Nothing particularly interesting

This is one of those mornings.  I suppose every morning has to be a morning of some kind of another - but this is one of the ones which tends to exist in a kind of no-mans-land.  It is a morning like the calm in the centre of a hurricane.  It is a morning which is that moment of weightless peace which exists just before you land either in the fire or in the frying pan. For several nights I have been working on project plans, reading draft dissertations and preparing lectures until the wee small hours - and this all just a week or so before marking even begins.  It is not healthy, and the older I become the harder it gets.

It seems that when it comes to facts and figures, as far as the government is concerned anything goes. From the beginning of this coalition’s reign, there has been a propaganda campaign which has somehow managed to convince the nation firstly that the national debt is the most significant problem the nation faces, and secondly that the cause of this problem is almost exclusively the public sector and welfare.

There is a point in each semester - always the same point - where I seem to be suddenly hit by a sense of hopelessness.  Ok, that is maybe exaggerating a little - but there are things which tend to happen in the final third of a module which are depressingly predictable, and which seem to happen to many of the lecturers I have talked to.