.
“Since the recession began, applications to train for teaching have shot up.”
BBC News Radio 4.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7933690.stm
So this is now a clear case of potential teacher supply outstripping demand. And what does a stupid government do in this situation? Well, a truly stupid government, as represented by Jim Knight, creates an incentive for supply to go up even higher by saying it’s going to compress PGCE training courses from an already ludicrous 12 months to - wait for it - 6 months. That’s SIX months to learn about and become skilled in the arts and sciences of being a teacher.
What the government should be doing, of course, is fast-tracking redundant bankers with their fat kiss-offs into work experience as Teaching Assistants, to give them a substantial first-hand insight into why the majority of them SHOULD NOT, and CANNOT, become teachers.
That would serve two purposes. First, to disabuse them of what it’s actually like to be a teacher, and save them the time and expense of training to be a teacher. Secondly, to rid them of the idea that they have the intellectual, emotional and spiritual resources to be a teacher.
The very few who survived this sort of apprenticeship to a practicing classroom teacher for at least 6 months, before even embarking on training, would then
* be absolutely certain that they have the qualities of sensitivity, empathy, intuition, intellect, instinct, humility, emotional intelligence and resilience that you need to be a good teacher.
* be clear that they can function effectively in a professional setting as a member of a team of professionals, which of course you don’t necessarily need to do as a self-serving banker.
* be clear about the sort of self-discipline and self-sacrifice it takes to be a good teacher.
Having had such a workplace experience, any sensible applicant for teacher training would then demand that basic training should be effective and thorough, and conducted by highly skilled and experienced practitioners in both the college and their placement schools for a minimum of two years.
-------------------------------------
There’s talk about the government introducing a Masters degree in Teaching & Learning. The incredible thing is that we apparently don’t already have them. How can that be?
Could it be anything to do with the idiotic world of academia where subject specialisation is all, and “Teaching & Learning” is a bit . . . . . generalist? A bit like Primary teachers - regarded as the poor relations, generalists, etc. When what they are in terms of their professionalism is actually a specialist in child development and pedagogy.
No-one can actually teach a young child who has limited language and literacy without understanding what makes a child tick and how to motivate them to want to learn. Or at least that’s what Primary teachers used to be able to do before NuLabour got its hands on education and turned teachers into operatives in results factories, “delivering national strategies” and teaching to tests.
In Finland, the world’s best educational system has not only an all-graduate profession, it has an all-post graduate profession, with every teacher being trained to Masters level in pedagogy within 5 years of starting teaching.
As a teachers’ Union spokesman said on the radio - it’s completely mad to let semi-trained people loose on teaching children when they haven’t even begun to properly understand the basics of child development and pedagogy, let alone know how to organise up to 30 children within a small space so that each and every one of them has his and her specific educational and personal needs met, all day every day.
Let alone be able to offer them a daily experience of school that fosters a love of learning for its own sake, and allows every child to develop high levels of intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual intelligence.
Even experienced teachers find it difficult to do that - principally because these days they’re no longer trained in such skills. They’re fast-tracked into “delivering” literacy and numeracy strategies and “the curriculum”. In other words, preparing the children for tests and exams.
But of course this is what people like Jim Knight imagine teachers should be doing. Any old banker can surely be trained to stand in front of a class and fill children with imperial gallons of facts. Within six months. Can’t they?
That’s right, Jim lad. Hammer them with grammar, “wow words”, “connectives”(?), number facts, bits of science, history and the rest, plus some training on test techniques, and Gordon’s your uncle.
------------------------------------------------------
Here’s an excellent article, published on the Guardian website yesterday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/09/anthony-seldon-examinations
I can’t imagine Anthony Seldon wanting any semi-trained ex-bankers working in his school. Can’t imagine the fee-paying parents wanting them either. Maybe they’ll be fine for the inner-city schools. Eh, Jim?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2009/mar/09/anthony-seldon-primary-tests
---------------------------------------------------
Returning to Oxzen’s recent comments on Brown and Harriet Harman, I notice Jackie Ashley wrote some very important comments in yesterday’s paper, under the strapline,
Harman and Darling are the PM's most constant allies. He should let them speak out, rather than slap them down.
This is another sad indictment on Brown, who’s still failing to realise it’s time to admit what the rest of us already know about NuLabour’s complicity with the City and ‘globalisation’ this past decade, and understand that he’s now operating in a totally new epoch that requires totally different approaches to politics and economics.
(Harriet Harman) seems to be fighting her cause in cabinet, taking a more anti-City line than some other ministers, and refusing to have her equalities legislation nudged aside by Mandelson . . . Under great personal attack, she's got her head down and is plugging on regardless. You don't have to regard her as some kind of political titan to think this is cause for mild praise rather than contempt.
Personally I think it’s cause for enormous praise - both what Harriet said about the bankers not being allowed to keep their booty, and the fact that she’s still fighting for her equalities legislation, especially if Mandelson is against it - which he would be, wouldn’t he?
Unless people feel politicians, like the rest of the world, have been shocked into rethinking their assumptions, how can they feel confidence in future decisions? This is not about weakness. You can't base a new politics on denial.
The Tories, with all their hedge-fund chums and banking backers, are still far too smug in their finger pointing, but even their language is now altering. Labour, take note.
If (Brown) was able to admit that he had been too credulous about the banks but had learned some painful lessons, he would actually now be in a stronger position, far better able to get a hearing.
If he was able to see Harman and Darling as loyal people with minds of their own, rather than as potential renegades who need to be slapped down, then he would also be in a better place, and his administration would seem more coherent. Why pick fights with friends?
The mood of the country has changed, anyway. People want something different in truly dangerous, recessionary times. They want politicians to be less tribal, franker and more open about what went wrong. It's a time for rallying round, not for finding new divisions.
It's not quite true that everyone failed to see the expanding golden bubble for what it was. A few did. But millions were mesmerised and the consequences are going to be horrible. At this hard moment, there is no place for false pride. We are in it together. The prime minister must be less proud. He has, frankly, less to be proud about.
There were a couple of good comments on CIF after this:
From guardianreeda (on Mandelson, and someone‘s suggestion that he could take over as PM if Brown resigned)
For a completely unelected, completely unelectable multiply disgraced multi-million pound trousering liar to end up running the country courtesy of Labour is indeed a fitting way to draw this desperately disappointing period in our history to a close.
From ardennespate (on someone’s comment that Brown’s successor should fire Mandelson immediately)
... from a large cannon, off the highest turret of the Tower of London, in the general direction of Elephant and Castle. Without a crash helmet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/09/gordon-brown-harman-darling
------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is getting involved. Quite right too. This whole economic and financial crisis is, in the end, about spiritual intelligence, ethics and morality, equality and purpose.
Archbishop delivers attack on impact of globalisation.
Time for everyone to look at own lifestyles, he says.
Blaming the greed of individual bankers for the financial crisis was too easy and people should instead be asking profound questions about how poorly regulated economies obsessed with ever-growing consumer choice have skewed the judgments of entire countries, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
Focusing on the greed of bankers had made people lose sight of the fact that "governments committed to deregulation and to the encouragement of speculation and high personal borrowing were elected repeatedly in Britain and the United States for a crucial couple of decades", he said. "Add to that the fact of warnings of some of the risks of poor (or no) regulation, and we are left with the question of what it was that skewed the judgment of a whole society as well as of financial professionals."
The archbishop . . . attacked "opportunistic" offshoring and outsourcing by large international companies. "The present situation favours economic agreements that give little or no leverage to workers and that have minimal reference to social, environmental or even local legal concerns.
"Learning how to use governmental antitrust legislation to break up the virtually monopolistic powers of large multinationals that have become cuckoos in the nest of a national economy would also be an essential part of a strategy designed to stop the slide from opportunistic outsourcing towards protectionism and monitoring or policing the chaotic flow of capital across boundaries," he said.
Plenty of good sense and things to chew on there. Excellent.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/09/deregulation-spending-banking
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/09/rowan-williams-lecture-full-text
.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Layer 133 The Little Things, the Bigger Picture and the Desert Island.
.
Having perfect eyesight, children scrutinise everything. They see the minute detail in everyday things, and are mesmerised, fascinated and incredulous in the face of the awesomeness and wonderment of it all. How could they not be?
Pre-verbal children see colour, form, shape, proportion and texture and go “Wow!” A baby will stare at a colourful object time and again for minutes on end. We can surmise that the colour and shape alone are worthy of their unblinking attention.
A re-birth in the art of seeing takes place when children, usually at school, have access to a 3-D microscope and can see things like the hairs on the legs of insects and spiders, the texture of their eyes, and the incredible surfaces of human skin, and the leaves of plants, when highly magnified.
Many adults who went through school prior to the availability of affordable powerful 3-D microscopes have missed out on something truly awesome.
One of the downsides of growing older is that eyesight becomes less acute and we literally stop seeing the little things in their glorious fine detail. We put on glasses to read, but can’t normally be bothered to take them out of their case to look closely at the everyday things which we take for granted.
A cup has some artwork on it. A postage stamp has some kind of design. An insect has an unusual colour and shape. They remain a blur. In any case, there’s no time to look properly, and it’s not as though they’re important. We have more pressing things to attend to. So much passes us by.
Having perfect long sight I take it for granted that I can see the world in general in all its glory. I never stop to think about the children or adults for whom it’s a blur if they don’t have corrective lens or can’t be bothered to wear them. I have a complete lack of empathy with such people, because I’ve never asked myself what it must be like NOT to be able to see the wonders of the world all around - trees, clouds, hillsides, buildings - all of the time, in proper focus.
There’s a new optical telescope orbiting the earth that will enable the human race to observe the universe in unbelievable detail. I can still remember the pictures that were taken with the Hubble telescope when they first became available, after much corrective surgery. The universe is un-be-bloody-lievable!
Radio is a kind of telescope for the ears. Through it we can hear things happening far away, and can be incredulous and amazed by what comes into our lives. The BBC is a kind of hearing aid and telescope combined, feeding the brain with incredible and sometimes awesome, sometimes appalling, information.
Thanks to television and channel FX it’s recently been possible to see, through the combined efforts of some very technically and artistically gifted people, an approximation of what life is like in far-away places like America’s drug-infested ghettos (The Wire) and Iraqi towns and cities (Generation Kill), and the sheer horrific and brutal nature of what went on and still goes on there.
It’s hard to give a damn about something if we don’t really know about it. That’s the reason journalists were ‘embedded’ with troops in Iraq - so that we never got to see or hear what it was really like.
The final episode of Generation Kill showed young troops confronted with the non-attached or detached viewpoint of a journalist through the lens of a collage of images he took on his personal digital camcorder and left with them before he flew home - showing close-ups of the carnage caused by the war. They sat around and cheered at the opening shots of buildings being blasted apart by bombs and rockets. They quietly drifted away when confronted with lingering shots of dead and maimed bodies of civilian adults, and children.
--------------------------------------
The other day I persuaded my 94-year old aunt to put new batteries in her hearing aids and to insert them in her ears. The sheer joy of having one’s quietly-spoken non-shouted words heard at first utterance! And as for her - “What’s that noise?” The upstairs cistern re-filling. “What’s that ticking?” The kitchen clock.
----------------------------------------
Desensitised, we cope with the world, but we don’t really see it or hear it. It doesn’t impact on us the way it could, or should.
I read the other day that Gordon Brown tends to watch only sport on television when he wants to relax. That’s relax, as in, switch off from reality. Not for Gordo, then, gritty dramas portraying the reality of other people’s lives. The writer was pointing out that Gordo is unlikely to ever watch any of the collection of films on DVD given to him last week by Barack Obama. I wonder if we can find out which ones he was given . . .
-----------------------------------------
I’m going to make a pitch to the BBC for a programme and a series called Desert Island DVDs. Celebrities and interesting nonentities will be filmed talking about the eight films they would take with them to a desert island.
Which films could we bear to watch more than a couple of times? Surely most films only hold our attention because of our innate desire to find out ‘the ending’? Which films are worth watching when we already know what the ending will be?
That was the amazing thing about the Frost/Nixon film - we already knew how it would end - so how did it manage to be both interesting and exciting? The fact is, we remember roughly how the Frost/Nixon interviews ended, and approximately what happened. We have a hazy and fuzzy recollection. Or some of us do.
The film focuses tightly on the characters and their relationships, and by three quarters of the way through the film it’s still almost impossible to see how on earth Frost can get from a position of absolute defeat and humiliation by Tricky Dicky - a formidable opponent - to a position where Nixon admits to his culpability for the Watergate fiasco and its attempted cover-up. I’ve written elsewhere about what happened to make Frost wake up to the reality of what was going on, and start to focus and work hard at defeating his opponent.
A proper work of art gets beneath the surface of things and lets us see glimpses of the human condition in all its tragedy and majesty. A true artwork is our instrument for looking at things we otherwise overlook and fail to perceive, even when it’s just showing us what true beauty looks like and feels like. Even that perception of beauty or simple truth gives us some insight into the awesome nature of reality, and connects us to metaphysical truths.
If we ever take the time to look closely at the credits for films we notice what an incredible piece of coordinated teamwork a feature film can be. The best films require a lot of genius to make the end product watchable, arresting, entertaining, comprehensible, enlightening and enthralling. Brilliant directors, editors, producers, camera operators, scriptwriters, lighting specialists, scenery makers, actors, location scouts, special effects people, composers and costume makers work together and sometimes produce something magical. The annual film awards pay homage to these people.
But it’s one thing to produce something profound and wonderful - it’s another to want to view it repeatedly on a desert island. Presumably the cast-away would want a mixed diet. Something to provide escapism, something to remind them of home, something to nurture the soul and spirit, something to provide spectacle for the eyes and ears.
I wonder which ones Gordo would choose. He’d maybe just dimly remember a couple he saw back in his youth, before he became a full-time politico. The presenter would have to put a ban on him taking DVDs of great sporting events, repeats of Scotland’s occasional victories at football and rugby. I wonder what Sarah watches while she’s waiting for him to roll home of an evening, or at Chequers at the weekend.
There will no doubt be some wonderful films of the Great Financial Crash of 2008, in years to come. There are probably scripts being written already, with directors already considering who they want to play Gordon Brown and Alistair - Dahling! Who will be Bush and Greenspan and the bank chairmen?
------------------------------------------------------
Business ethics, unscrupulousness and under-regulation was big in the Observer yesterday. The paper seemed to major on lap dancing, and its increasing prevalence, even in places like Bournemouth and Newquay, both of which are said to have 4 of these ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. It seems they’re very popular with wealthy young high-spirited bankers, as well as other varieties of saddos and desperate fools who are easily parted with their money, to the tune of around £200 per visit, and £1,000 for a bottle of posh champagne.
Oxzen holds no brief(s) either for or against such ‘businesses’, but he’s very interested in their treatment of their workers, whom the bosses claim are not operating in the sex industry. They also claim they enjoy good protection, good working conditions and high rewards, all of which appears to be less than the truth.
An ex-lap dancer, Nadine Stavonina de Montagnac, (crazy name, crazy gal), wrote a half-page article for the Observer, saying the business was ‘not what it was portrayed to be’. Shock horror. Gosh - really? Who knew?
She has a strange way of expressing herself, as a self-confessed exhibitionist, looking for ‘an exciting life’ and wanting to ‘feel like a superstar’. She says she ‘conditioned herself to think that removing my clothes was a sacrifice worth making to feel special’. Sacrifice? Sacre bleu!
Call me old-fashioned, but I can see how women make sacrifices by working two or three jobs a day and studying for better qualifications in order to better support their families, and I can see how very able and intelligent women make the sacrifice of doing cleaning and shelf-stacking in order not to go on state benefits. But taking your clothes off for the benefit of men who want to ogle women’s bodies, and by doing so ‘feeling like a superstar’ - that’s not a sacrifice!
The serious point here is that these women, like most workers, are exploited, and whilst they make serious money for the bosses and owners, they make little if anything for themselves, unless they’re prepared to make ‘private’ arrangements with the ‘clients’.
What happens is that the ‘dancers’ are ‘self-employed’, and have to pay the clubs for the privilege of plying their trade on the club’s premises. You therefore find situations where there are too many dancers for too few customers, all competing with one another to do £20 dances after paying the club’s owners up to £80 a night for just being there. They also have to perform regular pole dances for free, and they say that some nights they might only get to do one or two lap dances, if any.
The club’s owners are trading on the naivety and gullibility of the performers - a bit like financial advisers and bankers trading on the naivety and gullibility of people who need to invest their money, who are led to believe they’re getting a good deal, and that riches await them. The only ones who actually benefit are the insiders who really know that it’s a pack of lies they’re peddling.
But we already knew all this - Channel 4 showed a documentary on lap dancing last year. It was appalling seeing how the young women were deluded and desperate, and had no come-back against the unscrupulousness of the club owners who knew full well that they were ripping off these pathetic individuals, who were just trying to earn some money and stay solvent.
The problem clearly is lack of regulation by ‘our’ government, so that the exploitation can take place. People are protesting about the effect on their neighbourhoods of having the clubs setting up near where they live - but do they even give a damn about the exploitation that goes on within their unregulated walls? Surely that’s the much bigger issue?
Thanks to Channel 4 and others, the government has known full well what’s been happening to these women, but has it done a damn thing to regulate these practices? Er - NO.
---------------------------------------
Returning to the subject of radio, and what it can tell us about the wider world to which many of us have no immediate access, Desert Island Discs has been very interesting lately.
The more you listen, the more you realise that most of the third-rate performers and presenters who wash up on the desert island had pretty awful childhoods, suffering from lousy parents and spirit-crushing boarding schools. Of course there are exceptions, like David Walliams recently, who was amusing and chose some excellent music.
More often though, you get people like Brian Rix, who, whilst he’s done wonderful things for Mencap, made his living in the theatre by dropping his trousers. He was sent to a boarding school he hated, and was ‘bullied’ there, and has been dropping his trousers ever since. His choice of music was abysmal. Very troubling.
This week there’s Richard Madeley, a self-madeley man, an extrovert, a show-off, a hyper-competitive self-promoting ‘presenter’ who’s done more or less anything to try to appear talented, interesting and special, short of actually dropping his trousers. Mental and spiritual undressing he’s done plenty of, and his wife’s been known to get at least some of her kit off in public. His choice of music was abysmal.
How could anyone seriously think that something by Sting or The Police is in the top echelons of fabulous music? Some of their songs have been very good pop songs - but would you really want a pop song as one of your choices on the island? Consider the alternatives!
The Police above all bands were about fake blondness and pretty-boy image, not music, as such. Pretty much what Madeley has traded on. Some of his ‘blond’ quotes will haunt him to the end of his days. “So who’s written your autobiography?” Bless.
He did say one thing, though, that’s worthy of note. He’s finally learnt that show business isn’t worth a damn compared with the worth of a good family life, which he’s now focused on having. The boy’s growing up.
.
Having perfect eyesight, children scrutinise everything. They see the minute detail in everyday things, and are mesmerised, fascinated and incredulous in the face of the awesomeness and wonderment of it all. How could they not be?
Pre-verbal children see colour, form, shape, proportion and texture and go “Wow!” A baby will stare at a colourful object time and again for minutes on end. We can surmise that the colour and shape alone are worthy of their unblinking attention.
A re-birth in the art of seeing takes place when children, usually at school, have access to a 3-D microscope and can see things like the hairs on the legs of insects and spiders, the texture of their eyes, and the incredible surfaces of human skin, and the leaves of plants, when highly magnified.
Many adults who went through school prior to the availability of affordable powerful 3-D microscopes have missed out on something truly awesome.
One of the downsides of growing older is that eyesight becomes less acute and we literally stop seeing the little things in their glorious fine detail. We put on glasses to read, but can’t normally be bothered to take them out of their case to look closely at the everyday things which we take for granted.
A cup has some artwork on it. A postage stamp has some kind of design. An insect has an unusual colour and shape. They remain a blur. In any case, there’s no time to look properly, and it’s not as though they’re important. We have more pressing things to attend to. So much passes us by.
Having perfect long sight I take it for granted that I can see the world in general in all its glory. I never stop to think about the children or adults for whom it’s a blur if they don’t have corrective lens or can’t be bothered to wear them. I have a complete lack of empathy with such people, because I’ve never asked myself what it must be like NOT to be able to see the wonders of the world all around - trees, clouds, hillsides, buildings - all of the time, in proper focus.
There’s a new optical telescope orbiting the earth that will enable the human race to observe the universe in unbelievable detail. I can still remember the pictures that were taken with the Hubble telescope when they first became available, after much corrective surgery. The universe is un-be-bloody-lievable!
Radio is a kind of telescope for the ears. Through it we can hear things happening far away, and can be incredulous and amazed by what comes into our lives. The BBC is a kind of hearing aid and telescope combined, feeding the brain with incredible and sometimes awesome, sometimes appalling, information.
Thanks to television and channel FX it’s recently been possible to see, through the combined efforts of some very technically and artistically gifted people, an approximation of what life is like in far-away places like America’s drug-infested ghettos (The Wire) and Iraqi towns and cities (Generation Kill), and the sheer horrific and brutal nature of what went on and still goes on there.
It’s hard to give a damn about something if we don’t really know about it. That’s the reason journalists were ‘embedded’ with troops in Iraq - so that we never got to see or hear what it was really like.
The final episode of Generation Kill showed young troops confronted with the non-attached or detached viewpoint of a journalist through the lens of a collage of images he took on his personal digital camcorder and left with them before he flew home - showing close-ups of the carnage caused by the war. They sat around and cheered at the opening shots of buildings being blasted apart by bombs and rockets. They quietly drifted away when confronted with lingering shots of dead and maimed bodies of civilian adults, and children.
--------------------------------------
The other day I persuaded my 94-year old aunt to put new batteries in her hearing aids and to insert them in her ears. The sheer joy of having one’s quietly-spoken non-shouted words heard at first utterance! And as for her - “What’s that noise?” The upstairs cistern re-filling. “What’s that ticking?” The kitchen clock.
----------------------------------------
Desensitised, we cope with the world, but we don’t really see it or hear it. It doesn’t impact on us the way it could, or should.
I read the other day that Gordon Brown tends to watch only sport on television when he wants to relax. That’s relax, as in, switch off from reality. Not for Gordo, then, gritty dramas portraying the reality of other people’s lives. The writer was pointing out that Gordo is unlikely to ever watch any of the collection of films on DVD given to him last week by Barack Obama. I wonder if we can find out which ones he was given . . .
-----------------------------------------
I’m going to make a pitch to the BBC for a programme and a series called Desert Island DVDs. Celebrities and interesting nonentities will be filmed talking about the eight films they would take with them to a desert island.
Which films could we bear to watch more than a couple of times? Surely most films only hold our attention because of our innate desire to find out ‘the ending’? Which films are worth watching when we already know what the ending will be?
That was the amazing thing about the Frost/Nixon film - we already knew how it would end - so how did it manage to be both interesting and exciting? The fact is, we remember roughly how the Frost/Nixon interviews ended, and approximately what happened. We have a hazy and fuzzy recollection. Or some of us do.
The film focuses tightly on the characters and their relationships, and by three quarters of the way through the film it’s still almost impossible to see how on earth Frost can get from a position of absolute defeat and humiliation by Tricky Dicky - a formidable opponent - to a position where Nixon admits to his culpability for the Watergate fiasco and its attempted cover-up. I’ve written elsewhere about what happened to make Frost wake up to the reality of what was going on, and start to focus and work hard at defeating his opponent.
A proper work of art gets beneath the surface of things and lets us see glimpses of the human condition in all its tragedy and majesty. A true artwork is our instrument for looking at things we otherwise overlook and fail to perceive, even when it’s just showing us what true beauty looks like and feels like. Even that perception of beauty or simple truth gives us some insight into the awesome nature of reality, and connects us to metaphysical truths.
If we ever take the time to look closely at the credits for films we notice what an incredible piece of coordinated teamwork a feature film can be. The best films require a lot of genius to make the end product watchable, arresting, entertaining, comprehensible, enlightening and enthralling. Brilliant directors, editors, producers, camera operators, scriptwriters, lighting specialists, scenery makers, actors, location scouts, special effects people, composers and costume makers work together and sometimes produce something magical. The annual film awards pay homage to these people.
But it’s one thing to produce something profound and wonderful - it’s another to want to view it repeatedly on a desert island. Presumably the cast-away would want a mixed diet. Something to provide escapism, something to remind them of home, something to nurture the soul and spirit, something to provide spectacle for the eyes and ears.
I wonder which ones Gordo would choose. He’d maybe just dimly remember a couple he saw back in his youth, before he became a full-time politico. The presenter would have to put a ban on him taking DVDs of great sporting events, repeats of Scotland’s occasional victories at football and rugby. I wonder what Sarah watches while she’s waiting for him to roll home of an evening, or at Chequers at the weekend.
There will no doubt be some wonderful films of the Great Financial Crash of 2008, in years to come. There are probably scripts being written already, with directors already considering who they want to play Gordon Brown and Alistair - Dahling! Who will be Bush and Greenspan and the bank chairmen?
------------------------------------------------------
Business ethics, unscrupulousness and under-regulation was big in the Observer yesterday. The paper seemed to major on lap dancing, and its increasing prevalence, even in places like Bournemouth and Newquay, both of which are said to have 4 of these ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. It seems they’re very popular with wealthy young high-spirited bankers, as well as other varieties of saddos and desperate fools who are easily parted with their money, to the tune of around £200 per visit, and £1,000 for a bottle of posh champagne.
Oxzen holds no brief(s) either for or against such ‘businesses’, but he’s very interested in their treatment of their workers, whom the bosses claim are not operating in the sex industry. They also claim they enjoy good protection, good working conditions and high rewards, all of which appears to be less than the truth.
An ex-lap dancer, Nadine Stavonina de Montagnac, (crazy name, crazy gal), wrote a half-page article for the Observer, saying the business was ‘not what it was portrayed to be’. Shock horror. Gosh - really? Who knew?
She has a strange way of expressing herself, as a self-confessed exhibitionist, looking for ‘an exciting life’ and wanting to ‘feel like a superstar’. She says she ‘conditioned herself to think that removing my clothes was a sacrifice worth making to feel special’. Sacrifice? Sacre bleu!
Call me old-fashioned, but I can see how women make sacrifices by working two or three jobs a day and studying for better qualifications in order to better support their families, and I can see how very able and intelligent women make the sacrifice of doing cleaning and shelf-stacking in order not to go on state benefits. But taking your clothes off for the benefit of men who want to ogle women’s bodies, and by doing so ‘feeling like a superstar’ - that’s not a sacrifice!
The serious point here is that these women, like most workers, are exploited, and whilst they make serious money for the bosses and owners, they make little if anything for themselves, unless they’re prepared to make ‘private’ arrangements with the ‘clients’.
What happens is that the ‘dancers’ are ‘self-employed’, and have to pay the clubs for the privilege of plying their trade on the club’s premises. You therefore find situations where there are too many dancers for too few customers, all competing with one another to do £20 dances after paying the club’s owners up to £80 a night for just being there. They also have to perform regular pole dances for free, and they say that some nights they might only get to do one or two lap dances, if any.
The club’s owners are trading on the naivety and gullibility of the performers - a bit like financial advisers and bankers trading on the naivety and gullibility of people who need to invest their money, who are led to believe they’re getting a good deal, and that riches await them. The only ones who actually benefit are the insiders who really know that it’s a pack of lies they’re peddling.
But we already knew all this - Channel 4 showed a documentary on lap dancing last year. It was appalling seeing how the young women were deluded and desperate, and had no come-back against the unscrupulousness of the club owners who knew full well that they were ripping off these pathetic individuals, who were just trying to earn some money and stay solvent.
The problem clearly is lack of regulation by ‘our’ government, so that the exploitation can take place. People are protesting about the effect on their neighbourhoods of having the clubs setting up near where they live - but do they even give a damn about the exploitation that goes on within their unregulated walls? Surely that’s the much bigger issue?
Thanks to Channel 4 and others, the government has known full well what’s been happening to these women, but has it done a damn thing to regulate these practices? Er - NO.
---------------------------------------
Returning to the subject of radio, and what it can tell us about the wider world to which many of us have no immediate access, Desert Island Discs has been very interesting lately.
The more you listen, the more you realise that most of the third-rate performers and presenters who wash up on the desert island had pretty awful childhoods, suffering from lousy parents and spirit-crushing boarding schools. Of course there are exceptions, like David Walliams recently, who was amusing and chose some excellent music.
More often though, you get people like Brian Rix, who, whilst he’s done wonderful things for Mencap, made his living in the theatre by dropping his trousers. He was sent to a boarding school he hated, and was ‘bullied’ there, and has been dropping his trousers ever since. His choice of music was abysmal. Very troubling.
This week there’s Richard Madeley, a self-madeley man, an extrovert, a show-off, a hyper-competitive self-promoting ‘presenter’ who’s done more or less anything to try to appear talented, interesting and special, short of actually dropping his trousers. Mental and spiritual undressing he’s done plenty of, and his wife’s been known to get at least some of her kit off in public. His choice of music was abysmal.
How could anyone seriously think that something by Sting or The Police is in the top echelons of fabulous music? Some of their songs have been very good pop songs - but would you really want a pop song as one of your choices on the island? Consider the alternatives!
The Police above all bands were about fake blondness and pretty-boy image, not music, as such. Pretty much what Madeley has traded on. Some of his ‘blond’ quotes will haunt him to the end of his days. “So who’s written your autobiography?” Bless.
He did say one thing, though, that’s worthy of note. He’s finally learnt that show business isn’t worth a damn compared with the worth of a good family life, which he’s now focused on having. The boy’s growing up.
.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Layer 132 Green Custard, the Death of Industry and Ghost Towns.
.
Springwatch 6 - - Green. Shoots. And Leaves.
Throwing a cup of green custard over Mandleson was an ugly, violent thing to do, and the young woman who did it no doubt felt very angry with him. It’s not the way to go, though. We need to show that as much as we may loathe him we’re capable of non-violent, Gandhian protest, in order not to allow him any opportunity to gain the high moral ground. Strange, though, how the assailant, having carried out her assault, was allowed to simply walk away.
A few trees here and there now in blossom, and a few beginning to show signs of green leaves.
Coventry City playing at their Ricoh stadium today - against Chelsea in the F.A. Cup quarter final. Sky-Bluecollar Motown UK versus the Oligarchs. Next stop the semi, at Wembley. Drogba has just scored, but no matter - we were one down in ’87 at Wembley.
-------------------------------------------
Billy Bragg had an excellent piece in the paper yesterday.
With 25 years' hindsight, Maggie's bitter victory over the striking miners unleashed forces that led directly to this economic crisis.
There is a bitter irony in the fact that the Bank of England chose the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the miners' strike to fire off its weapon of last resort in an attempt to damp down the conflagration currently sweeping through global capitalism. The wry smile that passes across the lips of those who opposed the naked selfishness at the heart of the Thatcherite experiment will be mirrored by the disconcerted frowns of those who, having wholeheartedly embraced the free market, never thought that it would lead to this. Like Frankenstein's monster, Thatcherism has turned on its creators.
Is there anybody out there willing to stand up – on this, of all days – and raise a toast to the willful destruction of our manufacturing industry and its replacement by the financial services sector? Yes, there were unions who were resistant to change, but whoever came up with the idea that the solution to this problem was to import cars rather than make them ourselves sacrificed more than just the entire engineering skills base.
The forces that Margaret Thatcher unleashed in order to defeat the NUM destroyed whole communities before leeching into our society. Untamed by successive governments, these same forces now threaten to devour us all.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/miners-strike-thatcherism-billy-bragg
Coincidentally (see below) Billy was born in the borough of Barking & Dagenham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bragg
------------------------------------------------
The Other Motown UK.
There was a documentary on BBC4 this week called Ford’s Dagenham Dream which told the story of the phenomenal success of Ford of Britain during the period when Ford was designing and producing Anglias, Zephyrs, Zodiacs, Cortinas, Granadas, Escorts and Capris.
My very first car was a 3-speed Anglia, (slow, very slow and please get up this hill you crap little car), bought for less than £100 by parents who were keen to see me off the Lambretta and travelling in something ‘safer’. Definitely a lot slower. I had special permission to park it in the staff car park when I was in the sixth form. I can’t imagine that happening these days.
I learned to drive at 17, and my dad used to take me out for extra practice in his 6-seat Ford Zephyr automatic, which felt huge compared to the Vauxhall Viva of the driving school, in which I had 5 lessons.
Dad later moved on to a Cortina. Right at the end of the sixties Ford produced the Mark I Capri, which seemed incredibly cool and glamorous in its day. One of my uncles bought one, and it remains in the family to this day. My son, who’s no lover of cars, has definite designs on it.
The point of the documentary was that the massive sprawl of Dagenham is now a ghost town, and Ford has moved most of its production to places where there’s a more docile, and cheaper, labour force.
--------------------------------------------------------
Coventry was the other British town that was built almost entirely on the motor industry, and the manufacturing and engineering skills of its people.
Coventry was the home of Jaguar, Daimler, Triumph, Standard, Hillman, Humber, Singer and Alvis - all great marques in their day. There was also a massive Massey-Ferguson factory, where members of my family worked for decades.
I also had uncles and aunts who worked in factories like Wickman making machine tools, in foundries, and in factories belonging to GEC, making electrical goods and components.
Unlike in Germany and France, where industrial management was professional and based on solid engineering expertise, boardrooms of the large manufacturers in Britain were dominated by toffs and marketing wallahs, snake-oil salesmen and friends of the Chairman. The kind of people who subsequently went into banking.
Industrial relations were based on all-out conflict rather than partnership. Management tried to screw the workers, and the unions were prepared to use strike action in disputes over the length and frequency of tea breaks.
The original innovative and creative giants who founded the motor industry were gradually replaced by the kinds of idiots who authorised the production of complete rubbish like the Marina and the Allegro, which pretty much put paid to car production by Morris in Oxford and Austin in Longbridge. Engineering and financial disasters.
MG, Rover, Wolseley, Jensen and Aston-Martin, even Bentley and Rolls Royce, were also allowed to flounder and die for lack of investment and expertise - their brand names eventually bought for a song by much smarter operators.
Much the same story applies to the motorcycle industry in England, and in particular the BSA company in Birmingham and Triumph in Meriden.
In the longer term our government, acting on behalf of we, the people, would give hefty bribes to the likes of Nissan and Honda to set up manufacturing in places like Sunderland and Swindon, and teach workers there how to bolt together vehicles like the ‘Bluebird’ and the ‘Avensis’, using components, engines, gearboxes and drivetrains designed and built in Japan.
The ultimate irony was giving huge government subsidies to BMW, a company that designed and built many of the aeroplanes which flattened wartime Coventry, to assemble the revived Mini in the Midlands. Tragic, and pathetic, all of it.
Thatcher, of course, knew nothing about and cared nothing about manufacturing and industry, or the people who had created and sustained it. She hated the working classes and their trade unions. Her family background was in shopkeeping. Buy cheap and sell dear - the ultimate expression of capitalism, and the driving logic of ‘the market’, profiteering and exploitation.
We needed Thatch to teach us that greed is good, that mining, manufacturing and engineering are unimportant, and that the City, the financiers and the oligarchs are the masters of the universe. Having learnt these things from the dear old fool, we’re now having to deal with the consequences. Up the City!
------------------------------------------------------
The Specials were quite a phenomenon when they started producing music in Coventry back in 1977/78 for Gerry Dammers’ Two-Tone label. They were the Arctic Monkeys of their day - original, dynamic, ‘political’, authentic, and in complete commercial control of their affairs, determined not to be exploited by the music moguls in that London.
For a while they were incredibly popular, and highly influential on the music scene. Their music was a brilliant synthesis of styles that blended rock with Caribbean influences, and was performed by an eclectic mix of black and white musicians.
Their best-known and best-selling record was Ghost Town, released in 1981 - an atmospheric and eerie musical rendition of what it felt like to live in a city that was run-down, impoverished and largely devoid of people, work and cultural life. That record, written by Dammers, spoke for the working and non-working people of Coventry, and elsewhere.
Shops are now closing down in city centres all over the country at an unprecedented rate. People are being thrown out of work or put on part-week working in this country as well as America, and around the world, at a rate never seen by the present generation of young people, if indeed by most of us.
If it wasn’t for the quick reaction of governments, and their ability to spend public money by the billion and trillion in order to guarantee the viability of the banks and other major financial institutions, then millions of people would have lost all their savings and millions of companies would have gone bust, with unimaginable consequences for employment and wellbeing. Capitalism would have destroyed civilised life on this planet as we know it, let alone destroyed particular mining villages, manufacturing towns and industrial cities.
-------------------------------------------------
This week the Coventry Telegraph had a report on the re-formation of The Specials for a stadium show at the football ground (The Ricoh!) and a subsequent tour. Jerry Dammers, the founder member, keyboard player and main songwriter is quoted as saying the other members of the band have decided to go it alone without him, to exclude him, for various reasons to do with petty jealousy, rivalry and Gerry’s continuing purism and political idealism.
Ironically The Specials effectively broke up just after Ghost Town when the lead singer Terry Hall and his two dopy mates left the band to go it alone as The Fun Boy Three (!) - a wretched little outfit if ever there was one, and an obvious reaction to Dammers’ serious intent, political commitment and activism.
So the people who walked out on The Specials now want to claim they ARE The Specials! The fools should reform as the Less-Than Fun Boy Three. Or Four. Or Five.
It’s as though the Beatles got back together without Lennon, or the Stones without Keith Richards or Santana without Carlos. It also brings to mind the deluded Roger Waters trying to stop Pink Floyd continuing to perform after he left, on the grounds that he was effectively the heart and soul of the band, since he’d been the main songwriter. As if! And the posturing front man Terry Hall wasn’t even a songwriter or a musician!
Why are humans so fundamentally vain, egocentric, stupid and pathetic? Green custard on the lot of them. Whoops!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Specials
My word of the week - Non-attachment.
My word for next week, and every week - Enlightenment.
.
Springwatch 6 - - Green. Shoots. And Leaves.
Throwing a cup of green custard over Mandleson was an ugly, violent thing to do, and the young woman who did it no doubt felt very angry with him. It’s not the way to go, though. We need to show that as much as we may loathe him we’re capable of non-violent, Gandhian protest, in order not to allow him any opportunity to gain the high moral ground. Strange, though, how the assailant, having carried out her assault, was allowed to simply walk away.
A few trees here and there now in blossom, and a few beginning to show signs of green leaves.
Coventry City playing at their Ricoh stadium today - against Chelsea in the F.A. Cup quarter final. Sky-Bluecollar Motown UK versus the Oligarchs. Next stop the semi, at Wembley. Drogba has just scored, but no matter - we were one down in ’87 at Wembley.
-------------------------------------------
Billy Bragg had an excellent piece in the paper yesterday.
With 25 years' hindsight, Maggie's bitter victory over the striking miners unleashed forces that led directly to this economic crisis.
There is a bitter irony in the fact that the Bank of England chose the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the miners' strike to fire off its weapon of last resort in an attempt to damp down the conflagration currently sweeping through global capitalism. The wry smile that passes across the lips of those who opposed the naked selfishness at the heart of the Thatcherite experiment will be mirrored by the disconcerted frowns of those who, having wholeheartedly embraced the free market, never thought that it would lead to this. Like Frankenstein's monster, Thatcherism has turned on its creators.
Is there anybody out there willing to stand up – on this, of all days – and raise a toast to the willful destruction of our manufacturing industry and its replacement by the financial services sector? Yes, there were unions who were resistant to change, but whoever came up with the idea that the solution to this problem was to import cars rather than make them ourselves sacrificed more than just the entire engineering skills base.
The forces that Margaret Thatcher unleashed in order to defeat the NUM destroyed whole communities before leeching into our society. Untamed by successive governments, these same forces now threaten to devour us all.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/miners-strike-thatcherism-billy-bragg
Coincidentally (see below) Billy was born in the borough of Barking & Dagenham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bragg
------------------------------------------------
The Other Motown UK.
There was a documentary on BBC4 this week called Ford’s Dagenham Dream which told the story of the phenomenal success of Ford of Britain during the period when Ford was designing and producing Anglias, Zephyrs, Zodiacs, Cortinas, Granadas, Escorts and Capris.
My very first car was a 3-speed Anglia, (slow, very slow and please get up this hill you crap little car), bought for less than £100 by parents who were keen to see me off the Lambretta and travelling in something ‘safer’. Definitely a lot slower. I had special permission to park it in the staff car park when I was in the sixth form. I can’t imagine that happening these days.
I learned to drive at 17, and my dad used to take me out for extra practice in his 6-seat Ford Zephyr automatic, which felt huge compared to the Vauxhall Viva of the driving school, in which I had 5 lessons.
Dad later moved on to a Cortina. Right at the end of the sixties Ford produced the Mark I Capri, which seemed incredibly cool and glamorous in its day. One of my uncles bought one, and it remains in the family to this day. My son, who’s no lover of cars, has definite designs on it.
The point of the documentary was that the massive sprawl of Dagenham is now a ghost town, and Ford has moved most of its production to places where there’s a more docile, and cheaper, labour force.
--------------------------------------------------------
Coventry was the other British town that was built almost entirely on the motor industry, and the manufacturing and engineering skills of its people.
Coventry was the home of Jaguar, Daimler, Triumph, Standard, Hillman, Humber, Singer and Alvis - all great marques in their day. There was also a massive Massey-Ferguson factory, where members of my family worked for decades.
I also had uncles and aunts who worked in factories like Wickman making machine tools, in foundries, and in factories belonging to GEC, making electrical goods and components.
Unlike in Germany and France, where industrial management was professional and based on solid engineering expertise, boardrooms of the large manufacturers in Britain were dominated by toffs and marketing wallahs, snake-oil salesmen and friends of the Chairman. The kind of people who subsequently went into banking.
Industrial relations were based on all-out conflict rather than partnership. Management tried to screw the workers, and the unions were prepared to use strike action in disputes over the length and frequency of tea breaks.
The original innovative and creative giants who founded the motor industry were gradually replaced by the kinds of idiots who authorised the production of complete rubbish like the Marina and the Allegro, which pretty much put paid to car production by Morris in Oxford and Austin in Longbridge. Engineering and financial disasters.
MG, Rover, Wolseley, Jensen and Aston-Martin, even Bentley and Rolls Royce, were also allowed to flounder and die for lack of investment and expertise - their brand names eventually bought for a song by much smarter operators.
Much the same story applies to the motorcycle industry in England, and in particular the BSA company in Birmingham and Triumph in Meriden.
In the longer term our government, acting on behalf of we, the people, would give hefty bribes to the likes of Nissan and Honda to set up manufacturing in places like Sunderland and Swindon, and teach workers there how to bolt together vehicles like the ‘Bluebird’ and the ‘Avensis’, using components, engines, gearboxes and drivetrains designed and built in Japan.
The ultimate irony was giving huge government subsidies to BMW, a company that designed and built many of the aeroplanes which flattened wartime Coventry, to assemble the revived Mini in the Midlands. Tragic, and pathetic, all of it.
Thatcher, of course, knew nothing about and cared nothing about manufacturing and industry, or the people who had created and sustained it. She hated the working classes and their trade unions. Her family background was in shopkeeping. Buy cheap and sell dear - the ultimate expression of capitalism, and the driving logic of ‘the market’, profiteering and exploitation.
We needed Thatch to teach us that greed is good, that mining, manufacturing and engineering are unimportant, and that the City, the financiers and the oligarchs are the masters of the universe. Having learnt these things from the dear old fool, we’re now having to deal with the consequences. Up the City!
------------------------------------------------------
The Specials were quite a phenomenon when they started producing music in Coventry back in 1977/78 for Gerry Dammers’ Two-Tone label. They were the Arctic Monkeys of their day - original, dynamic, ‘political’, authentic, and in complete commercial control of their affairs, determined not to be exploited by the music moguls in that London.
For a while they were incredibly popular, and highly influential on the music scene. Their music was a brilliant synthesis of styles that blended rock with Caribbean influences, and was performed by an eclectic mix of black and white musicians.
Their best-known and best-selling record was Ghost Town, released in 1981 - an atmospheric and eerie musical rendition of what it felt like to live in a city that was run-down, impoverished and largely devoid of people, work and cultural life. That record, written by Dammers, spoke for the working and non-working people of Coventry, and elsewhere.
Shops are now closing down in city centres all over the country at an unprecedented rate. People are being thrown out of work or put on part-week working in this country as well as America, and around the world, at a rate never seen by the present generation of young people, if indeed by most of us.
If it wasn’t for the quick reaction of governments, and their ability to spend public money by the billion and trillion in order to guarantee the viability of the banks and other major financial institutions, then millions of people would have lost all their savings and millions of companies would have gone bust, with unimaginable consequences for employment and wellbeing. Capitalism would have destroyed civilised life on this planet as we know it, let alone destroyed particular mining villages, manufacturing towns and industrial cities.
-------------------------------------------------
This week the Coventry Telegraph had a report on the re-formation of The Specials for a stadium show at the football ground (The Ricoh!) and a subsequent tour. Jerry Dammers, the founder member, keyboard player and main songwriter is quoted as saying the other members of the band have decided to go it alone without him, to exclude him, for various reasons to do with petty jealousy, rivalry and Gerry’s continuing purism and political idealism.
Ironically The Specials effectively broke up just after Ghost Town when the lead singer Terry Hall and his two dopy mates left the band to go it alone as The Fun Boy Three (!) - a wretched little outfit if ever there was one, and an obvious reaction to Dammers’ serious intent, political commitment and activism.
So the people who walked out on The Specials now want to claim they ARE The Specials! The fools should reform as the Less-Than Fun Boy Three. Or Four. Or Five.
It’s as though the Beatles got back together without Lennon, or the Stones without Keith Richards or Santana without Carlos. It also brings to mind the deluded Roger Waters trying to stop Pink Floyd continuing to perform after he left, on the grounds that he was effectively the heart and soul of the band, since he’d been the main songwriter. As if! And the posturing front man Terry Hall wasn’t even a songwriter or a musician!
Why are humans so fundamentally vain, egocentric, stupid and pathetic? Green custard on the lot of them. Whoops!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Specials
My word of the week - Non-attachment.
My word for next week, and every week - Enlightenment.
.
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