Category: politics

Four in ten newly qualified teachers quit within the 1st year.

Being a teacher, I turned up this stat just the other day on a recruitment site for assaid ‘support teachers’ mentioned in the article below.

Figures disclosed showed that only 62 per cent were still in teaching a year after gaining their Qualified Teacher Status

Richard Garner. Independent.

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Almost four out of ten teachers are no longer in the classroom a year after qualifying, a teachers’ conference heard yesterday.

Figures disclosed at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference in Liverpool yesterday showed that only 62 per cent were still in teaching a year after gaining their Qualified Teacher Status.

The figures, based on an analysis of Department for Education data, also showed that the number who complete their training but never enter the classroom has tripled in six years – from 3,600 in 2006 to 10,800 in 2011.

The cost to the taxpayer of training them is estimated to be just under £1 billion.
Continue reading “Four in ten newly qualified teachers quit within the 1st year.”

How much is your PM/Pres. paid?

World Leader Pay Infographic

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he and almost everyone working for him would take a 10% pay cut because of mounting economic sanctions imposed on his country.

Whether Putin and his staff will actually feel the slash in their salaries is debatable, considering Putin says he is unaware of the amount printed on his paychecks. “Frankly, I don’t even know my own salary; they just give it to me, and I put it away in my account,” he reportedly said to a group of reporters during his annual Q&A session in December.

Putin’s official salary is chump change compared with that of a prime minister of an island nation smaller than New York City.

Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong earns 12 1/2 times as much as Putin at a whooping $1.7 million. Loong’s salary is large enough to pay for the combined salaries of the leaders of India, Brazil, Italy, Russia, France, Turkey, Japan, United Kingdom, South Africa, and Germany.

Loong’s Singapore is also the world’s most expensive city for a second year in a row, according to The Economist’s bi-annual Worldwide Cost of Living report.

Link.

Life behind the great firewall of China: VPN in China

Update China internet – January 2015

As of 1st January 2015, the Chinese government further tightened it’s grip on the nation’s internet access.
A rude awakening for many expats hoping to get on the ‘net – nothing worked.

Things have calmed down a little, but the fall-out is as follows:-

1) All foreign sites are throttled.

Regardless of CDN’s, font-libraries, supplementary elements, platforms etc.; foreign sites are subjected to government level ‘throttling’.

2) Mobile VPN’s don’t work.

Astrill, one of China’s largest VPN’s – no longer able to support mobile VPN access.
Hidemyass, the VPN I use, connection is intermittent at best.

This thread on Shaghai expat reports, some are experiencing more luck than others, depending on what VPN you subscribe to.

China’s Internet access – Life behind the great firewall

Since May of last year, when the troubles in Hong Kong first erupted, the Chinese government has been changing the way the internet works inLife behind the great firewall of China China.

We’re all aware of the ‘great wall of China’, the system by which China monitors and prevents sites it doesn’t wish it’s residents to view.

Previously, this would have been Facebook, Twitter, certain searches or selected content would be blocked.

Also Youtube.

Not really a massive problem, you could still update your phone, look at maps and do a quick translation. At home, sites were slow to download, but acceptable.

Since May 2014, that’s all changed

China internet restrictions since May 2014

The following sites have been blocked wholesale.

Twitter, Facebook, Google (all sites), Soundcloud, Instagram.

New York Times, Bloomberg, selected international Wikipedia pages, Wikileaks, BBC news and radio.

Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, iStockPhoto.

Flickr, Change.org and most VPN sites.

China now throttles all foreign websites

Something the government does now is ‘throttle‘ foreign websites. ‘Throttle‘ it, makes elements ‘timeout’ and leaving you with an improperly rendered and unreadable page.

This maybe due to font libraries, or CDN (content distribution networks), such as Google font libraries or Edgecast respectively.

Many sites access these services to serve content in a more efficient manner. When this content is blocked, the whole site fails to work.

As a foreign speaking resident, this causes you problems.

The only way to get around this is –

China VPN

There are a number of companies offering VPN, or Virtual Private Network services

**A VPN is a protocol executed to access the internet through a tunnel, a tunnel where your real IP address and location is never revealed.

to get round these restrictions, and be able to go on the websites and access the services you would at home.

I won’t trawl through them, there are sites which tell you how much and the relative features etc.

I picked the one with the largest network of servers. Hide My Ass!

It’s got services in Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Continue reading “Life behind the great firewall of China: VPN in China”

Year of the Pig – Again

Had to watch the BBC2 daily politics program today whilst doing my wii-fit jogging, which happened to be talking about the Leveson enquiry and all the money it had spent.

pigThe platitudes issued in the spirit of non-achievement and self enrichment in this report is something that the British seem to have excelled themselves at, and really, rolls out to society as a whole.

So, congrats to everyone, this a very good time to be a pig.

May we roll things out for ever and ever until they lead nowhere.