RUNNING TO FIND THE ZONE - PART 2

I wrote and published my blog 'RUNNING TO FIND THE ZONE' on Saturday 20 February, last month. It was a celebratory blog. I had just completed my first run for six months after recovering from a foot injury, plantar fasciitis. Five weeks later, I am writing and publishing this update: 'RUNNING TO FIND THE ZONE - PART 2. This focus on my running side should have some life in it - I've entered for the Oxford Half Marathon on Sunday October 9 2016 and I reckon I'm good for around a six-part story between now and then.

Heading towards the finishing line in the Edinburgh Marathon in 2014

When I belonged to the Bungay Black Dog Running Club in East Anglia - see my website - I took up the offer of a weekly blog in the local newspaper as I trained systematically for the Bungay Half Marathon in 2009. That was good fun to write and an excellent opportunity to heap praise on a

OSBORNE AND DUNCAN SMITH - GETTING INSIDE THEIR MINDSET

Steve Bell in the Guardian

I knew I wanted to create a blog this weekend to capture and share my thoughts on Wednesday's budget - but I could never have anticipated how the turn of events were to make it so difficult. Some things were predictable, at least up to a point. George Osborne has had seven years as chancellor of the exchequer to orchestrate the neo-liberal economic and political goals that he and Cameron have taken to heart. Lower taxation, cut back the public sector, open up opportunities to maximise profit through private enterprise - and thereby, so the argument goes, increase the nation's wealth and so benefit as many people as possible in our society. Broadly, that is what he claimed to be doing on Wednesday.

But these last seven years have seen the failure of this Tory vision. The rigours of austerity did not lead to the elimination of the national deficit by 2015 within the five years of the parliament. The continued pain of austerity will not lead to a surplus, as Osborne claims, by 2020.There is now such a gap between the policies recommended by an increasing majority of  economists and the declared

UNROBING OFSTED and THE DANGER OF WORSHIPPING FALSE GODS

Ros Asquith cartoon in Education Guardian

Under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative government reorganised the schools inspectorate and instituted OFSTED (now the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) in 1984. An Orwellian moment?

Every state school now faced regular inspection and a public report, on the basis of common criteria that applied to all inspections. In 1988, the National Curriculum was introduced under the terms of the Education Reform Act of that year. The content of what was now taught in schools was standardised across the land enabling assessment of outcomes to be measured and league tables to be compiled to rank schools according to performance.

Almost a generation later, who is still fooling whom? Lies, damned lies and statistics. In fractured times, politicians toss statistical data around like confetti to spin a sense of certainty. We are the ......

UNDERSTANDING THE PAST - A PORTAL FOR UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF

Looking down into the valley where I live now 150 years ago

This is a view from Rosewall Hill and the engine houses of the Ransom United tin mine, taken in the late 19th century, looking down into the Stennack valley where the buildings are those of the St Ives Consols tin mine.

Take a camera shot now from the same point and in the same direction and you'll see a Stennack valley covered in housing estates. We live in one of those houses. Underneath those housing estates lies a warren of underground mine workings where men (and some women in the early days) spent