Failed pupils can pass test of time
Glory, glory Halle-lujah!
IF YOU’RE expecting me to add my clamour to the crabby chorus telling teenagers to suck up the disappointment of their lowered A-level results and “use the experience to become stronger’, forget it. I’m all for backbone and resilience. “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is a reasonable philosophy. Crying over spilt milk won’t clean the floor or moisten your cereal.
But slogging away at school for 18 months only to have your finals wiped out by a global pandemic is high on the list of unexpectedly scary events guaranteed to derail your world.
Lockdown was ghastly for adults but torture for teens. Imagine being stuck with your cursed parents for four hellish months when you’re burning to do what your rioting hormones dictate. Have a bash at recalling how it feels to be 18.
So stop wallowing in maturity and the weary resignation that creeps in with each advancing year. Instead, allow yourself to remember how it was to be young: the impatience, the electric energy, the desire to sleep on strangers’ floors and fall in love three times before breakfast.
FOR many sixth-formers A-levels are a vital hurdle which, once vaulted, provide a route to adulthood. That said, there’s nothing new about wretched pupils sobbing at their miserably inadequate results.
What is new and worryingly sinister is being let down by an algorithm so flawed that the Royal Statistical Society wrote to the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) saying it was unfit for purpose and offering help. Ofqual’s response was to pressure the RSS to sign a five-year non-disclosure agreement. So vital assistance was never given.
What will the legacy of this mess be for young people, particularly those discriminated against for attending a low-performing school in a disadvantaged area? Apart from shattered dreams and horror at the intransigence of the universities – obdurately sticking to their original requirements despite the raging tumult – how can they fail to feel betrayed?
As to the belief government works tirelessly for the greater good, forget it. We now have a generation bristling at the injustice meted out to it. Trust has been destroyed. But at least no algorithm can destroy all their dreams and wreck their hard work. So there is potential for a silver lining: these teenagers may turn out to be the crusading reformers we need to gallop to our country’s rescue?
I’M pleased for Halle Berry. No really, I am. Somehow at the age of 54 she has managed to inhabit the body of a stunning 16 year old and is strutting her unlined, unsagging wrinkle-free stuff in an eye-watering array of bondage-inspired bikinis.
There isn’t a woman on the planet who – were they in Halle’s uniquely pert and perky circumstances – wouldn’t do the same.
Blessed with a flat stomach and thighs unrippled by cellulite I would shrug on a thong and mount the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.
There’s no point hiding one’s light under a bushel. Seeing Halle in the almost altogether is not so much an inspiration as an unattainable fantasy, as inaccessible to mere mortals as the Venus de Milo’s form.
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THE creator of Pointless, Richard Osman, says: “I used to be terrified of flying, but it turns out I was terrified of flying economy.”
I’ve never been scared of boarding a plane and am far too pennywise to squander hard-earned cash on business class tickets, but I’m scared witless of boarding a plane while Covid-19 continues to rage.
Apologies to all struggling airlines but trying not to inhale the purified but recycled air while worrying sick about the person across the aisle’s persistent cough isn’t my idea of an enjoyable journey.