage growth in numbers?

Like horses with blinkers or jockeys with blindfolds, they have charged headlong at Becher's and come a cropper. Those of us observing from the safety of the sidelines, our progeny having passed through University some time ago, saw this coming before the field even rounded the first bend. Of course, those blighters at Whitehall and Westminster were just interested in getting the unemployed figures down not in the best interests of the nation's children.

The headlines had set even this sleepy corner of England talking. Hogenroast Malpractice may be off the beaten track but that doesn't mean we are unaware, you know. So, having been joined by Robert Awfullybuff-Headstrong, Nigel Snipe-Razzell and Merton Herflop, I became quite animated on the subject.

"Indeed so" nodded Merton, the former school joker and now editor of Public Eye, "I have been thinking how to get some good cynical humour out of it on next week's "Have I got some view for you"

This brought some good thumping and hoorahs from the group. Merton was a schoolboy of no influence at Warboys, despite editing the school rag but has turned that completely around with his very public face on tv. Can't say I always agree with his views but he does present them with a cutting edge.

I hope you are listening, out there, those of you who balls-ed up the system. Here are the squire's three actions for the future good of our school leavers;
- Provide enough alternative places in good apprenticeships or equivalent that offer good skills and a high likelihood of employment and review them every two to three years to ensure that what is on offer is relevant to what society needs.
- Go back to Universities as academic houses with establishments (such as the polytechnic and technical college) providing specialisation, ensuring there are enough places for all students who obtain all A grades.
- Reduce the number of places so that grants and scholarships can be offered to reduce the terrible debt that families and individuals face after their course is done.

We don't need degrees for the sake of it. We need people qualified in skills that can be put to use. And most of all, we cannot afford everyone to be intelligensia with nobody to do the leg work. The top 2-2.5% worked for a reason. It isn't elitism, it's about managing expectation.

Basel is more like an old Brush

Now I don't know any bankers. You might think a man of my standing would, but I don't. Probably just as well for them otherwise when all that shenanigans with the banking system happened, I'd have been after them with my riding crop and a blunderbuss. The hunt needs something to do, as well.

I happened to be down at the Wagon and Tax Break over the weekend and was drinking with an old Warboys man, Don Merryweather or as he calls himself, these days, Donald D Merryweather.

We happened to get onto the subject of the banks with Donald being a Financial Consultant, as you would. Do you know these dashed bankers are sorting their dirty linen behind closed doors in Switzerland? I say, dash it all... any other industry and we'd have a public enquiry but not the banks, evidently. No doubt, they will come up with a lot of technical jargon and then expect the rest of us to believe that they have imposed a lot of strong regulations on themselves!

What are those lily livered political types going to do about it? That's what I want to know. We are all grown ups and despite what these banking types may think, a lot of us understand business and finance, too. So here's my personal challenge to them... come out of your closeted, velvet cushioned seats at your antique walnut veneered table and talk to the rest of us in plain language because we want to hear how you are going to do things better in future.

Let's not forget whose money saved your bacon. And let's also not forget that we are all suffering as a consequence of your inability to regulate your industry properly. And by the way, when we talk about not wanting you to take big risks, that's not an excuse to keep down interest rates on our savings nor declining investment in small businesses.

Basel (well alright, pronounced improperly)... it's enough to make a fox laugh.