There is a capitalist myth gaining currency that electricity is “clean energy.” When we are sucking the watts out of sockets or batteries it is clean enough of course, no columns of yellowy grey smoke rising from tall chimneys, no nasty oily smell as of exhaust fumes from internal combustion engines.

That might seem to confirm the claims of commercial operations promoting the virtues of the electric car or electrical home heating systems but think again. Electricity is not a clean fuel, most of the electric power used for domestic and industrial purposes is generated by burning coal, oil or gas. Power stations are the biggest emitters of CO2 and NO2, running 24/7, pumping these pollutant gases into the atmosphere.

Plus your Prius into the main supply and you can feel virtuous, the generating plant that produced the electricity flowing into your batteries is well away from town so out of sight, out of mind. But the power station is not the only source of pollution drivers of electric cars should be aware of the environmental impact of manufacturing and disposing of Nickel Metal – Hydride (NiMH) batteries. both are absolutely filthy processes. Lithium – Ion batteries would be a better option but for the scarcity of lithium and the abundance of people who want to own cars.

Still, so long as the batteries are not manufactured in our back yard the public relations peoples’ job in persuading us to scrap our perfectly good conventional cars and buy new hybrids or electric cars. We can continue to be concerned without actually changing our lifestyles.

Clean generation systems are the answer but what does The Great Conspiracy come up with? Carbon Capture Systems. Even if the technology works it only succeeds in moving the problem out of sight.

Nuclear power from fission offers CO2 free electricity but pollutes in other ways. So much for electricity being a clean fuel. It is time we stopped letting the media and the evangelists for free market solutions divert attention from the grim realities. As things stand we have no reliable and environmentally friendly way of providing the electricity modern societies need. And the effing Government are pratting about with windmills.

Nuclear fusion would seem to provide and answer but research has not progressed much in the last fifty years.

We will only have abundant clean energy when we are prepared to elect Governments that are not slaves to big business and big finance, that will not prioritise the profit factor but sink public money and human resources into developing power generation technologies that utilise genuinely reliable and sustainable sources, the Sun, tides, river flow.

The Sats results for pupils at KS2 and KS3 were finally published yesterday, amidst continuing grumblings about the marking process.
This follwed hot on the heels of news that secondary schools regularly re-test the children when they enter Y7 as they have found that the grades they receive at KS2 are not compatible with the childs performance generally.
A further concern is that the number of children attaining Level 5, the highest level available to a child sitting a KS2 paper, has dropped.
This has led to concerns that brighter children are being neglected.
Too damn right they are. When Labour came to power in 1997 Tony Blair said his priorities were,"Education, education education."
The first attempt to get over 75% of pupils achieving level 4 in each of the core subjects was quite simply to lower the pass mark on the papers and make the questions easier.
When SATS were first introduced in 1993 it was impossible to get a Level 4 on the English reading paper without answering what are termed 'higher order questions' where to answer correctly a child would have to form an opinion, or read between the lines and give reasons for their answers. All this changed after 1997, it became possible to achieve the pass mark, which was lower anyway, just by answering multiple choice questions, or simple comprehension type questions.
The same applies to Maths and Science where children were expected to be able to explain how they worked out an answer, how they would solve a problem, design an experiment or draw conclusions from a set of data.
However having instigated this change it was still not enough to achieve the target the government had set itself. So then they brought in booster classes. Teachers were asked to identify those children who were at a predicted level 3A or 3B, and these children were given extra tuition, funded by the government, in an effort to boost them up to level 4.
In many cases thase children would be removed from the ordinary class to be taught separately, in small groups, whereas the other kids, now the ones from both ends of the ability range, were left in the classroom.
But the trouble with cramming is that it just doesn't stick. It's OK if you've got the knowledge there, but if you are trying to get the knowledge in in the first place that is a different kettle of fish, so even though some of the children improved enough to get that coveted level 4 more often than not it wasn't a genuine improvement, as the secondary teachers soon noted.

Now, 11 years down the line education is once again in turmoil, this year's SATS ara a fiasco and standards do not seem to improve, only 61% of children who took SATS this year achieved Level 4 in all three subjects. Meanwhile the brighter kids get bored and are turned off education, cruising along without ever being challenged, because despite Mr. Blair's belief that sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors could convince the public that things were changing it should now be obvious to anyone who cares to look that the only change has been the pursuit of mediocrity at the expense of excellence.

Everybody knows what is happening, nobody is prepared to admit they know what is happening. The American election will all come down to the race issue.

Last wek barak Obama said the Republicans would try to scare the electorate by pointing out that Obama does not look like the other Presidents pictured on the dollar bills. Now McCain has never said this and nor has anybody representing his campaign (they don't need to, America's right wing are racist enough to work it out for themselves)

In response McCain accused Obama and his campaign managers of playing the race card. Obama's people responded to that by saying McCain's whole campaign was racist. That may seem ridiculous to we British, but we are looking at a country where some people would accused you of racism if you mentioned you ate Fried Chicken for lunch.

McCain accuses Obama of playing the racecard. Obama accuses McCain of being a politician

Now Obama has had to backtrack and admit McCain was not racist. Remember it was not McCain who made the crack about the pictures of dead Presidents on the dollar bills, it was Barak Obama who said that McCain was going to say that. So by way of a non-apology Obama now says McCain was nor racist but was cynical. A cynical politician, now there's a first.

It all sounds like a case of the pot calling the kettle...........erm........a cynical racist to me.