THERE is a trend for pupils and parents to give teachers end-of-year gifts, such as chocolates and cakes.

Some people are uncomfortable about the whole idea, but I think it indicates something positive, or perhaps more than one positive thing. Either more teachers are nice people these days, or fewer pupils are budding sadistic maniacs – or both.

All I know is that any teacher presented with foodstuffs by pupils at my old school soon learned through experience to chuck them straight in the bin.

Or at least have the chemistry teacher check them for potentially fatal laxative saturation.

And never to leave the staffroom kettle unattended.

Retail therapy can be a real minefield

RETAIL Codex is a pilot scheme which aims to train the specialist sales professionals of the future.

The first intake, all Swindon Academy pupils, recently graduated – and I wish them all successful careers.

The project, was instigated by the Brunel Centre and run in partnership with Marks & Spencer and learning partner Imparta.

I’m glad that the Brunel Centre and Marks & Spencer are so heavily involved, as they’re very good at what they do. I only wish they could also train the future bosses of certain other retail sectors in certain skills.

Then the bosses could develop sensible policies and pass the good news down to their staff. If they did, customers would be more likely to spend lots of money and less likely to go off in a huff.

There are certain experiences I’ve never had at Markies or the Brunel, but which are a ten-a-penny at certain other places.

For example, I’ve never been to Markies or a Brunel Centre clothes shop to purchase, say, a pair of trousers I’m perfectly happy with, only to be told by an earnest sales assistant that I should buy a far more expensive pair of trousers because the ones I’m looking at are dangerous.

I’ve never been told: “Only the other week a bloke who bought those trousers spontaneously combusted when he crossed his legs.

And three other blokes who bought pairs were asphyxiated to death because nine-foot boa constrictors had been inadvertently sewn into the waistbands at the factory. Tragic business it was, sir.”

Nor have I ever been to buy a book in a bookshop at the Brunel and been told: “I wouldn’t get the paperback if I were you sir.

They’re known to snap shut suddenly and give you a paper cut severe enough to have your fingers off at the palm. Design fault, apparently.

I’d get the special edition hardback if I were you, the one on vellum with the tooled leather cover and gold leaf trim.

“I know it’s two dozen times as expensive but you can’t put a price on safety.”

No, I’ve never been told anything like that at Markies or the Brunel.

How is it, then, that I can’t enter an out-of-town mega-emporium to buy a computer without some twerp telling me the basic model I want is going to blow up and disembowel me?

Or that I need a machine with enough power to co-ordinate an International Space Station rendezvous in order to deal with basic emails and view the odd cat video?

Or that the discounted satnav I have my eye on is going to deliver me not to my Auntie Doris but to the polar bear enclosure at Chester Zoo?

Something else I’ve never experienced in the Brunel or at Markies is being told I should take out some ridiculous warranty.

“Yes, sir,” nobody at all has ever said, “I recommend spending an extra fifty quid for a warranty on this two-quid packet of Imodium just in case the buffet at your holiday destination actually agrees with you. Or you forget how to take pills and attempt to ram a handful down your earhole – or somewhere even more unfortunate.”

If only certain big box electrical retailers adopted the same sensible approach.

Then maybe so many of them wouldn’t end up as empty big boxes because millions of customers have said: “To hell with this for a game of soldiers.'' 

 They need to do their maths and geography homework HEADTEACHERS across the Swindon area are a teensy bit sceptical about the latest funding announcement from the Government. If you recall, £1.3bn is to be injected into the nation’s cash-starved schools.

So far, so encouraging, but it soon emerged that there was absolutely no information as to how the money was to be distributed.

We also learned that much of the £1.3bn was gathered by making other cuts to the education budget. It’s hardly surprising that so many of the senior educators we spoke to were less than enthused.

I’d like to be a bit less cynical about the announcement myself, but I’ve noticed a couple of things lately. One is that there seems to be an awful lot of announcements about wonderful new tranches of funding for all manner of things.

The other is that the last time I visited London, certain people were missing from bridges - the people who run that game where you fleece tourists by hiding a marble under one of three cups and switching them around. I wonder where they went, and what they’re doing for a living these days.