The scent of sexism

I know it's Christmas, but the build up has been dragging on for the past 6 months.  The increase in perfume adverts is a sure sign that the season of selling and buying has begun.

Perfume is expensive, eau de toilette, aftershave whatever you are buying.  I don't travel abroad, so if I'm lucky, I receive a bottle of perfume to last the year.  Still Calvin Klein Eternity from my mum, because that is the last one she remembers me wearing, and Coco Chanel Mademoiselle from my father in law because he was instructed to buy that for me once.  (I love that, but one of our senior managers wears a lot of it and you can tell if she's in her office or not from the smell in the corridor so I've gone off that a bit.)  My darling Dan was metrosexual before the term was first coined, he virtually invented the term male grooming and seems to get through a bottle a month.  Not Coco Chanel, that would be weird, nor any Chanel as I have never yet been able to afford to treat him to that.

It is a tiny bit strange advertising fragrance on the television, surely we buy it for the smell which currently cannot be conveyed through the visual medium, and I find it so hard to believe that we are sold an image that is more important than the smell.  All the bottles end up looking the same in the shop anyway don't they?  And whatever you spray on a tiny scrap of card smells completely different when you have accidentally put it through the washing machine the next day.

It is even tricky to talk about. How do you describe a scent?  It ends up sounding like a pretentious wine description on the shelf of a supermarket "with undertones of cinnamon and the sunshine in an early evening bower".  I always use the word "smell" when I am introducing the idea of language change in English; write down as many words as you can think of which are synonyms for smell.  Now classify them into good and bad.  Most of the bad ones have Anglo Saxon roots (stench, stink) whereas the positive associations are with words of French origin (scent, perfume) coming in after 1066 and associated with the middle classes.  Typically,we have kept all the nouns we can find in English, making it just so important to find exactly the right words and make sure than we can identify all non-native speakers.

All of which makes the concept behind many perfume companies' advertising even more completely baffling.  They are almost always inappropriately glamorous with ludicrously young couples doing stupidly attractive things.  There is a Johnny Depp one this year that may ruin many of my favourite films which suggests independence and the open road, I always imagined Johnny Depp would smell rather musty.

The collection I have tried to avoid paying any attention to this year includes a woman rapturously clutching a perfume bottle while she writhes on the floor, perhaps making love to an invisible and nicely perfumed man.  Because...why?  Buy a woman perfume and she'll put on a sex show for you?  I don't get it.  Then there's a very pretty Greek sort of goddess woman who catches some Greekish mortal men with no knickers on and gives the camera an arch kind of look, because everyone knows there is nothing more attractive to a woman than mens' cocks.  And some of these may be famous Greek gods or footballers, if it's not David Beckham then I'm struggling with names.

The worst one I've seen is another Adonis type, although he might be a little bit more Norse in his godlike status, there seem to be lots of mountains and storms in black and white behind him.  Now I wasn't watching this one too carefully, I'll be honest.  Television in general is a time for me to catch up on my emails and I frequently get requests from my husband to stop working, but the gist of it seemed to result in him returning to his changing room after a feat of extreme physical prowess and  being presented with, presumably as part of his winnings, a crowd of semi naked women.

It makes me yearn for the heroin chic of the Calvin Klein campaign of 1994 or so, with Kate Moss and a number of androgynously skinny models in black and white who were so sexy they could have been having sex with the whole crowd or themselves, or just the nearest person - I slightly forget the point of the advert but the point was they all smelt the same. Although male grooming is now seen as acceptable if not essential, as the standards are raised for men to be allowed to behave more like women, it has only seemed to raise the bar for women who still have to be that little bit more groomed than men. And smell nice.  And be so highly sexed that a bottle of perfume leaves them writhing on the floor with unfulfilled lust that you - yes you, presumably male audience, could satisfy simply by stepping into the picture. And sit around waiting until he has finished his sports just to... I have no idea... lick him clean?

Happy Christmas everyone and a fresh and pleasantly scented new year to you.  I'll be crushing up rose petals in summer to make my own scent.  Tweet me your recipes.  @housefeminist

Where is the big society when you need it?

Rex has decided he wants to collect Match Attax.  As far as I can tell these are the Panini stickers we used to collect when we were at school.  Football does not really play a big role in our house, we watch rugby but football is even slightly discouraged.  If you were to buy sufficient stickers to fill an album and did not get any swaps at all it would take you 57 weeks and £3576 to collect all the stickers - maybe - quite a lot of money anyway.  My children don't even have an album.  It was too expensive, so they are randomly swapping pretty coloured stickers for other pretty coloured stickers and commenting on the relative merits of people they have never heard of.  It's a little reminiscent of the episode of The IT Crowd where Moss and Roy are practising manliness and learn a few key phrases to join in with football conversations; "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"

So every now and then, they all ask to spend their meagre pocket money on over priced packets of these little fragments of confetti and I grudgingly agree.  The other day they were standing at the counter, purses in hand ready to each pay individually for a £1 packet of stickers with a queue of six people behind us and I didn't have enough cash for the lacto free milk for which I was having to delve into the overdraft.  I paid by card and paid for their stickers simultaneously to try and save time.  When we got home, I asked for the money for the stickers.  "But we still have it." Rex declared, suspiciously guarding his rainbow purse in his sticky fist.
"No," I explained, "I paid for it with card so you need to give me the money."
"But that was the bank's money." he countered, quite accurately.
"Yes but for your stickers."

The rest of the details are tedious, but needless to say I had to wait for them to go to bed and sneak the money out of their purses later.

It seems to me that David Cameron is having the same trouble understanding economic policy as my 5 year old.  He doesn't seem to understand that once the money is gone, it is gone and cannot be spent twice over.

Today it has emerged in a Guardian article that David Cameron has written to his local County Council in his role as a constituency MP to ask them about all the cuts to local services.It's like a Monty Python Sketch, or Yes, Minister, or ... or Prisoner .."Who is responsible for this mess? " "You are number one."

I think he genuinely believed that there was a whole raft of people out there willing to pick up the pieces of these massive cuts to council funding, a whole set of elderly ladies who were just dying to get up off the sofa and stack books at the local libraries.  And I wonder if people who have been brought up in privileged environments have only a vague understanding of what the "simple folk" do all day. Perhaps, at David Cameron's school, food magically appeared, rooms were magically tidied and no one ever questioned where it all came from, it was only when Hermione reminded everyone that there were actual house elves doing all the work that any of us thought about it. Oh no wait, that was Hogwarts...and Cameron's school didn't have girls, so no wonder he never gave it any consideration.  So as a consequence it's no wonder that some MPs are convinced that there are myriad back room staff who fanny about with press releases and clean and type things and all those little jobs that don't take very long really, why would you need to actually pay someone to do them?  No doubt someone would be happy to give up a couple of hours a day to help feed the children / type up letters / organise road safety / teach a class of twenty four five year olds.  Just the little things.

That army of volunteers does not exist.  I am a volunteer, I know.  My mother-in-law couldn't retire early, she still does extra shifts if she needs to to pay the mortgage because her pension isn't going to go that far and she's worked her whole life.  Other grandparents are having to look after their grandchildren because childcare is so expensive and all mothers have to go back to work.  Anybody else with a couple of hours on their hands is usually trying to pick up a couple of extra hours of work to help make ends meet because wages are static and everything else isn't.  It is not that people are not willing, but if a job is worth doing then it is worth being paid for and these things are valuable.

Our library in the village is threatened with closure. It is an amazing place and really active, always full of people, a great resource.  Pip and Rex love borrowing sock monkeys as much as books.  There are always free activities and crafts for children.  They are really well attended but the librarian is not allowed to charge for those things, not even to cover costs.  She is allowed to charge adults for activities so she often gives up her evenings to run quizzes and other activities to raise the money, to pay for the children's activities. She doesn't even live in the village and has to drive out to open up the building so she feels she may as well be there.  This is on top of her full days at work, and when she goes / retires, they may not even appoint another qualified librarian, because that is too expensive and apparently anyone can put books on shelves.


I am no more likely to convince David Cameron of the ludicrousness of the display than I am to convince Rex that the money is not there any more but I have to keep trying to convince everyone else to remind politicians and voters to think really carefully about the value these public services provide before the big yellow taxi comes for me, because we really are not going to realise what we've got until it's gone.

Bad Grammar

Nicky Morgan wants more grammar schools.

http://schoolsweek.co.uk/grammar-school-expansion-plans-in-at-least-ten-10-new-areas/

They are called "extensions" or "annexes" or some kind of semantic rubbish but they are grammar schools.

My mum went to Grammar School, my dad didn't - he went to Secondary Modern or technical school, but he went to University and my mum didn't, because her parents didn't even think of it.  Most girls didn't and certainly not working class girls from Liverpool, maybe my dad only went because his dad had died and he had a reason to get away.

I am not suggesting that all types of education are right for everyone and shoving everyone through a system of GCSEs where there is only one level and you have to get a C or a 6 or whatever the hell it is called for anyone to give a damn or you have to get an A or an A* or a top 9 to go to the "top" universities because how else will we know if you're the right kind of person or not is wrong.  But there is something going badly wrong with our education system now.  The new examinations make sure that only the kind of person who can retain information (or learn facts) can pass the right kind of examination.  

Alan Bennett had it right a few months ago when he said

Bennett, who was educated at a grammar school in Leeds, told an audience at Cambridge University: "Private education is not fair. Those who provide it know it. Those who pay for it know it. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. And those who receive it know it, or should. And if their education ends without it dawning on them, then that education has been wasted.

"My objection to private education is simply put. It is not fair. And to say that nothing is fair is not an answer. Governments, even this one, exist to make the nation's circumstances more fair, but no government, whatever its complexion, has dared to tackle private education."

Private education, free schools, grammar schools.  The only kind of education system that can make sense is to make sure that we all go to the same schools, where teachers are paid the same and have the same motivation to succeed. Not to run these schools like businesses should be a given, it does not make sense to take away a more expensive teacher because he or she is more expensive.  A child who cannot achieve a grade C can still make progress and that has to have some value.  If politicians' children went to the local comprehensives then would they really allow things to go on as they are?  

Private education does not merely ensure that students receive the "best" education, and that is debatable, it ensures that they make the right connections, that they stay within their own circles  and makes sure that the rest of stay where we are as well. The child who gets in to the grammar school on some kind of scholarship still does not have those connections, unless his or her parents can make those connections work, the sailing club, the golf course, then that child is no more likely to access those higher echelons of society than the rest of us.  And what does that child have to give or lose?  Cameron humiliating himself with a pig gives important people power over him, but what he gained in return; their support, their loyalty, bound up in a secret bond of trust that the rest of us cannot access is far beyond a few newspaper headlines and Charlie Brooker jokes.  

This government are doing all they can to maintain the status quo not to change it, or even to revert to a simpler time - to me it sounds a little like feudal law and the middle ages.  

Bread, circuses and mind control

As often happens it takes a Radio 4 programme to clarify my thinking.  Dan doesn't really believe in literature, as he's arguing that his job his harder than mine, that the A levels he teaches are more intellectually rigorous than those that I teach. What's the point, in other words, of studying literature? Or Media Studies?  Or anything else I am good at.  (Actually I am beginning to doubt how good I am, but that's another story.)

One of these arguments was suggested to me as I listened to the Radio 4 afternoon drama on Friday.  I love listening and rarely get to.  However, I was on my home from work and I heard most of it in the car.  I missed the end, as usual, but I wouldn't even have heard the start had I not left work so late because I was running around sorting out trips and marking.  That's the best thing about part time, getting to work for free when I stop being paid.

The drama was The Liberty Cap. (The Liberty Cap) about an experiment using hallucinogens to treat depression and I was inspired by the objections that main character had to the treatment.  That has to be part of the point of literature of course.  Or Media Studies for that matter.  It allows us to empathise, to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, to explore an area of emotion that we have no access to under normal circumstances in a safe environment.  But what he said made perfect sense to me.

I visited the doctor's.  It doesn't happen often, not by choice.  If I am ever really ill then I try to get an emergency appointment and by the time I get one I tend to be better.  This time the doctor asked me to return.  I was concerned I might be depressed.  The doctor said I wasn't depressed, I was a teacher and my misery was a perfectly reasonable reaction to what was happening around me.

However, as this drama made me aware, depression is also a perfect reaction.  The government have introduced massive cuts in tax credits, they have reintroduced grammar schools and that is the effect.  They are ensuring the people who could do something about it - like the trade unions are too depressed to do anything about it.  It's a form of mind control.  Gone is the idea of bread and circuses; although Strictly, Bake Off and Britain's ... Factor or whatever it's called are certainly fulfilling their remit as opiate.  And the rise in the use of food banks seems to suggest that it's better to starve us all into submission that to keep us sate.  Instead there is a focus on the steel industry and teaching, both of which have dared to raise our unionised heads above the parapets. The new union legislation that the government are trying to get through parliament is trying to ensure that we have to get a mandate for half a day's action greater than the government have to make the legislation that forbids us from doing it.

So perhaps that's the best reason for keeping reading and watching.  Something has to keep me dreaming and something else has to keep me from being depressed, because I intend to keep fighting.

Leading Ladies

Patricia Arquette used her academy award acceptance speech to call for equal pay.  We all kind of agree with that don't we?  Women and men should be paid equally for doing the same jobs, or equivalent jobs?  Except looking after children and the house, that should always be done for free, by everyone, equally.  Ah.  Well because that doesn't happen, it all sort of makes sense that it doesn't happen everywhere else.

None the less Patricia Arquette was pretty brave to say that out loud.  Maybe she's got bigger balls - sorry - tits than me (that's no better is it? Especially given her personal attributes) but I'm used to the roll of the eyes when I "go off on one" and I usually have an audience of about ten, not thousands.

I love her a bit though.  Some of my favourite things involve Patricia Arquette - True Romance in my 20s and not just for Christian Slater, Medium in my 30s and now, finally CSI:Cyber, just when I thought I had seen all the CSI they bring out one with a female lead.

And Patricia Arquette is quite a lead.  She is typical of CSI leads - Mac, Grissom, Horatio, they are solitary workaholics with little family life or romantic longevity.  I keep forgetting she isn't Allison from Medium with three daughters and the wonderful Joe.  So although she is a successful boss, who has apparently sacrificed other aspects of her personal life, so have people in equivalent roles.

I love the fact that in Medium, Arquette defended her weight gain and apparent dowdiness by reasoning that a busy mother and working wife would reasonably look like her.  Love her!  Greatest defence of my now 5 year baby weight.  Until I saw a picture of the real Allison DuBois, on whom the character was based who looks like a very glamorous actor.

In Holes, she plays the strong independent school mistress who avenges her lover's death with an equally strong Sigourney Weaver as the the other adult lead.  But the character's motivation is still a fundamentally feminine one.  Are we really only capable of springing into action in defence of our lovely husbands / boyfriends / sons?  Do none of us have any feeling for the sisterhood or society in general?  I suppose that's where Riley in CSI comes in, she is fighting for justice and the American Way or truth or was that Judge Dredd?

Even the lastest Amazon Prime Series I have started watching has Rami Malek as a secret hacker vigilante (Mr. Robot), another male lead who seems to be simultaneously keen to bring down national corporations and defend the weak and feeble women in his life who keep making bad relationship choices.  In the first episode he made a bad choice with one woman providing sex and drugs, saw a female counsellor who didn't really do a good job as she was distracted by a man and embarrassed his co-worker and best friend / secret crush in front of a room of her male bosses.  (There is a link; Christian Slater is in it.)

There can't be equal pay if there are not equal roles and so at the moment Arquette has a point.  I think it's Dyer who talks about the constructionist approach.  Does the media have to change people's perceptions or does the society it reflects have to change?  "Ah, solving that question / Brings the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields."

 

"I'm drowning"

The start of this school year has been a year like no other.  Every July I make a solemn promise to myself to work consistently every evening in order to prepare myself for September, and every August 31st I wonder what on earth I did with my time.

I am still not sure.  I think  the children just stayed up an hour or two later, and by 10pm I was snoring on the sofa.  I didn't even manage a glass of wine, I now officially drink less in the holidays that I do in term time.

But this year we were busy.  The rules have changed.  The syllabus has changed.  We have to teach a different A level.  GCSE is now all examination.  Oh, and  we now have to move to life beyond levels.  So while we are insisting that our year 10s and 11s understand exactly which level they are doomed to achieve we are telling our year 8s and 7s that they are better than levels.  They are "Emerging" learners.  "Emerging" from what I am not yet sure.  "But what does it mean?" I ask.  "It's about a level 4a."  Oh.

When I came back to school this time we hadn't quite finished all of our schemes of work,  So I am planning day to day, in the hope that someone else in my department may finish writing their contribution before I do.  "I'm drowning!" the young teacher back from Maternity leave tells me.  "It's getting on top of me!" an experienced teacher tells me.  "I'm sinking beneath all this." our new male teacher says.  All these metaphors, can you tell we're an English department?

But at some point I am going to get observed, and my year 10s need to know what their target grades are, otherwise how will they know if they are under-achieving.
"You're targeted a level 6."  I tell one.
"But I only got a band 4 for my work!" clever little Precious in the front row says, disheartened.
"Ah, no, that's ok." I say, "That's a band 4, that's our new exam board, it's about C."
"What's a C?" she asks, her clever eyes shining with tears behind her designer glasses (clear lenses).
"That's a band 6... I mean a level 6."
"Oh... I see..." she replies, sniffing uncertainly.

I am so glad she does.  I don't think I am quite there yet.

A new red dawn?

Jeremy Corbyn has done it. Somehow, against the odds, he has been elected the new leader of the Labour party.  And Tom Watson has also redeemed himself.

That means all sorts of things.  Not the least of which is that the (few) opinion polls and the general reporting of the media was right in their supposition that he would win.  Just a few months ago we were all reeling from the inaccuracy of the predictions of a general election, but this time they were spot on.  The fewer the polls, the greater the accuracy?  Not sure how that works.

I was listening to The Week in Westminster with Steve Richards on Radio 4 as the results were broadcast and once again heard Labour MPs acting as harbingers of doom on the future of the Labour party under a socialist labour.  It wasn't just sexism and nylon that was bad in the 80s kids.  The left was loony and even Kate Bush lied to me - Ken was not the man that we all needed.

Hang on though, Kate Bush was making brilliant records in the early 80s.  Dire Straits were amazing.  (Not cool, I admit, but still amazing,)  So perhaps there could have been something good?  I don't want to get too convoluted here ( although the Kate Bush references could carry on) but John Speller in particular on Radio 4 was promising a disastrous future and 18 years of Tory rule.  I was around in the 80s, but many of these new voters were not and most of the people in power in the 80s are not still in power either.  The phenomenal level of interest that the Labour leadership election has attracted was first signalled by the number of sympathy joiners to the Liberal Democrat Party in the immediate aftermath of the election.  That shocked many people into taking an interest in politics that they hadn't before - perhaps even in a party that wanted electoral reform when they saw how unrepresentative the "first past the post" system could be.

In other words some of these people are new voters.  In other words some of these people are not the type of people that John Speller believes are involved.  He went so far as to suggest that they were not representative and perhaps even only represented a narrow section of London centric society.  (Admittedly another hobby horse of mine, but in this case I am not sure he was right.)  He claimed that the new voters in the Labour party were mostly in the south-east and that perhaps that meant that the usual Labour supporters in the North and the Midlands were consequently under- represented in the vote.  If the vote had taken place as it did before Ed Milliband  change the system in 2012, then Westminster Labour MPs would have had a greater say and he said that they carried the weight of the constituents who had voted for them.

While it is true that we isolate ourself in our own little social media bubbles; surrounding ourselves with like-minded people on our social networks, blocking any of our "stupid" acquaintances who inadvertently share a "Britain First" post, reinforcing our own ideologies because it is nicer to be proved right than wrong; that also means that we perceive ourselves to be equally entitled to a say in the way things happen.  It isn't just "X factor" culture that encourages us to vote, it is the breakdown of the social barriers that allows us to believe that we are more important as we write blogs to share our views without an editor to tell us we are being libellous or simply talking rubbish and that we are as important as the celebrities and politicians (Tom Watson again) whose Twitter accounts we follow.  We can see their real unmediated words.  We expect a say.  This makes the electoral system difficult at the moment and means that people noticed when UKIP - for which they had voted, didn't increase its share of seats.

I am Northern and living in the Midlands and I would not have a vote in the leadership election under the old system as my constituency MP is Conservative.  I could have had a vote if I had wanted to register as an affiliate member of the Labour Party.  There are many voters in Northamptonshire who voted for Labour but who are not represented by their current Conservative Constituency MPs because we do not have a system of PR.  There are also many voters in Northamptonshire who were pretty sure that the Tories would get in in Northamptonshire again and chose not to vote for Labour because they were not left wing enough.  If your protest vote isn't going to count it doesn't matter who you vote for.  So I resent being told that the Labour party which should be my representative; as a working person from working class roots, from Liverpool, growing up in an industrial Lancashire mill town,  needs to adapt itself to the electorate in order to win.  Stop trying to poach votes from the Tories and start taking back the working people who think that UKIP are the new spokespeople for working people, from the Green party who seem to have taken some of their ideas from the Socialist Workers, from the Liberal Democrats who used to seem a bit apart from two party Punch and Judy Politics.  And most importantly of all, do what Corbyn seems to have already done, take votes from the people who up until recently couldn't care less about politics and made sweeping statements about how it didn't matter.  More people didn't vote for the Conservatives than voted for the Conservatives, and even more people didn't vote for anyone at all.

I don't know if this is a new dawn for politics in general, but it's nice to feel like we're in the middle of something exciting.

Genderation Gap

I have just returned after a week with the Grandparents.  We stayed in an old farmhouse in Hay-on-Wye.  It was a gorgeous building, beautifully simply decorated and rented by a nice man, my age, who grew up on the farm.

However, it transpires that I missed my husband an awful lot - he did not join us for reasons that will become clear.  I also need a Starbucks within daily commute, a good internet connection, a phone signal... oh heavens, what have I become?  And what I need most of all is a daily drive that doesn't involve ploughing the Volvo into a hedge every evening while I cope with bickering siblings, an advice-filled father and locals who know the road so well that they can drive down it at about 45 mph either because they know the road so well or don't expect bloody tourists to be crawling around every blind bend.

I can cope with holidays with my father, just about, after all I grew up with them didn't I?  Dan did not and would really struggle and as a consequence, so would I.  That is just too many bridges to build.  Dan's idea of a holiday is to do well ... very little.  He likes to watch television, play and preferably complete a number of boxed sets and a video game.  This takes time, sometimes nights without sleep.  When we do go away, he still likes to take things easy.  We're on holiday after all, there is no rush.  He likes to have a big breakfast, and then a sit down.  My father, on the other hand, thinks that holidays are for doing things in.  If we're not out of the house by eleven, he starts to pace, or build a gazebo.  I recognise that I also have inherited this impatience and as a consequence we now travel separately to weddings and museums.

After day 4 or 5 however, I started to relax a little.  I became almost used to the routine, having a coffee made for me as soon as we got in, having help putting the children to bed (although I was still needed for stories), opening a bottle of wine before dinner.  Why can't I do this more often? I wondered to myself, before remembering that when I get home from work, I race to cook dinner before bedtime, so I can start work again.  That explains the lack of wine.  I don't even want to think about the "s" word, I'm already having panic attacks.

I then remembered that my mum had always (sort of ) had that opportunity through most of my childhood.  She was a stay-at-home mum for much of that time.  I don't like to admit that I would now like to stay at home.  I do not want to go to work.  But I can't help it now.  We're on the mortgage treadmill, or is it the huge debt treadmill?  Then I remember that that is also why I wanted to work.  I wanted my children to have all the things that I thought I was missing out on when I was younger.  There are some things I cannot balance.

Oh well, I'm opening another bottle of wine, there are still a few days left.

Are politicians heavyweight enough?

A journalist from The Mail on Sunday apparently asked Liz Kendall about her weight.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-kendall-brands-journalist-unbelievable-over-questions-about-her-weight-10399838.html
She told him to "fuck off."

I hope that's true. I want it to be. She goes up in my estimation massively if that is the case. The same journalist; also according to The Independent obviously has a bit of a thing about weight as he  had not only asked George Osborne a similar question , but also compared Liz Kendall to Catherine Middleton. Does it make it a feminist issue?

This is tricky. We have to be careful nowadays. It's not ok to be a bulimic or an anorexic. We used to have them at school, but now those conditions are treated as part of the increasing range of mental health issues that we face every day in school and are expected to be included in our normal teaching duties. And at least that means that we seem to recognise some of the complicated nature of these conditions as being about control and not just unrealistic visions of beauty.

It's also not ok to be overweight. We have no respect for fat people.  We seem to approve of fat children being taken into care to save them from their evil parents. Fat politicians are a bit of a joke. Look at the response to Eric Pickles. Look at Cyril Smith; not so funny now.

Liz Kendall doesn't have children. That doesn't bother me. I still believe I may have more in common with her than David Cameron. I don't care how heavy she is. None of my fucking business.

Budget for life

I have been depressed recently and need to get back to blogging or I may explode with rage.  I am not clinically depressed - at least I don't think so, I was depressed about the Tory government and the Budget 2015 may have just finished me off.

This summarises pretty much everything I disagree with about ... well, not the Conservatives, not exactly anyway, I think it's Capitalism, or Thatcherism or something similar.  I believe that this budget was all about keeping up in our place, making sure that the working class stay working class, that the non-working class stay non working as long as possible.  

Not everyone thinks this, but I don't want think we need to be aspirational.  Why should we have to aspire to be at the top?  It is just not ok to be earning so much money that you can't spend it.  When I bought my first house I saw a Jaguar for sale for the same price.  No one needs a car that costs more than a house.  That is a thing that doesn't need to exist.  People need somewhere to live and they don't necessarily need to own it. I'm not saying that we shouldn't all want to be something, or to do something, but why do we need excessive financial recognition.

Back to my specific problems with the the budget and why I believe it is part of a government policy to generally oppress the working classes and keep the richest people exactly where they want to be.  Firstly it's the duties on tobacco; according to the 2014 hscic statistics (http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB14988/smok-eng-2014-rep.pdf); although about 1 in 5 adults smoke, it's around 39% of unemployed people and between 1980 and 2013 household expenditure on tobacco has increased fourfold.  I don't really think that there is a government conspiracy to increase the level of smoking in the unemployed to kill of the population, but I do think the rise in tobacco duties disproportionately affects the unemployed.  Electronic cigarettes may be as saving in the long term, but the initial outlay is usually greater than a packet of fags.  And clearly the government are not able to stop us smoking and are unprepared to take any kind of brave stance on drugs and tobacco, so that statistic is unlikely to change any time soon.

Oh yes, but petrol's frozen, so if you can afford a car then you've got it made. as long asyou have enough money to pay for your new or second hand car outright.  For those of us who can only afford a small amount each month, and so may have been able to afford a new car on the hire purchase scheme, the reduction in tax for new cars is changing.

That may be superficial, but the attack on working class children is much greater than that.  The government have abolished any grants for university, potentially this could just maker it harder for working class children to even consider going to university, or at least going away from home. If they live at home because it is cheaper for their parents then they are only experiencing half of the fun of university.  University gives you the rehearsal for life.  You learn to be a grown-up, to move away from home and see what it is like away from your small community.  If only middle class children get that experience then only they will gain that confidence to move away from home and take on greater challenges.  Anecdotally, I can think of lots of girls from school or girls I have taught who have ended up staying at home and marrying local boys who didn't go into any further education. Think of the teachers you know who taught someone's dad, whose children go to the same school, I'm falling into the same pattern myself, but at least I lived in a few cities first.

It's okay though, the government have thought of this.  They are intending to set up lots of cadets training for kids, they are making sure that businesses are responsible for providing apprenticeships.  I know I should be applauding these opportunities, but it doesn't sound to me like widening, broadening or improving opportunities for working people or non working people, it sounds like we are conspiring to ensure that the less able children in our society are being kept in their place -  cannon fodder and manual labour.  As a useful side-effect; if we have fewer well-qualified Brits then we can stop getting ideas above our station and be happy to sweep the streets and pick strawberries; all the things for which we currently have to import all those foreigners.

I am one of those who is guilty of having three children.  I shouldn't expect any extra money for that.  The government is operating a two-child policy to make sure that only rich people breed in excess.  We used to get tax credits a few years ago.  It was about £200 a month before we had our third.  It didn't cover the £700 a month childcare costs, but it made a dent as I was part time, earning about £1000.  I realise that means I was earning about £75 a week, but I couldn't think of any other way of getting £75 a week and being able to contribute to my pension.  They changed the rules half way through the year and by the time we came to renew, we were no longer eligible.  Not only that but we owed them £1200 for the overpayment that they were proposing to take in one go from our account.  Good luck with that.  This meant we were £200 down a month on our childcare and having to pay back £100 making us £300 a month worse off and although I eventually managed to increase my hours it didn't make it an easy year.  I didn't know how to find £300 a month, I still don't, it has pretty much built up on the credit card ever since.

So the budget doesn't affect me much, but it doesn't stop me from feeling depressed about the erosion of opportunities for any change in society.  I just see the people at the top barricading themselves in their ivory towers and shutting the rest of us out.  I'm off to make a doctor's appointment, the holidays are coming and I should be able to get one before I go back to school.  I need to do it now while there is still an NHS.

Normal service will be resumed

I haven't written a blog post for nearly a month. The reason was that I was so utterly depressed by the General Election result that I couldn't think of anything optimistic to write.

I still feel the same actually.I am incredibly concerned about the state of education in our country. I wonder what will happen when all the academies fail to get good results, when they've sacked all the teachers, appointed new young blood that can't hack it and quits within the first few years. Where will all the new teachers come from then?

The army, was that the latest plan? Qualified teachers aren't really necessary.  Has it occurred to them that former army officers might not be any better than us in the classroom? I don't have behavioural issues in my class because I can't shout loudly enough, perhaps the army succeed because it can and does administer punishment and consistently.  In my first school all the kids got the bus home or walked.They weren't school buses, they were public buses, so if they missed the 3:45 one there was another one soon. We were allowed to keep the students for up to ten minutes at the end of the day. And they all came to their tutors at the end of the day. Feedback was instant.Justice was instant.Very few issues went unresolved at the end of the day.  Students didn't necessarily need detentions, unless they had work to catch up on but to know that they had to face consequences, to address the teacher they had tried to escape from was very effective.

This doesn't always happen, even in my school now. I have also heard of schools where students tell the teachers that there is no point threatening detention for missed homework, swearing at another student, sitting there and doing absolutely nothing for an hour as they "don't do detentions" and their "mum will phone the head". And they do. And the heads don't always back up the teachers.

There is nothing magic about army officers or unqualified science specialists. Look at the problems David Starkey had in that Jamie Oliver programme. Teachers are a very special blend when they're good or outstanding. I don't have it yet.at least not all the time. Not at the moment. A few of my colleagues do.

So I'm still grumpy. This is made slightly worse by worrying about a lazy year 12 and 300 exam papers I need to mark if I'm going to get the car fixed to drive to France this summer. Dan wants to leave the country. He did anyway, but the election result certainly hadn't helped. I'm dealing (or not dealing) with the most corrupt governing body of a school I've ever come across who seem to think they can convert to an academy after speaking to some bloke the chair (man) met at the golf course and the worst HR who seem to be advising schools to take no care of their staff whatsoever. But this is a blip. I know life isn't like this.it's been worse and it will get better. Normal service will be resumed.

Life Outside of London

Peter Kay has broken the internet with a BBC iplayer programme called "Car Share". It's quite funny.  According to the article I was reading today it's about two people sharing lifts to a "Northern" supermarket.

I've been to them, they had them when I was growing up.  Safeway?  Gateway? Fine Fayre?  Were they "Northern".  They don't sell the same food.  It's mostly internal organs and potatoes.  It is virtually impossible to buy balsalmic vinegar and it's exclusively real ale in bottles and no lager.

Or not.  In fact they're almost the same all over the UK,  I challenge you to get kidnapped, blindfolded and dumped in a Tesco store somewhere and to identify the city you are in without leaving the store.

Would they say if "Car Share" involved Jack Whitehall travelling to a "Southern" supermarket?  I don't think so, because "Southern" is just normal isn't it?  It's a bit like regional broadcasting.  Every region apart from London and the South East.  I'm not being deliberately prejudiced against the South.  I think the problem lies with London.

I remember on one of my first nights at University meeting 3 friends from Devon who pointed out to me that they never saw any good gigs in Devon. Nothing ever comes down south they said, it all stops in London.  It was the first time I had thought about it, I hadn't realised quite far away Devon was from ... anywhere.  I still thought Sheffield was in the Midlands.  We went on school trips to London and to visit my Uncle.  We travelled all round the UK to go to gigs, go on holiday, visit family.  When I finally met real people from London however, many of them confessed that they had rarely travelled outside of London except to leave the UK, even to go to University; why would they need to?

On our school trip down to the Harry Potter studios I asked my colleague why the studios were so close to London.  I was surprised to see house built right up to the edge of the studios and right to the edge of a dual carriageway.  Why would anyone want to live there?  They didn't of course, he explained, they build a ring road to avoid the residential areas and then build up to the new boundary.  Like when you put a cat in a box and somehow they end up filling all the space.  Wouldn't it make more sense to build a studio near East Midlands airport I asked?  It's near an airport and the motorway, surely one airport is as good as another for international film stars.  Then another film studio would spring up down south he told me and of course he's right.

So what is the government doing to regenerate the North and replace all the industry closed down in the 80s?  Build a high speed rail link ... to make it easier to get to London.  What if we don't want to go to London?  The DVLA was moved to Swansea, but now all my friends seem to have been made redundant by the DVLA.  Wouldn't it be a good idea if the new parliament buildings were somewhere near Birmingham?  That's the middle-ish.  I wonder what would happen to my 4 hour journey up home if the London MPs had to do it every week?

If the Houses of Parliament were somewhere else perhaps other business would follow.  The government should be the ones taking the lead, Businesses provide work for the companies, their lawyers, the accountants, the cleaners, the van drivers, the window cleaners, the local Starbucks and sandwich shops.

Radio 4 implied today that politicians could be scared of the North.  Shirley Williams suggested that politicians are cosseted within a world of other politically-savvy media people and media-savvy politicians.  The special edition of Question Time filmed in Yorkshire was apparently a bit blunt for the politicians.  The implication seemed to be that we don't really know how to behave when we meet politicians, that these Northerners got a little bit power-crazed and it somehow went to their heads.  We're just not quite civilised enough to be trusted with the grown up stuff.

So that's what I am checking for in my last few days of manifesto-reading.  What the plan is to spread the wealth, development and house prices across the nation.  Great Britain, the United Kingdom is greater than the sum of its parts and it is certainly bigger than our capital city.

Eye candy for the political girl

Last night I abandoned my pale pink flowery platform clogs by the front door and this morning Rex asked me if they were new.  I bought them for my first grown up wedding 18 years ago.  I had always wondered how my mother had managed to accumulate quite so many pairs of shoes and now I know.  

"I don't worry about things being fashionable," my unbelievably beautiful and glamorous colleague said today when we were discussing her shoes and my shoe story.  I believe her.  I don't believe in fashion either, which is a good job, because you can't always buy fashionable on ebay or from ethically sourced hippie traders.  That's the reason I give for second hand, I'm recycling.  

I probably face the same criticism as Natalie Bennett has about her clothing.  I have seen her described as "Too hemp", the party campaigners have been instructed to dress in a "mainstream" manner.  Could the party end up alienating some of their key voters in an effort to appeal to the general voter?  I quite like the idea of voting for a sandal-wearing, dreadlocked, candidate who doesn't believe in deodorant.  

In fact, comments on clothing and appearance in general have been quite a feature of this campaign.  That could be partly due to the number of women involved in the leaders' debates; suddenly the audience have something else to look at rather than 3 men in grey suits with different colour ties.  Remember Karl Stefanovic?  The Australian news anchor who wore the same suit for a year to highlight the sexist treatment of his female co-presenter.  We don't notice the suits, I haven't seen the Daily Mail trying to induce my husband to "Get the Look" on the high street with this similar grey suit from Next and a slim yellow silk tie from Debenhams; £25.99.  But Nicola Sturgeon , according to the Daily Mail again is "Living Proof" that women "become sexier with age, income and office".  That's an article is it?  A photo comparison comparing a picture of Sturgeon in 2001 and now.  I wore a lilac suit to a job interview in 2001.  And back then I used to try.  

What's slightly messing with my head about all this, and undermining my argument up to a point is that the men in the campaign are being treated in a similar way.  "Dead Ringers" tonight (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007gd85) imagined a sketch with Justine and Sam comparing manicures and hiding from Diane Abbott in a "Real housewives ..." sketch and made the joke that Justine had picture of "Wallace and Gromit" on her wall at university.  I ended up googling Ed Milliband and Stephanie Flanders just because it all seemed a bit unlikely, rather like finding a friend on facebook who turns out to have worked with one of your former colleagues allowing you to say "Small world!" in surprised tones when actually I have lived and worked in the same town now for most of my adult life so it's not really that surprising.  Last election campaign it was Naughty Nick with his notches on the bedpost and this week even Radio 4 thought it was newsworthy to play a recording from a voter in Cheadle telling Nick Clegg that he was "better looking in real life".  Better looking than whom? David Cameron? Well, yeah?  

I can't quite figure out if this is equality, or trivia, or something worse.  I actually heard a woman on the radio today say that she wasn't going to vote for Labour because she didn't like Ed Milliband as soon as she saw his face,  It reminded why I like listening to the radio, I never really know what politicians look like, I thought I'd fancy Andy Burnham more than Tristran Hunt.  And if Steven Wolffe wasn't UKIP then who knows?  We do judge on appearance whether we like it or not, so perhaps it is a reasonable topic of conversation during this election campaign.  

There a two arguments in my life that I remember clearly on this topic.  The first was when I was about 16 and I shaved my brother's long hair at the sides - it was acceptable in the early 90s.  I had not anticipated my parents' reaction, or at least not the reasons for that reaction.  They were worried he would get suspended from school, I knew he wouldn't, he was too invisible, I'd been too good. We could get away with minor infractions, I never once wore uniform correctly.  My father was worried about people judging him, and that like it or not, people would see him as a yob.  A less yobbish individual than the future vegan that was my brother could not be imagined. I argued, rather well I thought, although I don't remember it reducing my sanction, that that was exactly why people like my brother should have that kind of hairstyle; to alter perceptions.  

Ironically, the second argument was almost the reverse of that.  A boyfriend of mine had a job interview at the place where I worked.  He chose not to wear tie, and wore a jumper over his shirt.  I didn't care, I wanted him to marry me in his Converse, but I believed that he was making a statement, something that he wouldn't accept.  

This seems to illustrate the fine line that politicians, journalists, commentators and all of us are treading; we want our politicians to look like politicians, and yet we don't like politicians.  We want our politicians to be different and yet we don't trust them to do the job when they are.  So if the female leaders look different, it's because they are different.  If Nicola Sturgeon looks more the part now, then that is because she is, she is now a leader mixing with other leaders and she has to make a decision whether to continue to dress as she likes or to try and fit in.  You can always spot Caroline Lucas on tv without the caption as she is wearing a floaty scarf, Theresa May's shoes caught attention once, so now she has to try and make a feature of them.  It makes her more colourful and look less like part of a "nasty" party.  

We all know we are judged on our appearance and to pretend otherwise is not very genuine.  If we choose not to wear make up, shave our legs, let our grey grow, we are accepting the message that that conveys about us.  If we expect our politicians to look a certain way before we take them seriously, then we shouldn't be surprised if they start behaving in the same way too.  

Votes for women

There is a General Election this year.  It is on Thursday May 7th 2015.  Put in your diary, make sure you are registered (https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote) and turn up to your polling station and vote.  Vote.  I care about this and I could spend a very long time trying to convince everybody which party to vote for, but at the moment all I care about is that everyone votes.  And if you are a woman (which, let's face it, there may be more than a 50% chance if you're reading this) it's even more important.

Pip, my precociously intelligent princess has been wandering around the house saying "Ed Milliband" in various voices for the last few weeks.  She likes the sound of it, more than many people would like the reality of it, and although she doesn't quite understand his job, she knows "He wants to be Prime Minister."  That already puts her head and shoulders above approximately half of my sixth formers, one of whom, gazing at a picture of Nick Clegg displayed on the interactive white board asked; "Is that David Cameron?"  She votes for the first time this year.

However, after an event organised by our sixth form team a few weeks' ago, she is now much better informed, and she cares, she even told me she would vote.  They organised a "Question Time" style event with some of the local candidates and representatives of the main parties.  For the students, the fact that anyone cared enough about this "stuff" was enough to ignite a very small pilot light.  And it wasn't just that these people had turned up at the school, they got to hear some of their peers asking sensible, well-considered questions and they started to realise that politics wasn't just the shouty stuff at PMQs; it is wind farms and tuition fees and ooh did you know there used to be an EMA for 16 and 17 year olds? No, didn't think so.

I know people are disillusioned with politicians, but that should be giving us more motivation to vote, not less.  We have a responsiblity to find out how to use that vote correctly on a national and local level.  If you don't like the way things are done now then vote for a party that would change things. Liberal Democrats have pledged electoral reform although I'm not sure if they are still promising Proportional Representation.  If you are worried something specific then look at the figures for your local area and make your vote count against the current MP - look for the candidate that would be most likely to remove him or her. Even if you can't remove your MP this time, putting a dent in an MP's majority changes the way that candidate is treated for selection next time, so may cause a change.  Your vote can count.

Back to women voting though.  Why is it so important?  Not for the lecture, what these amazing women went through, the force feeding, the chaining to railings, although all of that counts, but because we have to make sure our voices are heard.  18 year olds also need to be heard but MPs don't always care about them, they haven't paid tax, they haven't earned the right.  Parties and spin doctors know that most people who vote are old.  Older than 18, older even than me.  I love my parents, but we are worlds apart in our interests.  My dad used to be a Labour voter and now seems to have moved so far to the right that he asked me not to talk to him last time, even though we have always had productive debates.  At the moment the Houses of Parliament does not reflect the make up of the population and nor is it likely to unless we vote for change.  While the only people voting are wealthy, or middle class, or male or old it is no wonder that they are the people who are being catered for,  Become a voter and parties have to take account of what you say.  Rick Edwards believes that 18 year olds should be made to vote at least the first time, but argues that if voting is compulsory then you need a "none of the above" option.(In his book; called None of the Above.)  That could happen.  There is a chance that things could change and it feels this time like it really might.  Vote for change.  Work out the best way of making it happen and vote for it.  But vote.

Loss leaders

A yougov poll says Nicola Sturgeon won the itv leaders' debate tonight, as the election campaign "proper" begins. ( https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/04/02/leaders-debate/)  Apparently the most "googled" leader was Leanne Wood.  I'm not really sure that is surprising since most if us probably know very little about her.  

Most of us can't vote for Nicola Sturgeon, not even me and I live near Corby.  It's also easy to see her and Leanne Wood and possibly even Natalie Bennett as the Will Self contributor to Question Time, the Ian Hislop of Any Questions, the anti establishment political commentator who can make some off-the-cuff critique of all the political system in general and offer a trite solution or even worse - the Russell Brand - no solution because they do not have an election to win; they know they will never be called to account for their policies.  Who cares if Natalie Bennett gets her sums wrong? She's never going to have to actually do them.  

I think this new type of politics offers hope for our parliament.  I disagree with all the commentators who told us that after the last election we got a government that none of us had voted for.  In actual fact that seems to me to be exactly what everyone wants, the general public does not trust politicians, and the idea of them having to work together appeals to us.  A rainbow coalition, a vote for consensus politics is what we hoped for.  

Maybe it can work, Germany does ok.  It's tempting to think that that is one of the reasons for the rise in popularity of minority or single interest parties such as UKIP.  I find it difficult to watch Nigel Farage without wishing he spoke in "meeps" like Beaker from the Muppets of whom he reminds me. The idea that he speaks for the common people makes my skin crawl; I've never even met a banker.  However I think our democracy is strong enough and established enough to accommodate even more than a handful of UKIP MPs.  It's tempting to believe that they will be the first to shoot themselves in the foot even without a fake sheikh to catch them in another sting.  If there are a number of parties represented with no overall majority then all policies will have to be negotiated and compromised on.  Extreme views will not be able to dictate policy.

  

One of the reasons that Natalie Bennett, Leanne Wood and particularly Nicola Sturgeon may have come out slightly better than the three leaders of the three main parliamentary parties is one of the things they should be capitalising on.  People do see Nigel Farage as a man of the people but maybe they can see the other three as women of the people.  They don't look like our idea of the establishment.  They are women.  They don't sound like most other professional MPs from the Bullingdon Club, independent education or even London.  They speak English with regional / national (!) accents.  And Nicola Sturgeon actually has leadership experience.  We may not all be able to vote for all of these parties but it may start to engage non voters in politics in a way that doesn't involve patronising working people by assuming we are fooled by a pint and a sneaky cigarette.  

Putting the stress on the right part of the sentence

I have worked hard today.  And I feel guilty for saying that since I have been sitting on my arse all day and my father-in-law wouldn't find that an acceptable way of working.  I repeatedly feel like I have to apologise for being a teacher, for not doing proper work.  And today I wasn't even teaching; I was trying to help other teachers not be sacked for being ill.

It is emotionally draining and I am knackered after arguing over and over again that it is not fair that someone should lose their job for being off sick.  This was all thrown into sharp relief by a programme on Radio 4 tonight.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b055g8zh

This was File on 4 and the title of the programme was "Sick of school". It analysed the recent workload survey and commented on the number of teachers who are off sick with stress, it suggested that perhaps we aren't all whingers, that perhaps we do work hard, even perhaps, that no end of holidays can ever compensate for working 14 hour days, 6 days a week.

What could be even more frustrating is that I can't help feeling that all our hard work is somehow misdirected.  Teachers work hard because we love our job and love the kids we teach but we are being held responsible for every aspect of parenting and education and there are not enough hours in the day.  Students spend less that 10% of the year at school, but every new initiative seems to fall to schools.  Sexting, religious tolerance, citizenship.  And GCSEs.  3 levels of progress.  Literacy.  Prepared for the workplace. Any workplace. It no longer seems to be any one else's responsiblity to train teenagers.  It's hard to know what else we can do.  In an interview on the Radio 4 "Today" programme on Monday morning Trevor Phillips was being interviewed about his new documentary "Things We Won't Say About Race Which Are True"  http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/things-we-wont-say-about-race-that-are-true
and made some really interesting comments.  He said that it was difficult to get certain statistics involving race acknowledged publicly.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02m37ld
He said "The big educational success story of the last ten year has been London schools which used to be at the bottom of the league tables and now it's at the top...the high performing ethnic minority groups Chinese, Indian, African and Polish have exploded in numbers".  He was suggesting that we could really learn from this and rather than see this as merely a correlation in numbers, explore the reasons for the good performance of these ethnic groups and learn lessons from them in how to achieve this success for all ethnic groups.

It makes me wonder if race is the only reason that this story hasn't gained greater attention from the press and teachers' groups.  This also suggests that a school's performance may not be solely down to the teaching or the management, but may, believe it or not, have something to do with the social background of the children we teach.  In fact, the family or ethnic background of the students may have more to do with the results than the teachers.  Who knew?

I am  not trying to suggest that all the work we do is without merit, we can produce all sorts of wonderfully positive effects, but I see my year 11s for 3 hours a week, and on Monday morning, one of them always stay in bed after a night of GTA.  On Thursday afternoon; Neil always spends 15 minutes with his head on the desk saying how tired he is, 15 minutes longing for KFC and 15 minutes asking if we can watch a video.  Sometimes he uses paragraphs and I want to ruffle his hair.

But that's the relaxing part of the job.  I'd rather deal with an irrational 15 year old than an academy chain who don't want to pay middle aged women for their experience when they've had surgery and need a few more weeks to recover.  That's stressful.

Equal Rites

Lots has happened this week, topped off by the fact that as usual, I am sitting watching Comic Relief and sobbing my eyes out as I always watch the documentary bits out of guilt.  This is despite coming home so tired after work this evening that I was sobbing into the washing up as I felt too weary to even stand up.  I couldn't do a proper job; how do surgeons do it?  How do fire men and women? Police officers?  Those poor factory workers who have to work nights?  My friend who works for Coca Cola and does the same shifts as the factory workers?  Hopeless. The last time I felt like this I was waking up 3 or 4 times a night to feed a crying baby and then getting up at 5 with a toddler and walking another one to school a couple of hours later.

I want to talk about divorce settlements; women being told to get a job or claiming their husband's post-divorce income, but yesterday Terry Pratchett died.

As a massively geeky teenager whose best friends were boys, I had to do something to fit in.  It couldn't be computer games, although I spent a shameful number of Saturday afternoons watching my brother and my friends play Doom or Quake or possibly even the first GTA, I'm not sure, it was the late eighties, perhaps most of the time was spent waiting for the games to load.  I watched (and loved) Alien and Aliens, Terminator and Terminator 2, I saw Metallica in concert and owned an cd single by Joe Satriani, I attempted to play a game involving lots of talking and throwing multi coloured dice with an eccentric number of faces - that wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't quite bring myself to read Lord of the Rings so the compromise was Discworld.

I was resistant at first.  This was taking the aspirational geekdom to a whole new level.  Reading fantasy?  Time to strap on a wooden sword and run through the woods in leather skirts?  I was missing a trick actually, had I been able to overcome my crippling lack of self confidence I could have been a warrior goddess in an armour corset, a bosomy wench or a purple velvet-swathed sourcer-ductress and I would have had my pick of pale and hopeful unshaven-yet-strangely-smooth warriors.  But I was wrong.  This was fantasy, but not as I had previously perceived it through the lens of not actually having read it.

The Discworld is a wonderful place with fantastic characters.  It's a parallel world which is flat, balanced on the back of four elephants, riding on the back of Great A'Tuin a giant turtle swimming through space.  Ok, so far, so normal fantasy, but  it is so much more, Over the series of thirty something / forty (?) books Pratchett wrote satire, parody, pastiche while simultaneously creating a unique cast of characters beautifully delineated and developed over the entire series. If you were fond of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg you could read the witches' books, if, like me, your favourite books were the detective style Guards! Guards! series with the hard drinking, seen it all Captain Vimes you could read those.  And if you like Death - well - you could find him in every book, but the ones which explored his complicated relationship with his adopted daughter Susan were some of the best.  I loved the satirical representation of the corrupt government of the Patrician and the insight into Macbeth that the witches' books suggested.  Clever literary allusions were sprinkled throughout the books but not enough to spoil brilliantly crafted stories.

Of course, as the only girl in that group of tree huggers meant that I was, even then,  rather taken by the female characters in the books.  There were many strong male characters in the books, many of the main characters were men and when there were female characters they were often cast in conventional female roles - witches, dominant queens, daughters, supportive wives, but there are also many lead women with their personalities as carefully drawn as any of the male roles.  In one of the very first books a girl tries to gain admission to the male enclave of the Unseen University - it's called "Equal Rites".  I am quite keen on Angua, a great police officer brought in with the city's desire to recruit minorities, not because she's a woman - because she's a werewolf.

Granny and Nanny firmly operate within the roles ascribed to women, but they have no problem controlling the men, and Pratchett very consciously challenges the maiden, mother, crone / whore stereotypes perpetuated throughout literature.  But Adora, Angua and most of all Susan take control in their own right and have their own place on the Discworld, it was certainly a place I wanted to be.

He aten't ded.  Not while we have the books.

Do blondes have less fun?

It doesn't seem to have been a good week for blondes; Natalie Bennett crashed and burned, and not for the first time in a interview where she was asked to explain her policies and Madonna crashed in a slightly less metaphorical way at the Brits.

Radhika Sanghani in The Telegraph ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/11431987/Natalie-Bennett-doesnt-deserve-our-sympathy-or-a-hug.-Just-a-Lemsip.html) characterises the treatment of Bennet as sexist, or at least the attitudes expressed on twitter.  It's hard not to agree with her when the Daily Mail chooses the headline "This Aussie blonde's just not up to the job" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2967671/Ian-Birrell-says-Green-Party-leader-Natalie-Bennett-exposed-poor-media-performer.html) Is it relevant that she's is blonde?  Are they implying that blondes are dumb?  Is it different when Boris Johnson is described as blonde? Or posh? Or nice-but-dim?

If we are are going to reduce politicians to stereotypes then does it matter which one?  Natalie Bennett has done some pretty rubbish interviews, but then Ed Miliband really got it in the neck after forgetting to mention the deficit in his conference speech, and for forgetting the names of the candidates for the scottish Labour party leadership and for forgetting the name of the party donor, no wait - I think that was Ed Balls - or is that just could it be a good headline?  Turns out anyone can forget things.

The Green Party didn't used to have a leader, they were and are trying to things differently in politics, although they perhaps felt that they needed to have someone for the public to identify , and not just Caroline Lucas.  She's kind of done that. And that's kind of what Nigel Farage has done as well. And Boris Johnson.  They have made careers out of seeming slightly buffoon-ish, and now, strangely, Farage looks the least buffoon-ish out of all of his membership.  Isn't there something rather British about that? You start with an idea that sounds ludicrous, but the longer it hangs around, the more acceptable it seems.  I never thought they'd ban smoking in bars.

Madonna also received a great deal of sympathy on social media.   I missed the event but wondered what all the fuss was on Facebook.   There were the expected jokes about her age, her attention seeking nature, the lyrics of her song...I didn't see any about her being blonde.

In fact, both women, while not necessarily triumphing, certainly seem to have gained some credibility.  They have literally and / or metaphorically picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and carried on.  If that's what you have to do to be taken seriously, I'm going to throw myself down the stairs more often.

Surviving half term - the penultimate

A Saturday in half term; so no ballet! No streetdance! No tap!  The chance to stay in  bed.  Or get up early and make everyone breakfast and miss out on coffee with the ballet mums.  I am never happy.

We decided to clean the house and catch up on the washing. That may have been my decision.

It was however a no cost day.  Pip and her friend made peg dollies and I put the entire contents of her bedroom into bin bags.

I rearranged her room, and once she has been through every bin bag and decided what she cannot do without she can slowly add it back to her room.

For dinner I had vegetable chili from the remnants of a huge batch I made for friends and froze.

This was made in the slow cooker with sweet potatoes that I roasted first.

Asda sweet potatoes £1.15 per kg so 60p
Asda frozen onions 85p for 500g so about 30p
Asda tinned tomatoes 31p for 400g so 62p
Tesco kidney beans in chilli sauce 295g for 65p
Asda baked beans 410 g for 32p
Asda garlic 25p a bulb so about 5p
Total cost £2.54 which served at least 5.

And my final attempt to save money this holiday was using my yogurt maker - I can't believe we don't get paid for another week.  I think mine cost about £20.  It reminded me of my mum's.  It's a 50p yogurt mixed with a 49p litre of UHT skimmed milk and a spoonful of skimmed milk powder. I had frozen fruit coulis in the freezer made of strawberries from the garden, icing sugar and lemon juice.

As long as I can keep eating from the freezer for the next week, then all will be well.  Oh and just the essays to mark. Jack Monroe will keep me going.

Surviving half term - part 5

We are back at home; in time for  a final relaxing evening before the PE kits washing, bedroom tidying, home learning and book marking of standard Sunday panic, amplified by the illusion of having had a week off. 

My parents are the most supportive, and often look after the children during the holidays, but they have been poorly, so asked us to visit.  They have never really asked us for anything, not even a swift repayment of the thousands of pounds we owe them, and unsurprisingly, I felt obliged.  With no car, we travelled on the train, so travelled comparatively light.  

My father finds it hard to imagine why anyone would want to travel on the train when they own a perfectly good car (which clearly I do not), and was almost insistent on driving me home.

"Don't be daft, I have cheap train tickets, it is cheaper than the diesel, even the way you drive dad, you couldn't get it cheaper.  And you'd have to do both ways."

"I'd drive you early on Saturday."

"I can read my book on the train, the children can walk about."

"The car needs a run, It hasn't had a long journey this month.  It needs a long run."

"It's a new car.  Missing one long run in its first six months will be fine."

It was a hard sell, in the end he dropped us at a station further south and no doubt had to sit on the M6 for 2 hours.

I forgot my cardigan, I meant to pack it, couldn't wear it under my coat, bag was a bit full.  I always forget what the weather is like.  I always forget it rains, all the time.  I always forget that it is SO COLD in their house because they NEVER turn the heating on.  But then that is why I owe them thousands of pounds.  

So I had to borrow my dad's cardigan.  

But I spent no money today, except a real coffee at the station because coffee shops are another indulgent reason my parents have lots of money and I have none.

Surviving half term part 4

It turns out, the best way to survive half term on a budget is to go and stay with the grandparents, where you are fed lots of food and looked after.

All you have to do is get there. Dan very generously offered me his car, deciding that if he walked from the sofa to the pub that would be sufficient for the week. The other car languishes by the side of the road waiting for pay day when it may once more drive again.

Instead, I managed to use the same London Midland "Great Escape" deal that I used to travel to London to get to Liverpool for £20. Before that we visited a local garden centre which had a soft play area for £1.50 while I met some mums for a sanity saving coffee. As they stayed for lunch we went for the train and ate packed lunch on the journey.

Today I used my underused National Trust membership to follow a real with the children. We avoided the coffee shop and gift shop. Despite the best efforts of most of the retired guides, the National Trust had really done everything to make families welcome recently. Most properties have some sort of treasure hunt and many have p lay areas and picnic areas, often close enough to a coffee shop or outdoor kiosk and close enough together to combine those activities in the most civilised fashion.


The children have been dosed up to the eyeballs with refined sugar, apples that I "don't cut properly" and pancakes that are also"better than"mine. And I slept til 9  o clock, albeit that when I woke up, there was a snoring toddler in bed beside me.  I even made some phone calls and marked some essays.

Surviving Half term part 3

On our late night return from seeing Kate Bush (see previous blogs) our train was very delayed.  As a result we were entitled to compensation.  (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/72098.aspx) As this arrived in the form of a voucher, it had to be used by travelling on the train again.

We also have a  Family and Friends railcard which costs £30 a year.
http://www.familyandfriends-railcard.co.uk/online10/?gclid=Cj0KEQiApIGnBRCFx-idn7-E2Y8BEiQAc6fQbHnSHMYbMlvC9lJ7fp-P9YTX1yu3HV1lPwMkKWW1JacaAstD8P8HAQ
There is also a 10% discount until May.
Finally, London Midland are offering vouchers for cheap train travel at certain times if you choose when you want to go.
http://www.londonmidland.com/great-escape/great-escape/

So a journey that could have cost  around £53 ended up costing £20 -  and this was paid for by the vouchers.

We went to the British Museum, which despite bearing no resemblance to Night at the Museum 3 was still considered brilliant by the children.  We were lucky with the weather and able to eat sandwiches outside the museum before we went in.  I chose the British Museum because I didn't think I was ready for the tube with three children and knew it was an easy walk.  Of course the highlight of the day was the journey.  " We're in a tunnel!" Rex declared, thrilled.  "Or are we in a time machine?" he added, disappointed that this mundane explanation seemed more likely.

Both of the older children "needed" the toilet on the train, the exact opposite of me who will go to great lengths and endure extreme thirst to avoid using the train toilet.

I thought the children had used the train quite a lot but apparently it was longer ago than I thought.  Max was extremely anxious not to miss our return train and asked me for a minute by minute countdown from the moment we got there.  As it was Shrove Tuesday, he also insisted that it was important to eat pancakes for every meal of the day.

For breakfast we ate pancakes with syrup - not too unusual, and a pre-requisite of a visit to Grandma's.  For lunch Max had ham salad on a mini tortilla wrap and for dinner I fried onions, peppers and chicken, wrapped in more wraps and baked with cheese sauce on top as a compromise.

Tesco mini tortilla wraps 10 for £1;  20 for £1.50  so 60p
Tesco sliced mixed peppers £1 for 500g so 20p
Tesco diced onions £1 for 500g so 20p
Tesco Chicken Breast Fillets £3.99 for 1kg so 50p
Tesco everyday value grated cheddar £2.50 for 500g so 50p
Tesco everyday value sweetcorn 99p for 907g so 10p

Total £2.10

To top it all we won the pub quiz,

Surviving Half Term Part 2

It was Penguins of Madagascar this morning at the cinema.  I thought this was a spin off of a sequel but it still managed to cast Benedict Cumberbatch and John Malkovich so that shows what I understand of film marketing.

We raided the Christmas sweet cupboard for treats and brought our own drinks because I cannot bring myself to pay cinema prices for snacks.  My mum told me she could not understand the modern audience's obsession with eating at every performance and this must be the only time I would allow them to have sweets at this time of day.  I think she may be right.

This afternoon the rain defeated me and we ended up at soft play for £16.  This was not in my budget, but Kettering and Northampton museums don't open on a Monday, rather like hairdresser's.  We slightly made up for this by eating packed lunch in the car, just to remind me of my childhood holidays in the Lake District and Rhyl.

Surviving half term Part 1

I realise that February 14th is only half way through the month, but our bank account is usually empty by the 5th of the month so regardless of the comparative brevity of the month, this half term has to be a cheap one.

Usually I would manage a couple of days on our own, but grandparents are poorly so all the not entertaining is down to me.

Saturday

The majority of this day is taken up with the ordinary ballet lessons and craft at the local library which seems to surpass expectations.  When I attended a meeting there I found out that the library cannot charge for the children's activities, they need to make the money from activities they provide for adults. They have to meet their monthly targets, which are then reassessed based on what they earned the previous month.  Seems a bit unfair to me, but gives me the motivation to support the activities they do provide for adults.  We finished off by trying to teach Pip, my precociously intelligent Princess; to ride her new big girl's bike.   I foolishly decided that without warm up and only exercise bike practice for the last 4 months, I could set off round the block with a small boy on the back.  Apparently he has put on more weight than even I have this winter and I didn't really feel I could do any more after that.

Sunday

Cinemas not only have their "Kids AM" (Vue) or "Movies for Juniors" (Cineworld) at the first showing of the weekends, but also on holiday mornings.  Since we never see anything when it first comes out, the children are always up to date but 3 months behind.  Determined to make the showing of Penguins of Madagascar, I bought the tickets today.  I couldn't buy them online as I wanted to use my Nectar points, so I spent £5 in Nectar points and bought the 4 tickets for £2.

In the afternoon we made dinner together and shortbread.

The recipe is my version from one from "Baking |Magic" by Kate Shirazi.  (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Magic-Series/dp/186205889X)

250g butter (Tesco value 98p)
50g sugar (Tesco £3.85 for 5kg so 39p
250g plain flour (Tesco 45p for 1.5 kg so 8p)
125g cornflour (Tesco £1.19 for 500g so 30p) Although I usually use semolina.
50g plain chocolate (Tesco 30p for 100g so 15p)

Basically butter and sugar creamed, then flour and chocolate added.  I rolled it into a sausage shape then sliced nice rounds of biscuits, which didn't quite survive the children's manipulations.
Total cost £1.90 for about 40 biscuits.  I had icing sugar, some food colour and decorations although they tasted great without.

Now we're having a late night watching Harry Potter while I do the ironing.
I did a £20 shop earlier and put £30 of fuel in the car.  But otherwise that's my first £4 day....

For whom are women's bodies?

Awkward title, and yes it did start out as "Who are women's bodies for?" but I couldn't bear to look at it.

This has been bothering me since The Sun's massive and "hilarious" page 3 joke.  They really got us there didn't they?  It was a boob-rilliant joke.  I laughed my tits off.

I have tried to justify and understand the whole page 3 thing but I really struggle to see it from any kind of feminist perspective.  You can see boobs whenever you want, if you want.  You can google them (lol).  There is real porn for free on the internet.  And there are boobs of all shapes and sizes pretty much all over the internet.  The type you might want to see if you want a cheap thrill, famous boobs, photoshopped boobs, the kind to put you off plastic surgery, the kind to reassure you and young girls that you are perfectly normal and to be honest there are plenty of men ready to tell you that all boobs are good boobs.  That is choice.  Treating women's bodies as part of the news, something any of us have a right to see at any time of day is a bit, well, weird.

I can recall earlier in my own life and in my earlier teaching career asking students to bring in newspapers - when it was still a strong possibility that they would have them at home, to analyse how the news was reported.  I used to deliberately ask students to bring in only the front page to avoid the sniggers and inappropriate comments around page 3.  I remember the cubs looking through the newspapers that used to be stored in the scout hut for recycling, searching for the page 3s.  Why should teenage girls (and younger) be made to feel so uncomfortable about their bodies, at a time when they are already self conscious?  I remember those desperate attempts to cover up as everyone else became aware that some of the girls in the class were developing more quickly than others.  I remember boys running their fingers down your spine to feel if you were wearing a bra yet.

That is not a message that we should be giving to young children.  Girls' bodies are not for display, they are only just learning to look at themselves in a new light, why should they feel like they have to show them to everyone else?  It would be impossible for boys not to see other people in that light.  We have the right to look at these boobs and we didn't even ask to, why shouldn't we look at yours?  Why won't you show me?  I remember the sixth form boy, early in my career, asking if I would wear that particular blouse out of school, without the other top underneath.

This was brought back to mind today with the news that Barrister David Osborne has blogged that it is not always rape if a woman is drunk.  I tried to google the original blog, as I don't really like judging based on only The Daily Mail's view but I was on the third page of search results and was still finding the outrage of The Telegraph, Huffington Post et al without finding it.

The fact that in this day and age, he feels he can blog this already suggests a certain disengagement from modern life but it does link to the same idea as women as product, as consumable.  They put themselves on display, what was I supposed to do y'honour?

It is as disrespectful to men as it it is to women.  I don't hear men claiming that they had to joy ride the shiny Bentley / BMW/ Nissan they passed in town, yes it was locked, but they just left it there; parked; yes I had to smash the window and the alarm went off but the car just sat there and let me sit in the driving seat.  It didn't even break my fingers when I touched its steering wheel and slid it into gear.  Eugh. Sorry.

I don't mean to get away from the point or conflate two complicated issues, I am just supporting the idea that we are w-a-y past the presentation of women as passive objects that are there to be stared at in a very everyday sense.

I can look at boobs whenever I want, I have never bought The Sun; I have choice and still haven't always managed to avoid them, so any step taken to avoid the irrelevant placing of boobs is welcome.  Breastfeeding is not an irrelevant placing of boobs btw.  But that would get me started on Farage and that's for another blog.

Fuzzy bee logic

In my current work, I frequently support teachers who have had issues with their head teachers.  One of my recent cases was a female teacher who is in a position of authority.  Her headteacher had challenged her over the difficulty of her job, had questioned her over her level of commitment, had actually asked the question "What does your husband do?", and wondered what time she arrived in the mornings.

Oh yes, and it was a female headteacher.

According to some psychologists or business gurus this is the Queen Bee theory - that women don't help out other women, that we prefer to work with other men and have little sympathy for the problems other women experience in the work place.

It is easy to find cases to support this, they tend to be anecdotal and perhaps we have fewer examples with which to compare.  Perhaps women are still more comfortable asking the questions which have been accepted as unacceptable and sexist.  Everyday sexism (http://everydaysexism.com) reminds us of plenty of contemporary examples and anyone my age seems to be able to compare memories that were acceptable in the 80s...maybe...eugh.

Anecdotally, I can report very few problems with any of my female bosses, many of whom have surrounded themselves with other women,  although the field of education is more or less 50:50 male : female and perhaps not representative of the wider world of business.

I wonder if it isn't women bosses that are the problem, but sometimes bosses in general.  What does it take to get to the top in whatever field you work?  Many people who are in charge have got there because of an absolute faith in themselves, their own ability and what they believe is right.  That's kind of inevitable isn't it?  If you prevaricate and procrastinate, considering both sides of the argument and worrying about whether you made the right decision , then you are probably a lot less decisive and probably move a lot less quickly than if you trust in your own judgement and don't feel the need to widely consult.If that were the case, then you wouldn't have a great deal of regard for anyone else's way of doing anything.  If you have succeeded, if you have done things your way and it has worked then you do not always respect anyone else's life choices or even understand why anyone would not want to achieve what you have achieved.

This attitude seems also to exist in some middle class politicians attitudes to working class communities.  About a year ago, David Willetts was engaged in a debate about white working class boys and their failure to thrive in our comprehensive system.  People like me and some of the boys I have taught over the years do not see ourselves reflected in the political class, or for that matter the City and its working residents.  They don't even always respect what they do; we've all read about those thieving expense and libor fiddlers.  It's better to be happy.  Getting a good job - like in the public sector - is more sensible, especially if you don't have family money to fall back on.  No one we know is in those trades, nor can they provide us with work experience in the long summer holidays from independent school.

So if you are in a job that you enjoy and have got to the top, it is hard to see why others can't do it.  They must be too lazy or distracted or unfocused.  I have only gone for promotions when I have got closer to those positions and realised that the job isn't quite what I thought it was, or that the people who are doing it are not super human, or have simply realised that the person immediately above me is working less hard than me and getting paid more for it.

Back to the unsympathetic female bosses; they shouldn't only be promoting other women.  They shouldn't be criticising other women for doing things in a different way, and as I have discussed here many times; things won't change until we accept that parents may have to work differently, and everyone should be working differently and it is no more acceptable for a man than a woman to work until way past his or her baby daughter's bathtime or the time that they could be helping to feed a confused or elderly parent.

We are still trying to balance a situation that has been continuing for a very long time.  It took a very long time and a great deal of technology before people could claim that men running with no legs could be at an unfair advantage in a sprint. The originators of that competition did not set up the race fairly in the first instance, so why shouldn't women be given a leg up against this unfair backdrop?  At first, runners without legs competed in events against one another and that is starting to change.