Wednesday 21 December 2011

Mithering musings part 2

Restorative Justice - recently, we had a two part Insect Day on that delivered by a brace of RJ evangelists. Just what you want as twilight sessions towards the end of term. Loved the theory but cannot imagine much in the way of it being effective for our putative jail fodder. There were also grumblings and frownings among some of us old lurking deadwood that having staff go through it with some of our charmless unlovelies would undermine any effective dealings we have with some of them.

Perhaps those bastions of hero worship John Terry and Luis Suarez could undergo some RJ with their nasty little racist outbursts. Foul as many of our kids are, they are hot on their anti-racism so long that is  you are not ginger which seems to be the only thing the mythical PC brigade have failed to tackle.

Horrid headline from the Independent yesterday purportedly stating that the pursed lipped fool Gove is set to make MFL compulsory to 16. There really is no point to it unless MFL is taught properly from say age 7 and that some profound cultural shift occurs beyond the middle classes who are the only people who seem to see a need to study a language. The reality is that English in its  various forms is the default second language of the world, that is the experience of our kids who will just sit resentfully through lessons they will fail to achieve in as they see no value to languages (not even their own) and, given the demographic of our school, are simply not  academic enough to succeed. Here's an idea for little Michael - why not have a compulsory European Studies GCSE which will at least equip kids to understand a little more what is going on across the Channel and the UKs place within.









Sunday 11 December 2011

The voice of pissed off England?


JulianSorel
11 December 2011 12:22AM
David Cameron is the Prime Minister for the City of London.
The same City of London which is primarily responsible for the financial crisis.
The same City of London which contributes 11% of tax revenues each year but which is instrumental in facilitating $3trillion of tax funneled to tax havens every year.
The City has become disproportionately dominant over the last 30 years, a period in which the wealth gap in the UK has widened massively, a period in which we have all become massively indebted as real incomes for ordinary people have stagnated.
It's extraordinary that Cameron thinks that his priority is to defend the interests of the City regardless of the impact of EU isolationism on the UK manufacturing sector.
Cameron's stupidity has cheered the swivel-eyed bigots on the Right of his party and his sponsors in the City, but it was not done in the national interest and it will tear the coalition apart, after which it will tear the Tory Party apart.
The most momentuous foreign policy decision in decades, and one which he and the Europhobes will come to rue in the coming years.

Old age


Written by my Mother - in - Law during one of her increasingly rare less un-lucid moments. She is in a (s)care home who do their limited best despite the fees they rake in. 

In another not so distant life she has been a published writer, artist and poet, local rather than national, also a linguist and fellow teacher and is fading from view. She is past her use-by date and only too aware of it.

Who knows the stories of the others, all women,  keeping our seats warm in the waiting room for death?



Old Age

Our bodies stiff
Head and neck so gently bent
Towards the earth

Strutting stumbling struggling through
Old age arrives
We feel, though we may not say, too old to be alive
Why do we often wish to die
Cut our throats and pass away
Not have another day spent struggling

Unseen unwanted
So it seems
Only really loved
Within our dreams