Yet another new blog

I saw a woman on C4 News on Saturday night talking about the English schools going back next week. She's not sending her 6 year old daughter to school just yet. She'll wait to "see how it goes" and may send her later. It occurs to me that this woman is happy to use other people's kids as sacrificial lambs: send them in, see if they catch the virus and if they don't, send your own kid in. Sadly, she wasn't challenged on this attitude. I'm not a particularly moral person but I find that view quite offensive. She was asked about parents who have to work and can't be at home with their children. She was, she said, "between jobs". She looked uncomfortable at being asked about this and she wasn't pushed on it. Me, I wanted to know: what are she and her daughter living on? A partner's income? Savings? Benefits? But it was what she said after that that really offended my teacherish heart: she thought her teaching of her daughter for t...

Let's just imagine that Scotland takes its independence in 2021. That will leave Northern Ireland and Wales thinking: "Bloody hell, we're on our own here now with the loony Tories". And they too will start planning their departure into the big wide world. But what happens next? First, Englandshire (as I see Little England these days) will leave the EU once and for all. After all, folks, that's what a majority of the voters wanted. No, in fact that's not true: somewhere between 34% and 43% of the voters of England wanted to leave the EU but they still live in a world of First Past the Post voting so the result drags everyone out of the EU whether they voted for it or not. And they can't change their minds. They may have known very early on that the EU referendum was purely shite and purely advisory (as all referendums are) but English voters don't seem to have the stomach to argue with the likes of the unelected prime minister Dominic Cummings. So...

...about having a Tory government in power in Westminster for 10 years may be that there will be many people in the UK under the age of 40 who don't remember any other kind of government. I'm not saying the governments that preceded the Tories were good but we knew at least that change was possible. It was possible to have a government that wasn't so arrogant that the Prime Minister appointed a bunch of hedge-fund millionaires with no political experience as MPs and called them his cabinet. The PM didn't dump most of the experienced politicians in his party out of government so no one could argue with him. He didn't bypass parliament and senior civil servants and replace them all with personally-appointed advisers. And he didn't bugger off on holiday several times in the middle of a pandemic, leaving an inexperienced ministerial appointee and one of his advisers in charge of the country. Do you really need evidence that government by SPAD (Special Advise...

I admit I treat all writing by journalists - and all presentations by TV and radio journalists - with suspicion and I foolishly assume that everybody else does too. Tonight I got into a heated discussion with someone I don't know who has 'friended' me on Facebook all the way from California. I like California. I also like Californians. Not always the most down-to-earth people in the world in my experience but very helpful and kind on a personal level. The subject under discussion was UK politics. At one point he told me off for lecturing him. I had to say I wasn't lecturing - I was correcting him because he had written some stuff that was frankly bollocks. (No, I didn't write that word. He's Californian. I doubt if he would recognise it). He had been telling me that UK politics is "centre left". I was a bit surprised that an American should claim that and asked how he knew. He said he considered himself well read. I asked what he read. He said h...

I've been watching on the telly as people pour off ferries at the Channel ports, desperate to escape being quarantined by getting back from France before 4am. I'm pretty sure the travellers aren't just English but people from all over the British Isles. So let me ask them a few questions.  What were you doing going abroad? It's just 5 weeks since we were in lockdown. Have you so little imagination you couldn't picture the virus still being around and - as my granny used to say - just sit on yer erse for a wee while? When we were in lockdown in the UK, which was in fact a fairly relaxed form of lockdown compared to what was (and is) going on in other parts of the world like NZ, Australia, South Korea and Spain, did we obey the rules in order to stay alive? When lockdown ended, did you go rushing out to the shops or did you decide to take your time, choose quiet periods for shopping, wearing a mask, or maybe just go on with online shopping? I'm guessing th...

 I live alone. I have done for many years and I like it that way. But I'm not a solitary person. I like company. I like being with family and friends and having a nice meal, several glasses of wine and a bit of banter. The lockdown has not been good for me but I've got through it. Living alone, I've acquired hobbies over the years that keep me entertained when I can't get out and about.  I've noticed many married people, left on their own after bereavement, struggle to handle the solitary life. Most of them come round, make new friends and develop new interests. There are, though, a few people who just don't have the knack of living on their own. Life must be pretty difficult for them. This pandemic is not over and anyone who thinks we can all just get 'back to normal' is a fool. But today I saw an article in which people in the north-west of England complained the lockdown had been lifted too soon and they were now heading back into a very restricted li...

If you're a parent or a school student encountering exam results for the first time, I hope all went well and it's onward and upward for you. If you didn't do as well as you'd hoped, dry your eyes, talk to the school and decide if you want an appeal. If you do, good luck. If you decide not to appeal, get advice all the same and then move on. Whatever you do, pay no attention to the media. Me, I'm hardened to it all. We've had decades of the media undermining young people and teachers on results day. They tell us: - Results are too good. - Results are bad. - Too many disadvantaged pupils are getting poor results. - Pupils at 'posh' schools do better. No definition of what a posh school is and no mention of how hard all teachers work - every frickin one of them - to improve kids' exam results and thus their chances in life. We know there's a problem for learners in deprived areas of Scotland. We're working on it. One way is to give child...

I've had a free blog site with WordPress for years. Just in the past few weeks, I can't make contact with other people on WordPress, and my attempts to contact WordPress all seem to involve me paying money. I'm not sure I want to bother doing that. We're all surrounded these days by people who want to take money off us. I've registered this blog address with WordPress - just in case I find some way to keep the blog going:  rantingoldbagsblog2749138905.wordpress.com I'm not awfully well right now.  Certainly not well enough to take on a battle with a commercial site. So I may soon be communicating via Facebook's chocolate teapot pages. When I was a teacher, I learned my nickname was Arnie because of the number of times I told kids: "You get on with that - I'll be back".  If you don't recognise the reference, are you sure you were really alive in the late 20th century?