Let's deconsrOne thing I didn't mention in yesterday's post was the quality of teaching in many schools. I mention this becasue of this article, published in repsonse to a new report by a right wing think tank, Politeia
The interesting part of the article comes at the end, and says:
"This report is simply nonsense masquerading as serious comment," a spokesman said.
"Teaching is now the number one choice for graduates and the latest figures show that 95% of current primary school trainee teachers have a 2:2 degree or better.
"Every single teacher needs to have a degree for postgraduate teaching training course and at least two A-levels or equivalent to get on the well-respected three year education degree - as well as GCSEs in English, maths and science."
You'll notice that this little quote quite artfully fails to address the point made in the report. Yes, many primary teachers have GCSE maths. That neither means that they are comfortable with numeracy themselves, or with teaching it. Simply dismissing the conclusions as "nonsense masquerading as serious comment" is neither helpful or practical. In fact, it's arrogant and insulting and possibly even just wrong.
Let's take the DCSF's repsonse and analyse it:
"95% of current primary school trainee teachers have a 2:2 degree or better". Degrees in what? Given the imbalance in the number of women in science and technology subjects (including mathematics) and the also known imbalance in the ratio women to men applying for primary (and even secondary) teaching, this already makes the numbers of "numerate" graduates smaller for teaching posts.
"Every single teacher needs to have a degree for postgraduate teaching training course and at least two A-levels or equivalent to get on the well-respected three year education degree - as well as GCSEs in English, maths and science." Fine. What this really means is that a newly qualified teacher at 22 being expected to teach 11-year-olds how to do maths may have a teaching degree (or PGCHE) in a dgree with no significant numerate content, two A-Levels at grade E in non-maths or science subjects and a grade C obtained in GCSE in mathematics around six years previously. The numbers doing maths and science at both A level and degree level are currently not as high as they should be and, in some areas, are on a downward trend.
If undergraduates across the sector are in any way like the sample I am exposed to here, then the report has a serious and valid poiint. Levels of functional numeracy and mathematical proficiency are not good. And, I just wonder where the most proficient mathemically-minded graduates end up teaching.
I happened to hear Alan Milburn on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, talking about the report of the committee investigating access to high status jobs (of which more here). And never have I heard such an arse-covering, sophistic apologia as what he actually said.
The committee, of which Milburn was chair, has expressed concern that low levels of social mobility have prevented children from what used to be called working class (now just 'disadvantaged') backgrounds from gaining access to better paid and more high-skill work. It's interesting that Milburn himself is hardly from a privilged background himself , but seems unable to see the main source of the problem: the education system itself and the systems to which it is umbilically tied.
Successive governements since the 1980's have attempted, with no success at all, to widen access to the so-called 'better' jobs to those of us who, in earlier times, may have been thought of as unwashed plebs, the malodorous hoi polloi. Milburn talked about the paucity of ambition and opportunity in those schools near the bottom, but whose fault is that?
The drive to 50% participation in HE has had a poisonous effect. Yes, there are more people with degrees now, but that has simply led to requirements inflation in the workplace. When I left school it was perfectly possible to apply for Executive Officer (EO) grades in the civil Service with 2 A Levels. I knew people who did. Try doing it without a degree now. Where did the 50% target come from? An arbitrary target that seemed to appear almost from thin air when Kenneth Baker was Secretary of State for Education and has not been disavowed until now, it seems..
The 1992 reform of the university system hasn't helpd either. Everyone knows rhere is still grade and institution snobbery rife. A degree at a new university simply isn't worth the same as one from somewhere older. Anyone who thinks this isn't true is just kidding themselves. Try going to an interview and saying your degree is Wolverhampton, or Sunderland, or DeMontfort and compare that to Oxbridge, Durham, Bristol, Imperial. The branding sells. It may not even be fair, but it's still true. We now have what amounts to a comprehensive university system and no one dares to say it. The result is a system where privilege and influence becomes increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer places and the barriers to entry get higher and higher.
So, where does the problem start? Well, in leaving the poorest areas to hang when employement collapses. Where are the biggest pockets of non-particiption and dearth of ambition? The places like Middlesbrough, Corby, Consett, Merthyr and the rest who were bulldozed by the wonders of free-market economics. The conditions for 'why bother, it's hopeless' were created right there, when a generation of kids saw economic stagnation and decay, who saw their parents thrown on the scrapheap, who saw the places they lived disintegrate before their eyes, and who also saw the rapacious 80's sail right by them and leave them for dead. Is it any wonder that the drug dealers and the wide-boys, the ultimate Thatcherite go-getter entrepeneurs, sprung up?
So before these kids got to school, things were bleak. Then a sequence of bright sparks in Whitehall, far removed from quotidian realities, decided to reform schools to straiten the teachers into rote National Curriculum teaching. The older and more experienced teachers got out while they could, leaving a vacuum and a generation of inexperienced and ill-equipped replacements in their stead. Schools became a battleground and teachers became a handy political punchbag, not to mention the recipients of literally dozens of new initiatives. And then there's selection and choice: the great con trick. Parental choice is a way of pacifying the middle classes, who don't want their dear little ones mixing with scruffy oiks and ne'er-do-wells. So the system is rigged to let them spirit their children away into schools that keep them separate and reinforce the divide, in much the same way that the richest have been able to do with private education for decades. And, in the schools at the bottom, of course, the kids have their expectations managed. so most of them are not encouraged to go to university. It seems, even back when I was a teenager, my friends and I were the exception rather than the rule.
But even if they were encouraged now, what then? Well, as the latest little reorganisation of government has shown, the new attitude to universities seems aggressively functional. Universities are the engines of economic growth, there to provide the materials that industry needs. Gone is the idea of a university being a noble place in itself, gone the idea of learning being a benefit for its own sake: no, academia exists purely to satisfy the needs of industry. Employers demand soft and transferable skills and an awareness of the business world. Why aren't they bloody paying for it, then? If that's what they want, why don't they teach the graudates themselves? I think one can guess why. Evn worse, students are soaked for cash and forced into working to pay for that education. Once again, the poorest are punished. The fear of debt is stil palpable for the very poorest, no matter what is said about money being used to help the neediest.
What the Milburn Report does is whitewash over the cracks and fails to acknowledge that many of the socio-economic mantras of the past quarter century have helped to create this mess. We are the most horrendously inequitable and iniquitous nation in Europe. Until those problems are addressed (and they will not be as too many vested interests are at stake), things will not change.
First, a minor gripe: I wish BBC News wouldn't report this as Breaking News over 12 hours after it actually happened. A minor issue, but still annoying.
I watched the coverage of events unfold last night, partly online on Twitter and partly by listening to KABC Radio in LA (a local LA station). There is a faint air of surreality about the whole situation. In fact, in my misty recollections this has more than a little similarity to the time when Elvis died in August 1977, when I was a mere seven years old.
Why is it so important? Well, for a start he is a figure of Elvis-like proportions. He did for black music what Elvis did in the 1950's. Jackson was the first black musician to take black music firmly into the white pop mainstream. Other Motown acts did gain success, but didn't quite mange to break through the wall that existed between white and black music. And he was the first to do it in such an all-encompassingly global way; even more so than Elvis who didn't, let's be honest, venture outside of America all that often.
The scale of Michael Jackson's musical career is really quite breathtaking. Thriller alone sold over 60 million copies worldwide and almost single handedly defined the way the the music industry marketed albums. And though Thriller wasn't the first music video, like Queen's Bo Rhap before it, it redefined the template for the music video that persists even to this day.
Thriller's successor, Bad, has sold around 30 million copies. And this was considered a failure! There are only a few albums in the history of recorded music that have sold anything like this many copies. And these are the albums that are, to reuse an already overused phrase, iconic: Tubular Bells, Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours and a few others. It was all downhill afterwards of course, though all of this is comaprative. for anyone else, the performance of his later albums would have been more than successful. But not for Michael Jackson.
All of this was, of course, played out against the backdrop of an increasingly complicated and fractured private life. To go over all of this here would be pointless, suffice it to say that much of his life up until his death was an ever-increasing cycle of stress. We will also probably never know excatly what really went on regarding the court cases and the allegations about his behaviour around children. I don't particulary think that he was a calculated paedophile, just a very messed-up and unfortunate man. His whole life has been spent in the glare of publicity, under the intense scrutiny of the world's media. Is it any wonder that perhaps he ended up at a stage of arrested emotional development? Indeed, very few people ever have to experience the levels of adualtion he experienced. Perhaps only really Elvis, Muhammad Ali, The Beatles really understand this level of atention. And some of thos ecoped better than others. Individual members of the Beatles had varying levels of success, Elvis was not so lucky.
Perhaps the saddest thing is to reflect on a whole sequence of 'what might have beens' and to wonder if things coul have turned out any better for him, not to mention his children. An unfortunate parable of our times, it seems.
I have to admit this article at the BBC causes me no little concern and disquiet. If it is to be believed then anyone who admits to an affiliation with the BNP be disbarred from teaching. At a fundamental level I believe this is both wrong and dangerous. Why?
First, the BNP will be able to use any such ban to peddle the line that the political classes are scared of them 'telling the truth' and that they are victims of an establishment that are trying to silence any debate on the 'immigration' issue (though we all know it's a cypher for race). The argument that they should be denied 'the oxygen of publicity' just doesn't hold water. Rather like the whole Sinn Fein debacle in the 1980's, trying to pretend they don't exist is doomed to ignominious failure, not to mention ridicule.
The second problem is more serious: how can anyone who is a member of the BNP be banned from anything? Last time I looked the BNP were nota proscribed organisation. Memebership is not illegal. They are a legal political party, allowed to take part in elections. I am very surprised that there has not yet been a challenge (to my knowledge) to the ban on BNP members in the police, for instance. One would think that this would contravene the principles in human rights law protecting freedom of expression and political association. In other words, a ban might simply be illegal. Given the BNP's hatred of all things European I'd find it wryly ironic that they could be protected by law they hate.
There is an obvious solution. Anyone entering public employment should be forced to declare membership of any political party they belong to [this includes me, for example, who teaches in the university system]. Indeed, this is a small part of a wider problem, viz: if we want to show the BNP for the one-dimensional cover for other, less savoury groups they almost certainly are, then they need to be smoked out. If they want to be treated like a mainstream party, treat them that way. How?
Force them to open up their accounts and fund raising activity. Where is their funding coming from? What are they spending the money on?
Force them to engage in the political process. Let Jeremy Paxman loose on Nick Griffin. Let's see what happens.
Quiz them about policy. If they want to be seen as more than a one note rant, then let them prove it. If they can't then they will be exposed as a shower of bellicose racist louts.
I don't like the BNP's message. I don't like their attitude. I think that their whole political outlook is based on the lazy and mistaken premise that immigration is the single major issue facing British society now. But you know what, until membership of the BNP is illegal you can't arbitrarily ban people from jobs because they belong to a political party you don't like. On this matter, I'm with Voltaire.
I was about to use some of this material to start a blog all of its own but I decided I couldn't wait. Here's a brief list of life's little (or not so little) modern irritants:
Call Centres I just got a phone upgrade from 3. And, don't get me wrong, the phone is actually rather spiffy (Nokia 6220) it's just the customer service that's a ballache. When I had my last phone I paid for an unlimited mobile Internet tariff. This made sense as I do tend to use a fair bit of mobile Internet. Anyway, last week the phone gets an upgrade and I walk out of the shop a happy bunny with a nice new phone and start using the Internet. On Saturday morning, 3 send me a warning text message saying, "Hey, you've used £10 of internet. Maybe you should upgrade to Internet Max?" Colour me puzzled.
So, this morning, off I trot to the 3 shop in Scarborough where I bought the phone to sort this out. The guy in store was polite and tried to be helpful, but said (after trying the obvious stuff) thay I probably needed to ring Customer Services because it looked like it was something the branch couldn't set. It shouldn't be too much a problem, he said. Ha!
That's when the trouble began. I rang 3 Customer Services. Problem number 1 is that the line is crap. I can just about hear something that sounds like a human voice, only it's difficult to tell because it sounds like the person talking was sitting in a disused toilet in Bangalore. This is because they were. The first person I spoke to just didn't understand what I wanted and seemed to think I was wanting to add the service. First brick wall hit. So she put me through to the Concerns department, who didn't have much of a clue either.
At this point they tried to tell me that the AddOn for unlimited internet wouldn't get activated until September. I wasn't happy about this, seeing as I'd already had it for 15 months. Then he suggested I go to the retail outlet. I told him I'd already been there, but this didn't really seem to register. In fact, he was pretty insistent that's that what I had to do becasue that's where I'd bought the phone. At this point I asked him a couple of questions:
What kind of workflow stops the people in customer service seeing data that someone in a retail store has entered. Why can't they see data they need to see? And what kind of pinhead wrote that software?
In what sense does an upgrade consist of taking service away and crippling a handset when it was a service I already had? It's not like I was asking for anything I didn't have before, is it?
Reaction: blank incomprehension. Result: I rip yer man a new arsehole, put the phone down and resolve to ring the store before I go totally ballistic. Eventually I get through and after 2 minutes or so and a quick chat with a pleasant woman at the other end of the phone it gets sorted. How? She rings around and discovers that the problem is a workflow one. My AddOn was added, but for some reason has conflicted with the old one on my records Result, no Internet Max added. But it didn't bother to flag anything up for the store, who can't see that level of the data, apparently.
My AddOn will be active onWednesday, no thanks to the wonder of outsourced call centres..
"Can We Interest you In One of Our Offers Today?" Picture the scene: you walk into WH Smith in Scarborough just after opening time (around 9am, say), dressed for work. You pick up a newspaper and wander over to the counter to pay. At this point, the assistant looks at you and asks,
"Would you like to try something from our selection today, sir?"
"Why, yes!", you think. "After all, seeing as I skipped breakfast this morning, what I'd really like to fill that little hole is a 600 gram bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk from the pile of tat on the counter next to you to stuff down my cakehole, thank you."
Or perhaps not.
Or, you wander into the Pumpkin Café at Scarborough railway station and ask for a small tea to go, only to be asked, "do you want any sandwiches or snacks with that?".
If I'd wanted a sandwich or snack with it, don't you think I'd have fucking asked for one?
Notice how it only happens in chains, nver in corner shops small businesses. It's the insistence on offering this blank, faceless, corporatised "customer service" that ensures that what actually happens is that the customer is thoroughly hacked off and wants to murder the poor retail drone who has been ordered to "sell" their wares to you. It is the principal, though not the only, reason why I run away from Starbucks at great speed whenever anyone ever suggests going inside. I got caught once; never again.
The "Polite" Notice A minor plague this one, but no less of a ballache. And usually ito be found in the realm of the prissy, tight-arsed control freak. The "polite" notice is generally a thinly veiled peevish imprecation to desist from doing something or other that most normal, well-adjusted people really couldn't give a flying bollock about.
The annoying thing is not the notice itself, but the insistence on caling it "polite". Who are they to decide if they're being polite in asking? Actually, it usually isn't. It's more often than not a shrewish little dig or a patronising sneer at any non-right thinking person that crosses their path.
Anyway, seeing as I'm the recipient, I will decide if your notice is polite, thank you. I don't need you to tell me whether your bloody notice is polite or not.
Let's be honest, admitting to a liking for Jean Michel Jarre in the UK is about as cool as admitting you are a trainspotter these days. People look at you with the puzzled and rather pitying look they give to life's losers, like West Brom (or Middlesbrough or Newcastle) fans. Music wonks are the worst of all, loftily preaching that Kraftwerk are obviously infinitely superior. However, any man who has spent time studying with both Schaeffer and Stockhausen is not to be sniffed at. So, I can say rather unironically that the music of Jean Michel Jarre has been a major part of my musical apprecation for pretty much all my adult life. Friday evening's perfomance at Wembley Arena is the sixth time I've seen Jarre perform live (Docklands night 1, Maine Road Manchester 1993, Manchester Nynex 1997, Aero 2002 and Oxygène at the Royal Albert Hall last year are the others) and it was a surprisng experience in many ways.
This is not the first time that JMJ has undertaken an major arena tour. In 1997 he toured Europe with a show that contained many elements of his outdoor shows: lasers, projections; the whole nine yards. This time there were lasers, but gone were many of the accoutrements of earlier shows. Indeed, this time round the feeling was very much more like last year's Oxygène excursions. There was little else in the way of visual garnish and that let the music speak for itself a bit more.
The opening of the gig left me feeling aurally underwhlemed though. JMJ dramatically appeared from a curtain of light to begin playing the opening number. Unfortunately, from my seat in the back top corner (stage left, block N9 for anyone familiar with Wembley Arena) Industrial Revolution 2 sounded way too loud, with a nasty muddy bass sound that dismayed me and drowned out everything else. This may have more to do with Wembley's fairly ordinary acoustics and my own ears than with any setup problems given the amount of care taken with soundchecking. It fairly soon seemed fixed to me, however, and the sound quickly settled down and improved markedly to my ears. Magnetic Fields 1 sounded much, much better and things never looked back from that point.
In recent times, JMJ has had a tendency to tinker with his back catalogue somewhat, reworking older pieces like Equinoxe 7 in live shows to give them a more contemporary feel (see the versions that appear on the Aero album, for example). This wasn't the case this time: this was Jarre old school, with many older analog synths on stage. The first proper indications of this came with old favourites Equinoxe 7 and Oxygène 2, which sounded like I hadn't heard them played for a very long time.
And of course, it wouldn't be a JMJ show without the laser harp. This time, the instrument looked a lot like the set-up from the 1997 tour, and still sounded great on the old favourite Rendez vous 3. Oxygène 12 sounded wonderful, but I missed the movie that has accompanied it in its live outings since 1997. The time lapse photography it contains really adds something to the music.
Magnetic Fields 2 was quite simply the very best live version I've heard of one of my favourite Jarre pieces (better even that the superb version in Paris in 1990, a gig I still regret missing). It was so good it had the hairs on the back of my neck rigid and a big silly grin plastered all over my face. This alone was worth the ticket for me. It was also the first time Equinoxe 5 has poked its head over the parapet in a live setting for a while. The juxtaposition of part 4 and 5 sounded fabulous and 5 itself was a treat. It also served to up the ante for Chronologie 6 and 2. They didn't disappoint!
Clearly there had to be an encore, because he hadn't even wheeled the really big guns out yet. And obviously, as soon as you hear those five notes, you know what's coming. The crowd did and gave him a huge roar for his pains.
It was at this point that JMJ talked a little about his recently deceased father, with whom he had a famously distant and sometimes strained relationship. Calypso 3 was apparently written in London at a time of rapprochement with Maurice Jarre and it was this that was played next. I liked the sentiment, even though it is actually my least favourite thing on Waiting for Cousteau. I don't dislike it, I just like 1 and 2 more. Finally then, came Rendez vous 2, a piece that I am usually rather ambivalent to. I've always found it overly bombastic and plodding for my taste, though with some things melodically to enjoy. But not this time: it was punchy, driven and played with real energy. And the laser harp section was played by a Jarre clearly enjoying the evening.
He even managed a second encore, coming out for an Oxygène 4 reprise and a quick blast of the opener before taking his leave for the evening.
This is, in fact, the best live show I've seen Jean Michel Jarre play for ages. The four men on stage looked like they were genuinely having some fun and the audience did feed off this, even up in the gods where I sat. The guy dancing in block N8 was an additional treat, especially when he was seemingly conducting along to RV2. Taking Oxygène out live again last year seems to have given JMJ a new lease of life, ditching most of the gimmickry and providing a show full of things that fans will love, including some things not heard for a while. The one thing that was noticeable though, is that there was nothing in there (aside from Oxygène variation III) from after 1997, and nothing from Zoolook either. This was sad, because a Zoolookolgie like 1990's La Défense version would have gone down a storm here amongst fans who truly get it. Still, you can't have everything, and this was a really special night and a great show.
Set List:
Industrial Revolution 2
Magenetic Fields 1
Equinoxe 7
Oxygène 2
Rendez vous 3
Oxygène 12
Souvenir of China
Magnetic Fields 2
Oxygène 5
Oxygène Variation III
Equinoxe 4
Equinoxe 5
Chronologie 6
Chronologie 2
Encore 1:
Oxygène 4
Calypso 3
Rendez vous 2
Encore 2:
Oxygène 4
Industrial Revolution 2 (outro)
PS: Caroline Sullivan in the Guardian on Monday May 25. Were you actually there? I don't seem to recall Equinoxe 1 even being played. Still, it's one more star than the Oxygène tour got last year, with almost the same review. Isn't that nice? This review in the Scotsman was far nicer. It was nice to actually hear a British writer say it too.
Apparently, everyone's favourite Tory Boy and used-car-dealer-alike 'Dave' Cameron, has started an election petition, saying:
"I don't think the country wants to wait another year to pass judgement on their politicians and this Parliament."
Isn't that nice? How lovely of Dave to have the interests of us plebs at heart, and not to be a shameless fucking opportunist who, in the best tradition of most myopic chancers, seems to forget that his own party is not exactly squeaky clean on the matters in hand. In his own words, the system is 'paralysed'. But he conveniently fails to mention that his party is part of the problem, perhaps hoping that we'll not notice. Unfortuntately, while many of us are not that stupid, some are.
It's not just the government, it's the whole system people are angry about. Given the chance I think most of us would run our MP's out of town with pitchforks and flaming torches. But to Dave, this is all just a jolly wheeze and a way to try and score points over the PM, which at present it's a bit like kicking a puppy. No one thinks you're either big or clever David. In fact you're being a bit of a tit, so do us all a favour: either do something useful instead of grandstanding, or just shut up.
An election is probably the last thing that will help here becasue it will distract from the wider problems of the system in total. Perhaps that's the idea; if we all concentrate on the election perhaps we'll forget the murkier aspects of the political process and be good girls and boys, voting when we're supposed to and leaving all the hard sums to our betters.
It's not often that I find myself disagreeing with Stephen Fry quite so vehemently, but on this occasion I really can't understand why he claims that the current row over MPs' expenses is 'not important'. It is important. Very important. Why? Well, here are some reasons:
For years, Parliament have tried to presuade the public that most of our longest established professions, like medicine, teaching, academe and the law are not capable of regulating their own behaviour. One by one, each of them has been given an external and 'independent' body to which they must be accountable. The one seeming exception to this is, oddly enough, Parliament.
As a result, seeing honourable members on our TV screens constantly using the excuse that these claims were within the rules are a bit rich considering they themselves wrote them. Where's the outside scrutiny? Quis custodiet custodies? And even then, some MP's are stretching these rules well beyond the point where Hooke's Law might break down.
Seeing footage like George Foulkes attempting to throw a smokescreen over the whole sorry business was an attempted (and wholly unsuccessful) act of sophistry. OK, so BBC newsreader/journalist Carrie Gracie arens £92000 a year. And yes, this is about 50% more than a basic backbencher's salary. But any expenses she might claim are certainly not as generous as those doled out to MP's, nor are they so laxly waved through on a misplaced assumption that they are reasonable. The audit trail is more rigorous and accountable. Apparently, the Fees Office warned the Speaker about this issue some time ago. What did he do? Diddly-friggin'-squat, that's what.
On Saturday, Margaret Moran, the MP for Luton was questioned about her arrangements regarding second home allowances and spending on a house in Southampton. One of the justifications she gave was this:
"Any MP has to have a proper family life, they have to have the support of their partner.
"It is all within the claims policy and that's why I'm angry about this because not only has it been very stressful for me and my family, it gives the incredibly misleading impression that somehow we've been dodgy, that we've been fraudulent or we've been corrupt. Nothing is further from the truth."
What precisely makes her any different from the many people who spend long periods working away from home? They don't get the chance to claim for multiple homes, or flip between them for convenience. In fact, if she was so bothered about her family in Southampton, why the fuck did she want to be an MP in Luton in the first place? Just a thought.
And now of course we have the wholly unedifying spectacle, as the BBC's Nick Robinson calls it, of My Shirt's Hairier Than Yours. Part of Cameron's insane rush to appear utterly moral is caused by his politican's finely tuned and innate sense of crass opportunism, part of it caused by the knowledge that his own party are really no better because it is a cross-party problem with the entire culture of Westminster itself.
But now we get to the meat; all through this, it has been claimed that Parliament 'understands the public anger on the issue' Well, clearly they don't, judging by both actions and words. And the reason is the major problem: our political class has become so distanced from the people they represent that they are no longer even aware that what they are doing is somehow, at best, hugely insensitive during a recession where some people are struggling to even keep one roof over their heads, at worst large scale fraud of the sort which they have spent a deal of time piously berating the banking sector (though not undeservedly as it happens). MP's may complain that £64000 a year is not enough. Indeed, compared to many in higher-powered London jobs it isn't. But you know what? It's still at least twice what most of their constituents earn each year, and more in many cases. And those constituents don't have the lovely expenses cushion to break their fall either. Most people understand that MP's do have some reasonble expenses, but there is a difference between making reasonable claims and what too many are doing now: taking the piss. It has to stop.
I don't remember what the weather was like on the morning of Friday, May 4 1979. Presumably, as a nine year old it was pretty much like any school day, so I assume that it was a fairly average spring day. However, as a slightly precocious child I do remember knowing that the day before had been a election day; our school was a polling station, which always caused a fair bit of disruption and I'd been aware of the foment surrounding the proceedings. My grandfather had died in January 1979 and I remember real concerns in the family about how, or whether, his funeral was going to happen. I even vaguely remember the March night the Callaghan government fell, watching the late news on my portable TV in the bedroom (also the place where I got a taste for Python and Spike Milligan's Q).
What I do remember that day though, is coming home for lunch and, between watching The Sullivans and the lunchtime children's programmes, looking on as the slight, blue clad frame of Margaret Thatcher walked down a sunny Downing Street, delivering her prepared homily based on the words of St Francis of Assisi. It didn't seem quite as epochal an event to a nine-year-old as, looking back now, it so clearly was. This was, in fact, the day that Britain changed forever. And now that homily seems to me to be one of the most hollow and mendacious addresses in recent political history.
I wrote a few days ago about Cameron's promise (or threat, if you wish) of a New Austerity. It seems apposite as the world we find ourselves in now has its roots in that day in 1979. It seems strange to think now that at that point, the rampant Thatcherism of the late 80's was a long way off and that the first years of her government were fractious and frankly terrifying, played out as it was against the Soviet entry into Afghanistan and the events in Poland.
There were scores to be settled and enemies to be crushed. Of course, by this point the Labour opposition were too busy ripping themselves apart to be remotely concerned about the wider fight against an idelogical crusade hellbent on dismantling much that was good about Britain. The sad part of all of this is that some of what she did was actually necessary. Some privatisation was useful but it went tpo far. And yes, some union power needed to be curtailed but under the Thatcher government collective representation was utterly emasculated. Entire industries and communities were laid waste as the Thatcher juggernaut rolled over them. The social problems, the poverty (I refuse to call it that horrendous euphemism social exclusion), the decay of infrastructure, the drug problems, the breakdown of families had their roots there too. For all those who did very nicely of the 1980's bubble there were many more whose lives were ravaged and broken by socio-economic policy experiment that seems like a brutal, rapacious brand of social Darwinism.
It was Thatcher who gave council tenants the right to buy. The Callaghan government had toyed with the notion. Even this had its problems. As more bought their houses, council stock was denuded and it became increasingly difficult for councils to maintain such areas properly. It also removed local authorities from housing policy and further eroded their political power, making them more dependent on centralp government and moving more power to the centre as time went on. Councils, which had been the source of much that was good about local services (like buses which were to be deregulated, badly) became increasingly impotent.
The cult of presidental politics in the UK pretty much started there too. Before Thatcher there did seem to be much more of a sense of collective responsibility. As the Thatcher era dragged on, however, the focus fell more upon the Prime Minister and fell away from those in the Cabinet. Parliament was used as little other than a rubber stamp for a rampant executive that enjoyed cataclysmic landslide wins in 1983 and 1987. Labour would repeat this folly after the wins of 1997 and 2001 and would, tragicallly, learn nothing.
The legacies of Thatcherism are manifold: some good, but many bad. It seems wrong somehow to celebrate that day 30 years ago when she first took the reins of office. What does seem appropriate, however, is to remember this day and give ourselves a reminder from history of the folly of electing those who make the seductive promises to give us exactly what we want.
Oh look, after last year's genius idea of 'let's shut down the north and get all of those malodorous northerners to move down here where it's lovely', they're at it again (link): 'failing univerities should be closed or run by the private sector'.
OK, the former is not utterly stupid because of academic overcapacity within our HE system, but why do these idiots seem unable to see that handing things over willy-nilly to private sector control is not a sensible solution.After all, it's hardly worked fantastically well for trains, hasn't it?
[shakes head and mumbles softly to self in despair...]
I remember the Winter of Discontent. I was nine years old and my family wondered whether we would be able to bury my recently deceased (and much-loved) grandfather. I even vaguely remember the evening when Labour lost the Commons no confidence vote that led to the 1979 election. But what I remember most about 1979 was the figure Margaret Thatcher standing in Downing Street, quoting the words of St Francis of Assisi. How hollow those words seem now, viewed from a distance of 30 years. What followed was hardly designed to bring harmony or hope to anyone.
David Cameron's speech today to a Conservative gathering in Cheltenham promises an era of fiscal conservatism for any incoming Conservative government, vowing to "replace Labour's spendaholic government with a new government of thrift". To me, this sounds very much like a restatement of the public spending ethos of the Thatcher governments of the early 1980's, reinforced by his assertion that he had 'always been a fiscal conservative'.
This is not good news, but hardly surprising given that Cameron did not experience the privations of the 1980's at the sharp end. No, he spent much of that time at Eton and then at Oxford, where he and his Bullingdon chums were smashing up restaurants for a laugh, just becasue they could. The closest he will have come to the economic and social hardship that ensued from job losses at nearby Cowley would have been the pinched and worried faces of the plebs struggling to get by in Oxford's city centre.
The wide-ranging effects of Thatcherism are being felt even today, and not just in narrow economic terms. Huge swathes of our industrial base were allowed to go to the wall. This did not even happen in the suposedly rapacious free-market America of Reagan. Protectionism was rife and, as a result, the American steel industry, for example, enjoyed the sorts of aid that many of our industries did not.
Places like Corby and Consett are a testament to this. They used to make steel in Consett. What do they make now? Crisps. Delicious crisps admittedly, but crisps all the same. Nearby places like Trimdon could no longer support working communities once their pits closed. No one builds ships in Sunderland any more and the captial intensive regenerations on the Tyne, Wear and Tees have not come close to solving the problems that the death of those areas' native industries created. They are now some of the most deprived areas of the country, sharing much in common with South Wales, which had been similarly defenestrated by Thatcherism.
One consequence of these acts of economic vandalism was that social structures that were sustained by these industries, like apprenticeships, were destroyed. Young school-leavers were placed into adult working environments, were shown positive male role models and given reposnsibility. When those industries, like ship building, died, those structures died with them. Thirty years on, they have still not been replaced. Successive governments have not addressed the problems, instead focusing on the narrow taks of satisfying a fickle middle class who will float between parties for the greatest gain.
This 'fiscal conservatism' did not extend to credit though, did it? No, the 1980's were the era when the fetters that had held consumer credit in check were removed. This was the beginning of the era of mass consumption and the mantra of, 'look after yourself' (remember 'There is no such thing as Society', anyone?). This social Darwinism has pervaded our national consciousness since then. As a result we asa country are shallower, more venal and greedier than ever we were. The tragedy is that no government since 1979 has sought to roll back that venality, preferring to ride on the dizzying and instantly gratifying soma rush of the consumer wave.
Cameron's promises seem doomed to repeat the same mistakes: massive public service cuts; regressive systems of taxation (including VAT); increasing unemployment and greater social inequality. What does this mean? An even more polarised society than we have now, with the richest, who fund the political system, benefitting the most, swiftly followed by the middle classes that the political class cannot afford to upset.
In the end, David Cameron's speech does nothing to address any of these issues, merely rehashing a bankrupt and outdated view of a political mindset that became irrelevant at the same time as the Berlin Wall fell. And it should stay that way.
I am laughing like a drain at the palpable wounded moral outrage emanating form some areas of the conservative party. So Damian McBride had a private email leaked which, according to the News of the Screws, contained appalling and unsubstantiated allegations like:
... a story that Conservative leader David Cameron has an embarrassing medical condition. What, like piles or something? More likely a manifestation of incurable smugness.
...a vicious triple attack on Shadow Chancellor George Osborne. It suggests he had sex and took drugs with a prostitute, another smears his wife, and the third claims an ex girlfriend has photos of him in a bra, knickers and suspenders. Sounds pretty much like the kind of knockabout Bullingdon Club fun the tabloids would go for. Or at least snigger about behind their hands. It all sounds pretty much the kind of run of the mill boffo wheeze any MP would get up to of a weekend. One allegation was about Mrs Osborne's mental stability. Well, she's married to Osborne so you have to wonder. As for the photos, who hasn't got some faintly embarrassing snaps hidden away somewhere, and theyre probably form university or soon after, so who gives a flying bollock, frankly?
... involves MP Nadine Dorries and another Tory MP. Last night mother-of-three Dorries said she was consulting lawyers. Who? Next...
... that a Tory MP used his position to get publicity for a firm in which his partner is boss. I'm failing to see how this is in any way unusual conduct for an MP anyway. Isn't one of the whole points of a being a career hack in the House being able to do all that lovely networking.
At this point you have to say that McBride's principal crime is being something of an idiot and, frankly, a bit of a cock. Oh, alright, a total cock. Worse yet, sending something like this, possibly unencrypted, using a medium that, by design, has an audit trail is stupidity of the very worst kind. The lesson here for any putatative spin doctors out there is to do it over the phone in future, or possibly even face to face. In burkhas.
But of course, the outrage was predictable. And the demands for an apology from Brown were hilarious. Like that was ever going to happen! Perhaps he should have offered to do so if CCO could guarantee that no one working there had ever done anything similar. Not likely, really is it? I heard someone on Radio 2 loudly declaiming that he'd never seen anything like it in 20 years of politics. Christ, he must have led a very sheltered life. I wonder if mummy ever let him out without his mittens on a string?
While we're on the subject, I don't seem to remember anyone from the Conservative party complaining when rumours started floating around Gordon Brown's sexuality before his marriage, or even about Charles Kennedy's personal problems. Once again, the selective memory kicks in.
I love the stink of hypocrisy, when those involved in the necessarily dirty business of politics quite hilariously attempt to hijack the moral high ground. And look gruesomely pompous and Pooterish in the process. It feels a bit like hearing Peter Sutcliffe complain that Harold Shipman wasn't a very nice man.
I left school (here) 23 years ago, and the neighbouring sixth form college two years after. My house was just over the road and, to go to school, I had a fairly relaxed five minute stroll of a morning, when I wasn't rushing because I was late, that is.
Today I had to go to the dentist to get some work finished off: a root canal filling as it happens - yet another sign of increasing age. And as the bus passed the school buildings on Marton Road I looked out of the window and noticed they simply weren't there any more. They're being demolished and all that sits there at the moment are several huge piles of building rubble and a lot of fencing. So after my filling was done, on the way back into Middlesbrough, I decided to jump off the bus back into town for a few minutes and get a couple of quick snaps of where my old alma mater used to be. I've put them all in a facebook album. Pretty much the only bit of the school left is where the old art block used to be. I spent quite a lot of fairly entertaining art lessons with Derek Boyle here, including when Neil Flint brought in his Grandmaster Flash records and where I heard The Message and White Lines properly for the first time. It was here also I was first made aware of the considerable charms of Mandi Piper, the girl with what surely was the world's most beautiful bottom (and the world's filthiest laugh). :D
Perhaps it's a sign of my onrushing old age but it feels slightly odd to have such a large part of one's youth pulled away like this. It was, after all, the site of numerous wheezing and wintry cross-country runs; of seeing Barry Waines break his arm when putting up a trampoline wrong and occasionally finding scuzzy-looking grumble mags in the bushes surrounding the school (usually with pages stuck together). It was the site of a locally notorious period of race riots and legendary inter-school fights; I didn't say it was Eton, did I?
It was the place where I met people who are still friends to this day (and some people who I'm glad are not). It was the place where the first teenage hormones stirred and you started to notice how girls (and one of the girls' PE teachers) looked. It was the home of the tapered wedge, odd-coloured dayglo socks, the Patrick rainjacket and Adidas Samba trainers, of Duranies and Smiths fans; the place where Mr Green's whip lived and where you could get Mr Atkinson to go off into a Malayan reverie at the drop of a hat if the lesson didn't interest you.
It was where one of the maths teachers looked like he'd starred in the Evil Dead - this was Mr Mellor, variously known as Mr Mellor the Frog Eyed Fella or just Zombie Mellor. It was where you saw Mr Clark the PE teacher knock out a violent trouble causer with one punch. It was the place where the history teacher sounded like Zippy and looked like Rod Stewart after a really bad night, and where you spent one memorable day 'reconfiguring' her classroom when everyone else had gone on a trip to Blackpool. If she noticed that every poster in the room had been turned upside down and all the door handles had been turned around, she didn't say a thing.
When it closed in 2003, the few pupils remaining were ferried off to The King's Academy, run by a bunch of happy-clappy God freaks. Where's the fun in that? The site itself seems to be currently being used as a overflow car park for the James Cook University Hospital next door.
It was the place where I fitted in, and where I didn't.
I'm conscious of the fact that I've not writen anything here since having a bloody good laugh at Mandelson getting hit with custard. But here I am on a Thursday evening, enjoying a little time off work and not really having a whole lot to write about. What has happened since last I wrote, other than the G20 summit finishing?
Well, I turned 39, so now I am officallynearly middle-aged. Which is nice. I have also finally started the driving lessons I've been trying to fit in since the turn of the year. Every so often I get to pootle around Whitby in a Ford Fiesta diesel. So far, the drivers of Whitby seem to have gotten off reasonably scot-free and my driving instructor (Emmo) is a sound bloke, which always helps.
The Easter holiday has started so there are few students around. This still means there are things to do, including lovely, lovely workshops on retention, exam and module administrivia as well as the start of planning for next years' teaching. I have a fairly general idea of what I'll be doing next academic session and I couldn't really have asked for a better spread.
Whay I have been doing though is watching, listening to and reading stuff. I've finally manged to watch Batman Begins and am just about to dive into The Dark Knight. And because I enjoyed the movie V for Vendetta (and had just been to see Watchmen at the cinema) I took the plunge and bought the book, which I'd read parts of before. I was pretty impressed. It also made me see the movie in a new light, though to be honest I'm rather less critical of it than others have been; the movie version of things are rather more contemporaneous version of events, which works rather well.
I'm expecting a copy of Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher and Bach to drop through the letterbox very soon. It's a book I've wanted to read for ages but just haven't gotten around to.
I've also had my first really major dental work to contend with. Until this point, I'd only ever needed two fairly minor fillings and had ten years between them. This time I went for my check up to be told I'd need another, only for the damn thing to decide to abcess. So I've had my first root canal filling and it's not even finished yet: I have one more visit next Wednesday to actually get the thing finshed, I hope.
Yesterday morning, I read Chrlie Brooker's wonderful column in the Guardian. As a rule, it's the first thing I turn to on a Monday. I'll read it and laugh like a drain, usually drawing attention to myself if I'm on the bus at the time.
This week's column was different though. I won't comment any further, save to say that it must be read.
however, as i was reading the comments, I noticed someone had posted a link to a Philip Pullman atricle in the Times last Friday. Blistering is not the word. So, even though it probably goes beyond fair use, here is the entire text of the article. Read it.
The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake's prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.
We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.
We are so fast asleep that we don't know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?
The new laws whisper:
You don't know who you are
You're mistaken about yourself
We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless
We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you
And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised
The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasizes about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:
Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity
Whatever your opinions are, we don't want to hear them
So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are
And we do not want to hear you arguing about it
So hold your tongue and forget about protesting
What we want from you is acquiescence
The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.
You are not to be trusted with laws
So we shall put ourselves out of your reach
We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition
You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them
You do not need to hold us to account
You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?
Who do you think you are?
What sort of fools do you think we are?
The nation's dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.
And the new laws whisper:
We do not want to hear you talking about truth
Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours
We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on
We do not want to hear you talking about innocence
Innocent means guilty of things not yet done
We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence
You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt
We do not want to hear you talking about justice
Justice is whatever we want to do to you
And nothing else
Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don't mind if we are. They don't think we care about it.
We want to watch you day and night
We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you
We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people
We can see you have abandoned modesty
Some of our friends have seen to that
They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible
In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide
We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural
We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things
One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:
We know who our friends are
And when our friends want to have words with one of you
We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need
It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law
It is for us to know what your offence is
Angering our friends is an offence
It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.
Inconceivable.
And those laws say:
Sleep, you stinking cowards
Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms
Freedom is too hard for you
We shall decide what freedom is
Sleep, you vermin
Sleep, you scum.
And is it just me, or are people getting truly angry? I mean, out on the streets, poll-tax angry? One can only hope so.
I was wandering through the supermarket at lunchtime and just happened to see a copy of the Sunday Post, which had a story on its front page about Jermey Clarkson, following up the story earlier in the week about his remarks about Gordon Brown and his subsequent apology.
After the Sunday Post's article, we are now very much clearer on JC's position. He was sorry for mentioning the one-eyed thing, didn't have a problem with the Scots per se, but would 'never apologise for calling him an idiot'. You've got to laugh.
However, as usual, the press response to what was, after all, a joke was utterly hysterical. And the sight of George Foulkes on BBC News wondering why he wasn't being sacked were unedifying to say the least. Perhaps George, you might concetrate on something slightly more pressing than someone telling a joke in Australia you didn't like very much.
But of course, the tabloids have scented blood. Currently they're on the backs of anyone who utters a single word that is not utterly devoid of wit or personality. Remember, these are the same tabloids who routinely use their pages to spout some of the most malodorous effluvia. Clarkson, for example, hasn't said anything that any staff writer at the Sun or Daily Mail hasn't committed to paper previously. For the tabloids to then scream at the likes of Clarkson (or even Carol Thatcher) for being intemperate is quite hllariously hypocritical.
Besides which, if you look at what he said, you'll notice that JC called Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot". At this point it's probably easier to point out that the first two of these words are adjectives, describing the third word, which is a noun. And I don't think that there's any necessary correlation between adjectives one and two; the fact that he is monocular is not connected to him being either Scottish or an idiot. That is merely cheerful happenstance it seems.
And they didn't really mention what he said about James May and Frenchmen. Both of these things were also funny.
But there you go, that's the press for you. We deserve everything we get because enough of us still buy and consume their shit.
You don't know whether to laugh or cry sometimes. It appears that the Science Minister, Lord Drayson has called for a 'a debate on whether a bigger chunk of the research budget should be spent in areas that would benefit the economy', reported by the BBC.
It seems faintly amusing to me that this all comes in the midst of all the celebration of the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, who along with Alfred Wallace, was responsible for one of the greatest scientific theories in human history; it's certainly one the greatest in the life sciences. The pressure to give research an applied focus today means that, if he were applying for funding now, there'd be no guarantee he'd get anything.
But then, the same could be said of James Clerk Maxwell, without whose work on electromagnetic theory thr ouldprobably be no relativity, no quantum mechanics. Without QM, there would be no semiconductor physics to speak of and no silicon chips. So, I wouldn't be writing this blog without Maxwell's help.
Many of the greatest scientific theories and breakthroughs would never have been given funding under the current models. And Drayson seems to be positing the idea of making the focus even more applied, by the sounds of it. Perhaps this perspective is not altogher surprising from an engineer, with a training focused on the applications of science.
His speech to Foundation for Science and Technology says:
"I don't accept that identifying those areas which are best aligned with our economic strategy necessarily means you have to focus on more applied research,"
But the rest of what he says sounds like that is precisely what he is saying. Science funding and research over the last twenty years has been, like most of the rest of the HE sector, driven by the needs of business. Of course it would actually help if business knew what they wanted most of the time. But they don't.
As a result of that and of a host of other factors, science research and teaching in universities is a mess. The number of home students studying science continues on its seemingly inexorable downward trend. Postgraduate science stdy is falling too. Entry to sceince subjects is weakened to keep up numbers, which has knock-on effects on what can be taught (I'm specifically thinking of maths here). And campaigns like Science: So What? so Everything look like they're doing little else than pissing into the wind.
As a society we hugely denigrate science and those who do it. That is all the more shocking when one considers just how much science is at the centre of almost everything we do now. But most people don't see that. There is a wider mistrust and a lack of respact for science that needs to be addressed even from the earliest years o school if this is to be fixed in the long term.
Running half-baked science campaigns and making the pursuit of science ever more deterministic and risk-averse are not the ways to do it.
I use public transport on a daily basis. I have to because I don't have a driving licence (yet). and doing the daily journey between Whitby and Scarborough in all weathers gives one an interesting insight into the realities of public transport that most people making policy really don't have. It would be nice if someone had to do that journey every day to see what it's like.
For a start, Arriva run the Whitby Scarborough service. It's the only one. There's no train because the line was given the Beeching treatment at the end of the 1960's. I've been using the service for nine years now and steadily things have been getting worse. In the last year, however, things have become positively precipitous.
In September the 'All-In-one' Travel Centre in the bus station closed down because Arriva said it was 'no longer sustainable'. Never mind that the station now has a very large, empty unit and passengers are inconvenienced. Never mind that it removed a useful service hub. No Arriva weren't making quite enough money, so they threw in the towel. Thanks.
Then, just last Saturday, Loftus depot closed. This may not seem hugely problematic but it does have knock-on effects. Drivers based at Loftus either left the company or were relocated to Middesbrough or Redcar. And we also have had two breakdowns in just over a week: one coming home from Whitby, when the 1740 didn't show and on Thursday morning when the 0745 didn't either. In the first case, Loftus was not yet closed but, as the driver who turned up at 1840 remarked,'they were hardly going to push the boat out so close to closing...'. In the second case, Loftus was closed. No replacement bus ran (which would have taken about 30 minutes to arrive). no, they just pulled the bus and waited for the next one to show, 105 minutes later as per the timetable. A lot of angry people were late for work or college that morning.
This sort of thing will happen more often now that Loftus is closed. Why? Because the bus stock Arriva use for Whitby is aging and not fit for purpose. Most times, the buses provided for the Whitby-Scarborough run are comically underpowered town service buses, with less power and less ability to negotiate the hilly terrain on the A171. Going up Sledgates, near Fylingthorpe, so slowly that you could, quite literally, get off the bus and walk up the hill quicker is actually an embarrassment. And God are they old. The typical age of a bus on this run is at least 12 years. They rattle, the heating doesn't work in winter and blasts in summer. And of course there are the windows that just won't stay closed. Useful for having freezing cold air inexorably blasting at you in the depths of winter.
During the summer it was hilarious to see exactly when morning busese would leave Whitby. both the 0745 and the 0830 buses were guaranteed to leave at any time other than the one specified. It wasn't unusual for either of these to run 10-15 minutes behind time.
And then there was last Friday night. I took the X56 to my parents' house in Easington, near Loftus. The journey normally takes around 35-40 minutes, with the bus leaving Whitby at 2010 and getting to Easington at sometime between 2045 and 2050. On Friday, I stood forlornly at the stop from aorund 2005, waiting. At 2025 it stillhadn't arrived and I as beginning to wonder if they'd suffered yet another breakdown. At 2032, a bus hurtled up Bagdale doing close on 50. The destination wasn't visible until the bus was right under my nose (it was barely lit up at all). I managed to stop it and he came skidding to a halt a little further up the road. The driver, a regular, give his usual cheerful grunt as I showed him my ticket, like it was some horrible inconvenience to actually have to let unwashed scum on. Then he set off, twenty two minutes late...
...arriving in Easington a further twenty two minutes later and having driven dark, wet conditions like what can only be described as a fucking lunatic. In a car, going the direct route, the journey takes around twnty minutes. But he had to go through Ellerby and through Runswick Bay, not the direct route at all. He'd managed to shave (actually, hack) a third off the usual journey time.
I want to be green. I want to avoid driving. But running public transport like this isn't much of an encouragement. Outside the very biggest cities the exhortations of our politicians to use public transport in preference to cars just isn't going to wash. And it's not going to change because there's no incentive to do it. Even pricing people out of cars isn't going to work because the alternative is not worth the expense saved. It's embarrassing to go to continental Europe, to places like France, Germany and Denmark, where public transport largely works. But it costs. Of course it does, having an infrastructure there is good for the wide economy but no one wants to pay for it here. And so the system disintegrates still further.
fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
I was wandering through the supermarket at lunchtime and just happened to see a copy of the 
What am I doing now?