dan,

It's just all too hard these days. I was sent to school to learn. I didn't learn much, but you could get a job anywhere, so it didn't matter. Most of us were more or less normal - apart from the kid I didn't know and definitely did not want to see with his togs off. Now, kids have to be in 'relationships' and constant turmoil. There are things called 'helicopter parents' (generally female because a dad isn't really necessary these days, apparently). Girls are 'best friends' with their mothers, and dad and the boy .. well, not much is known about them. I'm glad to be on the downhill run and hoping like hell I won't be back after everything goes black.

Tttbn

Yep, we can only sigh in disbelief at the changes.
How about " school of the air". Wasn't that home schooling for kids. This day and age, why not copy that successful model?

Diver Dan,
I believe that with teacher shortage problems, as well as a large proportion of teachers being women, (non equal gender teaching) that they should create a national digital school curriculum, that can be used by anyone young or old, to learn basic schooling via app.

My kids were so unfortunate to receive a few years home schooling. the local state school was nothing a short of a zoo. Now one has a couple of degrees, another finishes medicine this year while the smartest is a Sparky earning twice the money I ever have. One of my sons mates who was home schooled at the same time and not particularly bright in my opinion is also a doctor. Poor deprived kids and they did not have to have their minds perverted by ' safe' schools' and other social engineering programs. They were taught to think before the attempts by unis to dumb them down with socialist dogma.

dan,

Too much trouble to pedal the radio these days.

With 99.9% of mothers 'fulfilling' themselves and being 'equal', but still in debt, with ridiculously high mortgages, there is little chance that that there will be a boom in home-schooling.

Apropos of nothing, I rose at 10am today after another virtually sleepless night, and couldn't get the lid off a new marmalade jar. I used to pride myself on my skinny but powerful wrists. Today, I had to resort to the lid-removing gadjet. The end is nigh. I'm bewildered and buggered.

runner,

Good on your kids. Some kids do well despite their parents. I hope Dr. Runner sticks to doctoring and doesn't join 'doctors for the environment' like a couple of of the pestilent contributors we have had on recently. Medicine is a necessary calling, but it seems to go to the heads of some, who believe that a medical practitioner somehow adds a little something more to a particular hobby horse than does an old-age pensioner pensioner with similar interests. Job snobbery is a particularly nasty disease, in my view.

Ttbn

Opening a vacuume sealed lid the easy way.
Tap around the rim of the lid with (eg) the handle of a metal knife, half a dozen times until the dome vacuume seal indicator pops up. Two fingers will easily open the lid from that point!

That's good advice from one uneducated of course.

Good stuff runner....