Private vs state: where do the kids eat crisps?

My house is sandwiched between two schools. To my left, and as it happens slightly down the slope, is the state primary school. Turn right at my garden gate and there is a private school a little up the hill.

Two different ideas in education, and as such I suspect they never meet up much. No reason why they should: they are just kids of people with different priorities even if as kids they are probably much the same in their interests and activities.

If I had lived in the house where I now live I know that going out of the garden gate as a fresh-faced ten year old say, I'd be turning left to go to the state school. I probably wouldn't even have looked up the hill: my parents had little money so I went to the place with the tall rooms and the tendency to make us line up for our morning milk. Yes, that's right: I was of the generation that had morning milk (seeing the third-of-a-pint bottles lined up on the radiators on a freezing morning and us all trying to poke straws through the icy block of milk to get a drink was a sight that will stay with me) so you can see I went to a state primary school when I was little, shortly before my wife went to a private school. Sometimes I tell her about the horrors of schooling where I went and she responds with the horrors of education where she went. Together we can conclude that being a kid in school can have its horrors, relatively speaking.

If I look at the downhill school each morning I see the road outside it (and spreading up the hill) full of cars disgorging their kids. If I look up the hill I see the road at the top (and spreading down it) full of cars disgorging kids. The ones at the top have uniforms (and interestingly no matter what religion the girls so far follow the rules of the school and wear skirts and dresses with no headscarves) but the ones lower down the hill can wear what they want, and do.

By and large the cars allowing kids to get out on the road side into traffic are much the same either at the bottom of the hill or the top, and by and large the parents are much the same even if the state school does have more of one ethnic group and noticeably more of one gender than the private school does. But kids are kids and as they struggle out of the backs of cars into the flowing traffic they have, top or bottom, to listen to their parents give them last minute instructions about lunch and so on. Instructions from parents who can't be arsed to get out of their driving seat as their kids try to make it to the pavement in one piece.

Some of the parents will park in the worst place they can at both schools, and at both places of learning some mothers shepherding their little darlings look weary before the day has even begun. It was ever thus, at least about the weariness if not the parking.

Well, that's kids and parents for you wherever they are headed.

There is however one thing that unites the parents of all these kids: they all pay for a state education. Both groups of parents (if they work) are taxed by the state to provide for their child's education whether they pay privately or not.

That's the thing about private education: the parents are in fact paying twice for their kid to go to school. You could argue, in a happy-I'm-a-socialist way that this then is penalty incurred on those who don't want for whatever reason to send their offspring to a state school. Paying twice is an example of some sort of left-leaning justice, an idea of which animates the hard-of-thinking 'intellectuals' in their eternal quest for fairness solely on their terms. It is also possible to argue that the ones who send their kids to a private school are thus making the load lighter for the state school system by removing their kids from possibly already crowded classrooms, and making a contribution to the costs of educating other children.

Whatever you argue or feel about private education, the question arises why there are parents who want their children to go elsewhere -- at a cost -- to be educated. As it happens, I know a family whose child is currently in a private school and they tell me they have no problem with paying taxes for education that they essentially don't use (though this is taxation for you: we can argue many of us pay taxes for things we don't directly use such as nuclear weapons, well-paid 'comedians' at the BBC and buying personal jets for tyrants in other parts of the world, and so on) but think their child will benefit more from a private education.

The child in question does seem to be getting a good education and is developing interest in all sorts of things and gaining skills in a variety of areas. It comes at a cost but the parents feel it is money well-spent. They have to make sacrifices in order to pay for their child's private education but they accept it is part of the deal. If they want their child to have a chance in future at a shrinking number of jobs and opportunities, they think this is the best way.

Others may feel differently about their money and want to spend their hard-earned cash in other ways while their kids are taken care of by the state. So it goes, and each to their own.

But one thing makes me think about this, putting aside the moral or political questions of how we want our kids educated and what it costs, and it is something I see every day I take the dog for a walk. It's a little thing in the great scheme of life and while it may be wrong to blame kids, I have to say this: there is far more litter such as drink cans and sweet wrappers and gum on the pavement outside the school down the hill than at the top.

Whatever they teach in these two schools something happens to the kids more at one than the other. It may be sheer numbers (the private school is smaller than the state one) but somehow at the private establishment the kids there seem to understand that the world is not a litter-bin.

For all I know the fact that kids are making an effort to be smart in uniform and looking at a greater variety in school or aware that their parents are paying for it all -- or perhaps the teachers have more time or more inclination to make the point -- but the kids at the top don't litter the place anything like the ones at the bottom. But then, talking to someone in education, the problem is often that kids in low income families go to school with their breakfast in the hand, consisting of crisps and a can of fizzy pop (apparently the sight of a child chewing gum and eating crisps at the same time while swigging cola is amazing, and revolting) and so breakfast's remains end up on the floor outside the school.

Perhaps in the act of paying for education, a lot of those parents make an effort to get their children to eat at home and not on the road. It's small thing, but just one of those little differences you get to see when it comes to argument between state and private schools.

Maybe it all comes down to the different ways of parenting: a choice of feeding the kids crisps at home or letting them feed themselves crisps on the street.

Disrupt and learn

If you ever want to get a handle on the lunacy that now manifests itself throughout the American education system, you can find numerous examples online though I do like Heather Mac Donald's excellent investigations and analysis into this subject. She really does root around those educational ideas in the US that on the surface seem stupid but on closer examination reveal themselves to be really, really stupid.

But one idea I have seen in action in this country in my limited time teaching was one she highlighted in an article of hers. One that has popped up over here as well as over there.

It was that any disruptive elements in a class must be allowed to continue in the class.

I am sure in liberal circles the theory looks good on paper: if a student is engaged in learning they have less time to disrupt the learning of others and if they do disrupt others then they should remain so they don't miss out on the learning they so obviously need. After all, they will learn nothing when out of class, right?

In practice this noble theory, like all such theories, falls over with a solid thud when you test it with a little push. No matter what the theory, the truth was the disruptive elements in a class stopped other students achieving. Some of the disruptors even enjoyed the disruption they caused because they were at the centre of attention. As they had better things to do than learn stuff they aren't interested in -- yes, even on a course they signed up for and allegedly wanted to pursue a career in -- they can enjoy the discomfort of other students who may want to learn but can't. People who inevitably find it harder to get on with the task because of the mayhem around them.

There are also some students who might learn in the class but prefer to be easily distracted. Idly sitting staring at a group of young men arguing over the fish names they should adopt as nicknames for themselves is way more interesting than writing things. You think this is a joke on my part? Ha, I wish! I had this in one class where five young males argued noisily over whether Carp was a better nickname than Shark. However when I did point out that they needed to sort out which were freshwater fish and which weren't they did nod in appreciation of my interest in their quest for the best nicknames.

Well, you have to help where you can, and it saved me wasting my breath telling them to do some work.

So why didn't I ask them to leave the class? Because they were there to learn and me sending them packing would have interrupted their learning. Obvious, innit? Keeping the kids in the class, no matter how unruly or bothersome they might be to others trying to learn, was the central platform of the college I was at. If you send one or two out they might go home and, wait for it, not come back ever again.

Gasp!

Retention, retention, retention was the mantra of the management. Keep them there no matter what.

Why? Because for the college to be paid by the state (and with it, the generous wages of all those who could sit in rooms far removed from the kids and not have to teach because they were deciding 'policy') the yoof had to stay on for the full course.

Still, at least I didn't have that trouble with Adrian. A somewhat cheerful if largely witless lad who preened his hair in the reflection from his iPod and then would spend ten minutes each lesson "choosing a track to listen to" as he worked. I did say something one morning to him that it would be a good idea, after twenty minutes "choosing" that he really ought to do some work.

"But I haven't chosen yet," he moaned.

Oh well, silly Adrian was determined to stay on the course and choose the very best tracks even if it took him all year. But here was the problem: no one wanted to confront the problem of kids who wouldn't work.

As a teacher you soon learned that you were effectively powerless. More, the students knew it too. What ya gonna do, huh? Nothing much, as it happens. The management at this college were on the side of the student. No, let me correct that: they were on the side of the student staying.

So if there was nothing much you could do then you had to hope you could persuade them gently or ignore them and concentrate on keeping the workers on task and getting something from the lesson. Though they were students and were reckoned to be there in order to study the truth was if they didn't fancy it that lesson they could put their feet on the desk and talk about the fast cars they would own one day. You could ask them to take their feet off the desk, and some did, so I suppose progress was being made.

If I had the authority to get rid of the non-learners and the disruptors, then the unthinkable would have happened: the ones who wanted to get on could get on without distraction. But they were the unimportant ones. The trouble-makers and the problematic matter most of all, so let us theoretically give them our attention. Concentrate our policy on their needs, and not the ones who would benefit from a more conducive atmosphere for learning.

I do know that throwing half-a dozen spotty, noisy, preening and self-centred but utterly uninteresting and unambitious young people out of a class would have allowed the non-disruptive ones to get on and learn but that would have been too easy. For a start in some classes the ones who wanted to learn would have access to a computer. You see, there was always race to get in first and grab the best chairs and then do nothing. But with say six gone from a class of 28 then the twenty computers available (and the fifteen reasonable chairs) would have been put to better use.

But theory was for those who didn't have to do anything. The practice was for those who had to do it. Quite a shock I suppose to many, but one that really needs to be said.

Sometimes the theorists had to interface with reality, but not often. I can recall the time when members of senior management came round with clipboards to count the number of students in the room through the glass panel in the door (I hope they saw the ones sitting at the back on the floor) but when I went to the door and asked one if I could help they said not at all. They were just checking the rooms were being put to full use.

Well they were, so no worry there. Disruption and squabbling over broken chairs was in full flow, as per the curriculum.

Management didn't have to interrupt the learning at all, for which they were probably eternally grateful.

Having an opinion about eating fish fingers on the sofa

One lunchtime I was walking with a workmate through the centre of the city in which I used to work and a woman stopped us both and asked if we could spare time for a quick survey. We had, and were duly surveyed.

The essence of this survey was what we thought about the name of a new beer. I won't tell you its name because it came to pass that enough people liked it and thus it may be your favourite tipple, though I haven't seen it for years and in all fairness to the brewing business some of these wonderful ales do come and go as tastes vary and sales rise and fall.

Anyway, the survey drew something of a blank between the two us. My mate loved the name and said he would definitely drink it (I presume if someone else was buying a round as he was always careful with money) but I struck out his plus by saying no, the name definitely didn't appeal to me (but yes I would drink it if someone else was buying the round as I was even more careful with money.)

We left the woman standing there with her clipboard, contemplating a plus and a minus but as I say there must have been more positives than negatives because the product appeared in pubs not long after.

Now as someone who has been both surveyed and has done the surveying (memorably once finding out that me and the department I managed would have to keep asking the public the same question until they agreed with my Managing Director's opinion) I do know something of this. A relative of mine too did surveys for a time and had to find things like men over sixty who chewed gum, and so on, though she did once do a survey for the cover of the 'Trainspotting' DVD which I imagine was a lot more fun than seeking out old men who probably did not have all their own teeth.

All this brings me to news of a new survey, trumpeted by the media (in other words, they got a press release and there was nothing else happening) about the mental health of kids. It made, as these surveys do, heart-rending reading. So many kids bullied, so many under pressure for grades and forced to play online games and achieving high scores, so much pressure to buy the latest and coolest, so much unhappiness caused by stress caused by, well, stressful things.

I don't doubt for a moment that there are lots of kids out there who are stressed and suffering. God knows, I went through a childhood where there was stress too. Bullying, pressure (exams, and real exams at that, not just 'course work') and being slagged off for not having the best. Most of us will have gone through this, and yet we survived. We all know the lovely idea of childhood being some sort of carefree romp towards adulthood is nothing more than a myth. Like the same myth generated endlessly on TV of people who smile inanely when they are given fish fingers for tea, or sit on a new sofa for the first time.

While the actors and models in the ads gain overwhelming happiness from such little things (and possibly get paid, too), the rest of us don't. We just have to get through the day and eat our fish fingers without being swept away on a tide of joy. Combine your chewing with sitting on a new sofa and you are truly in heaven.

But what I have learned is that a lot depends in any survey in what exactly is being asked. If a survey asks someone "are you unhappy?" the chances are they will either say yes or no, and as happiness is something of an elusive commodity (especially when you are not eating fish fingers at that very moment) you are likely to get more of the 'yes, I am unhappy.' But if someone should ask 'how unhappy are you on a scale of one to five?' then there is a degree of unhappiness there to be measured. Even all those bland ones add up to something.

Now a lot of selling is asking a question to which people probably can't say "no." I was once stopped by an aggressive looking young man on the same street as the now infamous 'neutral result beer name' question and asked if I wanted to save more tax. As this would, I imagined require me to pay money to save more tax (and possibly a lot more paying than saving) coupled with me needing to get back to work in order to be in a position to go on paying tax, I did the unthinkable. I said "no."

The aggressive young man was astonished but got over it to bellow after me that I was an idiot and how I didn't care about the ones I loved and that one day all this would crumble away, and so on. But, I had said "no" and ideally should have kept on walking. But I am what I am and turned round to go back to tell the little shit how little I thought of him and his pathetic tax-scam company.

A fair exchange of views, I thought.

In selling you have to ask the questions that are supposed to only elicit a "yes" and go on from there. If you think people are unhappy (and bullied and under pressure) that is the question you will ask, especially if you have an agenda or something to sell. A lot of public-funded charities will ask the questions that justify their being.

None of them will ask: "Do you think people like us are a luxury in life which fulfils no real purpose other than to ensuring people like me can sit in nice offices and are paid a good wage for not doing anything productive?" There would be a lot more yes answers, methinks, than no.

Ask troubled kids if how much they are troubled and you start to get the answer you want.

Ask them if fish fingers for tea on mum's new settee makes them happy and you are likely to get more no answers than the yes variety, unless of course you make one or the other and then I bet the evidence of happiness is overwhelming.

Please don't apologise, 'twill do no good

When I was little a kid said to me, "Don't say sorry, just don't do it again."

How right he was. Saying "Sorry" is actually a pretty cheap thing most of the time. When I was teaching some 'students' would turn up late for lessons and mumble a "Sorry I'm late" as they sauntered to their seat. They weren't sorry at all: it was just something you said to acknowledge their tardiness, and guess what? Yes, they'd be late the next time too and once more they would 'apologise' and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Because, to be honest, nothing had happened.

"But I said I'm sorry," the gormless 'student' would complain if I pointed out it wasn't a real heartfelt, 'I won't do it again' statement. It was a gesture, that was all, and having gestured they could get on with doing bugger-all in the lesson.

So the word sorry is devalued by overuse. We have people emerging from courts, for example, moaning that the person in the dock didn't say sorry for something they did when they shouldn't. The words were missing when the perp was sent down, and annoyance has to be vented. "if only he had said he was sorry!"

Well, a few idle words won't make anything right that has been wronged. A few words, soon said, quickly forgotten. I would rather a perp didn't do it again than just say sorry as if that magically makes it all okay.

Though we live in an age of many things, interestingly it is an age dominated by apologies. We apologise, or expected to say sorry, for things either real or imagined. We may have to apologise for that which was not anything to do with us. Our forebears did it, so let's say sorry. We are expected to weep with sorrow at what our ancestors did and perhaps never actually did. However Once It Has Been Decided It Was So then apologies must flow.

And yet, the funny thing is the apologies don't actually seem to make one iota of difference. You can say sorry until you are blue in the face and things broken aren't fixed. It's something to do with actions and not words, however impressive or heartfelt they may sound.

But the worst thing about this is... It doesn't really matter.

All sorts of peoples and nations have apologised for some war or 'crime' that happened years before, but that isn't the end of it. The reaction of those thus apologised to is to go on being angry or dissatisfied.

"I wanted an apology and it isn't enough!" Seems to be the reaction.

Take slavery. Utterly reprehensible it may be, but sadly it happened. It happened in a different age and was done by people long since dead, who were duly stopped by legislation passed by white governments. You would think therefore it time to move on. But there are people who demand an apology for events of two hundred years before, say, and then are still unhappy.

"We need to put right that all slavery and the white slavers did wrong," comes the cry from the ancestors of the slaves having listened to the apologies. But it often turns out, those apologies that they demanded and got apparently didn't soothe the fevered brow. The fact that white people said sorry for enslaving black people (or rather, buying slaves from black and brown people who made black people slaves in the first place) was of no value.

The apologies from whites was pointless because there are some blacks who still aren't happy about the whole thing.

Anyway, nothing can be done and sorry I raised this point. I promise I won't do it again.

Handing over the keys to the kingdom

There are times when I despair (and even for that matter get quietly angry) because of what we have become.

What we have become is not what we set out to be, and we have become this dreadful apology of a nation because we allowed the ones who didn't care to get the upper hand. The nation of Britain and all its myriad British peoples have became swamped by tides that threaten to wash away everything we are.

The British and their ways are being subjugated by the very people we trusted to help us. In trust we gave our so called 'leaders' and 'intellectuals' the keys to the kingdom and they slyly handed them over with one object in mind. They wanted to make themselves feel good, by lining their own nests and taking what they could while pretending they cared.

The keys to our islands and our ways were given away by people who had no right to do it. The keys  were ours; they belonged to the people of these islands and even the land itself. It is the kingdom, the nation, we crafted because it was best for us and ours. it is beautiful and rugged and breath-taking and comforting and reassuring in so many ways. It is ours. Or was.

Do not misunderstand me here. Britain isn't heaven on earth, as much as I might wish it to be. There are things we have done as a nation that have been far from great but there have also been times -- many times -- when we have done things that are pretty amazing and beneficial. For all our faults the people of these islands gave a lot to the world and even if the world didn't always make best use of the gifts and ideas, we did what we could to help.

On balance, I think Britain is in the plus side of the help/hinder equation.

Of course I am British, so I am biased. I was born in these islands good number of years ago and while I have been lucky to see some other parts of the world I am usually glad to come back here. yes, it rains and it's cold but there is something about this land that makes me feel okay. I have no doubt other people of other nations feel passionate about their lands, and good for them, because this is actually how it should be.

We also are an island and while everything is an island, one way or another even if it a very very big island with lots of countries (it struck me recently that if you land on the French coast you can, should you so wish, walk all the way to say North Korea. Not that I would, but there you go. It is possible.) we do have a way of looking at the world. Not always as history has shown with the best vision but the times we did outstanding things like Magna Carta and enabled people like Shakespeare and Newton to thrive and stood alone when all else around us seemed ready to fall puts us in a very unique position.

But somewhere along the line we said to the people who claimed they would guide us that we trusted them to do the right thing. But it was a misplaced trust for they failed. They failed us the British people. These people, who set themselves up as greater than the ordinary people, stopped listening to what we the people said, stopped liking who we were. Instead they listened to voices from other places, people with agendas far removed from ours.

These leaders set themselves up with our money and awarded themselves greater powers and greater amounts of money and sought more prestige and all the while plotted to hand us, the ordinary Brit, over to others who care only for their own power and prestige.

Look, I don't want to bring race into this though God knows everyone else does. We are white, because we are north European. It is how we are. We tolerate the cold and damp because, in a way, it is in our skin to do that. Our gods and our beliefs and our aims were shaped by what we are. It is how it is.

It isn't racist to be what you are. It isn't racist to see that what you are -- and in this it is to do with attitudes and beliefs and a willingness to be a unified people within these lands -- and why in many ways you have to be separate. There are times you have to say 'we stand alone' even as you say 'we can help.'

Being aware of what you are and what you have been and what you hope to be isn't hatred of others. Far from it because there is no point in hating what is. You may as well rail against the colour of sunlight for all the good that would do. The world is what it is, and its peoples are who they are and as such have their own lands and their own beliefs. So it goes. But what we are is what matters. It is who we are, who we have always been here.

But then somehow we said, 'we have a land and we have the keys to it' and we handed them over. We gave our trust and it was abused. Nakedly and flagrantly and with all the charm of snake oil salesmen (and women) our elected leaders took the keys and handed them over to others. Handed over to a faceless bureaucracy in Europe that would make laws for us while enjoying the privilege of not following them for themselves, given to a United Nations that promotes despots and tyrants and regimes that hate the West and who tell us we have to bow down to others. Or else.

Our leaders purred with self-appreciation and then eagerly danced to the tune of other people in other lands. And if they couldn't dance well enough they insisted we the people of these islands should dance too. Dance faster and more generously or suffer the wrath of those distant despots or face more laws to restrict and condition us.

These supposedly intelligent people were careless with what we gave them. They gave away our laws and our security and any feeling of self-worth we had. They trashed hope and replaced it with mind-numbing fear. They told us to be quiet and not express our views, that whatever we had to say counted for less than the rants of anti-Westereners. The leaders listened to the pretend concerns of people who knew nothing of the world, but had 'exciting ideas' that sounded far more fun than they really turned out.

These 'leaders' of ours told us we were worthless because of what we were in their eyes, and then they helped blame us for what we didn't do. They connived and plotted as one with doubtful people and did things behind our back, all for their own glory and not ours. Worse, they did it together as if they were friends with each other but not of us, the ones who 'freely' elected them. We were told by the elite we were worthless, inferior, that we owed the world a living. We had to accept what was alien to us because it sounded 'good' and 'worthwhile.' We were pushed to one side and then told we were guilty when we had not done anything wrong.

We were small and insignificant and the new order our leaders wanted would guarantee them more and make sure we had less.

If we did not berate ourselves and beat ourselves then we were failing, so the media helped our elite do it. No questions, no analysis, just a dog-like testicle-licking cravenness, pumping up 'threats' that were created to enhance power. There would be new laws and repression and regulations and guidelines that had to be slavishly adhered to, no matter what it cost. Anyway, money was free and plentiful for the ones at the top. More could be printed, just as more promises without value could be made. Taxes could be invented, new ways to take money created out of thin air. Or warm air.

So easy, so simple once you start. And you never had to say you were sorry when you made it to the top. all you had to do was say you would 'try harder' and you were 'proud to serve' and then carry on doing all you had done before.

Maybe it was our fault we went along with it all. It could be we as a people relaxed too much in the face of an extended peace. Maybe we thought that as war receded (though heaven knows it is never far away and in many ways it has been secretly brought into these islands from elsewhere) that life would get better. Maybe with it getting better we thought the intellectuals and the self-important elite at the top actually cared. Maybe we thought that common sense would prevail in all matters.

Perhaps we thought that our leaders would subdue their self-serving ways and would put Britain and the British first. For a while we thought that when our elected leaders and politicians talked to others it was to put our point of view across rather than listen to what others said, no matter how irrational or unsuited to our ways, and then wanted us to promise to obey.

We were wrong to think that the promises and all the words about caring for us were real, that they meant what they said in claiming they would serve Britain and its interests. They had the keys, on trust, and they handed them over so swiftly we couldn't keep up.

There will be an election in the next couple of years in these islands, though I have finally understood it makes little difference now how it turns out. Vote as you wish, you will get more of the same. The people of any party who will seek to get into Westminster will most of all want the money and the adulation and the craven support of a feeble-minded media in order to do nothing for the British people. There is a saying that the rich get powerful and the powerful get rich, and once I thought this applied to other places. Shitholes of countries with turgid, lazy and corrupt governments who run the UN and its ilk and while making their people suffer because they didn't really care. They were in it for what they could get.

Now I know it is true here too.

Oh, sure, you will hear fine words from our elite, carefully polished to accompany earnest expressions of care and compassion. They have been expertly trained to say it, how to present themselves nicely. But they will not act the way they say. They say one thing and think another. These people will act the way they think best for them and their small group of hangers-on though in truth these faithful, narrow-minded acolytes, who are also scrabbling for power and money and luxury, will be jettisoned as soon as convenient.

We now in these islands have a selfish leadership and we have had it for some time now. These smug people lied and schemed in order to be able to preen themselves and congratulate their image in a mirror crack'd from side to side. Worse, they pretended to be us, but couldn't wait to hand the keys to this kingdom over to someone else. Even if they did it with a flourish of heartfelt care and an anxious smile of reassurance, they handed them over all the same.

The trouble is, we may never get them back now.

What's Czech for "mind the gap?"

This morning, as the birds were rousing themselves from slumber and the normally rainy sky was actually showing some sort of colour other than grey, I was walking the dog in the park and for the third day running I was able to hear two Czech immigrant children -- yoofs of about 14 -- singing various Czech anthems and patriotic songs at the top of their lungs as they marched in lockstep towards the nearest comprehensive school.

I now know they were Czech because one of them had a huge Czech flag sewn on the back of his coat (not, I admit one of my top ten recognisable flags of Europe, but distinctive nonetheless and thanks to Pikiwedia I now know where it hails from) and they were clearly overjoyed to be here and eager to inform everyone of their heritage. Proud sons of the Czech tradition, no doubt, and perhaps staying here for the money when the job prospects don't pan out as hoped.

As it happens I have heard people singing before in public places (almost always tunelessly) and while this example of Anglo-Czech relations may have involved various east European swearwords and comments on the feckless state of Britain it didn't offend because I had no idea what point the song was making. I suppose I should have been grateful it wasn't rap.

Anyhow, it was timely reminder of the gap that exists between the peoples of nations, especially when they are shoehorned in to the same small area. This is one of my recurring themes in that you can't -- no matter how many laws are passed and how much propaganda is pumped out by the state and how much we are hectored by the lefties -- really expect people to be always perfectly happy with their neighbours. Singing or not.

There is, as far as I can see, a tendency in Britain to let people live and let live. If they don't bother us (or they don't frighten the horses) traditionally we are happy to let them 'do their thing.' The trouble is this allowance for foibles and pride and cultural dissonance and all the rest is actually limited. As much as we may say sure, come and live here, there is a tipping point where we start to become aware that we don't really feel that comfortable over a certain number being tipped here.

What that number is may well be indeterminate as it depends on the person feeling comfortable. I have heard it said that the first person on a street from another part of the world gets welcomed and even the second and third person happily tolerated. But once there is a preponderance of people who aren't willing to fit into the existing way of life then this tipping point is reached. It can manifest as the much-hated 'white-flight' (hated at least by those of the chattering class who have already fled to their secure mostly white fortresses and can pontificate from there) or it can result in a sort of sullen or resentful silence.

The other day a survey revealed that three out of four Brits think there is too much immigration. The left and the state machine at once went into overdrive to tell us we were wrong. Of course, the people asked in the survey didn't think they were wrong, and no, they probably don't need more education and lessons in approved thinking. After all, it isn't as if our glorious self-serving leaders haven't tried already to tell us we are wrong, so it isn't a question of more lectures doing the trick.

The issue over immigration is a feeling, however much you agree or disagree with it, and feelings are hard to shake off. All the intellectualising in the world won't really persuade someone they are 'wrong' about a feeling they have. It's too personal, too up close to their beliefs, to let it go simply to placate some smarmy, self-congratulatory prick who from their ivory tower knows all the correct words and political theories but none of the basic emotions of life.

But the thing is here that most people wouldn't notice immigration if it fitted in with the host country. If someone speaks the language of the host, acts as if they followed the laws and customs, then you might notice their accent is slightly different or their skin tone shade or two darker but it wouldn't matter. They would just be people, and most people are okay. But once they go round with national flags on them and form themselves into loud groups with extra demands then hackles rise.

Back when I was a fourteen year old I used to know a lad at school who was Jewish. We used to have morning assembly which necessitated signing Christian hymns so this lad Martyn would (with a few others) stay out and only come in for the important bits at the end like the Head telling us to not run when walking between classes. There wasn't ever the slightest suggestion that Martyn was 'different' because it wasn't important and because there was nothing different about him. He wasn't part of a scowling, sneering group who didn't speak English, he didn't dress differently and he didn't demand 'rights' and complain he wasn't loved. He came from a background that just had a different idea of something which mattered to his family but made no difference to his ability to join in, share jokes, play drums on the desk (he did go on to make living at it, so he is forgiven) and banter about football and girls and all the rest.

I might have thought Mary was more attractive than Dawn but that was just personal tastes.

Martyn was just Martyn and no one ever noticed he was Jewish. He fitted in, and that was all that was needed. No one gave a shit if he prayed to another deity or didn't eat some meats. So what? He was a good kid to be around. He was pretty much one of us so no one felt uncomfortable, including him.

This fitting in idea is much the same as "when in Rome." You have to fit in to what exists, not announce you are different and determined not to be part of it all. Do that and people feel troubled or resentful and all the state reassurances and intellectual yap doesn't make one iota of difference. No one says "Oh, look, I was wrong. Silly me."

It's just another measure of the gap between what we are and what we want (and indeed, what we have striven for) and what the newcomers want. More than that, it is an increasing gap between those of us who may well regard ourselves as the ordinary people who really have never had much and the pompuous elite who position themselves at the top and hand down advice and edicts and guidance for the ignorant.

We are not children, so the endless teaching tends to grate.

All this is about following some sort of attempt by newcomers to fit in to what exists. There are a whole bunch of places I wouldn't go and live because I wouldn't fit in, and I know it. I don't want to have to learn their language or adapt to some alien practices. I don't want my wife and daughter to have to cover their hair if they don't want. I don't want to bow and prostrate myself before corrupt governments and angry mobs. If you like, while I wouldn't mind carrying water from the local well,  I don't like the fact that some people are spitting into it because that's their charming way.

There is, as I have seen on dark mornings lately, a gap between me and others who aren't like me. They announce it loudly enough and while they may be cheerful souls in all sorts of ways I am more happy for them to be cheerful within their own skin. No, I don't want them not to be proud of their national heritage. Hell, I even admire a lot of eastern and central Europe for the way they stood up to the Russians. But I don't need that history drummed into me with tuneless howls in a foreign language early in the morning.

The gap between me and them doesn't need to be announced, and I don't want to be told the gap between me and our morally-superior, self-serving, propaganda-loving and utterly insensitive elite is growing bigger all the time.

Bananas

Every so often I stumble across some tweet by a leftoid-economy 'expert' who knows so much about money and how it all works they can share it in less than 140 characters. Actually, I should be honest here and say these sort of tweets are linked by others, perhaps erroneously thinking they contain some wisdom we all need to know, or maybe to just say 'WTF?'

Either way, I learned the other day that we should all be given (I think, as the numbers were so staggering I may have misread it) £3000 by the state. Just like that, with presumably no questions asked. Apparently the state can afford it and it would make a difference in everyone's life. Apparently.

Interesting, as people with £3000 tend to find that while useful in the short term it isn't really a long term solution to financial hardship, which the left is convinced most of us suffer from. Not that they have the answer of course, but they do enjoy pointing out that we all haven't got much money and things in the shops are dear.

So you and me would get three thousand and we can all smile because penury is over, finally. Goodbye to Boom and Bust, pronounced Gordon Brown and now it would be joined by poverty. So farewell then, lack of money (as EJ Thribb would put it.)

Okay, I admit I am not convinced. When I was teaching I did lecture some students on money. Well, it should have been on the delights of computer architecture but trust me there was a clear need from their conversations to try and grasp this cash thingy that, other than the ill-fated EMA, was escaping them. I told the yoofs that in their working life it was entirely possible, even at today's wage levels, they could earn half-a-million before retirement. I was working this out as 50 years of toil being rewarded at ten thousand a year.

Of course, as they were all convinced their first job would pay them thirty thousand a year for just turning up and playing games on some company's computer somewhere between the hours of 9 or 10 and possibly as late as 5 in the afternoon, then they would clearly earn much more than this. Some of the little angels' eyes lit up. One and a half million for playing games? Wow, impressive.

So my 10K was admittedly peanuts, but you have too start somewhere.

I did however have to point out to them that you don't get this all at once as soon as you start work. What happens is companies and organisations pay it in handy instalments, usually weekly or monthly. By the way the phrase monthly, I had to inform them, was not quite accurate as you get a five week 'month' every so often and that is a pain. They really should vote for a 13 month calendar. Anyway, the money comes in little drips and as such you have to plan. Excellent, with all that money you can work out how many video games you can buy.

The point was however that generally, you need income. Lump sums, tempting though they are, soon spend and then you have a problem where the next lump sum is coming from. Now I doubt if this made much difference to the 28 game-players sat in front of me (or at least the ones who were awake because I did have one lad who slept with head on desk most mornings as he was up until four every morning playing "Call Of Beat 'Em Up Whack-a-Mole Theft Craft" and it was hard to keep his eyes open when I was droning on.)

I did hesitate to point out, as this may be too much information all at once, that prices would rise over time and while a bargain £400 games console could be as much as £450 in the future, I could assure them the price of bananas for example would keep going up and up even if those cheerful banana-growers could turn them out smaller in order to get more to the kilo. It would be hard for any of us to work out how much of any start-work cash bonanza you would have to set aside to pay for bananas, even assuming that they were still being grown somewhere in the world and whether they could be transported to the UK.

Icebergs in the channel would play havoc with shipping.

No doubt my old students would have welcomed £3000 to get them started, as some lefty tweeter suggested on my timeline. As some folk would spend their £3000 instantly (and maybe not all on the latest game because some Moles have been well and truly Whacked) I expect they would soon feel poor again and perhaps press for another £3000 to keep them going, aided by caring and sharing lefties: "Tweeters are standing by to help you." It then occurred to me this lump sum gift to solve poverty may as well become a regular gift from the state. All our big, friendly state has to do is print more money. Simples.

In fact, why stop at £3000? It is a bit mean, when you think about it. Why not go for four or five thousand? How about ten? Once you start printing then the numbers can just get bigger. The paper's not too expensive and ink is pretty cheap so just keep those presses rolling.

Of course the problem to anyone with a smattering of idea how money works is that with this largesse the price of bananas becomes unstable. The price of those bent yellow things would go up and up in the face of such worthless money offered as payment, and even the most generous banana growing nation in the world would eventually stop wanting to provide goods to a mindless banana republic like the UK.

No matter. I look forward to seeing more on Twitter how much the state can afford to hand out again and again.

I do love reading about bananas.

Seeing the Not

I was out walking the dog this morning and it was beginning to get light. Not ideal conditions for throwing a ball and hoping the dog locates it in the gloom, but better than doing nothing by staying home.

In the sky, low to the horizon, was Venus. You can, as eni fule kno, tell it is a planet because it doesn't twinkle. You can also see clearly identify it at that time of day because the point of light is obviously living up to its name as the Morning Star (or at twilight as the Evening Star, even as already explained it isn't a star) and in so seeing it we give a nod to our distant mythologies. But the thing that is sobering about seeing a single point of light in a dark-to-medium sky is that it is small. Very small, really.

Well, small is relative because while close up it is considerably larger than my house and garden combined, it is small compared with everything else around it. As a mental exercise it puts a lot into perspective to look at Venus and say "that's a planet" and then look away from it to the (seemingly empty) sky and say "that's not planet." In fact, you will see a lot of sky that is not planet. Lots and lots and lots that very definitely isn't anything you might (breathing problems and gravitational problems apart) be able to walk on. And if you can walk on it often you can cultivate it and build on it and all the rest of planet living.

But here, right in front of you -- albeit a long way off in human terms -- is evidence how small a world is compared to everything else around it. You can clearly see there is a small planet and while we know from observation to be unlikely to sustain life as we prefer it we know it is solid. Significantly here, surrounding that ball of rock and gas there is a vast amount of not-planet.

In fact, it is easy to overwhelm yourself and say that is how we may well look from Venus if that world wasn't filled with clouds. Someone there could look out while walking their nine-legged dog or whatever and see their version of the Morning/Evening Star (which is us) and say "My, there's a planet and look, there's whole lot of not-planet round it."

But switching their vision from far off to up close, when they looked away from the point of light that was Earth and looked at what Astro-Bonzo was doing, they would see what was most urgent. The mess the foul creature was leaving on the surface of their own world was very much the most urgent thing to deal with.

It's the same here, mate. The mess in front of us is pretty big compared with everything else out there. All that not-mess isn't as big, close up, compared to the immediate mess.

No, this isn't an eco-loony appeal to save the Earth even if we have at times pissed around with its resources. This is an observation of how small and therefore unimportant things look from afar, and how urgent and big they look close up. It is a matter of perspective, of filling your vision with what is near and ignoring what is far, even if it that would be substantial if you ever got up close. Also you are, even if you are seeing it as important-but-distant. ignoring all what is not-object.

You and me and the people down the road -- yes, and all our supposed leaders for that matter -- are obsessed with the big and near. Even if you personally make an effort to acknowledge the distant point of light you have to also step back far enough to say: "There's a lot out there that isn't that one thing."

It is, I admit, hard to get away from what is big and near while we are on this planet. Gravity and scale and personal issues and time demands will keep us from getting away from it all. There isn't the opportunity to see it all as the small point of light of Something against a backdrop of the infinite Not.

Your life and my life and their life has to deal with the here and now. This morning in the early dawn I had to deal with my four-legged dog's mess, and that's the deal. We see what is in front of us as big and close up, yet we hope our supposed leaders see things that little bit more remote and in the grand scheme of things judge its importance compared to other things. It's hard, but it's what we ask them even if we know their 'vision' never extends beyond the end of their political noses.

We want these leaders to see things in context, see the important even if it is distant and also acknowledge that the pile of mess at their feet is surrounded by a lot of not-mess.

It can be done. Years ago I went for a long walk in the Lake District at a time when Britain was riven by some strike or other, coming as it did hard on the heels on another strike. The papers were full of the news and it was good to get away from the nagging and the hectoring, though this was at a time when our favourite State propaganda machine tended to report rather than lecture. Anyway, there I was halfway ups mountain and seeing all that had been up close and big as suddenly not very big at all. My car in a distant car park was out of sight and any other cars and houses were tiny. Quite insignificant, really, and all the issues of one bunch of strikers and another lot of managers suddenly seemed very small and hardly worth the effort.

Oh, I'm sure all those involved in that particular dispute would say this was The Most Important Up Close Mess Ever but then, they would. That was their task (and whisper it, their livelihood) to pump it all up so they felt better about themselves. After all, no one wants to be a tiny cog in an unimportant mechanism of an insignificant machine, do they? Especially when the news industry is all around pumping furiously too.

But out there in the mountains in the clear air under a big sky (not raining for once in the Lakes) it was much easier to see it all for what it was. I could easily appreciate there was a lot on Not That Dispute in the world.

So what is the point of this blog? I suppose it is asking our supposed leaders to step back a bit, go up a mountain and view it all from a distance and say, hey, you know what? There's a vast amount of Not going on too.

Of course, there are some supposed leaders who having got there might want to chuck themselves off the mountain if they so wished and I couldn't argue, because it would be all very distant and far off and I'd be looking at the huge vista of Not to worry about that.

Trust me, in the end there is a huge amount of Not This and Not That going on. Not is everywhere, one way or another.

A shaggy dilemma

As someone who has done a bit of writing over the years, I have to say I like dilemmas. If you do fiction among all that writing, you have to enjoy a good dilemma when you see one. You know, where the protagonist has to decide between saving the world or forgetting all of humanity and saving the love of his or her life.

Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, because having the world destroyed includes the loss of even the most precious person to the protagonist, but you get the point. The person who is the core of the story has to make a difficult decision. Ideally, they make 'the right choice' and all turns out well. I suppose this is a bit like the classic 'which wire do I cut to stop the bomb going off?' scenario. One wrong snip and the ditherer has merely hurried up the inevitable.

But, fiction aside, life does have its own little dilemmas. Pay the milk bill or go to the cinema? Pay the TV licence fee (aka the Telly Tax)  or have something other than broken biscuits for tea? Choices, choices... Though I won't include elections here because usually however you vote you get the same result: the power-hungry get to win and they will always vote for their own comfort and security ahead of yours.

(Nope, the above paragraph is silly. You have no choice but to pay the Telly Tax, even if you don't watch the ridiculous output of our bloated, smug state propaganda machine. So, it's broken biscuits for tea after all then. No choice there.)

A real dilemma is when you don't know what to do for the best.

Let me give you a completely made up example, and invite you -- the way an author or screenwriter can do -- to ponder awhile.

The other day I was driving through a northern town (not my own, as it happens) and saw a muslim police officer, complete with bushy shaggy beard, getting out of his panda car and going into house. No doubt some routine business, perhaps checking up on all sorts of everyday questions that arise with the law (no, I'm not going down the path of saying as some might think likely of whether there had been any grooming going on there) and seeing if those of who lived in the property could assist with enquiries. It could be, too, he was going home for tea. Or something.

Now this officer represents a potential dilemma for some.

One of the issues that has emerged over the past few years is the increasing authoritarian approach of 'public servants' and the increase in 'offences' against the community, which allows them to fine you for you not doing what you are told. The law has shown itself to be more and more petty, increasingly officious and even downright anti-citizen. There is also, in the explosion of laws we have had over the past twenty years, a whole bunch of misunderstood laws.

With that misunderstanding has come imagined laws. What's this, you ask? Surely that cannot be in an ordered society... Well, yes, it can. One of them has been whether members of the public can take photographs of buildings in public places. Or even, for that matter, take photos of a whole street.

Some people, possibly not professional card-carrying snappers, have been approached by the authorities and told they aren't allowed to take pictures. In fact, there is no such law, but when someone in a uniform -- real copper or plastic bobby or even grumpy council worker -- demands you put the camera away because they have decided it is against the law, then you can argue or obey.

Most will, however reluctantly, obey. Officer Unhelpful has won the moment and best not to be taken to the local police station and have to call a lawyer who can then explain the police that there is no such law prohibiting the taking of photos of the scene in a public place. Of course, if the police have evidence that will stand up in a court that you were planning some heinous crime then fair enough.

But by the time you get out of the cop shop you have, if nothing else, lost the light for the picture you hoped to take.

Now let's say the copper has got a point about your presence in a certain place. It might be utterly valid and he says he knows the law (he might even say words like "Section nine, sub-section three, paragraph five of the Public Security And Freedom Of Restricted Access Act" and you, in the face of such great knowledge, do what you are told.) As you probably don't know the law, and you want a police force  that is fair and reasonable and acknowledge that they have a difficult job to do and anyway you don't want to be in their way, you comply.

Most coppers are going to merely ask you to move along without having to resort to pseudo-law. Again, you will more than likely comply.

But his action in moving you or demanding you don't take photos might utterly not valid and the quoted act doesn't exist. You are told to do something when in fact, you are doing nothing. Nothing at all, neither wrong or right.

Again, you say, well, what the hell? Might as well keep the officer happy. No skin off your nose.

But here the dilemma might get a little tricky. Let's say you are approached by a muslim police officer and you very definitely aren't muslim. Your experience of them is that while they are people and all people are just that, with all the same complexities and hopes and fears as we all have, they tend to see the world through the pages of a religious book you don't believe in. It's a religion that you don't think is all that nice or trustworthy or even relevant to this country. Perhaps it's not the sort of religion you would join, especially as the track record of some members of that religion has proved to be devious and criminal and as such, makes you feel nervous.

You may also suspect that this muslim officer is likely to be impressed by social practices you find reprehensible. Say the man, away from his job, insists his wife (or wives) all wear a bag over their head all the time and walk three paces behind him. He might, for instance, believe in a system of law where a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's. He might turn blind eye to some of the antics of some fellow cultists who are not always working for the greater good of anyone but their own religion. He may be hampered in his job as he has to pray five times a day or the universe will collapse in on itself, and who may believe with it that the death of non-believers will please a very angry god (and who, incidentally, isn't the same as the one you believe exists.)

The officer is, in short, a person with little relevance to you and yours.

But, and there is always a but, he has been appointed -- fairly and reasonably and not as a politically correct gesture you will hope -- to a position of authority. He has to abide by a set of rules laid down and perhaps even swear allegiance to the crown. He has to be truthful and uphold the law of the land and above all he is allowed to wear the uniform and carry a warrant card. He even has a number so you know who he is.

But what if this man wants you to do something that is closer to his perhaps desired law than the one you think we should all adhere to? What if he orders you to stop doing something that isn't illegal?

You may try to put the uniform and the position ahead of the man inside it, but what if you can't? What if you think that Islam has absolutely no place here in western society?

What if you see the shaggy beard ahead of the silver badge with a crown on it?

Of course, you will have your answer as you sit reading this. You know, in a the spirit of fairness and for the sake of a unified society allied with a desire for fair play and approved thinking, what you would do in order to oblige and be reasonable.

Unless of course you think otherwise. In which case, there is a dilemma indeed.

Truth with doth

Doth is a funny word. Although we have a number of words ending in 'th' (and truth is one of them) the word doth is far from the most common, though it is a key part of the memorable phrase: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Methinks then I am indebted to Shakespeare for coming up with that one and giving it to Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, because it encapsulates not just what a lady might do, but the whole of humankind. In particular, I am thinking here of our old friend, AGW.

Recently a ship of excitable people set sail in a vessel named "An Inconvenient Truth" to follow in the footsteps of an Antarctic explorer. These people weren't however historians, but people convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that that their theories that there would be no ice in Antarctica in summer were beyond reproach. As the science of Anthropological Global Warming was so emphatically settled several years ago, what could go wrong?

What went wrong was a lot more ice than they anticipated. But what was wrong before they set off was being trapped in their AGW mindset. Having been seduced by an idea that increasingly looks ridiculous. A bit like a ship hemmed in by ice, if you like.

I do think there will come a day when people will look back at this AGW farce and wonder how such a delusion gripped so many people when all the signs pointed to a reality that didn't match the wild posturing. A modern, frantic South Sea Bubble that engulfed some if not all of us.

Now before you start screaming I am a terrible example of the monstrosity known as a climate change denier, I'd like to point out that I do believe in climate change. Happens all the time. Has happened throughout history, will happen for aeons to come too. I expect it will continue until the sun goes supernova and the planet gets fried into a whole new climate change.

I just don't believe it is all the fault of human beings. Nature is vast and complex and there are factors at play we can't really comprehend from such a limited viewpoint. Humans don't always have a huge breadth of vision, but while we do have some breadth we ought to resist thinking the experiences of a limited time span while we are keeping records (which may or may not be accurate) somehow constitute all of life.

Oh, sure, as a species we humans are wasteful. No question about that. Of course we exploit resources and haven't always considered the impact of mining and drilling and reshaping river flows. To some degree we spoil and are slow to repair. On the other hand we are not as powerful as we may think. Good old mother Nature can concoct forces a thousand times more powerful and earth-changing than anything we can manufacture.

Our wonderful planet can throw us off in the cosmic blink of an eye, and the sun can do whatever it likes whenever the mood takes it because we have absolutely no influence on this small star on the outer fringe of our galaxy.

But it is a vanity that we humans are such an important element in this planet's life. Our little globe of rock and iron and water has been around for a whole lot longer than us and may well outlive us all, but the belief we are responsible for everything that happens from now on is just silly. More than that, the idea we know everything there is to know about everything is beyond ridicule. Frankly, we have just scratched the surface.

Yet our capacity for self-delusion never abates: we think if we believe something it must be true. Further, we think if we shout louder and louder then wisdom and agreement will follow, and better still follow with generous gratitude. Protesting loudly doth do the job.

Six or seven years ago the largely self-appointed 'experts' screamed that the "science was settled" as regards AGW. There was no point in discussing it or examining it because we only had four more years to save the world (even if the world will blissfully go on spinning round a moody sun whether we are here or not) and we were doomed by the fact we made lightbulbs without clear glass, or something.

But the lady was protesting too much. She was howling, and she was purple in the face with rage about how bad we were, how we were killing the planet. There was no time to think, no time to examine. Hurry up and hurry up along the only road we can see. The science was supposedly settled and there was no time left to look and certainly no reason to apply brain.

Worst of all, the main stream media rushed to join in with all this screaming, but then as bad news is far more interesting than good news I suppose it was inevitable. The MSM loved AGW and we who asked "Is this really true?" could all just STFU.

One thing we can be sure about though is it's not over until the fat lady sings, however much she doth protest beforehand. Ain't that the truth?