RED ED

When Cameron runs out of ideas, he falls back on personal insults. Red Ed, my foot.  Find a better one, Dave.

   To begin with, what's wrong with being Marxist? I'd like to know. Now all of us from Kerala have first hand knowledge of both sides of Marxism, Naxalbaris, Indira Congress and everything in between, that silly Pinarayi included. Marxism has always been a well-meaning philosophy if you separate it from the methodologies attached to it. Remove the 'End justifies the means,' for instance and you can tell Soviet Russia where to get off. It's been done, I hear. By Gorbachev, was it, or did they do it all by themselves?

   Wasn't it Harold Laski who said that Jesus Christ was the first ever Communist? From each according to his means, to each according to his need. What's wrong with that? I think Christianity talks of a tithe. Either will do. C'mon Dave - tax those big businesses, discuss their tax status when they come to lunch at Downing Street like the CEO of Google did. The lot of them - McDonald's, Google, Microsoft... Watch them. See who is stealing from the people of the United Kingdom, stealing the food out of their mouths, the rooms out of their shelter.

   I know that you collude with them, Dave, because of the bedroom tax (but not the Mansion Tax), the wiping off of benefits, but not the bank bonuses. Dave, what do you think you are there for? Power an end in itself? No-no.no. You are there representing the people, all of us, not just the conservatives. And not just big business and the rich. So, please. get off your back-side and attend to the country. Forget you majored in Public Relations. Or you will end up on your backside come 1915 and I shall enjoy the spectacle.

   Ed nudged Labour a little to the left within sight of the poor of this country who can't afford their fuel bills or shoes for their children. He warms the cockles of my ageing heart. (whatever cockles are.) So what do you do? You nudge your party a little to the right. Now the battle is joined for 2015, eh? 

   Will you also team up with UKIP without quite mentioning it? I hear you are against it. Let's see if you'll stay that way when Ed pulls away in the polls.

   My provenance? Definitely Labour. So's you know. There used to be a decent country here, but the money-men and the so-called entrepreneurs, have ruined it. Now we have Rip-Off Britain instead. You can't trust anyone. Pity!

   Have I done mouthing off? Almost. Except for what you have done to the Liberals. Maybe they did it to themselves too. That abrogation of simple humanity.

   

An Inward Look - The Landscape of the Old.

There is a word that I cannot mention in front of my grand daughter, Asha, recently. It is old - old as in ageing. She has somehow gathered that old people tend to die sooner than others. It is my daughter's fault, I think. Someone recently died and all Asha asked was, 'Was he sick, Mum?' And instead of firmly saying yes, my daughter says, 'Not really. I think he was just old.' Now Asha is worried that I have grey hair and am clearly old. I had to promise that I will never, ever, die. Oh, boy! What a sentence.

   And that is why I have been a little remiss about my blogging. All this inward looking is not healthy for me, I think, indeed all this thinking might be disastrous as well. But the next few blogs will be about me and people of a similar age. Mind you, all the blogs are really about me, aren't they?

   I must admit, I have never enjoyed a phase of my life as much as I do this phase, this twilight time. Definitely old, definitely grey, and definitely senility approaching furtively.

   Then again, why am I so contended? If I have a recipe others like me can benefit too. I think my writing and reading have a lot to do with it. But it does not have to be writing or reading. My gardening makes me even happier. Recently I have wondered whether I should pick up embroidery again; something I last did in 1957, making a handkerchief for a reluctant paramour. He returned it to me very quickly without comment. You think there might have been a message there?

   Anything creative will do, I think. Once upon a time I thought that hobbies had to be started and cultivated over many years, like emotional investments, and you reaped the benefit as you grow older. My reading sustains me, but what if the habit had not been cultivated into an addiction by now? And what if all the indifferent writing and the sneering from agents had made me think writing was not for me?

     The point is: and this is a very important point- you don't have to be good. You just have to be enthusiastic. So, I consider, what are the pastimes you can start in old age and enjoy without having to wear out that arthritic knee or that dubious hearing? There is that magic world - the WEB. Here an old person can travel, research interesting ideas or just the sick life of celebrities, they can keep up with the new discoveries or the old histories. The possibilities are endless.

     The clan, our children, have a strong influence, negative or positive, on the state of our minds in old age. This merits another blog, but beware of role-reversal. I know a few parents who are dreadfully scared of their sons or daughters. When that happens a quick exit is indicated, preferably to another continent.

     I think I will dwell on this theme in my next blog. In the meantime, it is worth considering, not intensely, but off and on, in the late hours of the night or early hours of the morning, if you are insomniac like a great many old people. Needs to be thought through to a logical conclusion.

Learning and Schools

Yesterday I met up with Chris and Val after many months. People in London and around are so busy speeding to their destined ends that we do not notice our days furtively slipping by.That includes me.

   We got talking about education as is inevitable when three teacher-educators get together. Good Gove was mentioned in passing - we can't really do much to stop him from his headlong descent into learning chaos and elitism, but there you are. Everybody wants to reform education but they fail to take notice of the advice of the people in education: the teachers, the teacher-trainers, the lecturers,  And the end-user, as they so glibly call it in Aid circles; the parent and the student don't count at all. 

   The employers are consulted but each employer knows only what his particular field needs, not what the learner needs. A little like the elephant and the blind men. In India there is a mad drive in industry to learn Chinese, for obvious reasons. There is some leaning towards Arabic as well.  Let's say no more. Here in the UK it is all about applications to a particular industry rather than concepts that can lend themselves to further learning and development.

   A few parents are taking children out of school to educate at home. I can see why. EDUCATION can do a lot of damage to a child, the kind of damage to their ego, self-confidence and self-perception that only daily personal attacks can achieve. What's the point of a grade C in Maths if it comes to a damaged individual.

   Learning in schools: do we learn how to treat those more vulnerable than we are? Do we practise listening to elders and peers and sifting the good out of the bad advice? Do we learn any practical skills like putting a flat-pack together or indeed a broken person together?

   So what do I mean by education? It is about the end product: A caring, reflective and compassionate individual. A person who knows why fiddling your tax is wrong and why being homeless is an unfortunate condition, not a crime. Learning to live should be a joint endeavour, family and school working together, rather than drawing boundary lines.

   Maths and English and the rest of the school curriculum? We have to be a little more selective about what we put in the core curriculum. When I was teaching a comprehensive school I remember thinking that it was extremely time wasting to teach children Topology when they would probably never look at it again. But I had no choice for that particular group.

   I object to exams as a measure of what children have achieved- it tells you what they don't know, not what they know. Waste of time a great deal of the time.

   

   

Robin gave up on Batman

The poodle got away from the lead. My son keeps going around the house saying, 'Tonto has left the Lone Ranger.' He is happy; so am I.

   Like the historian, Sir Matt Hastings, said on the T V interview yesterday, I also hate that phrase, special relationship. It is meaningless, as in empty. The USA makes no concessions to any country where their interests are involved. Consider the history of extraditions - mostly one way.

   Consider also the sharing of intelligence. We get what they throw away, what the Sun or Daily Mirror has already published, with more detail. They do not consult us before they bomb Tripoli or engage in a long war with Vietnam. I don't even think they have to. Their mistakes are theirs.

   AND - if North Korea can get away with blue murder, literally, and the American conscience is  not agitated - Mr Kerry, what is more special about Syria?

   Now I must admit I think Kerry will make a wonderful president. I like him. He toiled and travelled ceaselessly until he got the Arabs and Israelis to talk to each other. What an achievement!  Take note, Mrs Clinton. When Kerry speaks at the podium in Washington, he makes sense. I hope he will be the next Democratic President. I loved the way he told UK off yesterday - the substance and the words were apt. Necessary and Sufficient as they say in Maths proofs.

   But we are a very small nation. There are States in India who have more people in it than the United Kingdom. 'Punching above our weight,' they say. Well, stop. Old men sitting round a table and calling themselves The National Security Council should not send young men and women off to die in distant hells.

   Every time another man or woman dies in Helman or in some other foreign killing field, a family is devastated; an endless grief for an unnecessary war. I note that in the Security meeting in Downing street there seemed to be only two women: Justine Greening and Theresa May. I think women will hesitate longer before they order sons, family and lovers to war.

   The Arab world is capable of solving their problems if only we could take our hands off that incandescent area. Sunnis and Shias can talk to each other if they want to live in peace. Let's send medicines and food to Syria, not armaments and soldiers.

   I am convinced like Mr Obama that the Syrian Government and their army are together responsible for the chemical weapons unleashed in Syria. But the response should not destroy more people and places. Above all, the UK should learn from its mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

   For now, we are in a good place. My son has now changed what he says. 'Tonto is now dead,' is the message going around in my house. Thank God!.

The Disabled

With the anniversary of the London Olympics this month, the disabled have front-row voices again. The Olympics made me proud of the way this country has regarded its disabled. For a few days all of us forgot that anyone was disabled. They looked so capable of soaring to heights of all kinds of achievement. Their self-possession was amazing. 

     In the succeeding months, slowly, they went out of centre stage. On TV, occasionally, there were murmurs: difficulty of access, public perception, employment - these were unsatisfactory . It seemed the euphoria was quietly ebbing away.

     I think I am a little disabled myself when I am faced with the three flights of steep stairs at a railway station or the vast gap between train and platform I have to negotiate sometimes when I arrive at East Croydon. Well, age is a kind of disability, I think,  though it is not comparable to genuine handicaps: not being able to see, to hear, to walk at all without crutches, or live in a wheelchair all your life. Still, I begin to appreciate the problems faced by the less -abled in our society.

     I cannot these days forget that tattered man who carries himself round the streets of Kochi on a floor level plank, to which he has fixed little wheels. Another has not even that option: he drags himself on his backside, using his hands to propel himself along. The people on the streets toss them coins, but that is as far as it goes. We take our shopping home and forget about them.

     In the orphanages where the disabled orphans live in Kerala there is hardly any specialist help. A kind doctor might spare some of his/ her time, but she has a full time job. No one is paying that doctor to look after those epileptic young men and women at the orphanage. There is barely enough food for the children and their carers. They live on donations, which come haphazardly.

     India is tardy organising itself for the care of its disabled. After all what is the point of exceptional GDP growth if there is no growth in social awareness?

     Compared to the situation in parts of India, the disabled in the United Kingdom are well-catered for. But what they want is to be able to look after themselves, to be employed, to be self sufficient, to have places to stay where they are comfortable, where they have access to friendship and to love. They want the things that you and I take for granted.

      They need entertainment and sport, not just for the few but for all. They need Society to cater for their special needs and treat them with respect.

     We still have some way to go.



     

Volda`

I travelled to Alesund as further North was too expensive, even on Norwegian Air. Everything is that bit more expensive in Norway. I was headed for Volda, where my friend, Lila, lives with her husband, dog, huge cat and arthritis.

   Lila picked me up and drove the 2 hours to Volda. I didn't mind the drive or the ferry; I wasn't thinking , how much further? as I do when I do road trips in India. Relatively flatland in the South gave way to mountains, and the fjords on either side were grey-blue and calm. The wooden houses perched on the hill side defied gravity and were scattered far apart.

   The rhododendrons were still in flower and had reached that blousy stage when the petals are about to drop. By the end of the week when I left, they were all gone. But in my garden in England they were long gone, having flowered a little late in June and disappeared at the first sign of warm weather.

   Norway was 12-15 degrees a lot of the time. Very occasionally it got up to 20 degrees, but the light never quite faded in the night. The dog and the cat decided I was harmless, probably a sucker for them and quietly invaded my room and then my bed. The people smiled when they saw you and there was no turning away or looking through. I was at home there; if I knew Norwegian I would not have stopped talking.

   I had a few arguments with my computer just before I left; I had lost all my e mail - 550+ of them -  in one hacking event. Norway reminded me to get my priorities right. E mails, who needs them? I can do without. Hackers - do you want the rest? It's all silly stuff, not the kind that has any lasting impact on anybody, even me.

  Switzerland was picture postcard pretty in my memory from long ago. But Norway was breath taking. The mountains lifting their peaks above drifting clouds, the glaciers now frozen but threatening, the rocks and boulders on either side of the road as you drove through the valley reminding you of how little you are - it was all majestic.

   I am back in England now, ready for the fray. Cleansed out and hopeful.

The English Language

There are some words, fairly recent adhesions to the English language that  really get me going. They touch a nerve and start serious discomfort.

   Girl children? Did we not have a perfectly good word for that since long ago? Are they not girls any more when Aid agencies begin talking about them in connection with inequalities in educational access or Female Genital Mutilation  (FGM is too antiseptic a word to describe this particular horror - let us call it by its real name. This is only for females and it is genital and what happens is horrendous chopping up that some times kills them and leaves them forever handicapped. Sexually. I once asked an African man, an educated one in Malawi about it , and he said, 'If they get pleasure out of sex, they will be rampant. We won't be able to control them.' But then the same man told me his wife was 'loaded, when she became pregnant. I've still to get over that, nausea included.

   And - come to think of it - why does nobody talk of boy children in this connection or any other? So boys remain boys till they become men and we girls have a holding place till we become women. Like purgatory. Ah well!

   Mind you - the boy word has its own indignities connected to it if you have ever lived in Africa as an expatriate. In South Africa all African men were boys irrespective of their age. 'Boy!' the white bwana shouted and the ageing steward actually limped in to answer that command. All over Africa, North and South, this word was copied by many expatriates. 

   And in sport, I have noticed, the men are all 'boys' even if they are at the fag end of their sporting lives, Tendulkar, Steven Gerrard, those huge forbidding Rugby players that look like mountains - all boys.

Back to my favourite language: My writing group once said to me that we should , each of us, have a writing buddy. Buddy? Thank you, no. A writing partner, yes. But buddy I can do without. As I said, it makes me itch.

Then there are the nouns that have become verbs. Now you can access something on the phone or computer. Maybe even gain access? How many of these are we letting in? Soon I shall have serious confusions if I try to 'parse' a sentence. (That's a childhood pastime that has vanished.) The nuns insisted you had to find the verb and the subject pretty quickly, or else you were lost.

   I guess that is enough of a moan for a day about things most people take no notice of. It's me from another century being cantankerous as the old are expected to be.