Teachers have a lot to answer for

Greetings, amici.

You, loyal readers and devoted students of the works of Cicero, are owed an almighty apology for his enforced and prolonged absence from these pages for the past few weeks. Fortunately your patience is today rewarded and we are back with more words of wit and wisdom. Apologies.

And lest you were wondering, and you will find this difficult to believe, but since we were last together the Navvies who have been ‘working’, and we use this word advisedly as not one has been seen actually expending energy on the task in hand, on the Viae around Cicero’s humble abode, have made little progress to date on suturing said Viae. This is getting beyond a joke. Words have been said though as usual these have fallen on deaf ears with the usual cry of the indolent around these parts ‘nothing to do with me, guv, I’m only doing my job’. Shocking.

Now you don’t come here to hear Cicero moan so let’s see what goodies we have in store for you today.

When Cicero was young, and here we mean very young, He was always doing poorly in maths, a talent that still sadly eludes Him. His teacher would keep telling Cicero that He needed to show the workings to get top marks.

‘But why’ Cicero would repeatedly ask,’ am I not getting top marks even though my answer is right?’

‘Because’ replied the teacher, ‘you might just be guessing the answer unless I see how you got there. How else can I tell if your thinking process is right?’

This is nonsense.

No wonder as a nation we are lacking in creativity and imagination if we need to see the working outs all the time. There are some things that just can’t be worked out logically and with process.

Einstein once said, and you can’t get any greater endorsement than Einstein for a wacky idea, “First we make the intuitive leap then we use logic to build a bridge back to where we started.”

Now in Cicero’s school such an approach would only have got you half marks but this is the kind of thinking that breeds not stifles creativity.

In the world created by our schools we're really not that interested in the answer but much more interested in how you got there-if the thinking’s right, the answer must be right.

But that kind of thinking stops us going beyond logic. It stops the creative leap. It assumes logic is the be-all and end-all. The Dyson, the iPad and Google were invented not because of our school system but despite it.

In Cicero’s world of Marketing Luvvies and Marketing Head Honchos ideas are the fuel that gets us through the day. The traditional model says that great ideas should flow from the brief but why can’t the brief be retrospectively altered to suit a great idea.

Normally that would be heresy. Surely the brief is sacrosanct.

But if we look at it another way the brief is the working out in the margin, the process by which we get there, the brake on the creative leap.

At this point traditional Luvvies will be spluttering into their cocktails and designer beer. How will we know if we've got the right answer if it doesn’t fit the working-out in the margin? And what if you got the right answer by the wrong method? Then it can’t be valid. Better to have the wrong answer by the right method.

But consider this. 4% of advertising is remembered positively, 7% is remembered negatively, but a whopping 89% isn’t noticed or remembered. Probably because that 89% all looks the same. And maybe there is a reason for that.

Teachers have a lot to answer for.

Is it only me......but surely it’s now time to hit the road.

The brass neck of some people really does rile me.

It is with a mounting sense of frustration, incredulity and choleric rage that I, along with many other right minded people, have been following the attempts by Basildon Council to evict and move on a bunch of so called travellers who have flagrantly and blatantly broken planning law. For 10 years the Apparatchiks at Basildon Council, the heart of Essex-dom, have fought these people. I am sure that my council would not fight me for 10 years if I had built so much as a shed on my wee plot. I am sure that JCBs and Navvies with picks and shovels would be in before I was able to say ‘Council Tax’.

It goes without saying that Human Rights have been invoked, notwithstanding the Human Rights of those unfortunate to live in the vicinity of this so called peace camp. And it is amazing that even the United Nations has intervened. You would have thought that with its members at war with each other and others demonstrating genocidal tendencies, the UN might have bigger fish to fry.

We also have the claims of some of these people that the camp is full of children, old people and cancer sufferers and that it is so unfair of the Apparatchiks to throw them out onto the roadside, nearly ignoring the inconvenient fact that these Apparatchiks have offered each and every camp dweller a house, which is more than they deserve. We even have camp spokespeople saying stupid things like ‘"But we've got nowhere to go. We don't know what's going to happen to us’’. Poor you. You have had 10 years to get yourself organised.

Now I always like to be constructive in my criticism, always looking to be helpful and to offer some tips and advice. And even though I find the claims and behaviour of these people objectionable, I think it only fair that I still try to help.

If you really have nowhere to go, might I point out that you are a traveller and travellers, well, travel. If you and your chums at the UN are so determined to preserve your way of life as travellers, it might be better if you hit the road now before you lost the art of travelling. I know it might already be too late. After all you have now been static for at least 10 years but since you still claim traveller status and you think this might entitle you to be treated as if you have protected geographical status, like champagne, the Cornish pasty and the Arbroath Smokie, I would suggest you get travelling pronto and save everyone a whole heap of trouble and expense.

Have a great week, travelling or not.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.