Wimps and Tyrants

My infant school teacher, Miss Osborne, was nice enough. Plump and pretty, although a little bit wimpish. One playtime, as we were all lined up ready to go into class, she was stung on the neck by a wasp and screamed so loudly that all us little children burst into tears. It didn’t help that after the initial ear piercing scream Miss Osborne ran around the playground flapping her arms in the air and crying hysterically. We were all shocked and scared and, worryingly, I don’t recall ever seeing her again after this incident. Maybe she was ashamed of causing us all trauma and was too embarrassed to face us again or maybe she died of anaphylactic shock.
Female primary school teachers in those days were either wimps or tyrants. Lots of them seemed to burst into tears for no real reason. Miss Ramsbottom, another infant teacher cried more than any of the children in her class and another tearful teacher (this time in the juniors) actually ran out of the class crying and we all had to write her a letter of apology. 'Sorry Miss for making you cry. We won't do it again'.

There were more wimps than tyrants but in my final year at Junior school we had the tyrant of all tyrants…Miss R.

Miss R was in her late sixties (or maybe even her seventies) and she was a spinster with whiskers. She would sit at her desk with her legs apart giving everyone a view of the contraptions she used as underwear and the elastic bands holding up her stockings. It looked like she had some experiment going on between her legs with pulleys and straps. The elastic bands must have caused her a great deal of discomfort which may explain her pinched expression. Miss R wore tweed skirts and lace up brown brogues. In fact she was a caricature of a scary, grumpy old teacher. She would pinch and shake us and use the ruler for any minor infraction. Miss R was a stickler for neat hand writing, saying our prayers and selling us charity stamps, that when stuck onto a card the card, when filled, would buy us a little African child that we could then name. The child (you had a choice of boy or girl) naturally remained in Africa but he/she had the good fortune to be sponsored by a 10 year old in the UK who forsake their sweets for the sake of a stamp. I only ever managed to complete one card (not because sweets were more important to me, but because my mum was on a tight budget, so tight that pennies really did need to take care of themselves) and named my little African baby ‘Adrienne’ which was my favourite name at the time.


There were a couple of male teachers who didn’t fall into either camp. On the whole the male teachers were interesting, fun and able to control, with ease, a class of thirty children. Mr C and Mr L, both big Irish men with a sense of humour and an excellent control of their tear ducts were my favourites. Primary School would be a much better place if it wasn’t dominated by women.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/12/primary-schools-male-teachers

'Man is remembered by his deeds'. Knute Nelson

When did the term 'do-gooder' become an insult? I imagine almost immediately if the programme 'Ian Hislop's Age of Do Gooders' is anything to go by:

http://channelhopping.onthebox.com/2010/11/29/ian-hislops-age-of-do-gooders-review-have-i-got-do-gooders-for-you/

This was a very interesting and informative programme and well worth watching.

As do-gooders go Wilberforce is a good one to start with and known to most of us because of his work to abolish slavery but how many of us outside the worlds education and medicine know about Robert Owen or Thomas Wakely. I suspect the term 'bloody do-gooder' was used to describe Owen by the women whose homes he demanded be inspected for cleanliness. But how ahead of the time was his vision for education? And Wakely? The Lancet was the blog of its day, anonymous and revealing.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-owen.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wakley

Octavia Hill would certainly fit in with the coalition government 2010. 'We have made many mistakes with our alms: eaten out the heart of the independent, bolstered up the drunkard in his indulgence, subsidised wages, discouraged thrift, assumed that many of the most ordinary wants of a working man's family must be met by our wretched and intermittent doles.'

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/octavia_hill.htm

Hill, like Owen, set up inspections of tenants housekeeping skills. It seems working class women of those times were a dirty lot, lacking the luxury of washing machines (or, in some cases, running water) vacuums, electricity, Domestos or maids. But unlike Owen Hills inspectors and rent collectors were female. These 'Hills Angels' gave advice to the women they collected rent from and, as Hislop observed, acted as early social workers.

I look forward to the rest of this series and it was good to see Hislop out of his HIGNFY seat although without the studio makeup his complexion is not a pretty sight. Heaven knows what it looks like in high definition. Last week at a friends house I had the misfortune to see Simon Cowell in all his high definition glory and it's not a pretty sight.

Before 'Do Gooders' I caught Miranda Harts sitcom 'Miranda'. I have seen the trailers for this but never managed to see it until this evening. I like Ms Hart. And I think this sitcom will grow on me. Mondays are looking good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_(TV_series)

Sins of the father

It must have been a very bad time for my parents, trapped in a marriage neither of them wanted, trapped into parenthood before either of them were ready for it. This was the time before the pill, before the sexual revolution and at a time when the expectation was (for the working classes at least) that you left school, got a job and got married. Once married you had babies and stayed married until one of you died and released you from the life sentence.


My parents stayed married for around 12 years. Most of those years were spend in a bubble of shouting, screaming, breaking furniture and the occasional spilling of blood, on both sides. I never saw my dad actually hit my mum but on one occasion, in a terrible argument, he threw a tin of Johnson’s baby powder at her. It hit her in the face and caused a deep gash near her one of her eyes. Pandemonium broke out as, what seemed like a torrent of blood, squirted from the wound, covering the furniture and my sister’s push chair, which had to be replaced. My mum must have run out of the flat because my next memory is of my dad on his hands and knees sobbing. Shortly afterwards my mum and I walked the short walk to St Thomas’ hospital so she could have the injury medically taken care off. This must have been around Christmas (’67) and the nurses were taking the decorations down and they gave me lots of angels and stars to play with. My mum had to wear an eye patch for weeks and then have some plastic surgery. The scar is still visible today – if you look closely enough.

The scars my husband gave me are fading too. The physical ones anyway. I have a feeling the mental ones will never fade. On the bright side they remind me of some of the lessons I had to learn. On the dark side they reiterate what my mum told me as I was growing up and that we all get what we deserve.

It took me a long time to get the image of my dad on his knees sobbing out of my mind. Up until that point I thought he was the strongest person in the world and I was scared by his reaction. Scared and convinced of his remorse. I knew this demonstration of remorse was important somehow and related it back to my mum, begging her to forgive him. She did. And it went a long way in making me forgive my husband when he cried and begged forgiveness for the injuries he caused me. It’s just what grown ups do isn’t it? Hurt each other and forgive each other.

I was a nightmare child. Clingy. Demanding. Petulant. I know these thing not only because this is what I have been told ‘we had to tie you in your cot because you just wouldn’t stay there’ and ‘I even had to take you to the toilet with me, you never gave me a minutes peace’ but because I can remember being clingy. I would wake up in the night and scream because I saw ghosts on the bedrooms walls, demanding that my mum held my hand until I fell asleep. I remember being in Ireland and worried that I would be left there, in that cold house, with those people who made my life hell, that my mum would return to England without me. So I used to scream and cry when she left the room. This did not make me popular.

Being popular for a child is pretty important. I was immensely relieved to hear my grandson’s teacher describe him as being a ‘valued and popular member of the class’. I did not become popular until I was in the 4th year (what is now Year 6). That was the year that I had my first proper hair cut. I can remember sitting in the hairdressers chair watching as my long lank hair was transformed with each snip into shiny, bouncy layers that framed my face – a face which now looked pretty. When I arrived at school the next day I was suddenly the most popular girl in school. All the girls said they loved my hair and, strangely, now all the boys wanted to talk to me and tease me. Prior to that ‘Feather Cut’ I had been invisible. That year also saw ‘hot pants’ become the coolest fashion item around and when I wore them on school journey I had several boys vying for my attention. A few months ago one of those boys (now a 50 year old Born Again Christian) gave me a copy of the photograph taken on that school journey. Thirty of us kids sat on the beach, dressed up in our Sunday best and there I am, hair feathered, wearing my hotpants (how I wish it was a colour photograph, they were purple Lurex) and wearing a huge smile.

My friend Kitty, who I met at secondary school later that year, says that my haircut was the reason she approached me in those first weeks at the new school. Kitty claims that she came up to me and asked me where I had gotten my hair cut. ‘Oh...my hair?’ I allegedly replied ‘it just grows this way’. Thinking about it now this wasn’t the lie Kitty thinks it was. If I had it cut before the school journey of 1971 it must have been cut in the spring of that year. So when I started secondary school in September it would have been months since the visit to the hairdressers and my hair would have grown considerably. So I was right when I said ‘it just grows this way’. I will have to remind her of this

Domestic Bliss

‘I see Helena Bonham Carter has signed herself up for parenting classes’ I told my daughter.

‘Who’s she?’

‘You know, that posh Gothic looking actress, has a role in the Harry Potter films’


‘Oh, who does she play? Mrs Weasley?’


‘No, I can’t remember exactly who, Draco’s mum? Anyway she is a baddie in the films’

‘No, I don’t know who you mean’.

‘Yes, you do. She played a monkey in the film ‘Planet of the Apes’ and is sort of married to some director and is usually in films with Johnny Depp.’

My daughter’s ears prick up at the mention of Depp. ‘Hmmm, I think I know who you mean.’

‘Anyway she and her 'domestic partner' (wiki's words not mine) apparently live in separate houses next door to each other. Isn’t that civilised? That must be the secret of a happy 'almost marriage’. And how sensible is she to want to take parenting classes?’ I reached for the remote control and switched on the TV. A comedy sketch show was on, featuring impressionists. And who were they impersonating at that very moment? None other that Helena Bonham Carter and her husband Tim Burton!

There's more - we switched over and 'The Corpse Bride' was showing. This dark animation, directed by Burton, features the voices of Bonham and Depp.

There’s even more –  later that evening deciding what to watch we came across ‘Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’  the musical, starring, yes you’ve guessed it, Helen Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp (whose singing voice is obviously modelled on David Bowie’s, during Bowie’s ‘Anthony Newly’ stage of course). The film is directed by….Tim Burton. Spooky!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Bonham_Carter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney_Todd:_The_Demon_Barber_of_Fleet_Street_(2007_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpse_Bride

http://www.showbizspy.com/article/219016/helena-bonham-carter-admits-she-needs-parenting-classes-to-help-her-become-a-better-mom.html

They are certainly an unusual couple. Three years ago Helena, in an interview with Playboy magazine said the following:

The household of Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter is outfitted for Christmas – just not in the traditional manner.

"He (Burton) decorates it with dead babies and slime balls and things," Carter, 41, tells Playboy magazine in its January issue, about trimming the tree with boyfriend (of six years) Burton, 49. "It looks lovely and glittery from afar, and then as you get closer, you realize it's rather gory."
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, Carter, who stars with Johnny Depp in Burton's new movie musical Sweeney Todd, says, "We're not that dark. What I love about Tim is that he retains a certain innocence and a childlike quality. He sort of forgot to grow up. I think I've definitely forgotten to grow up, which is great."
Carter, who in 2003 gave birth to the couple's son Billy Ray – and is expecting their second child later this month – adds with a laugh, "At some point, [Billy] will probably want parents. He'll have to look elsewhere."Of their life at home life, where she and Burton share separate, yet attached, houses, Carter says: "Mine looks like Beatrix Potter. ... He has dead Oompa-Loompas around and multicolored fiberglass alien lamps. But then he has some nice red-button sofas from Sleepy Hollow. So it's a funny and good mix."
 
A newspaper had to print an apology earlier this year for saying the family lived in three connecting, but separate, houses. Burton in one, Carter in another and the children and their nanny in a third. The writer of the piece described this arrangement as 'chilling'. Certainly I would agree that three houses in which to house one small family is a bit extreme but if you can afford two connecting houses that sounds like heaven. Both Burton and Carter have their own tastes on interior design and both value their own 'space'.


'We haven't got a passageway [connecting the two homes] - we've just got a room ...between the two. And to me it makes complete sense: if you've got some money, and you can afford it, why not have your own space? It really is a great idea. You never have to compromise emotionally or feel invaded....I'm surprised when people find it weird, to be honest. It's not even that separate, really - it just looks like a quite big, strange house. And there's a sense of choice about things - you see each other when you want to.'

I am not sure what she means by 'compromise emotionally' and that by having your own space means never having to do it. If only it was that simple.

It seems Carter was very upset by the allegation that the children were housed in a 'unit' with just a nanny, and felt this painted her as a bad mother. Maybe this had something to do with her decision to take parenting classes. Or maybe Billy and Nell have reached the stage were they want grown ups as parents.

As a parent said to me this week, talking about his Autistic son, 'N is my teacher. I take my lead from him'.

Memories

We were not allowed to have a bath. You would think that having moved into a flat which not only had an indoor toilet but also boasted a separate bathroom we would have been allowed to use this wonderous thing. The flat we had lived in previously didn’t have such luxury. There we had to share the outside toilet with the other families on the landing and it did not have a bathroom. The flat only had two rooms, a living room with a scullery and a bedroom. The flat we moved to was on the forth floor of a block and Mum made the bathroom out of bounds the minute we moved in by filling the bath with soiled nappies (my sisters, not mine). Once a week she would take us to the local baths where you paid a couple of pennies for the use of hot water and a bath. This was not in Victorian or Edwardian times, but in the Swinging Sixties. My mum might have been worried about the cost of taking baths at home although I don’t think we were exactly poor. Certainly working class but not poor. My Dad had a good job in a factory and my mum always had nice new clothes. I think she worked once, for a couple of weeks, in a sausage factory. Nonetheless we were never allowed to have a bath, instead we had to have a ‘wash down’. I was only allowed to wash my hair once a week and even then I was only allowed to use half a sachet of shampoo. Conditioner hadn’t been invented, and even if it had been I would never have been allowed to use it. My mum only bought red Lifebuoy soap, Signal toothpaste and black hair dye. These were the only items, along with my dads razor, in the bathroom cabinet. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I rebelled and took a bath every night and washed my hair (unless I was having a period, as apparently you risked death by washing your hair at that time of the month). I was a very smelly child. And I wore National Health glasses. It is a wonder I had any friends.


My mum didn’t like cooking either. So if she had to cook it would be done grudgingly so that bits would be burnt, other bits would be raw and all of it was unappetising. The fridge was always empty – apart from a pint of milk. When I met my friend Kitty I was amazed to see the inside of her mum’s fridge, filled with cheeses, cold meats (in Tupperware! So posh), salads and soft drinks. It was a relief when my dad left and mum gave up cooking. The Chippie provided for my dietary needs.

My mum was very fussy about housework but not at all concerned about home comforts. The carpets were threadbare and the furniture had seen better days. Even when she could afford it mum would never spend money on things for the home. I was always embarrassed about asking friends home. They lived in homes with fitted carpets and G Plan furniture. My room in the flat near Lambeth Walk was empty except for a bed. My baby sister must have been in my mum and dads room. I don’t remember any toys and certainly no books. But I must have had toys. There is a photograph of me with a lot of dolls but this was taken at my Nan’s home so I suspect that was where my toys were. I did have a special doll, Bella, that must have lived with me because I would have been inconsolable without her. My Nan used to make her the most wonderful outfits. When I was 7 we moved to a flat in a tower block and I remember I had toys there. I had an Etch-a-Sketch and Spirograph which I loved. I never had a Sindy (too expensive) but I did have a Tressy doll. I also had a Silver Cross dolls pram (must have been a gift from my grandparent) before we moved but my Dad used it to move some items to the new flat and it broke under the weight. I know I was mortified.

My Mum and I spent one Christmas in Ireland when I was about 11. On Christmas day I didn't have any presents to open as they were all in London (as was my Dad). No one thought to buy me anything to open on the day itself and I remember watching my cousins excitingly opening their gifts and one of them allowing me to have a go on the Spacehopper that Santa had delivered. When I got home I was given my present, a Lilliput typewriter which I loved. But by the end of the week it had been hurled across the room and smashed to bits by my dad who had got annoyed by the tap tap tapping noise it made as I typed. My next door neighbour Jeanie had been given a typewriter too (the more expensive Petite Typewriter) and she used to let me have a go on hers until we fell out when she stole my Tressy.

My Nan used to buy me colouring pencils, magic markers, pads of paper and I loved staying with her because she played with me. She loved Scrabble and we would spend hours playing this, it was the travel version (Travel Scrabble) so it even came on holiday with us. My grandparents took me to the South Coast, Dorset and the Isle of Wight. My Nan would cook me tasty meals, my Grandad would take me everywhere with him. Every Friday night the 'Evening News' would publish a ramble and each weekend grandad would cut it out and we would walk it that weekend. My main memory of him is walking with him in bluebell woods singing 'Ive Got Sixpence' http://www.retro-lyrics.com/lyrics/ive-got-six-pence-lyrics-364.html and I don’t remember them ever shouting at me and they certainly never smacked me.

My Dad would play cards with me now and again. He would always play to win and would get very angry if I won a hand, which hardly ever happened as he was an excellent player and I wanted him to love me.

When I was 6 I asked if I could go to school on my own and my parents said ‘yes’. The journey was about a mile and took me across two main roads and a few less busy ones. Maybe they were looking rid of me. I used to go to the shops to buy dads paper when I was 5. On the way back I would walk along pretending to read it so that passers by would be impressed - 'look at that little girl reading the paper - she must be a genius'! When I was twelve I took over cooking Sunday dinner (the Chippie closed on Sundays). My mum would have had me up chimneys if London wasn't a smoke free zone.

Although my dad had a car I don’t remember ever being in it with him. Not surprisingly as he had a Bubble Car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_car. This gave way to a Ford Zodiac  which I had to spend ages at the window to make sure no one nicked it. The only time I remember being in a car with him is after he and mum had split up and he took me to Southend in a beautiful blue Ford Cortina.


The toiletless flat was next to the factory where my dad worked. I used to see him as me and mum walked back from the shops and I loved the smell of sawdust and how kind his workmates were to me. I used to pick a pretty white flower (bineweed!) that grew on the fences surrounding the bombsites to give him. The firm used to give the children of its workers the most wonderful Christmas parties with lots of food and Santa would bring us amazing presents. One year they thought I was a boy (having a unisex name) and I got a tool kit. But the best thing was they would take us to the London Palladium to watch the pantomime. My mum came one year and embarrassed me by screaming ‘Malcolm I love you’ when the singer Malcolm Roberts came on stage in the 1971 production of Cinderella.

It is shocking that I never had any books. The only one I can remember is ‘Kittens with Mittens’ which I think belonged to my sister. When we moved to the flat in the tower block I joined the library and a whole new world opened up for me. A world of Hans Christian Anderson and Enid Blyton. I used to love going to that library. The children’s area was in the basement and was my favourite place to be. In fact I was exactly like Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’. And my mum and dad weren't very different to hers either.

Why am I sharing all this? Well kids, you aren't interested in this stuff now but one day you will be. I am going to ask my mum to talk to me about her childhood. She never has very much to say about it but I want to know what her home was like, what she was like in school, what her relationship with her parents was like and how things changed when her mother died. My mum was just 6 when her mum died and left a family of four children, my mum the youngest, with their father. Maybe that is why she struggled as a parent.

My mum came to England to be bridesmaid for her oldest sister and she never went back 'home' to live. She met my dad and they married. She was 23 and he was a mere 20. When I asked her why she married him (having been told she had never loved him) she said 'I fell in love with his mum and dad.'

10 months after they married I came into their life and for my mum this meant life was over. She hated being a parent, saw me as the reason she was trapped and spent the next 17 years telling me she hated me, I was stupid, ugly and that she tried to abort me but chickened out at the last minute. Abortions in 1960 were illegal and very risky and I know she tried drinking lots of gin in order to go through with it but it didn't numb her enough to put herself in the hands of back street abortionist. 'I wish you were dead' was the mantra of my childhood.

Even in my darkest moments I am always glad she failed.

I would have loved to have grown up in a proper house. With a garden. In a proper family. I would have loved to have had a pink bedroom filled with books and games and toys. I would have loved to have come home from school and be greeted by the smell of home cooking, to a mummy who smiled sometimes, kissed my cheek, and was happy to see me. I would have loved to chat to her about my day, show her my homework, be told how clever I was. How pretty. I would have loved to have been run a bubble bath (Matey) and told to make sure I washed behind my ears. I would have loved a dad who took the time to talk to me,  to sit me on his knee and read to me. I would have loved to have got through one day without being hit, without shedding tears.

'When I was Seventeen' http://www.top40db.net/Lyrics/?SongID=73059 I ran away from home and from everything I had ever known. Well everything except the being hit and shedding tears bit.

Maxims

Living by the rules is not always easy. Living by maxims can be even more of a challenge. Take these, favoured by George V:


Teach me to be obedient to the rules of the game.

Teach me to distinguish between sentiment and sentimentality admiring the one and despising the other.

Teach me neither to proffer nor receive cheap praise.

If I am called upon to suffer, let me be like a well bred beast that goes away to suffer in silence.

Teach me to win, if I may; if I may not win, then above all teach me to be a good loser.

Teach me neither to cry for the moon nor over spilt milk.


Some maxims, like these for 'manhood' are a lot easier to adhere to:


Your dog must be larger than a toaster.

Tip well.

Never use the word 'blossom.'

Outperform the GPS.

Always hold the door.

Never use emoticons


Then there are maxims that, if taken note of, will help you get by in this harsh and demanding world:


If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

He who hesitates is probably right.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.

Two wrongs are only the beginning.


Maxims for women:


Don't sweat the small stuff.

If you want everlasting love - surrender.

When you are old you will look at photographs of your younger self and marvel at how hot you were - and how stupid you were not to be able to see it. Enjoy your youth.


Max the maxims for a better life!

The Man With The Key In His Hand

He said ‘take the time to indulge…

To find the space in your day, in your heart, in your mind

Wherever it is that your soul resides,

Search for a place to stop thinking and start being

To embrace the layers that are full of light and knowledge’

He said it would bring an understanding

That would ultimately set me free

He said all this…

The man with the key in his hand.


He said ‘be aware of your dark side and that of others…

It has its purpose, its aim, and its compelling attraction

Search for the meaning behind it

To reveal its secrets and harness its power,

Recognise the difference between feelings and emotions

He said it would bring an acceptance

That would ultimately set me free

He said all this…

The man with the key in his hand.


He said ‘Life is full of awe and wonder…

If you know where to search

You might find it in work that fulfills and excites you

Or in the discovery of your true self,

Look within carefully and deeply’

He said it would bring an awareness

That would ultimately set me free

He said all this…

The man with the key in his hand.


He said ‘Patience is a lesson worth learning

For life can be tiring and sometimes dull

Recognise the value of the journey,

Reflect, use meditation, control destructive emotions

Make time to take care of your soul’

He said it would bring a contentness

That would ultimately set me free

He said all this…

The man with the key in his hand.


He said ‘There is a right way to live

Whenever possible promote and pursue truth,

Strive for peace and battle for justice

For sometimes a peaceful man has to take up his sword

Be afraid, embrace your fear, let it feed your flame

He said it would bring a courage

That would ultimately set me free

He said all this…

Gifted and Talented

I have some great dreams. Not as in Martin Luther Kings ‘I have a dream’ but as in sleeping dreams. Last night I dreamt the screenplay of a film which, on waking was crystal clear, but as the last remnants of sleep fell away I was left only with the title – ‘Gifted and Talented’ and a couple of the elements of the story line – two teachers on a G&T training weekend in some seaside town, who discover, along with the purpose of education, the fact they have great sex together.

My friend C was involved in this dream. In my dream she revealed that she used to be married to Bill Nighy and that he might be willing to play the part of the aging headteacher of the school that had sent our young idealistic lovers on the G&T training. Luckily C and Bill had remained on friendly terms and she felt it shouldn’t be too difficult to get him to agree to play the part for a nominal fee.

‘Gifted and Talented’ was intended to be a more realistic mix of films like ‘Nativity!’ starring Martin Freedman http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242447/and ‘Happy Go Lucky’ directed by Mike Leigh http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045670/. Both these films had Primary school teachers as the heroes. The trouble with having great dreams is waking up and realising your dreams will never become a reality. Which if different from the kind of dreams you have when you’re awake. For those there is always hope. This is particularly true starting tomorrow for Aquarians when the Sun moves into their sector of the solar chart. According to Sally Brompton this gives me and fellow Aquarians the opportunity to make a wish and watch it come true. My favourite Astrologer, Jonathan Cainer does not mention this amazing opportunity but talks instead of ‘a gap in the matrix’ which he says means that something I thought was one way is actually another. Maybe I should be careful what I wish for.

The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.

I have yet to read a novel by Nora Ephron – mainly because her work is catorised as ‘chic lit’ and I don’t generally read chic lit. The films she is responsible for are also ‘chic’ films and, although enjoyable, they also are not really my thing. But I am getting old and in recent years Ephron has been writing about the aging process from a womans point of view so she has seeped into my consiousness. Ephron is an interesting woman.

Wiki:

Ephron was born in New York City, eldest of four daughters in a Jewish family, and grew up in Beverly Hills;[1] her parents, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, were both East Coast-born and screenwriters. Her sisters Delia and Amy are also screenwriters. Her sister Hallie Ephron is a journalist, book reviewer, and novelist who writes crime fiction. Ephron's parents based Sandra Dee's character in the play and the Jimmy Stewart film Take Her, She's Mine on their 22-year-old daughter Nora and her letters to them from college. Both became alcoholics during their declining years. She has been married three times. Her first marriage, to writer Dan Greenburg, ended in divorce after nine years. Her second was to journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame in 1976. Ephron had an infant son, Jacob, and was pregnant with her second son, Max, in 1980 when she found out that of Bernstein was having an affair with their mutual friend, married British politician Margaret Jay. Ephron was inspired by the events to write the 1983 novel Heartburn, which was made into a 1986 film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. In the book, Ephron wrote of a husband named Mark, who was “capable of having sex with a Venetian blind.” She also said that the character Thelma (based on Margaret Jay) looked like a giraffe with "big feet. Ephron has been married for more than 20 years to screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi and lives in New York City.

Ephron has been in the news this week because her latest book 'I Remember Nothing' http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40074698/ns/today-books has caused some debate. Alex Baldwin, the actor, has alledgedly had a swipe at Ephron and what he sees as her failure to move on after a messy divorce (her second, the first being as painless as a divorce can be).

The Guardian:

Is Nora Ephron the secret target of Alec Baldwin's attack on a divorcee?

The actor Alec Baldwin appears to have launched an attack on Oscar-winning director and writer Nora Ephron in online magazine the Huffington Post, to which they both contribute.

Earlier this week, Baldwin wrote a comment piece for the Huffington Post's divorce section extolling the virtues and health benefits of forgiving and forgetting messy settlements. The article referred to a friend of his, "Cal", the victim of what Baldwin sees as a continued campaign of malice from an ex-wife, "Dora", despite their having separated 30 years ago, and both being happily remarried and thereafter enjoying great professional success. Many have suggested these are lightly veiled references to Ephron and her ex-husband, the journalist Carl Bernstein, who had an affair with Margaret (later Baroness) Jay when Ephron was pregnant with their second son. She subsequently adapted the events into a novel, Heartburn, which was made into a successful film in 1986 starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Now married to Nicholas Pileggi – the screenwriter behind Goodfellas – Ephron recently published a new memoir that touches on the incident, I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections, an extract from which ran in the Huffington Post on 8 November. It largely concerns the damaging impact of her divorce and her continued pain over the episode. In his piece, Baldwin makes reference to his own difficult separation (from his ex-wife, Kim Basinger), his "life-shortening custody battle" and the book he subsequently wrote about "the iniquities of family law, particularly in California". But Baldwin says he has now come to terms with the trauma, unlike "Cal's ex-wife [who] seems to have a condition that, sadly, you often see in high conflict divorces. She simply cannot shut up about her anger, her betrayal, her unresolved feelings, and her bottomless contempt for her ex, who has been a devoted and great father to their two wonderful children."

Baldwin heard a very different message from Ephrons words than I did. Maybe he is a friend of Bernstein? Yes, I too heard how hurt she was by her husbands ultimate betrayal. How the hurt continued to escalate as they both (but Bernstein in particular) handled the situation very badly. She says to her interviewer 'I mention all this so you will understand that this is part of the process: once you find out he's cheated on you, you have to keep finding it out, over and over and over again, until you've degraded your­self so completely that there's nothing left to do but walk out.' Her next comments, 'Now I think, of course, I think, who can possibly be faithful when they're young? I think, Stuff happens,' And, 'my religon is - get over it'. Does this sound like a bitter, angry woman? Not to me.

Here are some of her 'quotes':

'He was, in his way, as close to a Zen master as I've ever had, and all of us who fell under his influence began with his style and eventually ended up with our own.'

'Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.'

'Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficity disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.'

'In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.'

'I have no desire to be dominated. Honestly I don't. And yet I find myself becoming angry when I'm not.'

'Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it.'

These quotes are my thoughts. I wish they had sprung from my lips.

The Mail had the following article today:

Does divorce make you a better wife second time round?
By Tessa Cunningham and Eve Ahmed

Does suffering the pain of divorce mean you will try harder to make your next marriage work and, therefore, be a better wife? In her new book, I Remember Nothing, Nora ­Ephron, writer and director behind such films as When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless In ­Seattle, claims this is true.

There follows interviews with two twice married women, one who agrees with this premise and the other who doesn't. I suppose proof is in the pudding although I suspect the one who thinks she has learned from her mistakes will find out one day that she hasn't.

I may have blogged before that only one of my friends is happily married. It seems I was wrong.

None of them are.

We Are Being Watched

I have had my concerns about Facebook for some time now. There are a couple of games on there that I like to play which is why I had not deleted my page. I do a lot of thinking when I play these games, I mull over work issues, plan, dream and occasionally fantasise. Other than that I don’t use FB very much. Things I don’t like -the status thing, it makes me cringe, the cryptic ones ‘Tom is contemplating the crockery’ just as much as the mundane ‘Laura is so exhausted, gym was tough tonight’ and the only useful purpose it has is for sharing photos, video clips and music (although I often spend Saturday mornings dreading the photos that are going to be uploaded by friends from the night before – why can they never get my good side?). I have friends whose partners complain about the amount of time they spend ‘chatting’ on line and as for the comments, well some of them expose their writers as ignorant, racist or sexist. The ugly face of FB. If you are not on the ball and regularly check your security settings you could be sharing more than you think. For instance every posting you make from your smart phone also includes your postcode ‘Sandra is in SW3 7YT' if you don't uncheck a box buried in the small print.

So tonight I deactivated my account. I unfaced myself. Debooked. What made me make this monumental decision? The fact that I am being watched. And how did I found out that I was being watched?

On Sunday I decided to buy new lampshades for the living room having lived with the orange balloons for far too long. So I logged on and searched the B&Q website and looked at a few. If you click on an image you can zoom in and get a really good view of the items, along with product information. I then had a look on the Argos website and even (I am embarrassed to say) checked out the reviews. Yes, the reviews on the various lampshades. There were pages of the things. People had taken the time to write ‘excellent value for money’ and ‘bigger than I expected’. I said to my friend G that I felt a bit of a saddo checking out the reviews on lampshades. Holidays yes, hairdressers certainly, but lampshades? G reassured me that he researches everything he buys. As I always thought the man has too much time on his hands despite having three kids under the age of 8 I wasn’t that surprised. I imagine him sitting hunched over the lap top as his wife J entertains the children by juggling, singing and pulling faces and, as she breathlessly looks over at him with a sweating pleading face, he shrugs and says ‘I’m a bit busy right now love, we really need to replace our toothbrushes and I’m near to making the final decision, just another twenty three reviews to read then I’m all yours’. Anyway I digress. This was on Sunday. Today, while playing ‘Starries’ on FB what do I see at the top of the FB page? The lampshades I had viewed on the B&Q website! So how does what I looked at on the B&Q website end up on the FB page? What is the point of clearing history if this sort of thing happens? More worryingly I 'reserved' the items which meant giving my postcode and mobile number. Who has this information and who are they sharing it with?

Facebook hit by new security concerns over privacy settings
By Dan Raywood
Users of Facebook could be giving away their personal information due to the way the website's privacy settings work. A team from the University of Cambridge's computer laboratory has showed how Facebook public profiles could be used to find out personal information despite appearing to contain only a few details. In the paper, titled ‘Eight Friends Are Enough', the team pointed out that it was possible to reconstruct a user's friends list in a way that could allow marketers,governments and even criminals to understand the private relationships between different people.
It claimed that a search for a specific Facebook user will display every user's name, photo and eight friendship links. Affiliations with organisations, causes, or products are also listed. The paper's author Joseph Bonneau, said: "This is quite a bit of information given away by a feature many active Facebook users are unaware of. Indeed, it's more information than the Facebook's own privacy policy indicates is given away. "When the feature was launched in 2007, every over-18 user was automatically opted-in, as have been new users since then. You can opt out, but few people do - out of more than 500 friends of mine, only three had taken the time to opt out. It doesn't help that most users are unaware of the feature, since registered users don't encounter it." The paper further claimed that the public listings are designed to be indexed by search engines. In the team's own experiments, it was able to download over 250,000 public listings per day using a desktop PC and a fairly crude Python script. Bonneau said: "For a serious data aggregator getting every user's listing is no sweat. So what can one do with 200 million public listings? Facebook's public listings give us a random sample of the social graph, leading to some interesting exercises in graph theory. As we describe in the paper, it turns out that this sampled graph allows us to approximate many properties of the complete network surprisingly well." "This result leads to two interesting conclusions. First, protecting a social graph is hard. Consistent with previous results, we found that giving away a seemingly small amount can allow much information to be inferred. It's also been shown that anonymising a social graph is almost impossible."

"Second, Facebook is developing a track record of releasing features and then being surprised by the privacy implications, from Beacon to NewsFeed and now Public Search. Analogous to security-critical software, where new code is extensively tested and evaluated before being deployed, social networks should have a formal privacy review of all new features before they are rolled out (as, indeed, should other web services which collect personal information). Features like public search listings shouldn't make it off the drawing board." Facebook claimed that its publicly searchable pages were only introduced after an extensive privacy review. A spokesperson told the Guardian: "Public search listings are a way for those users who wish to allow people to find them in search engines to share limited elements of their Facebook profile. Their creation, continued presence, and the particular elements contained within them are entirely configurable by users. "Changes as to the presence or content of a public search listing may be made easily by any user on the privacy settings page."

Do you have a Blackberry? A smart phone? The following report has been denied by RIM … still it is food for thought.

BlackBerry to allow Indian government to monitor messages
Research In Motion's move could permit officials to lawfully access corporate customers' communications

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) is ready to allow Indian authorities access to the emails and messages of its most high-profile corporate customers, according to a ministry official in the country.The secure communications of India's 400,000 BlackBerry owners could soon be lawfully accessed by government officials, the unnamed interior minister said, adding that RIM is preparing for "providing live access" to customers' encrypted servers. "They have in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers," India's the Mint business newspaper quoted an unnamed Indian ministry official as saying. "Now they have assured us that they will discuss the issue first among themselves and find a way to meet our demands. Later, they would be providing live access to BES [BlackBerry Enterprise Server]," the official told the paper. However, the threat of a blackout for the 400,000 BlackBerry owners in India still looms after months of terse, but largely fruitless, negotiations between RIM and India's telecoms ministry. The Delhi government has opened up a front against Google, Skype and the many mobile carriers operating in the country, citing security fears over the level of encryption employed by the companies. Officials suspect the culprits of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, in which 116 people died, used encrypted BlackBerry devices. RIM today said: "RIM has once again found it necessary to address certain media reports in India containing inaccurate and misleading statements and information based on unsubstantiated claims from unnamed sources. "All our discussions with the government of India have been and continue to be productive and fully consistent with the four core principles we follow in addressing lawful access matters around the world. Any suggestion to the contrary is false." The company added that any "lawful access" negotiations would abide by four principles: that it was legal, that there would be "no greater access" to BlackBerry services than other services, that there would be no changes in the security for Enterprise customers, and it would not make "specific deals for specific customers".

Last month RIM escaped a ban on the BlackBerry communications of its 500,000 customers in the United Arab Emirates, while Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Lebanon have also raised concerns about the Canadian company's security policies.
The chief concern of India, which is the world's second largest mobile phone market behind China, surrounds communication passed between corporate BlackBerry devices using Enterprise servers. Organisations using BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) host their own server and encryption key – which only it can use to unscramble encrypted emails and messages – thereby offering a higher level of security.
RIM has publicly remained defiant, insisting that it would not offer special deals to specific countries and that security measures for its Enterprise customers would not be compromised. Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that there will be more than 600,000 BlackBerry sales in India this year and that India's smart phone market will have reached approximately 12m – a figure forecast to grow to 40m by the end of 2015.
The increasing popularity of smartphones running Google's Android operating system has eroded RIM's grip on the corporate communications market in 2010. RIM's most recent smart phone release, the Bold 9780, has failed to make an impression on consumers or traders since its launch in October.

Use Google as a search engine? Home page? Then Google knows all about you, what you like, what you buy, where you shop, where you holiday, maybe even your sexual preferences. It knows if you are worried about your weight or that little rash on your elbow. It certainly knows your political views. It knows the last restaurant you ate in and the last major purchase you made. It knows if you are married, single, gay, straight. Use a mobile? The phone company knows where you are. It knows who your friends are and someone somewhere in that company will know if you are having an affair and if you are one of the twats voting for Widdecombe and Wagner. If you use a loyalty card in the supermarket even Tesco knows all about you too. They can even predict your weekly shop. Amazon knows what books you read in bed, what music is playing in your car. Texting? Instant messaging? Pinging? Poking? Those words are out there. Emailing? Blogging? More words, thoughts, ideas, words mundane, words profound and words personal. Hundreds of words revealing all. Hell, Google, Yahoo, Tesco and Amazon know more about you than your nearest and dearest.

Before FB let you leave you have to give them a reason. This is compulsory. It lists several and adds a comment box. Did I make a clean break? No, I didn't want FB to know I was leaving it forever so I chose the 'I need a break' option. The 'it's not you, it's me' reason. It was harder than breaking up with a lover. There are things I'm going to miss. The friends, the camaraderie, the odd fun and games. The company. I won't miss the hold it has, the time is demands, the constant bombardment of information and the questions. Best they don't know I'm not coming back. Unless they read this of course.

I am going into hiding.

If You're Happy and You Know it...

Then you have good health and do not live in poverty. Your children are pictures of health and are doing well at school or in their careers. You have people you love and who love you. You have friends who visit or chat to you on the phone. You can escape the city now and again and walk in wide open spaces or breathe in sea air. You have a job or hobbies that you enjoy. You have space and time. You have choices and the power to make them. Your worries and concerns are fleeting and do not weigh heavily on your mind. You laugh freely and unselfconsciously. You cry unashamedly. You don't dwell on the past or have regrets. You live in the moment and cherish what you have.

You don't live in a substandard dwelling in a socially deprived high crime area. Your bedroom walls are not dripping with damp and mould. Your kitchen is not infested with cockroaches. Your child does not wheeze and cough when you put them to bed at night. Your 14 year old daughter does not have to endure name calling or sexual assaults every time she leaves the flat and you aren't waiting for the man in your life to come home and give you a good kicking.

You don't have to travel in crowded buses or on crowded trains in order to arrive at a job that is mundane, unfulfilling and poorly paid. You don't leave at the end of the day to make the same nightmare journey home. You don't have to lie awake at night wondering if your job is going to be one of the ones that is 'cut'. You don't worry about losing the roof over you head. You aren't bullied or scared. You aren't dissatisfied with your lot. You don't think 'if only'...

I was going to blog about the governments plan to measure our happiness. But after pondering what it meant to be happy I gave up. Happiness is so difficult to quantify. Of course the poor can be happy. The sick, the scared, the depressed, the tired, the good, the bad and the mad can all be happy too. Sometimes. Maybe it would be easier to measure unhappiness and then do some clever equation that will give the answer of how happy the people of Britain are in these times of war, spending cuts and uncertainty. Y = happy X = sad A = acceptance factors R = resilience factors. Y minus X + AB = YAB over F. Didn't I mention 'F'? F = Fairness and the answer is relative to who you are, how you live and the opportunities you are afforded in life. As I am crap at sums I am going to blog about council estates instead.



Wiki on the Aylesbury Estate:

The Aylesbury Estate is a large housing estate located in Walworth, South East London. It is the largest housing estate in Europe. Along with the Ferrier Estate, Aylesbury is considered the most notorious estate in the United Kingdom. It was for this reason that Tony Blair chose to make his first speech as Prime Minister here, in an effort to demonstrate that the government would care for the poorest elements of society. The estate is often used as a typical example of urban decay.

Not much has changed since 1997, if anything poverty has increased for those living within these ugly walls and walkways. Their sense of well being is unlikely to have improved either.


No country for poor people?

The chancellor has cut the welfare budget by £18bn. It is designed to incentivise people back to work. But will it also change forever what it means to be poor in Britain? Anushka Asthana and Toby Helm

Peter John, the Labour leader of Southwark council, leads the way into the middle of the Aylesbury estate. "This is where Tony Blair gave his first major speech in 1997," he says, raising his hand towards the grim, concrete blocks looming over him.
"There will be no forgotten people in the Britain I want to build," declared Blair to residents of the notorious south London housing block. Thirteen years on, there are signs of progress but poverty still scars the landscape.

Now a new set of politicians insist that they can transform lives here. Just over two miles from the Aylesbury estate, up the Walworth road, is Parliament. It was there, at 12.30pm on Wednesday, that George Osborne delivered his comprehensive spending review, laying out where the axe would fall.

The chancellor confirmed one key strategic decision in his drive to eliminate the budget deficit. In taking £11bn out of welfare in June, he had made it clear that this was a price he was prepared to pay to protect hospitals and schools. Last week, he took out a further £7bn.

It was expected, but the welfare passage of his speech still brought gasps from the opposition. The intake of breath was particularly sharp when he announced plans to limit the employment support allowance to one year. Then there was the £26,000 cap on benefits for a workless family and a further housing benefit shock: the age cap under which tenants can claim for only a single room in a shared house, rather than their own flat, will rise from 25 to 35. That came on top of earlier housing benefit changes that critics had slammed as "draconian".

A small part of the money raised, £2bn, will be channelled back into welfare and used to finance Iain Duncan Smith's policy priority: a universal credit to replace all working-age benefits and tax credits.

For Osborne, there was a single aim. "It will always pay to work. Those who get work will be better off than those that don't," he announced to cheers from Conservative and Lib Dem MPs. The measures were tough, he said, but fair.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies disagreed. The next day it found that, with the exception of the richest 2% of the population, the tax and benefit components of the plan were "regressive", hitting the poorest hardest. Osborne was accused of pitting the working classes against the most vulnerable and demonising the unemployed. But polls suggested substantial support for the assault on benefits. Focus groups had told the chancellor they wanted welfare not cut but shredded. In Southwark and across the country, a tough new settlement with benefit recipients is about to be enforced, and the arguments have only just begun.

"Parasites," mutters a man standing outside a community church in Bermondsey, one of the poorer boroughs in Southwark. He is furious after reading a newspaper story about a family of 12 receiving £95,000 a year in benefits.

"It causes resentment among hard-working people," adds Pat Hickson, a smart, 70-year-old woman. She welcomes the crackdown on welfare. "Of course there are genuine cases but it is the benefit cheats that I'm talking about." She talks of plasma televisions, nice cars and breakfast brought to the doors of those on benefits.
Others disagree. Inside the church, half a dozen working mothers chat as their children scurry around. "I see the argument for supporting people into work," says Katherine Beatham, 32, a charity worker. "But this idea that there is a mass of people out there who don't want to work because they are too lazy is a lie. They are playing on people's fears." She worries that London will become like Paris, with the poorest forced to the outskirts.

"This is a borough of contrasts," says Peter John. "Between those areas that have been regenerated and those that have not. Between the rich and the poor. Between [ethnic] communities."

Unemployment here is 9.9%, well above the national average. There are 30,210 working-age residents, 14.4%, who claim out-of-work benefits. More than 40,000 receive housing benefit or council tax benefit. Almost four in 10 children were living in poverty in 2007. A similar number are being brought up by single parents.
Few here will be immune from the cuts. In Southwark, Cynthia O'Callaghan, 34, scowls when she is asked about them. The teaching assistant and mother of three is most worried about losing childcare support. But soon the subject drifts back to welfare and the unemployed.

Paul Brown, 51, a church leader, says he fears the country is returning to a culture of the 1980s. "Sweeping statements about people getting rich on benefits – I don't know anyone rich on benefits."

Certainly not Anthony Johnston. At Southwark Reach, a branch of the homeless charity Thames Reach, Johnston, 46, explains how he lives on benefits. He had worked at the Natural History Museum for 23 years as a housekeeper. Then his mother died and he had a breakdown. He attempted suicide several times and at one point did not leave his house for 21 days, surviving on water.

Johnston is on employment support allowance and is going on courses with the help of the charity. He says people look down on him for not working. "I live on £90 a week – we get a £10 bonus at Christmas." Sometimes, after paying utility bills and for transport to his courses, he is down to £8 by Wednesday and has to stretch it over four days.

Phil Lansdowne, who is on incapacity benefit, agrees that it is hard. He says he would rather work for £200 a week, and lose £100 in tax, than be on benefits as he is now. The question for both men is whether the government's reforms will help them back into work. If not, they could soon find themselves surviving on even less than they do now.

Some critics say the problem is the assumption that people are not working because they don't want to. In fact, many are suffering with mental or physical illness or simply can't find work. Jeremy Swain, Thames Reach chief executive, says he understands the need for a "revolution" in welfare and believes Duncan Smith can do good things. But Wednesday's speech make the life of charities like his harder, he says, with some of the reforms "bowling him over".

"Everyone agrees that if someone is on benefits as a lifestyle choice then that is unacceptable. But more than 70% of the 8,000 people we work with each year want get into work," he says. He speaks of one man who is putting in job applications twice a week and has been to many interviews unsuccessfully but is now likely to lose 10% of his housing benefit.

Yet he is not surprised that people wanted welfare targeted. "People have looked down on those out of work for a long time. So when you ask them what to cut – police? They say no. Schools? No. NHS? No. The armed services? No – but welfare, who is going to lobby for that?"

Douglas Alexander, the shadow work and pensions secretary, says he supports change to the system but says the coalition's plans are "cuts", not "reform". He attacks the rhetoric about "scroungers" and claims it will mask the way the cuts will hit hard-working families.

Those low-income working families are being hit hard too, according to research released today by the Resolution Foundation. The organisation researches what it calls the real "squeezed middle", working families with a household income of between £15,000 and £30,000.

The study models the impact of negative and positive reforms, including changes to child tax credits, the loss of the education maintenance allowance and the increase in the personal tax allowance to £7,475. It compares the position of families in 2012, given the June budget and spending review, to what they would have faced under Labour's March budget. The result is that a couple with a combined income of £25,656 with two children aged five and three lose around £760 a year; a single mother on an income of £20,645 with three children, including one who is 17, loses £1,800 a year; while a couple in their early 20s with a pre-tax income of £18,289 gain £320 a year.
"Just at the time that the government is gaining plaudits for seeking to get rid of the 'poverty trap' for those escaping welfare, there is a real risk that a new 'aspiration trap' is being set for people struggling to reach a middle income," says Gavin Kelly, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation." It is a trap that is as likely to turn hard-pressed lower-income families against their "workshy" neighbours as against the government.

According to many experts, the "welfare revolution" begun by Osborne in last week's review has its roots in the US – in Wisconsin, where tough rules and time-limited benefits make the state of worklessness utterly miserable. Advocates say the decision to target benefits did not just drive down the number of claimants; it rewired the American psyche.

"People in the UK still think it is normal to go onto welfare. In the US they don't. In the US it is a last resort," says Professor Lawrence Mead, an American academic who was one of the main influences behind the US "workfare" reforms. In June, Mead was invited to Downing street to meet Steve Hilton, David Cameron's chief strategist. Treasury officials and civil servants from the Department for Work and Pensions also attended "They wanted to know how you do it on the ground," says Mead. "They wanted me to talk about Wisconsin and New York. They really wanted to know how to do it." The core objective, he says, is to change people's mindset so that they do not see welfare as a viable alternative. That is because benefits have been driven so low. In Texas, the average monthly benefit is around £46 per person.
Perhaps it is because of Mead that Osborne began to say this autumn that people should no longer be able to choose benefits as a "lifestyle choice".
For their part, ministers insist that the support will remain for those at the bottom. Writing today on www.observer.co.uk, Chris Grayling, minister for employment, promises "unconditional" support for those who can't work.
But fears remain that plans to "make work pay" will inevitably hit the poorest hardest. A US-style welfare system, they say, risks creating a US-style underclass. Julia Unwin, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, sums it up: "Threatening destitution does not work. What it does is frighten people who are already frightened. A society in which destitution is the threatened alternative to community support is not one that any of us wish to live in."

WHO WILL SUFFER

Changes affecting the non-working poor

■ A £26,000-a-year cap on the benefits an out-of-work family can receive
■ Extending the age under which people can only claim for the cost of a single room from 25 to 35
■ Reducing housing benefit by 10% after a year on jobseeker's allowance
Changes affecting the working poor
■ Significant reductions in the childcare element of the working tax credit
■ Households on incomes from around £22,000 to £58,000 lose all or part of the family element of the child tax credit, worth up to £545 a year
■ Elimination of education maintenance allowance will hit those with a household income under £30,810 with a 16 to 18-year-old in full time education
(Analysis by the Resolution Foundation)



Wiki on the Heygate Estate:

The Heygate Estate is a large housing estate in the Walworth area of London, England. The estate was completed in 1974. It is located in the London Borough of Southwark and south of the Elephant and Castle. The estate was once a popular place to live, the flats being thought spacious, but now has a reputation for crime, poverty and dilapidation. Along with the nearby Aylesbury Estate, it is planned that it will be completely demolished to make way for a regeneration of the area and the residents rehoused. However, many residents and ex-residents have complained that the council has failed to re-house them, and that the social housing that was planned to do so has not been built. Because of the decayed urban environment, the estate is used as a filming location, such as for the movie Shank and Harry Brown and The Bill tv series. (every cloud eh?)
Demolition of the first phase(Wingrave block) will begin in late 2010. The rest of the estate is not due to be demolished until 2015. The scheme has received criticism after it emerged that the £1.5billion of public funds going into the 'regeneration' scheme will actually result in there being significantly fewer social-rented homes. Environmentalist and former councillor Donnachadh McCarthy recently described the scheme as one of the biggest environmental, financial, social and political scandals of the decade.

Maybe I spend too much time talking to the people who live on these estates and other estates like them. Because I can tell you that although they may have moments of happiness they exist in a state of non well being. Will a job or better living conditions make them happier? Will a better future for their children make them happier? For some of these people, those who have escaped war, persecution and tyranny - maybe they feel safer and more content than they would in the worlds they have escaped from. But many must feel they have escaped a greater hell for a lesser one. So maybe they will score a little happier on the governments happiness scale. Who knows?

And our children? Are they happy? In our schools are our children happy? I was happy as a child, even though I lived on a council estate and my family were one of those dysfuncional ones. Because I had the A factor and the R factor. Now children just want the X Factor and that is a recipe for sadness and disappointment.

Everyone, of course, is subject to the odd bout of sadness and despair. Which is a totally separate thing from general well being, which is really what the government is attempting to measure. So forget happiness and aim instead for contentedness. Much more sustainable.

'When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war' Confucius

London is a beautiful city, and the Thames at night is always a particularly lovely sight. I love that the bridges are all different and, although I see it every day, I never tire of Tower Bridge. Last night I was a bit further up the river on the Albert Embankment which very close to where I lived as a child. This stretch of the river is lined with Victorian and Art Deco lamp posts and I remember as a child loving the cast iron fish curled around the posts. I used to be allowed to throw my bus ticket into the river (a real little litter bug) to feed the crocodiles I was convinced swam in the murky water. My friend M was in London to take part in the Remembrance Day parade and for the first time I watched the parade. It was very moving and I was struck by how much dignity the people taking part displayed and, strangely enough, how much of a sense of peace prevailed.

I don’t think I had ever seen so many old people in one place, not even in Eastbourne. I was also struck by how much old people look alike. If you live long enough your hair loses all its colour and vibrancy, your face crumples in on itself as your features enlarge and you just look like an identikit old person. Earlier this week I saw a large group of students making their way towards Westminster Bridge and they looked in good spirits. It was heartening to see people come together to present a united voice. Two very different marches, with very different outcomes. But I felt disconnected from them both. I am a March Virgin, but, I suspect, not for long.



Today is the 70th anniversary of the Coventry Blitz. Coventry saw one of Britain's largest raids of World War II on 14 November, 1940. An estimated 1,200 people died with most of the city centre destroyed. http://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/blitz/blitz.php

It is hard to believe that in the 1940s people lived with the daily horror of war. The war in Afghanistan is something you read about in the newspaper or watch on the evening news. Unless you have a friend or relative fighting in that war it is a war that is removed from our daily life. Living through WW2 was something very different. The sounds of sirens must have struck terror in the hearts of mothers as they rushed with their children to find shelter. Then, as they cowered in shelters and listened to the explosions, they must have wondered what they would find when morning came and they emerged into the dust and ashes of their cities.

When I was a kid there were still bomb sites around the Embankment and I remember playing in the rubble. There was always a group of people working on some cordoned off piece of ground, archaeologists who would sometimes shown us kids the broken pieces of crockery they found. Looking back these are unlikely to have been some Roman remains but some poor family's tea set buried under the rubble of their bombed out home.

Not long ago my sister was evacuated, along with her neighbours, from her home because an unexploded WW2 bomb was unearthed on a building site nearby. The disruption this caused for the 48 hours before they were given the all clear to go home led to a lot of moaning and complaining. At least they had homes to return to.

As I looked out across the Thames at the Palace of Westminster, Big Ben, the Bridges, the Tate Britain and all the other grand buildings that line the river it seems amazing that they survived the Blitz. I suppose it was because London was hidden under a cloak of darkness. Coventry was not so lucky.

‘A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.’ ~German Proverb

Sexford Wives

I was amazed and intrigued to see this 'robot' on the news this morning. Isn't she absolutely incredible? Now anyone reading this blog in the future may be baffled at my absolute awe at this robot/android/creature because they are likely to have one cleaning their house, minding their kids, or dare I say it....keeping their bed warm.

But this is science fiction becoming reality. Robotics have certainly come a long way in a relatively short time. This is seriously brilliant and totally scary.

My vision for the future:

At first these robots will only be available to the very rich. The Queen will buy a few and they will slowly take over from her human footmen, butlers, maids and the such like in the running of her palaces and castles. They will pay for themselves in a few years, a bit like solar panelling. Who knows she may even buy a few android corgis' who have the added advantage of coming out of the box they arrive in already palace trained. No, of course silly me, it won't be her as she is likely to die before the robots become that sophisticated but if is something that Charlie or Wills will look into mark my words.

As they become mass produced they will replace armies and navies so there will be no more mourning of dead soldiers and the injured robots can be repaired and sold off on Ebay. Reconditioned fighting machine robots might be a bit of a risk but they could also double as a minder if you live in a rough area. The winner of wars will be whichever country has the latest model. Oh, that'll be China.

The welfare bill will sky rocket of course as the robots slowly take over all the jobs, starting with manual jobs and then moving into things like teaching, policing and television presenting. Basically any job were thinking is not required. But that won't be a problem as they won't have to be paid. Nor will they pay taxes. I can see that being a problem somewhere down the line but economics has never been my strong point.

Homes across the land will have one. And husbands will be fucking their brains (or micro chips?) out. This is were they will come into their own and I have a fantastic marketing idea. I am going to market the first 'Marriage Protector Android'. Just think, men will no longer have to have affairs, lie to their wives, spend money on their mistresses or start second families. They can have their natural philandering needs met by a household electrical item. No wife will feel threatened by a mistress they can switch off and stick in the cupboard under the stairs. They could be marketed as a sex aid and sold at Anne Summers parties. Women will buy them in droves as it will free them from the need to feign headaches. They will just say to their husbands 'I've put DR231 on charge for you darling, I'm off out with the girls from work'.

If you would like to place your order now I can get you one for Christmas. Christmas 2025. Deposits non refundable.

There's A Ghost In The House

I keep seeing a ghost. And the ghost is me.

It started at my school reunion. Sitting in the church with my old school friends, looking around, nothing had changed. Yes, we were older but somehow still teenagers. Listening to the same sounds 'And may God be with you' 'And also with you' said in the same monotonous tones, hearing people sigh, fidget and whisper. The sames smells. Incense, candles. That's where I first saw her. My ghost. Sitting in a pew at a few rows down, wearing school uniform, hair in a 'page boy' (what possessed me?) and wearing the 'wet look' platforms that Katrina's dad said made us look (she had the same shoes) as if we had two club feet. I saw her and wanted to take her by the hand and lead her outside and have a chat with her. Just steer her right about a few things, give her a bit of a head start so she wouldn't grow up to be me.

On Sunday I took my mum out for a meal and she had a bit too much to drink and when that happens she gets maudlin. Which means she wants to talk about the past, which is never a safe subject to visit. But we had done the X Factor, my sister and death. 'Was I really such a bad mother' she asked? Why does she not remember? Her eyes filled with tears. Damn that vodka. 'No, mum, you were great.' I lied.

I know now that I wasn't a great parent. I wasn't bad. Just not great. Maybe not being great is bad? Parents should be great. Or even good may do. I was 'satisfactory' I suppose. So how come I can remember that? What did I hear someone on the radio say this morning? 'Hindsight is an exact science.'

Anyway I saw her/me again the other day. Twice. Once was down the Old Kent Road. She was pushing a buggy with her son in it with her daughter clinging tightly to the handle as she walked along next to her/me. She had just been out to buy the tea for that night. That's what you had in those days. Not dinner. Your tea. I remember what she was thinking as she made her way back from the butchers. She was worried about money. There never seemed to be enough. And she was worried that she would get back to their flat and he would be sitting there having walked out of yet another job. I drove past her in my nice car, on my way to my nice office, to my nice job and my nice life. I wanted to pull over and ask her to jump in and drive her and her babies far far away.

I caught a glimpse of her/me today. This time I know she was a bit happier. She was standing talking to her friends on the university campus, just before going in for the afternoons lecture. I didn't need to tell her to keep at it because I know she did.

I don't like seeing her/me at all. I think I may have to close my eyes the next time, count to ten and hope that when I open them she will have disappeared back into the past.

Tricky Words

My grandson’s school invited all the Reception class parents along to a meeting about how the school are teaching reading and I immediately booked the time off so I could go along with his mum and hear all about it. The letter was sent out before the half term, and as far as I know, no reminders were sent out - so I was surprised and encouraged by the number of parents who actually turned up.

It was obvious the school were using a phonic system to teach reading because my grandson had started to focus on the text and sound out every letter when he read to me. I had been used to him using the pictures and his excellent prediction skills to tell the story. His recent version of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ was wonderful;

‘Once upon a time there were three little pigs and they grew too big to live at home so their mummy told them they had to go’ he said on the first page.

‘So they all got their own houses and lived happily ever after’ he said on the next page and closed the book’

‘Wait a minute, that’s not what happens’ I said ‘you left out the straw, sticks, bricks and the wolf bit’

‘But I want to go asleep’ he said.

But over recent weeks he has started to concentrate on the sounds of the letters, and bless him, he thinks that the bbbb’s, ssss’s, and mmmm’s sounds that he makes is ‘reading.’

The meeting was rather like an assembly. And yes, the meeting was to introduce and explain ‘Jolly Phonics’. The children were there and I must say even I was impressed with their knowledge of the sounds the letters made. They were keen to share their new found knowledge and were all able to sound out letters shown to them and even join a few up to make a word. It was clear they were having fun (which is just as well as they have to learn 4 letter sounds a day with a recap on Friday). I didn’t get a chance to ask what happens if a child is absent. My poor grandson has been ill this week so has missed 3 letters this week already. Lets hope they were x, y, and z.

Fortunately his teacher, a lovely, bright, enthusiastic girl, (due to go on maternity leave soon) seems to understand that the children need more than a knowledge of phonics in order to be able to read. On display were lots of wonderful books that she and the Teaching Assistant had chosen for the class. Old favourites such as ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’, ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ and my personal favourite ‘Farmer Duck’ along with newer books like the ‘Charlie and Lola’ collection were on the shelves. They even had a set of fairy tales. And puppets. They had big books, picture books and books for group reading. She said that they were going to combine 'Jolly Phonics' with real books and that the important thing was to develop a love of books and not just concentrate on decoding the words as she warned that the children would soon become bored and risk becoming disengaged with reading if they focused soley on phonics. She reminded us that the Early Years Foundation Stage focused on six areas of learning and that ‘Communication, Language and Literacy’ was the area ‘reading’ came under.

But in order to learn to read, or indeed want to learn to read and enjoy reading, she stressed that it was vital that we communicate effectively with our children, that we use lots of language with them, that we listen to them effectively and respond appropriately. That we stop just giving instructions or asking questions. That we actually ‘talk’ to our children. She said she found this difficult to do, as a teacher she is always trying to extend the children’s learning and has used questioning to gauge what children understood and hopefully to encourage them to reflect and ask questions too. However it is important that we focus on the process and not just the product.

This was something that was discussed at my recent Incredible Years training. How difficult it is to do any activity with young children without asking question after question. ‘What colour is that balloon?’ ‘What shape is the moon?’ ‘What do you think will happen if the dog eats all the sausages?’ we ask when we are reading a book with a child. ‘What did you do at school today?’ ‘What did you have for dinner?’ we ask when we collect them from school. ‘What sound does a cow make?’ we ask when they are playing with small world toys such as farm animals. ‘What are you making?’ we ask when they are playing with the construction toys. Bloody hell…it is a wonder they don’t just shout ‘SHUTUP with the questions! Leave me alone to enjoy what I’m doing’. Rather than continually question it is suggested that we make observations or give a commentary. ‘Oh what a bright round moon’ or ‘that’s a cheeky dog, look at how fast he can run with the sausages in his mouth!’ It is an opportunity to engage the child in conversation rather than a question answer session.

His teacher is so nice that I almost forgive her for the 'tricky words'. These are words that cannot be sounded out phonetically. Like my grandsons 'tricky' name.

A Tale of Two Parks

My journey to work takes me through two parks. I drive through the first and am treated to beautiful scenes whatever the season. In the spring it is a blaze of yellow daffodils, in the summer families fill its grassy slopes picnicking and enjoying the sun. The autumn brings the stunning yellows, oranges and reds of the changing leaves and the winter, when we are lucky, brings hills of snow with sleighs and snowball fights. The views over London, no matter what time of the year, are stunning and I occasionally take 5 minutes to pull over, get out of the car and spend some time contemplating the views.

I walk through the other park. Well ‘park’ is elevating this small church yard above its station. It is a winding path with lawns on either side and flower beds dotted around. The signs of the season are not so obvious in this park. Obviously the trees change as the leaves change colour and the flowers that bloom change from snowdrops to tulips to heathers. And the short cuts across the grass become muddy so I stick to the path but I still enjoy this short walk. But yesterday morning it made me think too much.

The little park has resident homeless people. They congregate on the church steps or huddle on one of the benches. As I was rushing along the path, a thousand inconsequential thoughts running in my head, I caught sight of these ‘tramps’. They were wrapped up in puffa jackets, woolly hats with the obligatory check laundry bags containing all their worldly goods. There were about half a dozen of them, male and female, and they were engrossed in conversation.

‘I wish I was carefree. I wish I had nowhere to rush to, no targets to meet, no bills to pay. I wish I could sit on a bench, wrapped up and warm in the autumn sun. I wish I could sit and philosophise with my friends.'