Slavery

One of the most compelling chapters of American history, was the fight against slavery that divided the  north and south, creating a gaping wound, whose scars are still there.  Slavery has been a part of human history and probably prehistory, with weaker people being subjugated by their stronger neighbours. Empires were built on the backs of unwilling labour, Egypt, Rome and of course the British empire all embraced the culture of servitude and ownership of other human beings. Organised religions were established to reinforce the notion of  bowing and grovelling before a higher power and thus maintaining the status quo. There have always been slaves and masters.
There are even people who derive sexual pleasure from domination and submission, some actually live their lives in such fantasy, though for many the reality of their slavery is far from an erotic experience.
here in the UK, slavery has been illegal for more than a hundred years and yet it still exists. We all know of gangs of immigrants working on the land or in sweat shops for very little money, scared of being deported, they give their lives to unscrupulous employers.
Then there is the minimum wage, set at a dismally low level to encourage employers to take on workers who care little that the minimum wage does not constitute a living wage.  Hundreds of thousands of people in Britain are living in squalid conditions and children are going without the basics so that the wealthy can get wealthier. Their lives, meaningless to their masters.
Our government is driven by those that have; their mentality rather akin to the slave owners of the past. They have managed to alienate a sector of society that is unable to fight back, and by vilification of those people they have successfully divided the population once again.
Work is fine, and it benefits both the worker and society at large, but it is not all that life is about. There are not enough jobs for everyone, there never have been even in the best of times. The scarcity of jobs should not be used as a stick to beat people, or to drive down incomes to the point where people dare not or cannot walk away.

Babysitting

A baby that is tired but resists sleep can be a nightmare. When they scream and scream in sheer temper, there is little that you can do except keep your own in check, and sometimes that can be very difficult.  Matilda's mother was hard work as a child and undiagnosed asthma probably had a lot to do with it, but getting her to sleep was so difficult and the experience very stressful.
Matilda woke up last night whilst we were babysitting and as usual I bow down to experience and let the expert deal with the situation. It began with a whimper, but soon the looming tempest was unleashed and she let rip with everything she had. I turned off the monitor and found Fawlty Towers on Netflix. I Watched Waldorf Salad, and she was still at it, then the Gourmet Night and there were still no signs of her giving up.  Whilst pondering the next choice, probably Basil the Rat,  she was brought downstairs by a grandma at the end of her rope, and so I stepped in and sat her on my lap. Gourmet night was coming to a close and she watched it intently, snuggling in to granddad and chuckling along with the canned laughter. At least the crying had stopped and she seemed happy enough.  There was no sign of her sleeping and so I took her back upstairs, imagining that keeping her snuggled in a dark room would do the trick.  I sat in the easy chair and lay her on my chest and she happily lay on me breathing gently. We stayed like that for what seemed a long time, and I foolishly imagine that she was drifting off. It struck me at that point they I could probably not get up from the chair. It is hard enough without a human being on your chest, and was resigning myself to remaining trapped until her mother came home, when her head popped up and she decided that she wanted to play.  She explored my face, tried to remove my glasses and chattered away while I resisted the temptation to laugh.  She pointed to the bottle of milk, drank a good helping of that, burped, farted loudly and then pointed to her cot.  So I obliged and gently placed her into her bed. Of course she has her cuddly toys there and she could grab them and throw them around whilst exploring every syllable of her embryonic vocabulary.  So I knelt by the side of her cot and stroked her, hoping that my touch was still there. She quietened and lay still, but then the front door opened and she heard her mothers voice. She climbed to her feet, held onto the cot rail and was jumping up and down shouting YES!
At least our stint was over. I wonder how long it took her to sleep?

Sacred Cows

Anyone who visits a hospital these days, whether as a patient or otherwise, will probably hold the place and its workers in some sort of awe.  For many, visiting or staying in hospital is a frightening and stressful event. The NHS is a monster, and yet most of us to some extent owe it our very existence. I certainly do, but I am becoming more and more aware that the monster is becoming dysfunctional.  The whole system is burdened by democracy, with letters frequently duplicated, appointments cancelled over and over again, consultations usually late, and regular reports of patients being poorly treated.
While sitting waiting this morning, there were any number of employees, standing around doing what seemed to be very little. The main reception desk was unattended, the person on duty, restocking shelves of booklets while a queue of irate patients waited.  Everyone accepts the state of things and few make complaints because there is a built in reluctance to shake the boat, in the fear that you may be branded a troublemaker and so receive worse treatment.
To criticise is like farting in church.  You want to do it so very much but you are meant to show deference and respect, and so most people keep their views to themselves.
Few things these days are above criticism, even the BBC has its share of dissenters and critics, but the NHS, the Church and the world of Islam are treated with kid gloves.  Surely it is time that these institutions received radical overhauls.

Decision day

Well it is here, a day when Scotland is more or less ignored for 24 hours, while the people go to the polls. I know very little about the pros and cons of dividing the United Kingdom, but I suspect that whatever  the outcome of today things will never be the same again.  The Nationalists, in their fervent hatred of Westminster, and the Tory party in particular, have aroused many Scottish people to a height not achieved since Bannockburn, and many will be voting YES, with little consideration of the consequences. No-one can be certain of the outcome, and no one can predict the far reaching and potentially catastrophic results of a yes vote.  Maybe Scotland can make it alone, but it is a small country with a small population and I suspect that they are heading towards being the poor man of Europe. Oil revenues will not last forever.
The ballot results will be known soon enough, and ironically on the same day, the possibility of women members being allowed in the oldest golf club in the world, St Andrews, will also be known. The membership have been balloted by post and should their vote favour women, one of the last bastions of male supremacy will fall.  Some may think that is a bad thing, while many will welcome that decision, seeing it as a move away from divisiveness.
Division in my opinion is a backward step. The world is divided enough and where there is division there will always be problems. The world should be working towards common goals, but the prevalence of right wing parties such as Cameron's conservatives, will always encourage the division between this that have and those that don't.  With a general election looming, and the probably outcome not favouring the current government, you can imagine that the fat cats are already filling their pockets and insulating themselves from the likely chaos that they will have created. None of the major parties seem electable any more and so we are likely to have government made up of a divided bunch of unelectables, with the nasty right wing springing from the ashes of the coalition.
Maybe Scotland should go their own way, but I hope that they do not have to come begging to the rest of us when it all falls apart.

Google

This entry has nothing whatsoever to do with its title. Call it an experiment in the effectiveness of search engines in producing random hits.
The media are reporting the imminent arrival of yet another royal; this normally happens at a time when the Tories are in deep trouble, so I take some pleasure in the announcement, though I will not be keeping up with the developments.  Such news is ambrosia to much of the population; they revel in the growth of a family that has no connection with them at any level whatsoever.  The worship of the royal family is a weird phenomenon and must to some extent be an example of epigenetics. It runs in families I am sure and probably harks back to the days when the servant classes were totally dependent upon their masters for every aspect of their existences.  Many people still think that the ruling classes are a good thing, and so of course they listen to whatever they have to say, convinced that the house of Windsor is a found of wisdom and truth.
I have heard it argued that they are essential for the tourist industry, though I cannot see much logic in that argument. Some will argue that they are a part of our tradition; perhaps they are but then female circumcision is a part of the culture of some countries, and that does not make it either defensible nor worthy of preservation.
It is said that they have no power, but of course they do, they control immense wealth and they have the support of the entire Daily Mail readership which makes them as powerful as the Tory Party and far more powerful than the other political parties. Their tendrils reach far and wide, insinuating into the fabric of our society, parasitically thriving as much of the population struggles to exist. The gap between them and those unfortunates is beyond imagination and it continues to grow.
I  wish the child well and it would be nice to imagine that their life will be a normal one, but I suspect that he/she will want for nothing and will probably never face the prospect of having to find a proper job.

On writing

Now and then I ask myself why I write this blog, and I never really come up with a satisfactory answer. So few people read it that it cannot be for an audience, and even I don't often look back at older entries. When I was a kid, I hated writing. I remember being made to write letters to people to thank them for whatever, and then there was writing at school with terrible scratchy ink pens that we dipped into the ink wells on our desks, filled every week by the ink monitor.  We'd have to copy great chances of stuff from the blackboard and the mess was examined and criticised on a regular basis.
Then we moved on to grammar school and graduated to fountain pens. Biros were not allowed, and cheap fountain pens were pretty messy, at least in my hands. My handwriting was poor and this had a knock on effect in the quality and quantity of what I wrote.  Each day seemed an endless round of filling exercise books with my spidery scrawl. My handwriting remained pretty dreadful until I went to college, and I suppose, like the rest of me it began the painful process of growing up. We were expected to write of course and essays were frequent, if not brilliantly conceived they were done, and of course there were letters home to be dutifully constructed and sent. I even managed to write a little for the college magazine and found that I liked to produce short fictional tales.
As a schoolteacher I found myself having to write all sorts of things and my handwriting gradually improved through necessity, and then later I found out necessary to join the Open University, which involved a large number of essays and assignments.
Gradually I have learned to enjoy writing, and now in my self imposed quasi solitude, writing gives me an outlet for my feelings. I have written a number of short stories and like so many people, would love too write a novel, but I don't think that I have one in me.
Perhaps I have a vain hope that someone is listening, but in the end it really doesn't matter. I rarely plan what I am going to say, and so each entry is rather like an entry into a journal and if anyone has got this far then welcome.

Protest everything.

Watching a report about radical Muslims on a protest march in Luton was disturbing.  This was an organised rally opposed to the arrests of a local woman on terrorist charges, but of course there was more to it than that.  This was an opportunity to condemn the country that they have adopted as their own and the legal system that  serves us. It would seem that we are all going to hell, led by our police force and our government. Now while that may be true, it seems a little rich coming from ill educated and totally indoctrinated lunatics that are probably abusing the welfare system and love nothing more than to bite the hand that feeds them.
I support the right to protest and the right to free speech; these things are unlikely to be found in an Islamic state that these people wish to create in this country.
People love to protest and march. Virtually any change to the status quo is likely to be met with opposition, and also people like to demonstrate their support or otherwise for more or less anything.  People protest about new housing developments, they protest about housing shortages too. They protest against nuclear power, coal power, wind power, wave power, solar power, power shortages, the price of power, the abuse of power, immigration, bankers bonuses, MPs pay rises, train fares, bus fares,  anything.   The same people probably protest everything simply for the sake of it.
Mostly protests go unnoticed  if they pass peacefully,  after all a peaceful protest has little news value, so if you want to be reported then it is important to do something to get noticed.  Knock a policeman's helmet off if you wish to get arrested or start a brawl if you wish to get on local front pages, or as in these modern times, load your slogans with bigotry and hatred of your fellow citizens.
"Moderate" Muslims would do well to condemn the actions of their growing band of radicals, but they don't. The stay quiet, like most people, afraid to confront the toxic snake for fear of reprisals. Unchallenged by their own, these groups will grow and become nastier and noisier and the public at large will stop believing the lie that Islam is about tolerance and peace.  It has been said by some Muslims that Islam cannot co-exist with other belief systems, and that the role of Muslims is to convert everyone else to their way of thinking and what cannot be achieved by argument will be achieved by violence. I fear for the future of this country.

Charity shops

I used to have library tickets and would use them frequently. I loved the library, the relative peace and quiet and the sheer abundance of books. This was in the olden days of course before libraries became multimedia playgrounds,  and if you wanted to find something out you looked in a book. I would borrow half a dozen books at a time and probably read half of them before returning them.  I was taught from an early age to have respect for books, though I know that they are mass produced ephemera for most, I still find it difficult to mistreat one, even one by Jeffrey Archer.  I those days books came and went tidally and my own collection remained fairly static.
Times change, libraries are evolving and though books are there in abundance, so are computers offering google, Wikipedia and so much more. Many people read on tablets of Kindles and some predict the demise of the printed page altogether. I have read books on my iPad but find the experience unsatisfactory and still by far prefer to hold a book in my hand.
I no longer hold library membership but I do love to browse charity shops bookshelves and though I try to be disciplined, I still manage to buy books faster than I can read them. That coupled with a failing memory means that I am now forgetting what books I already have on my shelves as well as those that I have read.
Charity shops all smell much the same. I guess it is the combined  smell of elderly people and death. The smell is a reminder that inevitably, one day in the not too distant future, my life too will be measured out in black plastic bags and the things that surround me will be scattered to the wind and hopefully recycled.

There are two types of people

I read somewhere that there are 10 types of people, those that understand binary and those that do not. I remember meeting binary for the first time in a college lecture; it was probably in year one as attendance at such lectured did tend to wane as the terms went by. The tutor was actually very entertaining and I believe that we had an interactive binary system with the two states being standing and sitting. It was quite an ask for a  monday morning but it seemed to work and as a mathematical concept it was embedded easily.  This was 1967 and home computers and even personal calculators were some way into the future. Mobile phones, iPods, iPads were almost unimaginable and so application of the binary system was non existent to us mere mortals, though exponents of the world of electronics were already into their ANDS,  NANDS, NOTs, NORs and whatever. The age of computing was germinating and those with the brains and foresight could see it coming. Most of us could not and have spent a lot of time playing catch up.
The population at large never keeps up, it is impossible. Technology evolves faster than our ability to cope and so most people throw up their hands and give in to the tsunamis of change.
Computer coding now forms part of the primary curriculum and there must be long serving teachers who will find themselves in a strange world of languages that they have not heard of and having to enthuse young minds, far more plastic than their own. Many children will revel in the challenge, while others, already struggling with many other things will not cope and neither should they. Writing programs is a good exercise in logic and it does encourage thinking processes but like anything else it is not for everyone.
There are two types of people, those that adapt to the changing world around them, and those that expect the world to adapt to them. The latter is ok in the short term and as long as one has the tools needed to effect the changes, otherwise the world has a tendency not to co-operate.  

Back to school

Yes it is that crazy week when so many emotions will be in overdrive. Maintenance staff will have been busy for weeks, polishing, cleaning and fixing damaged furniture and fittings, floors will sparkle and even windows will be clean. Admin staff will have been doing all the mysterious things that they always seem to be doing and senior management will have been trying to work out the implications of whatever poorly thought through new initiatives have been thrust in their direction.
At home, teenagers will be contemplating the idea of getting out of bed before noon and having to wear uncool uniforms again, but secretly looking forward to being able to sulk in company, to bathe in pheromones and to begin new liaisons and relationships.
Timid toddlers will be dreading their first day of school having been terrified and intimidated by older siblings. They will don their loose fitting uniforms that they are told that they will grow into and pack their pristine pencil cases into equally pristine school bags; they will leave their beloved toys behind and begin the arduous process of social integration with children that most of their parents would want them to have nothing to do with. Lifelong friendships will be forged and enemies made.
Parents who have been on duty all day and every day for the last six weeks or more will be anticipating their freedoms or abilities to go back to work and hoping that their offspring will not embarrass them too much and keep out of trouble, and long suffering teachers will be dreading that return to the mayhem of modern education.  New rules, new curricula, new legislation and a whole new bunch of material entering the machine.
Teachers are trapped between rocks and very hard places. On one hand a lot of children that really do not want to be in school, being served a poorly devised national curriculum, that each successive government fiddles with, and a pernicious Ofsted organisation that can descend without notice, catch someone on a bad day and ruin careers and lives.  It is little wonder that many are giving up and that continuity is becoming a thing of the past.  Many teachers will be starting their careers this week and will be full of enthusiasm and "fresh" ideas.  Many others will have seen reality and will be back with a more cynical approach but will still do their jobs as well as they are allowed to, despite the fact that goalposts are both both moving and invisible.
I wish everyone luck and a successful year.