Fun Online Polls: Midges & Grammar schools

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Have you noticed/suffered more midges/midge bites than usual this summer?

Yes - 13%
No - 87%

Thanks to all who voted and left comments, if we adjust for those who've noticed fewer, there's probably no change overall, so either it is a very localised phenomenon or it's just me. Which has put my mind at rest.
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Apparently our new PM has floated the idea of selective state secondary schools i.e. "grammar schools". Rejoice! says the Torygraph. Boo! says The Guardian. Inevitably.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"What should we do to improve standards in secondary education and increase social mobility? (choose all that apply)"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

As to the last option, it sounds a bit socialist-authoritarian but is not without merit. If there were no private schools, then the most demanding/pushy parents would devote their efforts to keeping state school teachers on their toes; it would level the playing field and hence improve social mobility (downwards as well as upwards); and it would save parents a fortune in private school fees (so I have a vested interest in this and is the alternative to education vouchers), which are largely rental payments/an arms race anyway.

Further, in Germany (for example), private education is virtually unheard of (it is for backward children with rich parents), they have selection (into quasi-grammar and secondary modern) and their educational standards are very good.

Fun Online Polls: Merkel & Midges

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How many more Islamist attacks will it take before Merkel realises it was wrong to let a million of them in?
I'm sure she'll apologise and change tack soon - 2%
A couple more and she'll see sense - 1%
A dozen? - 3%
She'll give it a few more years to see how things pan out - 14%
What? A politician see sense? Never! - 71%
Other, please specify - 10%

Thanks to everybody who took part. I'm in the minority on this one, I reckon she'll do a U-turn fairly soon. Oh, hang on, maybe not.
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These last few weeks I have been bitten by midges more often than in the last twenty years put together and it is bloody itchy.

The warmenists have long been predicting that warmer weather = midges and mosquitos will be able to spread northwards. In my limited experience, it's not any warmer but it is definitely midgier.

So that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll, have I just been unlucky or have others noticed this?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.