Oh, Mr unpaid 'station ambassador', what shall I do?

Brighouse is inordinately proud of its railway station. Closed for 30-odd years by the Beeching cuts, it re-opened in May 2000 and provides a useful link for commuters across West Yorkshire and now even boasts two daily return journeys to London, operated by Grand Central Trains (prop. Arriva - ultimately owned by Deutsche Bahn). Our station is a pretty minimal, two-platform ('up' and 'down') affair - for Thick of It fans, its major claim to fame is that it was the location for Rebecca Front's character, Nicola Murray's angst-ridden resignation as leader of the opposition. Oh, and JK Rowling once steamed through on a Harry Potter special. Now, however, due to a spiffing idea from Grand Central marketing and publicity wonks, Brighouse has been chosen for an interesting unpaid work opportunity. Locals with time on their hands are being invited to apply to become Station Ambassdors, who will rock up to the station - in GC supplied uniforms - once a month to 'assist passengers arriving and departing from the station'. We used to call these people porters, and they were railway employees. The added shame of this is that this exciting idea is being supported to the hilt by the local traders' organisation, the Brighouse Business Initiative. Not much initiative being shown here in reality: volunteers won't have any extra money to spend in local shops - the 'consideration' they receive for their luggage lugging efforts will be rewarded with free train tickets - to take them to London.

One night's stay in hospital, one MRI scan, TWO surveys...

Yesterday afternoon I returned from a 24-hour, unplanned, stay in hospital necessitated by a suspected TIA (mini sroke). Minor symptoms on Sunday afternoon led to admission after a visit to A&E (don't worry, Mr Hunt; we were told to go if I experienced such symptoms after a planned visit to clinic the previous Saturday, so I wasn't wasting resources). Before I could be discharged, after being seen by my consultant who arranged for the MRI and discussed the outcome with me, I was interviewed in person for one survey and given another to be completed on a pre-paid postcard. The face-to-face interview involved completion of the usual 'on a scale of 1 to 5' questions, which included such shoe-ins as 'how would you rate the food' and 'what do you think of the decor' - neither of which are going to be too high on the list of improvements, given the current state of NHS funding. Most difficult to reduce to a 1 to 5 response was the question about quality of sleep. It was very poor, but this was because I'd been allocated a bed - at short notice on a Sunday afternoon - in a high dependency stroke unit, where my three fellow 'roomies' needed round the clock care from a dedicated, hard-working team of medical professionals. If lights turned on and off during the night and medics conferring at nearby bedsides disturbed me, lack of sleep was a small inconvenience to me alongside the care the other patients obviously needed. On a scale of 1-5, sleep quality was accorded a '2', but I made sure the scribe recorded my reasons at length. Higher up on the facile question scale was the single question on the pre-paid card: how likely would I be to recommend this hospital to a friend or relative in need of similar care? I've decided to save the NHS the postage on this, as it smacks too much of vapid customer satsfaction league-tables. But the answer is: should you find yourself suffering the symptoms of a stroke or mini-stroke in Halifax or its environs, the staff on Ward 6 at Calderdale Royal Hospital do their utmost to treat and reassure, given the constraints currently facing the NHS, and if you have a friend or loved-one being treated on that ward, they are - on the evidence of my experience - treated with a high-level of care and respect. Sorry there's no appropriate column on the survey for that testimonial, but dedicated, well-trained professional healthcare can't be reduced to a simple box-ticking exercise. So if your'e looking to save NHS resources, the questionnaire culture should be the first to go.

When Dad and Uncle Harry Couldn’t get a Pint

Dad and his best mate Harry, home on leave from Italy. A Joiner and a Caretaker turned Sapper and Fusilier sergeant 'for the duration' went into Leeds for the night. Two lads from Burley walking down the Headrow and into Vicar Lane called in the Robin Hood for a quick one. That’s how the story starts. Start of a home town night out. Harry was a big man, a sergeant in battledress, he goes over to the bar. Dad’s the smaller one of the two. It’s Harry’s shout, and shout he does. The barman goes red in the face as the drinkers at the bar part. “And I’m telling you I can’t serve you in here. Leeds is closed to the British. We can only serve Yanks and Poles in here”. Now Harry liked the Poles, fought with them at Monte Casino, though neither he nor Dad really got the Yanks. Too much money, too many cigs, too many girls. Dad never forgot three days’ blinded from the flash of one of their anti-aircraft guns defending the harbour at Bari, always grumbled how “you’d think they’d won the bloody war” at war films on TV. But denial of beer in the Robin Hood was an indignity of war they remembered and passed on; for them it was a war story in their very own backyard. If they’d hailed from Białystok or the Bronx, instead of Burley, then that genial mine host would have pulled their pints, but there was to be no beer in the Robin Hood for those two squaddies that night. D-Day Dodgers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4hny_XRaw4 By the same author: Short and Curlies Gnosis

A run in with a big prick

Nurses aren't trained to take blood samples. A useless fact - unless you've just agreed to be guinea pig (human pin-cushion) for a staff nurse's first attempt; as I did on Saturday. As if the TIA 'mini-stroke' clinic wasn't scary enough, the nurse in charge of blood letting and pressure checking decided to ask me if I 'minded' being first victim for her colleague. OK, take a walk on the wild-side, I thought, after all, it's just a 'little scratch', so they usually say when taking a sample. Enter staff nurse in training with trolley and look of steely determination. The needle was prepped and she went at the task like a Tommy preparing to clear a trench in a bayonet charge. Pausing only to observe I'd given her a 'good vein' and to line up the needle, in she went. Still got the purple welt two days later. Whereas the pinprick from this morning's professionally phlebotomist-taken sample has already faded into memory. Now who feels the little prick?

Coming over a little queer in the kitchen

Emptying the dishwasher is a mundane job that we do without thinking. It's a day-to-day activity that isn't marked out as special in our minds. Apart from last Wednesday evening, that is. I was just standing up with a handful of plates when my right side became numb: face, arm, hand and upper leg all lost sensation. I was immediately aware that one side of my body was sending or receiving the usualy amount of sensory information and I suddenly felt very vulnerable and 'odd'. Wife and son confirmed that my face looked 'normal' but I felt anything but for nearly an hour. Once sense and feeling returned to normal, I didn't think anything of it, until the following day, when I have the mother-and-father of all migraines - accompanied by 'speech disruption': I knew the right word, but couldn't say it out loud - quite a handicap, given that I was attempting to deliver a contract law lesson at the time. So, a visit to the GP was arranged for later on Thursday afternoon. The doctor asked my permission to video the consultation, which I agreed to, but now wonder whether we both might regret the recording. She started by asking if there was anything I was afraid of and what she hoped I could do for her: both rather daft questions, but probably conforming to some NHS training protocol of which I was unaware. Having run through the events of Wednesday evening and that morning, she thought I'd suffered a transient ischaemic attack (TIA)or 'mini-stroke', as they used to be called before the relentless onward march of the TLA (three-letter acronym) took over. She then proceeded to give me a full neurological examination, which involved hitting knees and wrist with a small hammer and scraping a metal object against my arms, legs and feet before printing a six-page article from the internet and telling me to take an alarming amount of aspirin each day until I was summoned to the TIA clinic at the local hospital. On returning home and reading the literature, however, I saw - on the sixth and final page - that I was now unable to drive until I'd been seen at the clinic, where a decision on the full duration of a driving ban would be made. Alarmed by this - especially in light of the GPs failure to mention driving, coupled with the amount of aspirin seriously outnumbering the prescription I'd been given, I made another appointment for the following morning. Now events took a far more serious turn. The second GP was very concerned about the speech disruption and, on discovering that the TIA clinic appointment was for the following Wednesday, called the hospital to expedite matters. He wanted me seen sooner because speech disruption is another TIA symptom, and could, therefore, indicate that I had had a 'crescendo' TIA, where episodes follow each other with increasing severity. The appointment was rescheduled for 9.00am the following morning. So, Saturday saw us at the hospital, bright and early, where I was ushered, with brisk efficiency, through blood pressure and blood checks, a neck ultrasound examination and consulatation with a reassuring doctor, who then said I was being prescribed a statin and a clopidogrel: the former as a precaution against cholesterol and the latter against sticky platelets (but not of the dishwashing variety, these little blighters hang around on artery walls, waiting for the chance to break off and get carried off down every narrower blood vessels until they get stuck and cut off the flow of blood to some poor unsuspecting nerve ending). He also said I would be called back for an MRI scan of the back of my head and advised a period of rest - 'don't worry and don't overdo things'. Yeah, and I'll try not to think about giraffes, either... Go on, bugger off, you long-necked pest.

From bona fide emergency to nothing to do with us

When the car disturbed the manhole cover in the middle of the road outside the rental property we moved into yesterday, I ventured a look into the hole. This turned out to be an approx 40 foot drop into a surface water drain, with upended cast-iron cover sticking up - end-on - diagonally into the air. Either way, it represented a serious danger to passing cars, who were at risk of hitting the cover, driving into the hole, or both. So I called Calderdale Council's emergency helpline. It's a bank holiday weekend and the operator agreed that I'd taken the correct course of action; for around 5 minutes - at which point she called back to say it wasn't their problem, because the were the responsibility of an unknown private contractor. So, from emergency to nothing to do with me in 5 minutes. The only suggestion forthcoming from the helpline? 'Call Yorkshire Water' - on the vague offchance that they might know who had fitted the manhole cover. Solution? Go to neighbour, who, bravely, manhandled the manhole cover back over the hole (I'm a devout coward when it comes to positioning heavy metal objects over deep holes and not afraid to admit it). The hole's safe-ish until Monday, when my neigbour assured me they're coming back to tarmac the street. We'll see - it'll still be a good old-fashioned British banky then, after all. It shouldn't surprise me, but the speed with which the Council washed their hands of the matter - especially given the potentially serious consequences - shows, yet again, how far the public service ethos has been lost in the UK.

An Unintended Consequence...

We returned home from holiday on Saturday 3 August to find our house flooded. On the morning we left, I went into the bathroom to discover no water was flowing from the taps. I called Yorkshire Water, our 'service provider', to report the disruption to our supply and then went on holiday, with the operative's words wishing me a good holiday ringing in my ears. Not so welcome was the call from our next door neighbour the following Saturday. We were just south of Worcester on the M5 when she called to say that there was water running out of our front door and that her partner had turned off the stopcock on the pavement outside. As our 'keyholder' - my sister-in-law - turned out to be enjoying a weekend away in Rutland (is that even possible...), we then had to endure the torture of a stop-start drive back up the M5/M6 before we could witness the damage first hand. The journey did allow us the luxury of reporting the flood enroute, so we arrived home in the knowledge that the restoration team would call on the Sunday morning, but also that the emergency accommodation promised by our policy would not be available until the following night, because all 'quality' hotel accommodation in our area was fully booked. I was, therefore, left with the need to secure overnight accommodation in a local 'non-quality' hotel, or cheap flop-house, if you prefer; least said the better, though a room that comes complete with a dog-end must now be a comparative rarity in these smoke-free days. After a fortnight in a Holiday Inn, we're now enjoying the delights of a Premier Inn, while waiting for the formalities to be compeleted on the assured short-hold tenancy of a three-bedroomed house near to all local amenities and our own, slightly damp, home. It was at this point that I reported our predicament to our local authority, Calderdale Council - itself no stranger to flooded households, but which was still able to deliver a most unwelcome surprise. Owing to changes the Council had been allowed to make by central government, Calderdale's cabinet has recently reduced the second home exemption to a nice round 0%, which means, shorn of the legal terminology the official tried to hide-behind, that we will have to pay full Council Tax on our own home and temporary accommodation. This is, apparently, an example of the coalition government's localism agenda, which gives local authorities powers to do what central government and civil servant used to do, but for which no-one gets the blame when hard-of-thinking local councillors and their employed jobsworths make a complete pig's arse of something in their own area. This came home to me when I brought the matter to the attention of one of my ward councillors. An independent, he turns out to be a member of the very cabinet that voted for the disastrous change. His reply was a prime example of how much havoc a no-doubt well-meaning numbnuts can cause when left in a room with a number of other elected representatives, a supply of tea and coffee making facilities, some biscuits and a frightening array of devolved powers. He had voted in favour of the reduction in exemption rates because he thought it would somehow prevent private rented accommodation being left empty, but he went on to say that the reasoning behind the decision was 'scant consolation' for us, as we were victims of the 'law of unintended consequences' that 'will get you every time'. He ended his apologetic email by asking if there was anything he could do. To which I must respond with two suggestions: 1) get your hand in your wallet and pay one of the two Council Tax bills you have landed us with, and 2) think about the consequences of your actions, rather than trying to use financial policy to motivate private landlords to do what you should be doing - housing people in need in your borough, councillor.

This is England?

So ran the legend, without question mark, tattooed onto the large man's upper left arm, underneath the tattoo artist's representation of a Union flag, unfurled in a stiff breeze. A simple affectation of patriotism – albeit it one stolen from the title of a series of TV films, written and directed by Shane Meadows. In his work, Meadows depicts the changed fortunes of a group of working-class skinheads during the 1980s and the tattooed man certainly would have shared their origins. But it was his chosen depiction of patriotism that interested me. The word itself is loaded – 'last resort of the scoundrel', according to Dr Johnson - or, perhaps increasingly, the first resort of the right-wing politician, as evidenced by David Cameron's frequent references to speaking of behalf of the British people, or praying in aid nationalism to bolster support for his policies. The reality, as exemplified by our tattooed friend, is rather different, for here we have a government dominated by a public-school and Oxbridge educated cabal that is simply light years away from the common shared experience of those they govern, yet with the apparent need to use the sentiment driven language of unity and shared past to drip feed fear of the 'other' – be it foreigners, the poor, the jobless, to keep the majority onside and supportive of policies, such as privatisation or the loss of employment rights, that are inimical to their basic needs and instincts. Seeing the tattoo made me wonder how it is that we have become a nation bound together by fear: is this the only vision our leaders are able or willing to offer those they are otherwise so clearly alienated from? Juxtoposed with the tattoo, I have another image – this time on the T-shirt worn by a man (strange how both image bearers are male – mirroring the John Bull or Tommy Atkins of old, so beloved by those on the right...). This slogan was slightly longer and far more threatening:

'Welcome to Great Britain; fit in or f*** off'

Fear of being overwhelmed by the 'others', by 'them' – a lowest common denominator rendition of the common refrain of IDS, Cameron, Farage, and those despicable advertising vans trundling around parts of London. We are better, more generous, more accepting, more open than this: we need to demand better of our leaders, or they will squander the real legacy bequeathed to us by those past generations who welcomed the 'other' and the different to these shores and whose leaders did not seek to create division and hatred merely so that they could claim narrow electoral advantage.

Breakfast with a Bee

I like to have breakfast in the conservatory this weather. It's warm and peaceful - but not this morning. I was just getting into the coffee and cereal when I heard an angry buzzing. I looked up to see a bee repeatedly flying into one of the glass end-panels and the angry buzzing that accompanied its efforts showed that it obviously was not enjoying the experience. To escape, it had to fly down the panel and then out of the open patio door; instead, its instinctive reaction seemed to be to fly upwards, thereby trapping itself against the glass. My attention wandered for a moment and I though it had managed to work this out, but then the buzzing started again - muffled this time. The sound reduction was due to the bee trapping itself behind a roof blind. And this is where the yuck factor kicked-in To remove the bee, I had to get a stepladder from the garage and climb up to unclip the blind. This released around a dozen fly and other insect corpses, but not the bee. True to instinct, it then flew to the lower edge of the roof panel, where it repeated the head banging on glass futile escape method. Retrieving a large glass from the kitchen and a magazine, I then had to balance on the top of the stepladder and put the glass over the bee, who by now had convinced me that it was not the brightest of hive employees. Not realising this was intended as a life-saving manouver, the bee now became really angry, with the result that sliding the magazine under the glass, while in danger of overbalancing on the top of the ladder became an even riskier operation. Balancing the glass on the magazine, I descended the ladder and walked out into the garden and placed the glass on its side on the garden table and removed the magazine. True to form, the bee continued flying into the bottom of the glass for a few seconds, before turning and flying out of the other end. I then feared a repeat of the whole rescue when it flew back towards the patio door, only veering up and away at the last minute. I was feeling rather proud of my rescue - the bee had returned to the wild unharmed and intact. My wife then appeared, wanting to know what I was doing with the stepladder in the conservatory and why I'd covered the floor in dead flies... All together now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlrsqGal64w

Constructive Vultures? Buying into Co-operative Bank Debt

Aurelius Capital Management and Silver Point Capital - two US hedge funds with 'vulture' reputations (ie buying debt to demand stringent repayment terms from already endangered creditors) have bought bonds issued by the Britannia Building Society before it was taken over by the Co-operative Bank. The bonds rank higher than the subordinated bonds and preference shares sold to small investors, who are already faced with losses as part of the bank's 'bail-in' that is intended to raise £500 million towards the bank's recapitalisation. Vulture funds act only on their own narrow self-interest but Aurelius and Silver Point have - perhaps mischieviously - attempted to excuse their behaviour by claiming: 'We are not here to cause mischief. We want to sit down with the bank and work out a consensual solution.' A 'consensual solution' to a situation where they have no definable interest in the first place. Their actions will force the bank to pay an even higher price for the recapitalisation and cause even more loss and uncertainty to the small investors who now risk higher losses if Aurelius and Silver Point's demands destabilise the bank still further.

Lights, Latex and Lubrication - it's Time to Examine That Prostate!

There really is nothing quite like a prostate examination first thing in the morning to add a spring to the step and a fresh focus to the eye. Having told the Doc that I was gaining entirely the wrong sort of reputation as a twice (or even thrice) a night man, he decided it was necessary to go through the brown rusty key-hole for a quick digital examination. Now, I've heard some people are prepared to hand over a decent wodge of hard-earned for this kind of thing, so getting it free on the NHS could be a boon for them, but whisper it not in front of Jeremy Hunt, for I'm sure he'd want to emulate the trail blazed by the private sector in offering this service, albeit for very different end reasons. For those of us either not yet initiated into such practices, or whose views on such matters are purely practical, as opposed to pleasurable, it does feel a bit intrusive to have - admittedly a medically-qualified - rigid digit pass through the old tradesman's on its way to gauge the size and location of this mystic organ. Then again, there is the undoubted advantage that a short period of discomfort gives way to longer-term reassurance: size and location found to be 'normal' it was all over and dignity (for both of us) was soon restored. I can now sit down in comfort, safe in the knowledge that there's nothing nasty lurking where the sun doesnt' shine. More of us chaps of a certain age need to try it - a lot more is at stake than a moment's embarrassment and fleeting discomfort.

The Day the Co-operative Bank Stopped Co-operating.

Once upon a time there was a bank that did not exist to make a profit for its shareholders. Instead, it was owned by its members and shared its profits with them. It did not sell products that its staff didn't really understand and it wasn't concerned with taking over as many other banks as it possibly could to grow its market share. Unspectacular banking - and it was ethical too: it refused to lend to businesses that were involved in the arms trade or in tobacco products, for example. But then it bought a building society. That was also a mutually-owned business (we used to have a lot of those, but most converted to become banks, and turned out to be run by people with about as much idea of banking as I have about football or brain surgery). Unfortunately, the building society, in order to compete with the bad banks that used to be mutually-owned, had made some spectacularly bad lending decisions and they sank the bank that co-operated with its members and its lenders and borrowers. And no amount of hiding behind spurious arguments, such as it was actually a 'plc' all along, just owned by a mutual organisation, will change the fact that ethical considerations and member dividends have now been sacrificed: we just lost another of the few mutuals, and in spite of the need to open up banking and increase competition, that everybody agrees on in principle, we now have one less alternative to choose from.

The Overexcited Headteacher

My son's high school headteacher sent a letter out to all parents at the end of the last half-term. In it, he used four variants on the verb 'to excite'. On closer reading, his state of near euphoria seemed to have been induced by a proposed extension to the entrance hall and a WiFi upgrade. I was torn between advising him to calm down - take a restful holiday, perhaps, or maybe do some relaxation exercises. Either that or advise him that vacuous hype of the trivial or mundane was a waste of trees, when commited to paper. In education there is a tendency for those in positions of authority to resort to vapid sloganising. The phrase 'I'm excited to tell you' - or one of its many variants - too often hides the reality that there is nothing worth saying, and that being the case, silence is the most honest course to take.

What's in a Name: the University That Needs to Grow-up

Soon after the official opening, my dad found himself standing in front of the then Leeds Polytechnic's new Brunswick Building, when a man came up to him and asked what he thought of it. Dad was a joiner and spent much of his working life on major construction projects. Taking in the front of the building, he said to the stranger that it was neither symmetrical nor finished (the right hand side was punctuated with the protruding rusting ends of metal wall ties). Hearing dad's assessment, his interlocutor took a sharp intake of breath before announcing that he was Patrick Nuttgens, the Polytechnic's Director and the architect responsible for the building! Nuttgens, who was Director of the Polytechnic from its opening in 1969 until his retirement in 1986, channeled his considerable talents into architecture and higher education. Not always popular in his adopted home city, he was nonetheless a leading advocate of urban development with a human face and of wide access to higher education, based on merit, not ability to pay. Fast forward a few years after his retirement to 1992, and the Polytechnic became Leeds Metropolitan University. The new name, a tad too pretentious for some, was felt to add a certain cache to the institution's new status - and served to differentiate it from the neighbouring, and longer established, Leeds University. Twenty-one years after attaining university-status, Leeds Met's current leadership (who don't tend to go in for Nuttgens' like longevity in office) appear to have decided that 'Metropolitan' has been outgrown, and propose spending £250,000 on a makeover, that includes the options of substituting Metropolitan with 'Headingley', 'Beckett' or 'Riding'. Susan Price, Leeds Met's Vice-Chancellor and leading advocate of change, wants a 'consultation with stakeholders' - whoever they might be - but offers little by way of explanation as to how a name adopted in 1992 has become 'outgrown'. With finance cuts blighting further and higher education provision and courses closing in many universities, including the loss of some language teaching at Leeds Met, a more mature outlook from the leadership would be more welcome than this ridiculous cosmetic attention grabbing exercise.

The Fearless Independence of the Taxpayers' Alliance

They're getting rather touchy at the Taxpayers' Alliance. Responding to a critical item in Private Eye 1339, which condemned the Alliance for its silence over the cost of Thatcher's funeral, its Political Director, Jonathan Isaby, complains in Eye 1340 about 'glaring inaccuracies'. Citing press and TV mentions, Isaby insists that the Alliance is not a 'Tory body'. However, a closer look at the coverage rather undermines his bluff and fluster. First up, Isaby mentions ITV and BBC appearances - neither of which offer much by way of critical analysis of the Alliance's credentials, but tend to accept its pro-Tory outpourings and partisan number-crunching to pad out their reporting. But he is on even shakier ground with the press articles that he says were critical of the Tories - ranging from the Daily Wail and Torygraph through to that bastion of left-wing ideology, the Daily Star, Isaby crows that the Alliance has been fearless in its attacks on tax avoidance. Or rather they don't. What they actually reveal is that the Alliance follows the editorial strategy of those papers: scare the crap out of the middle class; stop them getting ideas beyond their station (as the subtext goes: 'try this and you'll get your name in the papers your neighbours read...'); above all - keep the bastards voting Tory - that's the independence of the Alliance for you.

The end of the Co-operative Bank?

Well, so much for the much vaunted spread of competition in the retail banking sector. The beleagured Co-op, of which I'm a business and personal customer, seems rather shaky this weekend. I like mutuality in banking - sod the shareholders and their clamour for dividends - mutuals inject some sanity into the financial world; and in the case of the Co-operative, this was topped with their ethical stance. But not all mutuals were so nice and cuddly. The Britannia Building Society, for example, might have been owned by its members, but it was driven by a very pushy sales culture that I came to dislike intensely when managing accounts their on behalf of my parents. Every visit turned into a sales opportunity. Once, at the end of a month, I was coerced by the manager of the Huddersfield branch into converting two low interest accounts into 5 year bonds:I had an eye on the parking meter; she on her sales targets while the spiel wore relentlessly on. So important was the transaction to her that she insisted on dropping the forms round to my house in person, it was, she said, a short detour for her on the way home. In consequence of this treatment, I closed all the Britannia accounts as they matured and voted against the 2009 acquisition of the Society by the Co-operative. With pay reportedly being clawed-back from former Co-operative and Britannia employees involved in the debacle, I think there are many in the Bank and amongst its customers who must now wish they'd done the same. Unfortunately, the Co-op isn't too big to fail, and its founding principles are probably way too far to the left for Osborne to feel much in the way of sympathy, so I don't think there will be much appetite for a Treasury-mounted rescue; the only hope from that quarter might be the desire to give some traction to the oft-repeated calls for greater competition in the retail banking sector. Co-operative savers and investors, however, need to keep their options open, and hope that another mutual offers something approaching the same level of service that saw the Co-operative consistently outperform larger high-street operations in the customer satisfaction stakes.

A bit of a Kerfuffle

Which is the most serious: a kerfuffle or a palaver? Judging by usage in Yorkshire and Lancashire it would seem the former is the more trivial. After all, you can have a 'bit of a kerfuffle, but there's a tendency to say it's a 'right palaver'.

The Guru of Ampersands and Asses

I recently attended a business promotion event held in a football stadium in a near-by town. In addition to 40-odd businesses showing their wares, there were a range of seminars, led by expert facilitators. One, aged in his early 20s, was – according to his blurb – a Facebook guru. Already a seasoned promotional and marketing campaign leader, he was going to show us all how to ‘create a real kick ass page & what sort of content you need to think of to get “viral”. Being a native UK English user, my first thought was whether I needed to learn how to kick a donkey. This was followed by the cringe-making realisation that the young guru seemed to have a predilection for unwarranted ampersands. Facebook, as with other social networking media, may indeed be international, but the dangers of adopting it as the benchmark for all forms of written communication are becoming increasingly apparent. The guru, again according to his blurb, is adept at ‘finding ways that make him stand out’. You could say that again.

Cameron’s Fusiliers - Now Recruiting

The National Governors’ Association, the umbrella body representing the UK’s school governors, is now acting as the recruiting sergeant for David Cameron’s national service scheme for school and college students, the National Citizen Service. NCS participants are expected to take part in community and team building projects before joining a week-long residential outdoor pursuit course that takes place in school holidays. The scheme is heavily subsidised; the cost to parents is £50.00 with a bursary scheme for those who can’t afford it. Each session culminates with a ‘graduation ball’ at which students are presented with a certificate personally signed by David Cameron. Organisers gush that this ‘will look amazing on a CV or UCAS application’ – but given the PMs current low standing in the education sector, students would be well advised to keep the signature covered if showing the certificate to admissions tutors. Aside from the ball and Cameron’s moniker, the scheme replicates much of the outward bound work that local education authorities used to provide at their own centres, many of which have now been sold off to fund budget cuts, and the NGA’s involvement smacks rather of desperation by Downing Street and the DfE in drumming up support. Imagine the hue and cry that would issue from those same portals if Labour-run local authorities offered their own subsidised schemes for youth in their areas. In any event, school governors are kept rather too busy by the outpourings of Mr Gove’s over-active imagination to be sounding the praises of the Big Society by recruiting their young charges to take part in taxpayer subsidised prime ministerial feel-good photo opportunities.

Feeding back on feedback

Just in, from head of an examination board - who obviously has too much time on his hands... "You have provided us with a rich and detailed source of feedback and we have a lot of work to do to further analyse and consider how we move forward on the issues you’ve raised. I remain committed to providing you with feedback about this over the coming months, through the newsletter as well as through other means as appropriate." A never ending loop of feedback, going forward. Arghhhhhh. My idea of a living hell.

Tories: so many scapegoats, so little time - but IDS really doesn't want to frighten you

Interesting piece in this week's Private Eye. Apparently, IDS is concerned that people are being unnecessarily frightened by changes to housing benefit for social housing tenants. Bit of a mouthful that, isn't it. Could shorten it to Bedroom Tax, After all, that's what some journalists and a lot of the Twitterati seem to do. And that's the problem: you see, IDS has taken the BBC to task - and they've agreed not to call it the Bedroom Tax anymore. So simple really. Except it isn't. As you see from the article, IDS really only wants to frighten 'social housing tenants', not people in private rented accommodation who claim housing benefit (presumably he'll be coming after them later). But this is a perennial problem for the Tories. They have a political ideology that is built on fear: fear of the 'others'; fear of the immigrant; fear of the poor; anyone that might possibly be useful when it comes to keeping the marginal Tory voter on side. Right now, of course, with UKIP on the rise, the fear and scapegoating is taking on a new urgency. This can be seen in the reply from my MP - Tory in key marginal by the way - to an email I sent him. In this, I voiced my concern about politicians and the media victimising the poorest in society. But as you see from his response, he artfully only picks on the journalists (but doesn't name any Tory scribblers, presumably for fear of losing support; but we know who they are, don't we?). He only bothers to take up the first paragraph half-answering my point before turning the reply into a veritable hymn of praise to IDS's Universal Credit. . How reassuring it all is. And how reassured I'm meant to be; as long, that is, as I'm not a benefit claimant, or even, presumably, someone who doesn't have a job of work. I'm not, and I do: but I have claimed benefits and been unemployed in the past and recognise that I could be either of those again in the future. I also recognise the fear and loathing that scapegoating like this causes those who are claimants now. Which is why I spend so much of my time reading and writing about the subject - because we are responsible for those the Tories and their fellow travellers in the media tell us to distrust or castigate. Which is also why I'm so impressed by the Truth and Lies about Poverty Report from the Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Church Joint Public Issues Team. The Report dispel myths, in particular those of the 'everyone knows' sort that IDS and his happy band of SPADs like to feed to the Daily Wail, the Sun, Express et al. The truth is that benefit claimants did not cause the deficit. They do, however, come in useful as a government tool to deflect concern away from the real culprits: the message that we should take from these deflection strategies is that we shouldn't even think of attacking the bankers and financial institutions that are really to blame - because IDS doesn't want us being beastly to his friends.

Blandings - too bland for Wodehouse

Blandings - a good job the Beeb said the series is 'based on' P G Wodehouse's stories. The originals are much better and far, far funnier. As a Sunday evening sub-Downton offering Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders have been mildly amusing, but after I got a couple of 'Plumb' Wodehouse's books from the library (we still have them in Calderdale - and damn good they are too), I realised the written version is much better than the screen performance. For a start, Wodehouse carefully crafts his humour and lets the reader in - slowly - to the unfolding action. What is a short piece of virtual slapstick to Spall's Lord Emsworth is a verbal delight on the page - and laugh out loud funny when he reaches the squishy punchline. The hero - in Blandings it would be Lord Emsworth - is just a liable as the villain to end up looking ridiculous, and even the most inconsequential of plotlines is made to feel like the stuff of major importance as Wodehouse's elegant prose leads you into the action. Turn off the TV - read the books. Aside from the Jeeves and Wooster series, I particularly recommend Blandings Castle and A Few Quick Ones (ten short and very funny stories).

Take your partners for the great energy switcheroo...

Hacked off by Eon's latest price hike, a price comparison check showed that Co-operative Energy was cheaper. Being an existing Co-op member, and feeling that it would be good to cut the shareholder dividend out the price equation, I opted to change supplier to the Co-op.
Now received three emails from the Co-op requesting final meter readings. I've responded to these but the site linked to the request can't accept a gas reading because they haven't yet received a final reading from Eon. Which the won't - because Eon are waiting for the final gas reading from the sodding Co-op!
Human contact is out, of course. An insipid recorded voice tells me they're experiencing "high call volumes" (no big surprise there, probably legions of us frustrated would-be switchers caught in limbo betwixt suppliers).
So much for government and Ofgem assurances that switching is now much easier and that customers should shop around.
From what I've seen so far, with sob story calls from Eon and Co-operative Energy's inability to read emails switching suppliers is as frustrating as ever.

A Rather Poetic Pennine Wander

Spent the afternoon of New Year's Day walking from Lumbutts to Langfield Common in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. Following Paul Hannon's Hebden Bridge and the Calder Valley guide, we set off from Lumbutts, a hamlet in just off the Pennine Way long-distance footpath near Todmorden in the Calder Valley.
A strong wind at our back, we walked from the Shepherd's Rest public house away from the hamlet to join the Pennine Way before turning back at the Long Stoop to return to Lumbutts down an ancient packhorse path.
The walk was certainly invigorating, though we found some of the rather poetic instructions hard to follow in places, in particular the sections describing the path leading from Lumbutts to the Long Stoop. All in all, though, an great walk - certainly blew away the post-Christmas cobwebs.

The Long Stoop

Adwords add confusion

Google Adwords gophers have been in touch to say that my advert has been 'disapproved' because it links to a URL that contravenes their Landing Policy. What this techi bollocks means is that they think the site - which has featured in the same form on the advert for over five years - is infected with Malware. However, having run Google's own diagnostic tool over it, my site is clean (http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?hl=en-GB&site=http://www.westfieldeditorial.co.uk); moreover, Google hasn't visited that particular URL at all in the last 90 days. Sounds like the new year's getting off to a good start in Google Ad land, doesn't it? Meanwhile, my site is freely available, boring, yet available to visit in complete safety - you are all welcome to point your browsers to it.

C of E - licensed to discriminate

Maria Miller's cringe-making defence of the Government's religious same-sex marriage 'opt-in' compromise overlooks one important fact with regard to the Church of England. This is the 'established' Church, which means - in addition to having the monarch as its 'Supreme Governor' that forms part and parcel of the Constitutional relationship between Church and State (and 20-odd of its most senior Bishops sit in the House of Lords and have a role in making our secular laws). This means that the permanent 'opt-out' imposed on the Church of England and the Church in Wales from - supposedly - ever being able to marry a same-sex couple, in effect, sees the UK government enshrining in law the right to discriminate on one of the organs of state. Nice work Cameron, but I don't think it's enough to eep your grubby little compromise out of the European Court of Human Rights...

Leaving the Church

I have to admit that I'm not a natural decision-maker. I find there are always so many issues to consider and I fear being seen to rush in. Then again, there are times when you come to see that thing you previously accepted have changed, there comes a tipping-point and the end result becomes obvious. So it has become with my response to the decision of the Bishops' Advisory Panel I attended in April. The word Advisory is really a misnomer – a BAP's findings are invariably followed to the letter, and there is no right of challenge or appeal. It is not the fact of the refusal that has caused me such difficulty, rather the way in which the decision was reached; the report, in particular the part written by the pastoral adviser, contains a series of errors, but I was told, straightaway, that I just had to accept it and that coming to terms with rejection would, somehow, prove to be 'cathartic'. Well, taking my Vicar’s good advice, I took time off from Reader duties, even Church itself, and I talked and prayed about my position, but in the end I have come to the decision that I simply cannot return to St Matthew's. The crux here is the issue of obedience. My Reader's licence states that I am required to be obedient to the diocesan bishop in all things lawful. However, that far-reaching demand is now beyond me because it comes constrained by my realisation that expediency has come before justice; procedure before fairness, and I have been denied any opportunity even to set the record straight, let alone to challenge what I feel to be a patent injustice. It is now six months since I last felt able even to cross the threshold of an Anglican Church. That is a sentence I never thought I'd write, but it is true – and it is also true that my personal faith has probably never been stronger. However, in that six month period, I have also taken time to consider a range of other issues that have caused me difficulties over the years – mainly because they keep recurring in the news and in my thoughts and prayers. I have said many times that I believe divorcees are treated as second-class Christians by the Anglican Church, and this is especially true of the invidious, highly intrusive, but ultimately unnecessary Faculty process that remarried ordination candidates have to endure. In our case, my wife and I both divorced our first spouses a full eight years before we even met, yet the Faculty application was rejected three times, with no reason or explanation given by the Archbishop of York, who has sole jurisdiction to decide – again without any right of challenge or appeal. But this is not the only issue on which I feel that I have to part company with the Church leadership. The failure to accept the fullness of women's ministry, amply demonstrated by the amendment put forward as a failed compromise in the women bishops debate, and the failure to offer any real pastoral lead on issues of human sexuality, in particular the discriminatory treatment of homosexuals, are evidence of failures to accept the diversity of human life or to engage with the human condition, which I feel lies at the heart of the Gospel. So why not work for change from within the Church? Well, I have considered that, but feel it simply is not an option. This is because, as I see it, the Church leadership is adopting an increasingly beleagured stance in the face of its perceived loss of influence in contemporary society. The drift towards extreme, even reactionary, positions when faced with opposition, as evidenced by Lord Carey's recent intemperate remarks at a Conservative conference fringe meeting, taken together with the acceptance of rules and procedures that already routinely deny a right of challenge to internal dissent do not, I most sincerely believe, bode well for the future. Taken collectively, the overall effect is that I see a church that now finds itself a long way behind mainstream society, key elements of which seem to be far more accepting, forgiving and nurturing than the established church: what, as the Occupy protesters asked, would Jesus do? Not, I suspect, selectively quote scripture or mouth empty platitudes before lapsing into often confusing silence. I have been active in the Anglican Church for forty-odd years, the last 23 as a Reader, and I embarked on the selection procedure reliant on three very positive internal diocesan interviews that were fully supported by personal, pastoral and academic references, but these meant nothing in the final analysis, as only the BAP recommendation was taken into consideration. The end result is that I now find myself unable to continue within its structures or accept its authority. I do, however, feel called to a more listening or reflective type of witness, one that is not reliant on hierarchies but a more direct, personal relationship with God.

Eon-ough is enough

Few, if any, of us would buy from an organisation that allowed its telesales staff to harangue us during a 'cold call', yet energy supplier Eon seems to be going out of its way to alienate customers by doing just that, if our recent experience is anything to go by. Last week, my wife was called on her mobile by an Eon representative who asked to speak to me. Having explained that the call had come through to her and that I wasn't available, the caller abruptly hung-up. Yesterday, however, she received another call, again intended for me, but this time the caller insisted, or perhaps persisted, in trying to get the message across. The call came while my wife was at work and she explained that we didn't need boiler cover and that she was busy and couldn't talk. Instead of accepting this, the caller proceeded to speak with increasing volume and speed, doubtless to ensure they reached the end of their script faster than my wife could hit the red button. Caller failed - and now Eon have received a non-too polite email to Customer Services pointing out that another call will result in us changing energy suppliers. Calling the mobile is interesting as our landline is registered with the Telephone Preference Scheme (TPS) and we've told Eon only to contact us via email. It's also interesting that they seem so keen to sell central heating insurance now - is this a response the the government's tariff reduction plans?

Being Watched - then and now

From the tower of St Nicholas's Church in Prague's Lesser Town Square (Mala Strana Nemesti) the secret police used to watch comings and goings from their baroque watchtower. There are few CCTV cameras in evidence in Prague today. But in the UK, on average, you appear on approx 200 CCTV cameras each day you spend in a city or large town. The 1989 Velvet Revolution showed how far people will go to claim their freedom. We, on the other hand, have given ours away without a murmur – no consent was sought, and much of the watching is done for profit, not state snooping, though the authorities have made sure they can get their hands on the results, so that's alright then... And, as the right-wing press are always eager to say, if you haven't done anything wrong, you've nothing to fear.

Tramadol – did the doctor really know best?

I was given Tramadol in hospital to relive pain after a left knee arthroscopy. About an hour later, the physiotherapist had to help me back into bed. My temperature had rocketed and I felt about to keel over during her demonstration of how to ascend and descend stairs with a walking stick. She was assisted in her efforts by the ward sister, who left me with the words “if they ever ask if you’re allergic to any painkillers – say Tramadol, it doesn’t agree with you”. Well, my knees are both the same age, and this August it was the turn of my right knee to have its cartlidge tidied-up, as the doctor put it – making it sound more like something you’d do in a garden, rather than in an operating theatre under general anaesthetic. There then followed the painkiller allergy/intolerance question, to which I mentioned the Tramadol incident. “Oh, I don’t think it could have been Tramadol. After all, you’d also been on morphine. And it was an hour after you’d been given it before you had the problem” was his response – to which I replied that I didn’t want to risk a repeat performance; I was also mindful that I was being sent home as soon as I came round from the anaesthetic, and didn’t want to have an adverse reaction when I got home, leaving my wife and sons to have to deal with the immediate consequences of what the medics quaintly call a ‘contraindication’. Funnily enough, the question reared its head when I was in the hands of the anaesthetist and his two theatre nursing assistants as they prepared me for surgery. One nurse backed me to the hilt – she’d also had an adverse reaction to Tramadol and told me to stick to Co-codamol. That was just before the general anaesthetic took effect.

Tesco's wuff attitude towards dogs

Just returned from a short visit to our local Tesco. An over-zealous Advance security box-wallah was po-facedly telling a young woman that she couldn't leave her Jack Russell puppy tied to a rail outside the store. When asked why, he fell into 'more than my job's worth' mode: only following instructions, nothing against dogs, etc. Paid not much more than minimum wage, he probably gets his fair share of crap - and to be fair to the woman, her response was bemused acquiesence, rather than outright hostility or abuse. But since when did it become a no-no to tie a dog up outside a shop? Not very considerate, Tesco. After all, you allow us to insure dogs and probably make a tidy profit selling everything necessary for canine health and welfare, from dog biccies to scented poop bags, so why not let a dog wait outside while its owner is adding to your profits?

King's Lynn, the town that hates to see you leave

Nearly 28 years since my last visit, which I remember being marred somewhat by a one-way system rather lacking adequate turn-off signs, we returned yesterday, having failed to follow the ring-road cum bypass route the A149 takes round the town centre. Taking previous experience into account, I opted for front-seat observer role and Jane drove - both keeping weather eye on the signs. We ended up following the yellow-square with black dot 'all other routes' sign, which duly led us right Morrison's car park. Doubtless it's a really nice spot; my dad's cousin was once lady mayoress, so there is even a tenuous family connection, but it has to be said, signage is not a strong point or a reason to hurry back.

Ever been caught by the Short and Curlies?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-and-Curlies-ebook/dp/B008IDL70I/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1342822286&sr=8-13

Mind the Garage

So, you know how it is. You've got the car into a tight spot, but a little manouvering should see you right. That's when I hit the wheelie bin (garbage bin - US English) - twice. Then I went forward - that's when I hit the pebbledashed wall of the garage, and the scraping noise was loud enough to bring out the neighbours. Shit, bugger, arseholes: it's going to cost a fortune to put right. And it's my birthday tomorrow. Told the scratch removal company to make the invoice out for something less embarrassing, such as Ladyboy Massage Service...

The Bishops' Advisor and the Enneagram

The Enneagram is a device used to identify the psychological and spiritual growth potential of nine different personality types. The system is supposedly based on wisdom teachings from a variety of spiritual sources, including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Sufi Islam. From my perspective, however, I rather fear that its principles were used recently to determine that I was an unsuitable candidate for ordination training in the Anglican Church. You see, I was sent to a Bishops’ Advisory Panel (BAP) by my diocese. It had already been decided that I had a vocation by three internal diocesan advisors, but the final decision in these cases is reserved to three advisors who spend two and a half days observing and interviewing candidates. The Enneagram was highlighted as an area of interest by the advisor who had to discern whether I fulfilled the three criteria of “personality and character”, “relationships” and “leadership and collaboration” and there is a degree of overlap here with the character traits that form part of the nine personality types found in the Enneagram. The advisor interviewed me for 35 minutes (the programme allows up to 50 minutes, and this was the shortest of the three) but was highly selective in the use of my comments and responses when compiling the report. Reading it, I get a distinct feeling that my replies were made to fit – even to the extent of being taken out of context in two areas. Given that BAP advisors are entrusted with a decision-making role that cannot be challenged, reviewed or appealed against, I am worried that Enneagram-influenced thought, which has been criticized for its “new age” or Gnostic-based reliance on “whole universe” connectivity to individual birth-originated personality elements, is being given credence by some in the Anglican Church, when Enneagram use has been questioned by the Roman Catholic Church.

Sorry, Derrick

Visited Cheddar Gorge at half-term. This place has always been a tourist magnet but now has upped the ante in marketing terms quite considerably. A £50.00 family ticket (almost as steep as the Gorge...) bought us a short trip on an open-top bus, entry to two show caves and a museum with some graphic depictions of defleshing (an essential precursor to the act of cannibalism, apparently). In an apparent attempt to sweeten the pill, the chap who sold us the ticket was keen to point out that we could return to use up any unused part of of our ticket at any time in the next 10 years! The open-topped tour took us from the village car park up to the top of the Gorge before depositing us at Gough's Cave 0 larger of the two show caves. The visit to Gough's Cave is interesting, though the cod-Somerset Burr of the commentary, delivered via a hand-held audio guide becomes irritating after a while. Cave over, we wandered upstairs where the visitor complex is topped with a large Costa, of which the attraction is inordinately fond. We'd found Costa to be a ubiquitous addition throughout the Bath and Somerset area - from full-blown cafes to filling stations offering mini-Costa self-serve stand, the brand is busily penetrating the West with gay abandon. At Cheddar the large outlet dominates the top end of the most commercialised part of the Gorge. Sitting atop the entrance to Gough's Cave, the cafe boasts an outdoor decked area and the usual corporate-themed mismatch of contrasting furniture overlaid with the maroon and cream colour scheme and a smattering of local sepia prints. The drinks followed the usual Costa format, but the taste was enhanced by the contraband pork pies, sandwiches and fruit we smuggled past the barristas. Leaving Costa, we walked downhill and crossing the road, I saw Derrick's – a much longer-established, family-established coffee house. As we continued downhill, I saw a couple of other cafes, all with the owner-managed feel about them that Costa so obviously lacks. Next time, Derrick, we'll call in – and no contraband, promise. The smaller of the two show caves, Cox's Cave, only opens every 30 minutes, so we queued for 10 minutes before the gate opened. No hand-held device here, rather a full-blown sound system. In the first half, you follow a path that leads between pools filled with stalagmites and corresponding stalagtites hang, dripping from the ceiling. The second part, however, adds a way over the top kitsch, cod-Middle Earth gloss to the cave scenery. Best part of the day? The three mile Gorge-top walk (access only as part of the family ticket): best of the best? The Primitive English Billy Goat charging from the undergrowth to our right. They don't sell tickets for that, and Costa can't guarantee it as part of their refreshment 'experience'.

A Centimetre of Porridge - Putting the 'Little' into Little Chef

We stayed at a Travelodge near Bath for a few days this week. Before setting out for home, my wife and I and two boys went for breakfast to the Little Chef next door.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Passing up on the offer of a fry-up, my 13 year-old opted for porridge with maple syrup. When it arrived, we were not amused to see that there was only just over a centimetre covering the bottom of the bowl. When the waiter, a friendly young man wearing the regulation red top and apron, came with the rest of the order, we pointed out the paucity of porridge in my son's bowl. Looking a bit sheepish, he said this was the usual amount. My wife, acknowledging that is might indeed be the case, persisted with the complaint that - Oliver Twist-like - it just wasn't enough for £3.99.

Moving things up a notch, the waiter reported to the manager and returned to tell us that they would give us another helping 'on the house'. We accepted, and another - slightly more generous portion arrived.

LC's menu describes the portion, over-optimistically as 'a bowl of Scottish oats with hot milk'. It isn't, but what arrived at our table represents a hell of a mark-up in terms of raw ingredient cost and the no doubt minimum wage of our waiter. The moral of the story: complain if it's not enough - better yet, don't go to 'Little' Chef.

The Distressed Shepherdess of Raydale

So, there we were, enjoying a peaceful walk around Semerwater, when we were passed by a quad bike driven at high speed just outside the hamlet of Marsett. The rider seemed in a hurry but we thought no more of it and carried on walking. The second pass was faster but this time we merited a glance, on the third pass, she stopped and asked if we'd seen her dog! The rider was a middle-aged woman and her quad was equipped with a home-made scabbard, in which rested a very well-work metal shepherd's crook. The Shepherdess explained that her dog had taken herself off for a walk, not an unusual occurrence, but had failed to return, prompting her high-speed search. She then said that the dog answered to the name of Nell, but then said it was best not to call her if we did see her, as "she's not very nice". Her concern was that the dog had been stolen, as there had been a few cases of this reported in the Dales recently. A young dog, she explained could be worth £5,000. Nell, however, was 8 and "getting a bit old", nonetheless, she might still be worth £1,200 to £1,500 to someone who needed a dog and wasn't too discerning as to where it came from. We took the Shepherdess's phone number and agreed to get in touch if we saw any sign of Nell on our walk. Couldn't help but wonder as to the nature of their relationship; obviously they worked together, but the Shepherdess had little in the way of affection for her co-worker. Had Nell been stolen, or merely taken herself off in search of a more companionable accommodation for her later years?

Send the kids to grammar school - scare the parents

Why do the middle class like to be frightened? Fear drives them, but also saps them of reason. Spent much of this week listening to parents of kids in Years 5 and 6 getting into a state of arse-dripping panic over their choice of high school. In Calderdale (Halifax and its environs), we have two selective grammars. So parents get suckered into private tuition - sometimes for kids as young as 7 - so they can cram their offsprings' little heads with just enough to give them one of the 310 places on offer each year.
To up the ante still further, the grammars offer a pre-test, which, for a fee, they set and mark themselves (nice little earner...) And today 1,500 kids sat it. Now, if they just scrape through, the private tutors will trouser even more cash to make sure they do better come the real thing. The problem is though, there'll still be too many kids passing for the places available. Last year, over 800 "passed": what to do? Raise the nominal pass rate, until just 310 lucky ones hit the magic score. Simple.
I don't like selective education. My year was the first one to go through the comprehensive system back in the late 60s in Leeds. So I didn't have to endure the mystic mog tendency among my primary school teachers, who consoled parents with the age old saw that their 11 year-old wasn't "university material" - as if they could possibly tell at that tender age! The aim was to manage failure - after all nearly two thirds of their pupils were doomed to fail, the age of deference was still with us, so parents could be placated with the brutal truth: "your kid just isn't bright enough".
Yet, every year, we have to endure the same thing here in the less enlightened reaches of the old West Riding, where 11-plus angst stalks the homes of the middle class and their less affluent fellow travellers.
Why don't we just admit the charade doesn't work; why not let the more able go to the same schools as the rest; why not let them be role models for their contemporaries; why not take the fear out of education and let our children learn at their own pace and in keeping with their abilities?
I've seen just too many 10 and 11 year-olds reduced to tears because a classmate has parroted some piece of parental garbage about who will pass the accursed 11-plus to believe for one instant that competition has any place in selecting a high school place. Hubris stalks the homes of the failure: parents of the unsuccessful can be seen haunting the playground when the results are announced, telling no-one in particular that grammar school wouldn't have been right for their child, or that now they'll be with their friends at comprehensive. But it's empty rhetoric for those who heard them trumpeting future academic success earlier in the year. They don't really mean any of it. Their child has failed to deliver in this most important race. Even if they one day manage to win a Nobel prize, the invisible stain of 11-plus failure will still mark them out - all because they had a bad day one Saturday back in the dog days of their last year in primary school.

Americans on Holiday

Toward the end of July we took a two-day journey from Vancouver to Jasper on the Rocky Mountaineer. For the uninitiated, this is a gin palace on rails that travels that offers great scenery and wildlife viewing. So far so scenic. However, when boarding the train at Vancouver and again at Kamloops, the first overnight stop, we encountered pickets. Seemingly, Rocky Mountaineer's management (very slick and scaringly smiley...) had sacked 108 employees and employed cheap replacements. The discarded workers had had the temerity to seek their first pay rise in four years and overtime, many working 16 hour days on the trains.
Having talked to the pickets - who assured us they didn't want to stop people travelling, but rather wanted to put their case to us - I referred to the dispute, and an incident of harrassment I witnessed by RM's security goons, on Tripadvisor.
Now returned from Canada, I check Tripadvisor only to find the following from two hard-of-thinking and resolutely selfish American tourists, who, while saying they found my review "helpful", then go on to urge others to ignore the dispute and party on down like nothing untoward is happening.
First up we have Junetalks from Westlake Village, California, who writes:

Don't let the labor situation deter you from taking this trip. I was worried about this before we left. It is more or less a non event that will not impact your vacation.

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To which I can only say, it certainly should "impact" your conscience: holidays don't come hermetically sealed in value free containers - our enjoyment comes at a price, and for certain members of Teamsters Local 31 that price has proved very high indeed: the least Junetalks could do is to acknowledge the depth of feeling shown on the pickets' placards.
Next up from the Land of the Free industrial relations ignorance cadre, we have Bebecox from Nashville, Georgia (thought it was in Tennessee, but guess they might have two - after all, it's an easy name to spell), BebeCox has an even more right-wing take on this, writing:

Do not let the labor issues with past employess keep you from experiencing this great trip. The replacement workers were a pleasure to travel with and were very qualified to provide excellent service.

Now, the "past employees" thing is particularly offensive: the sacked workers aren't on strike, they were "locked-out" by Rocky Mountaineer, who then recruited replacements to work for even less than the 108 had been paid: this is expressly forbidden under the law of British Columbia, but RM chose to rely on a loophole provided by Canadian federal law - which allows rail companies to lock-out transport workers. Given the essential part rail transport plays to the Canadian economy, you can understand the desire to keep the railways working at all costs. But the point of the exemption is that it's intended to keep the mainly freight-based system running, not to allow holiday tour operators to get rid of expensive (and highly experienced) tour guides, who, let's face it, aren't essential to the running of the Canadian Pacific or Canadian National freight transit networks.
So, Junetalks and BebeCox, while I'm pleased you enjoyed your Rocky Mountaineer journeys, I'm rather hacked-off that you didn't read, or if you did, couldn't work out how much the dispute affected my enjoyment. But, perhaps more importantly, I'm disgusted that you can tell others to disregard a blatant injustice because it might just "impact" on their right to have a good time.

Mordecai Richler? Never heard of him...

Visited the Viewpoint Bookshop in Lake Louise, Alberta and noticed a copy of Barney's Version on the shelf. This was a new edition, carrying a banner that announced "Now a Major Motion Picture". Inside the back cover, the blurb mentioned that a biography of Richler was published on October 2010, so I asked the man behind the counter if they had it in stock. I explained that I was a fan of Richler's and that it was hard to get hold of books by or about him in UK bookshops, I actually referred to him as one of Canada's greatest literary exports. The man replied: "Oh, I didn't know he was Canadian. I only stocked that one 'cos I saw they'd made a movie of it. Does he still live over here and is he still writing?"
I replied, somewhat taken aback, "unfortunately, he died in 2001". The man apologised, and I went on: "You're going to have to catch up on his other stuff as a penance, aren't you?"

Mordecai Richler wrote 10 novels and hundreds of press articles, he won two Governor General's Literary Awards and was made Companion of the Order of Canada. Hard to see how he hadn't crossed the bookshop owner's radar before last night.

A hard lesson for the Institute for Learning?

While Michael Gove gains an unenviable reputation as a meddler in the world of compulsory education, his attitude to the further education sector seems to be http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifambivalent, to say the least. How else to explain both his failure to visit an FE college since taking office and also his willingness to allow a closed-shop to flourish in the form of the Institute for Learning (IfL)?
Having managed to avoid the ‘bonfire of the quangos’ – a fate that befell its sister organisation the General Teaching Council (GTC) - the IfL has now announced that its - generally reluctant – associates, members and fellows, who rejoice in the acronyms AIFL, MIFL and FIFL, will have to stump up £38.00 for the dubious privilege of belonging to an organisation that is, for many, a prerequisite to continued employment in the sector.
The imposition of this levy comes at a very bad time in FE, with colleges and other providers fearing deep cuts to funding with the inevitable loss of courses and jobs. Yet the IfL, which is highly adept at portraying itself as being essential for the career and professional development of teachers and trainers, feels it is justifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gified in becoming self-funding on the less than auspicious date of April 1 this year. In reality, the move was forced on it as the government has announced it is no longer going to pick up the tab of paying the full cost of all subscriptions, as has been the case since the IfL was formed in 2006.
Needless to say, the lecturers and their union, the UCU, are far from pleased. The UCU is balloting members for a boycott of the IfL, with the result that AIFLs, MIFLs and FIFLs now questioning whether they need the IfL could refuse to stump up £38.00 to belong to an organisation whose much vaunted, and largely self-publicised, benefits and services mainly consist of a pointless online database on which they have to record the endless round of meetings and training events that represent the necessary number of continuous professional development (CPD) hours they have to undertake each year as a pre-condition of retaining their professional status.

Driving licence blues

The request from the Bureau de Change clerk was simple enough: "have you got any photo ID on you?".
"Sure, I've got my driving licence". After moving house last October, I finally swapped my paper licence for the photo-card type and it always stays in my wallet. But not last Friday. A furious pat-down self-search followed, accompanied by "helpful" prompts from spouse and clerk. "I'll have to come back later", I muttered, leaving the Bureau with wife reluctantly in tow behind.
The most obvious question, after turning drawers upside down, was "where did you last have it". "Can't remember" was the equally obvious, but totally useless answer.
The previous evening we'd done last minute shopping for the Canada trip (which includes car hire - hence the need for a driving licence...) and bought clothes and luggage from several shops at Junction 32, a retail outlet near Castleford, West Yorkshire.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
So I got out all the credit card slips and shop receipts and we called round thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhe shops and cafe we'd visited, plus the centre's security department. All drew a blank. Even called the baker's shop where I'd bought a lunchtime sandwich. Nothing. Next point of call? Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency, Swansea. They were surprising helpful - a new licence could be ordered over the 'phone for a £20 fee. But there was a cost-saving catch: while they could dispatch it the next working day (Monday, as it turned out), DVLA only uses second-class post. No express service or guaranteed next day. Just real snail-mail.
And there you have it. Three days to go and waiting for the Royal Mail to deliver the replacement licence. My wife isn't looking forward to being the only other driver in the group - and I'm not looking forward to accompanying her in that capacity as a licence-less non-driver, when we wend our way through the Rockies from Jasper to Calgary.

Sunday in the Wharfe

Spent yesterday afternoon pratting around with an inflatable boat on the River Wharfe at Burnsall, North http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifYorks.
All the warnings about inflatables can make you feel wary of them. All I got was wet, much to chagrin of wife and sons, who seemed to be expecting the old git to get washed downriver half a mile or so, at the least. Sorry to disappoint, didn't crawl out of the river like a drowned-rat before a barbequing crowd at Appletreewick but bailed out when I realised the strength of the current meant I was going round in circles that were leading me on a spiral course downriver. I got out, in rather ungainly fashion, have to admit, while I still knew how deep the river was.

Xxxx-Box

Another victory for pester-power. I was prevailed upon by my sons to purchase an X-Box last Christmas. While we've had PlayStations and WIIs and Gameboys and PSPs have come and gone, the X-Box has given us a new - and terrifying - dimension that I was unaware of when I parted with my hard-earned.
The first signs were there on Christmas Day, when I was asked for the Router access details. On asking why, when I thought they were busy zapping virtual reality life forms, was so that they could go online. Didn't I realise, they asked, that the X-Box allows you to play with anyone who's online and playing the same game you are!
Now, several things tend to happen when you allow any geek or game-obsessed cyber warrior into your home. Your children turn into angry call-centre clone operatives, with the stupid head set and mouthpiece while they discuss the merits of graphics and tactics with heaven-knows who. They also run the risk of turning into the "last to be picked" for a team, or the first to be picked on if their playing skills are not as developed as the unseen group they've joined.
We've also had to endure the threat of being hacked and the heart-rending reality of being removed from a supposed-friend's playlist for committing some unspoken adolescent cyber-howler.
I suppose I'm open to criticism for not researching the full potential of the thing before buying it. But the danger far-outweighs the benefits. Not so long ago, the school bully stayed at school or followed you down the road home, but would soon give up if the walk was too long; now you can be turned into a slobbering wreck in the discomfort of your own room and in front of your own TV. It's reality gaming but far too real for me.

York amid the tourists

To York for a course from work. Walking from train station to the venue, part of the Theatre Royal that dates from the 13th century and used to form part of the cellar of St Leonard's Hospital, the way kept being blocked by group of Japanese tourists. They were intent of capturing all the city with a digital camera - on a tripod, which they placed on the pavement at regular intervals, slowing everything to a crawl. I was too polite to get in the way of the shot - even though for many of them I couldn't actually see any merit in the view - so that the five minute stroll turned into a fraught stop-start meander.

On the way back to the station I was approached by a middle-aged woman with an eastern European accent wanting directions to the National Railway Museum. I offered to show her, as it was on my route before realising that - at 5.05 pm it would be on the point of closing. The look on her face when I told her, allowing for the time lag in translation, was one of utmost disappointment. Turned out she was doing York in a day. Hard work sightseeing, apparently.

Bargewreck

Overhead this conversation while walking along the Huddersfield Narrow Canal in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire. I was in a hurry to get back to my car and overtook a family group, at the head of which was a grandfather with his 4-5 year-old grandson.
Grandson: "what happened to your boat?"
Granddad: "a silly person pushed a car into the canal and grandma and granddad sailed over it because we couldn't see it in the water in front of us. Our boat went over onto its side and we had to scramble out back to the bank".

All human life laid bare on the towpath.

A hard lesson for the Institute for Learning?

While Michael Gove gains an unenviable reputation as a meddler in the world of compulsory education, his attitude to the further education sector seems to be ambivalent, to say the least. How else to explain both his failure to visit an FE college since taking office and also his willingness to allow a closed-shop to flourish in the form of the Institute for Learning (IfL)?
Having managed to avoid the ‘bonfire of the quangos’ – a fate that befell its sister organisation the General Teaching Council (GTC) - the IfL has now announced that its - generally reluctant – associates, members and fellows, who rejoice in the acronyms AIFL, MIFL and FIFL, will have to stump up £68.00 for the dubious privilege of belonging to an organisation that is, for many, a prerequisite to continued employment in the sector.
The imposition of this levy comes at a very bad time in FE, with colleges and other providers fearing deep cuts to funding with the inevitable loss of courses and jobs. Yet the IfL, which is highly adept at portraying itself as being essential for the career and professional development of teachers and trainers, feels it is justified in becoming self-funding on the less than auspicious date of April 1 this year. In reality, the move was forced on it as the government has announced it is no longer going to pick up the tab of paying the full cost of all subscriptions, as has been the case since the IfL was formed in 2006.
Needless to say, the lecturers and their union, the UCU, are far from pleased. The UCU is canvassing support for a boycott of the IfL, with the result that AIFLs, MIFLs and FIFLs now questioning whether they need the IfL could refuse to stump up £68.00 to belong to an organisation whose much vaunted, and largely self-publicised, benefits and services mainly consist of a pointless online database on which they have to record the endless round of meetings and training events that represent the necessary number of continuous professional development (CPD) hours they have to undertake each year as a pre-condition of retaining their professional status.

Oxford University Press oppresses freelances

The Oxford University Press (OUP), one of the world's leading academic and professional publishing houses, is imposing a draconian and far-reaching "agreement" on freelances. These are frequently sole traders, with little in the way of financial resources. OUP is insisting that freelances sign the "agreement" by the beginning of Feb as a precondition for continuing to receive work, such as editing, indexing or proofreading.
The reason given for the "agreement" is to prove a freelance's status as an independent contractor for UK tax purposes - something that has traditionally been done by applying the UK tax authorities' "badges of trade". However, the agreement goes much further, in that it contains an indemnity clause, under which freelances have to indemnify OUP against any errors or mistakes that are accidentally introduced into the text of the material they've been working on.
This is both unfair and oppressive, but OUP - stating that it is relying on legal advice - refuses to enter into negotiations about the indemnity clause, or even provide an adequate explanation as to the perceived need for it.
Both the NUJ and the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), which represent the interests of freelances in the publishing industry, have approached OUP requesting clarification of the terms of the indemnity clause, but have been rebuffed by OUP.
Let's hope OUP's authors wise-up to what's happening and apply some pressure on OUP, otherwise their work will suffer as experienced freelances refuse to handle their titles because of OUP's unconsionable attitude to the freelances that form the backbone of the publishing industry.

Happy New Year?

How are people who have got used to 'having' things (even if funded by debt) going to react when they find themselves excluded from the consumer society? We've seen the first stirrings of social unrest with the student fee protests but will 2011 see many more taking to the streets in protest?
All very well for Cameron to say the cuts are necessary, and, in time-honoured Tory style that "there is no other way" - but will those about to lose their jobs, their status - possibly even their homes - see it that way. Exclusion is going to hurt and many of us have got used to 'having' all that we want: not 'having' or being excluded from the means of 'having' is going to test many in 2011.

Dave wants you to be happy!

We've been here before, Jeremy Bentham came up with his "felicific calculus" over 300 years ago. Only problem is, how can you make the majority of people feel "happy"?

What it "happiness" - social interaction? educational success? Thriving arts scene? Universal health? All things, in short, that now seem to be under threat from the government's austerity measures.

You can, of course, make people feel "happier" by making them focus on their basic needs: warmth, shelter, reading Mr Murdoch's newspapers, signing Bobby McFerrin's greatest (and thankfully only) hit. In short, you create a nation of happy morons, whose pleasure is assured by anything the ruling class seem fit to throw their way - as long as its dressed up on language that will make them feel good for the short-term.

Put it another way: how can you feel "happy" when you learn more about Andrew Lansley's plans for backdoor NHS privatisation or IDS's ideas for a benefits system that stigmatises the poorest and most disadvantaged in our society.

Degrees are good for society, it's not just self-interest

Heard Janet Daley on Radio 4 this morning, waxing lyrical (and rather misty-eyed, no doubt) about the wonders of the US higher education system, and how she worked 6 nights a week in a cinema to fund her studies. Then she came to the good old Tory question: "Why should those who don't go on to uni pay for those that do?"

Well, this takes us back to Thatcher and "no such thing as society", doesn't it. If you've been to the doctors lately or had a tooth filled, you'd be rather glad that the person you saw went to uni: in effect, you benefited from the knowledge and skills they got from higher education. Similarly, if you've dealt with someone who has a degree - and used the knowledge and abilities they gained from it, whether they were in a "graduate" job or not - then you've also benefited, albeit indirectly, from higher education.

As for Ms Daley's US experience, that struck me as the transatlantic equivalent of Monty Python's 4 Yorkshiremen. We don't have to follow the US in everything, and higher education is one area where we have more than enough experience on this side of the water to formulate our own policies.

NHS Direct

Coincidentally, given yesterday's announcement that the Coalition Government is to close NHS Direct, I had to call on its services yesterday morning when my son complained of stomach cramp.

Although the initial call was taken by a call-handler (what they?), I was soon called back by a paediatric nurse who reviewed his symptoms and then made an appointment for us to be seen at an emergency clinic at 9.00am.

Following NHS Direct's replacement by the cheaper 1-1-1 helpline, call-handlers, with around 60 hours training, will take the majority of the calls. As I found yesterday, when calling about a sick child, there's no alternative to fast, effective diagnosis and referral - remember this is a holiday weekend in the UK, and my own GPs' surgery is closed until Tuesday morning: what would 1-1-1 provide in this instance?

Andrew Lansley's announcement of NHS Direct's demise - during Parliament's Summer recess, makes Cameron's promise on NHS funding seem like cheap political opportunism, intended to dupe the gullible into voting for the Tories "the new party of the NHS".

Remember the 80s - the NHS most certainly isn't safe in their grubby little hands.

The Great Bear (Grylls) Hunt

Sunday, May 30 at 5.45 I roused my eleven-year old son and keen Sea Scout for an important rendezvous. His unit, 12th Halifax, had been invited to put on a kayaking and canoing display for the Chief Scout, Bear Grylls (actually, he’s called Michael) at Reva Reservoir, near Bingley, West Yorkshire.

As the scouts had to be on the water by 8.00, and we also had to pick another scout up en route – also my son is not a morning person, I prepared him the night before by telling him how his grandfather had paraded in front of Robert Baden-Powell at Pontefract Racecourse when he was 12 in 1933. Granddad died last year and he was very close to my sons, so I thought this would head-off any early morning protests.

In the event, he got up without a protest, dressed quickly and we left the house with sailing gear, vacuum flasks and jam sandwiches by 6.10. Collecting his friend on the way, I dropped them at Reva at 7.15. Parents couldn’t stay on site and a rather officious scout leader told me to return at 9.30. Strange, as the reason for Bear’s visit was to drum up adult volunteers. That aside, I went to Bingley where I attended the 8.00 Communion service and wandered empty streets before setting off back to Reva.

Bear, who was on a tour of Northern England, arrived by helicopter and spoke to scouts and leaders, including my son who was kayaking. Bear reached down to shake his hand, whereupon my son told him: “my granddad marched in front of Lord Baden-Powell at Pontefract Racecourse”. “That’s great” Bear replied.

It certainly was – my son isn’t lost for words and speaks easily with adults; I know dad would’ve been so proud of him. After all, he would’ve just been a face in the crowd on that parade, but his grandson spoke to the Chief Scout in person.

Scouting was vitally important for my dad and scouts of his generation. He grew up during the Great Depression. Money was tight in many families and scouting allowed them to get out of the city and explore the countryside. If Bear's tour drums up more volunteers, at a time when we're seeing public sector funding cuts, then the early morning will have been worth it.