Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

If you have been following the news, you may have recently heard that an oil rig leased by BP to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20th. The explosion killed eleven workers and, after two days, the rig, Deepwater Horizon, sank in 5000 ft of water.

I do follow the news about BP a little and, to me, this does not come as a great surprise. BP has a long and poor safety record, which includes a refinery explosion down in Texas back in 2005, which killed fifteen workers. From what the media has been saying, the reason for this latest disaster is, once again, due to poor safety.

The consequences for this latest disaster are going to be severe. Oil is leaking from the broken wellhead and it appears no one is quite sure how to stop the leak. It could be months before this is sorted and, in the meantime, crude oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

This all goes to show that, yet again, a big corporation has put profits before safety and you can be pretty sure that the government has allowed them to get away with lax health and safety. It is sad that many people are now going to suffer for big oil incompetence.

Today after school, we went on our visit to see Cinders at the Humane Society. We have been doing this at least twice a week since March when the Humane Society called and asked if we would like to adopt her.

While we were there, the staff at the Humane Society told us she was not healing and that they thought it was because of her situation at the Humane Society. Cinders pretty much gets to sit in cage all day with not much stimulation. They told us it might be better if we took her home where she would be in a better environment and where they think she will have a better chance to heal her sores. So, we have brought Cinders home. So far, she has spent a lot of time hiding under the bed upstairs but that is to be expected. She is, after all, in a new environment with two other cats that she does not know.

So far, Puck and Harvey have not taken well to Cinders. I am hoping that, with time, this will change, but our main concern right now is getting Cinders all healed. I have made an appointment with the vet and hopefully we can get Cinders settled into her new home and healed.

Today was another “day” at Gering High School, most specifically today was County Government Day.  This day was a little different from Senior Service Day last week as it did not involve the entire school. In fact, it involved just 26 juniors and myself.

Every year, Scottsbluff County organizes their County Government Day. Most of the school districts within Scottsbluff and Banner Counties send either junior or senior students to this event. The number of students that can go is limited to 26 so we pick which students get to go.

This year, I got to organize this event, which was pretty straight forward. I just had to decide who was going to go, what County Government departments  they were going to represent, and I insisted that students dress appropriately for the event. We then walked down to the County Government Building (its only about a 5-10 minute walk from the school) and the students went into a room upstairs to be introduced to the day’s events. After that, students were broken up into groups to learn about the areas of county government to which they had been assigned, such as District Attorney, Sheriff, County Commissioners, and so on.

While the students were in their groups, we teachers got to go to McDonald’s to chat and drink coffee, which was not a bad way to spend my morning. I got to meet Social Studies teachers from around the area and we had some interesting conversations.

At lunch time, we got to have lunch in a local church. We heard a few speeches and got to see how to properly fold an American flag. After lunch, students got to see some demonstrations by local law enforcement and then a  mock trial was held. The students were asked their opinions on the trial and whether a conviction based on what they had observed would have stood up in court. I was pleased to see that most students thought the case in question would be thrown out because it was based on an illegal search.

Once the day was over, we walked back to school, but I let the students have some time play on the swings, at the park. We got back to school just in time for the bell to ring. Overall, it was a pretty good day. I got to get out of the classroom and spend part of my day with other teachers. I do hope I get the chance to do this again next year. I am pretty sure that I will.

Today was Senior Service Day at the high school. I always like this day. While the sophomores spend most of their day testing and juniors both test and have to sit through a presentation, the seniors get to go out around the Gering/Scottsbluff area to do some community service for various organizations around town.

This year was actually my first year with the seniors. The last two years I had to spend at the Freshmen Academy with the 9th graders who have to take their Terra Nova tests on Senior Service Day. This year, I was picked to supervise a group of seniors as they spent part of their day helping out at the Panhandle Humane Society.  In total I had about a dozen seniors who were divided up into groups once the got to the Humane Society. Each group spent a little time doing different tasks, such as working with the cats, cleaning parts of the building, and working and playing with the dogs.

Although we were only there a few hours, it provided some insight into what the Humane Society does and just how much work is involved running a community organization. For me, the big plus was that, while I was there, I got to see Cinders. She is doing pretty good, but the healing is very slow. I think it may be after the end of the school year before we are allowed to take her home. I think she appreciated the fact that she got a lot of attention today.

After senior service was completed, the seniors returned to the high school for their senior picnic and then there were games where the students won prizes. It was organized so that everyone won at least one prize and some of the prizes were pretty good, such as flat screen televisions, ipods, and even a microwave oven.

At least for the seniors, it was a day away from the academic grind and for them a chance to hang out with people who they might not see again after they graduate next month. Unfortunately, there is some talk of not having senior service in the future, which would be sad as I think the students actually get something worthwhile out of this day.

As expected, the hopeless British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, called a General Election for Thursday  May 7th. My prediction is that the opposition Conservative Party will either win a small majority in Parliament or just fall short of an overall majority.

I will be glad if/when the Labour Party lose the election. They have totally run the country into the ground in the last 13 years, but, to be fair, they only continued the work that was started by the dreadful Margret Thatcher back in 1979. For the last 31 years, Britain’s political leaders have done their best to ruin what was once a great country.

So what do I expect from a Conservative government? More of the same. I see the UK continuing to decline economically, socially, and politically and none of the so-called politicians today have what it takes to stop the rot. I expect a low turnout (by British standards) on election day because millions of people think that the political parties are pretty much the same and are not worth the time or effort to to receive their vote or support.

Since I have lived outside the UK for the last fifteen years, I am no longer eligible to vote in UK elections. Even if I could vote I would not bother. None of the politicians have the best interests of the country at heart and, as the expenses scandal clearly showed last year, most of these politicians are nothing more than lying, cheating bastards.