Wednesday, February 15th .....

I’m at Giant Steps again. Tim, the new Principal, asked me to prepare a short survey to send out to parents. This will be the first step in a process to get a grant of $20 000 from the Federal Government. The program is called the National School Chaplains and Student Welfare Program. There are already some 1000 schools being funded under this program and another 1000 will be selected in the next round. You can do the sums: 1000 schools x $20000 x 3 years = $60 million dollars + administration costs. It’s unbelievable, what other dotty ideas can they come up with to waste money. At least we can’t blame Julia Gillard for this one; it’s a hangover from the days of John Howard. Probably part of his Back to the Fifties push.

The problem with the original program is that schools were asking for money to provide counselling services and a chaplain didn’t necessarily have those skills. So, in typical style, the government extended the program so that school could choose between a traditional chaplain and a Student Welfare Worker, then noted in the Guidelines that the roles of these two positions are identical. Ludicrous! As Shakespeare said, What’s in a name?

I turned on to an extraordinary show on ABC last night. It’s called Genius and the format is that audience members suggest bizarre ideas which are rated genius or not genius. Some of the suggestions were to standardise all Chinese menus so that #46 is always Chicken Chow Mein right across the country, or that all cars should be equipped with a wasp to make sure that the driver doesn’t fall asleep. One potential genius had worked out that, when people made their bucket lists of ten things to do before they die, swimming with dolphins and skydiving regularly appeared. To save time, he suggested that they should introduce tandem sky-diving with dolphins. He kept a perfectly straight face when the so-called judges picked holes in his idea.

Apparently, this show started on radio and came later to TV. One commentator pointed out that the only difference this made was that people could then see how mad the audience really were. I’d have to agree; they were a particularly peculiar lot, even taking into consideration that they were pommies. The best part of the show was the trio of presenter and two judges who beautifully sent up the genius wannabees.