“Poundland ruling 'blows big hole' through government work schemes”

It's been a good news sort of two weeks, with Gove u-turning on his bloody stupid Ebacc scheme and now this.

I've said before and I've said again that everything in the world is wrong with the government work experience schemes, taking paid jobs out of the economy and forcing people to work with ridiculous penalties. Good, I say. This ruling is not on moral issues, but simply on legal ones, but if this makes this stupid scheme go away and be properly rethought then I say that this is a good day for all out of work people – in particular, graduates.

I wrote about this in rather more details about a year ago: "Flaws in government work experience" My feelings are the same nowas they were then, with a sense of cheerful contentment I have been proved right.

Richard III

I blog and I did a history degree (half medieval and half modern history, fact fans) so I think I am morally obligated to comment on the Richard III news story.

First: from a historical perspective, this isn't big news. It fills in a little information on Richard III in terms of where he was buried, and some more details on his death and his scoliosis, but that's really it. We learn nothing about the society of the time from it, and attention on kings and queens takes away from the real unexplored avenues of history.

Now that the boring bit is over - and can I just say that I am a terrible history student because I have always found biographical history fascinting and my love for Charles II knows no bounds - I would like it to be known that this is a really, really cool news story. I very quietly read a liveblog on my phone for the announcement yesterday.

And if it means that a few more people pick history to study, a little more funding goes towards archeology and medieval history studies then I say hurrah for Richard III.

Finally: if you would like more information on Richard III (and if I see the phrase 'Tudor propaganda' again I will scream, what a TERRIBLE anachronism and don't get me started) then please see this helpful and informative video:

(Ignore the bit about his not having a curved spine, turns out that was true.)