Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

I finally got through graduation and all the graduation parties again for this year. It seemed like all the graduation events this year would never end and, indeed, this year I got about 50 invites from students, which for me is a record.

I do of course appreciate all of the invitations, but being the homebody that I am, I hate being out and about the weekend of graduation. It’s a relief that it is over for another year. As always, I handed out a graduation card and the “mystery” gift to each student and I do wish them all the best for the future. Now that it is all done, I can look forward to the summer break and not have to worry about school until August.

Next school year I will have tenure, so no formal observation and a lot less pressure. That will be nice for me and nice to know that I will be staying in one place for more than three years.

After five days, there is finally a new government in the UK. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition that they have agreed will last a full five years. The Liberal Democrats will get a referendum on an alternative voting system for elections and David Cameron gets to be Prime Minister. The Liberal Democrats also get five seats in the cabinet and also 20 other ministerial positions in the government. The Conservatives get to enact their agenda of cuts to government services because of the UK’s huge budget deficit.

I doubt that this arrangement is going last the full five years. For one thing, there are too many Conservatives and Liberal Democrats that are unhappy with this arrangement and too many ideological differences. It will be interesting to see how supporters of both parties accept this arrangement. I have a feeling that a lot of people who voted Liberal Democratic will feel let down and angry. Many Liberal Democratic supporters have more in common with Labour than the Tories and may find this arrangement to be unacceptable.

I anticipate that this set up will work for a year or two before it implodes. Gordon Brown has already said that he is resigning the Labour leadership so a new leader may make Labour more popular with Gordon gone.

So we have the result of the UK General Election. As predicted, Labour lost and the Conservatives won the most seats, but not enough for an outright majority. So we have a hung Parliament, the first since the election of February of 1974.

Right now, Gordon Brown is still Prime Minster. I don’t see how he can stay in that position. He clearly lost, could not form a coalition, even with the help of the Liberal Democrats, and is personally unpopular. What will happen is that, in the next few days, there will be negotiations and the most likely outcome will be a Tory-led coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I actually think that this will stink but it looks like this it what will happen.

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.