The news is particularly annoying at the moment

Today all sorts of hand-wringing about snow. Lots of sniggering about 'working' from home, implying anyone doing so is skiving. Boris Johnson quoted all over the BBC & Radio 4 yesterday as some kind of lovable phrase-coining duffer and leading the giddy Martha Kearney a merry dance at lunchtime. Similarly annoying yesterday, we had Maths Genius (tm) and ex-TV Personality Carol Vorderman recruited by the Tories and hitching herself to their Decade Of Woe narrative. She's well into this broken Britain theme it seems:

"In the last decade, 3.5 million children have left school without a basic qualification in maths, a shocking statistic.

"If they are to get the best jobs in the future and Britain is to emerge stronger from the recession we have little choice but to sort maths out now."

Shocking indeed. We should definitely sort maths out now. Why oh why couldn't anyone have thought of this 10 years ago? Why? Couldn't anyone have seen back then that the issue was so simple and the solution so elegant? Eh? Oh:

[Sunday 14 March 1999] CAROL VORDERMAN, Britain's highest paid female television presenter, has been personally recruited by the Prime Minister to spearhead a campaign to raise standards in maths.

Independent. Guardian.

Never mind, Carol. I'm sure it'll work this time round! If not there's always 2019.