Is it all really worth €95?

Ok, so I'm in the middle of the mocks. Or the Pre's as we Irish call them. And for the priviledge of having our lives ruined for 2 weeks, we pay €95. Every paper we sit has to be sent to an external examiner which in the case of the pre's is some trainee teacher who needs a few quid. Generally the result we get isn't actually the result we should be, and end up spending a very long time going through each paper with our teachers looking for mistakes in marking. When I sat my Junior Cert in 2007, I managed to gain an extra 5% because of cock ups made during marking. Now I'm not one for piling more work on our already over worked teachers, but I honestly think they'd be better off marking our pre's themselves. At least then we know that the mark we're getting is accurate, because bar one of my teachers, I know all of them are competent enough to be able to mark the paper to the same standards as the examiners. It's stupid that we pay stupid amounts of money for this, and then for the real thing have to pay another €130. I don't mind paying it for the real thing, because I know that the examiners are smart enough to mark them well, but paying nearly €100 for it for the pre's is ridiculous, especially in the current economic climate when not everyone can exactly afford it. It pisses me off something chronic that the government are forever moaning that they don't have enough money when the amount of money the Dept of Ed get from the exams is appalling. Grrrr.

I'm gonna topic jump here, to something that's quite close to my heart because of what my boyfriend does. Chris is a trainee paramedic for East Midlands Ambulance Service, who have recently been in the news because of the (in my opinion) fully justified actions of a solo responder paramedic in Derby. She was called to a pub at about 1am in the morning to a woman suffering a blood clot as a result of recent leg surgery. Bearing in mind the time and that she was being called to a potentially dangerous situation due to alcohol being present, the standard procedure is to wait for back up before entering a situation. The crew that had been requested were 2 minutes away from finishing their meal break and were told they were not allowed to respond until they were finished. Wanna know why this is? Because if they're interrupted for anything other than the declaration of a major incident, they can claim £130 off EMAS. In the end the paramedic went to the pub alone and found CPR being administered and of course she started her own treatment. There's an EU directive about rest breaks you know? They have to take them, whether they like it or not. Because that crew were on a rest break, they were not allowed by proticol to answer the paramedic's request for back up, and as a result the paramedic is now suspended. What the fuck? How is that justifiable? Because of EMAS proticols, she got in crap and is now fighting for her job. It's stupid and annoys me. I wouldn't deny Chris his rest breaks, He works 12 hour shifts and can go 10 hours without getting 5 mins for a toilet break or anything. If he gets a rest break he's entitled to it. But I know that if he had 2 mins left and there was a critical call waiting, he'd take it. The only reason EMAS refused to let them go was because they knew fine well they'd have to cough up over £250 for 2 interrupted meal breaks. Ragggge

Anyway. It's late, and I'm going to bed. I feel better for that rant haha.