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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
