Buzz Bashing - Spring 2016

We all know how boring the Hampstead Buzz can be, but this term's edition was particularly dull. If you start, for whatever god-awful reason, looking at editions back-to-back, you begin to notice a trend of articles that are almost undoubtedly in there; something ironic about Digital Leaders (what with Hampstead still being in the dark ages), something moronic about Enrichment Day, and something sports-based. Woop.

Regardless, we will press on. The Head's Message was, as per usual, deceptive. He boasted about the "very well attended Easter holiday school" among other extra teaching which teachers give up their time for to the unabating thanks of stressed students (but the Head surprisingly never seems to make an appearance at), neglecting to mention that the school Management couldn't pull their fingers out of their arses far enough to finalise the Easter timetable until after school on the final Thursday of the term (the day everyone broke up), leaving a great many students in the dark about their holiday plans. The school rectified this by emailing and texting all parents the timetable when it was finished, no doubt costing the school a pretty penny for the service (see Trash passim).

For some reason, the UNICEF logo was placed randomly beside the text, which went on to talk about the "redundant 5A*-C measure at GCSE" now the government is switching to a numbers-based system (just to confuse people further). Putting on a brave face now that all his banners will have to be changed from the snappy '99% G*-U' figures to some unending bile about attainment points, the Head remarked that the Department for Education calculated last year "students achieved considerably above expected", which is not always a compliment. 'Considerably above expected' simply means that 'these plebian comprehensive kids didn't do as poorly as we thought they would'.

According to the Buzz, but somewhat unbeknownst to anyone else, the Enrichment Day "gave insight into the criminal justice system", which is ironic since the Head has somewhat of a hair-trigger for calling the police when it comes to certain (anarchist) bloggers he hasn't been entirely just towards. As part of the criminal justice theme, Year 8 visited the science museum (eh?), Year 10 and 11 visited St Paul's Cathedral (huh?) and Year 12 visited the University of East Anglia (at least there are law students there). Year 13 continued this theme of criminal justice by having a choice of sessions (most of which, we are told, students chose not to go to at all) including Yoga, Insanity, Bath Bombs and the other four Circles of Hell. Mindfulness was also a reported option, but we're not entirely sure how a conscious person could not be mindful.

Drop everything and read was back again, this time with a space-themed quiz around the school which was, as you'd expect, largely ignored by the student populous. On the back page was a short article about a group of students going to see a production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller. One student commented that "watching the production has really brought the play to life", really grasping the concept of a theatre production. According to the article, the play depicted "the hypocrisy  and suspicion experienced in the McCarthy era" in which the characters are "stirred into madness by [...] paranoia". Now, who does that remind us of...