By next Thursday, before yet another holiday weekend, – yes, I know bloody teachers – I will have submitted around 30,000 words to my current headteacher outlining the progress of 26 children in my class. I started a couple of days ago. Pressure makes for focus I find.
A certain amount of copying and pasting is allowed for similarity in contexts. Blah, blah, they all studied artists and scientists and found out about the life of pirates in days of yore. That still leaves a lot of words that are unique to every child. Mainly because they are all unique. I’ve spent every school day with them since last August till now and I know them as well as it’s possible to know anyone in around 1,000 accumulated hours of close proximity.
And it strikes me all over again. Every year. Every time I come to the full report on the progress and knowledge of the children in my care. Gawd, I really know them. Not until I put the words into type and see before me the evidence of my own thoughts and their development.
Of course, in between times, this is all held in my head and in ongoing assessments and profiles. But it’s the summary – if summary 30,000 words can be called – that brings home to me every-single-year how well I imbue all that unfolds before me.
Don’t we all?
I haven’t commented, as such, on the results of the general election here in the UK where the incumbent party swept home on around 25% of the electorate.
And that might even be wrong.
My head is full of figures.
I’ve read just about everything there is to read on post election analysis. I’ve listened to and read some unadulterated shite.
Some perfectly reasonable arguments and some hugely emotive posts from people who have so much at stake from another five years of Tory government. The favoured and the damned.
I haven’t read much on WordPress unless there’s been a link through Twitter or Facebook to a relevant post on a subject that is not going away. Democracy. Justice. Representation. Empathy. Compassion. Corruption. Representation. Capitalism, that no creator of its name surely ever envisaged. Surely not, Adam Smith.
More than one subject there?
Or one?
I’ve listened to I don’t know how many repetitive newsreels on Burundi and immigrants on boats who may or may not be genuine asylum seekers and appeals from member states of the European Union that Britain and other members step up to the mark and take their fair share of suffering by any other name.
I’ve hung my head that, already, an extreme right-wing government is seeking to revoke the Human Rights adhered to by member states of the EU to be replaced by some paper invoking #British values. A government with its 25% mandate seeking to ensure that no strike action may occur in any workforce without a 40% vote in favour.
I’ve laughed, delightedly, that the 56 Scottish Nationalist Members of Parliament ‘flouted’ etiquette by applauding – that’s it, applauding! in Westminster! How very dare they! To flout the establishment thus! Off with their ……Fuck off!
I’ve smiled that a 20 year old politics student overturned a 17,000 seat majority from Labour to claim her own 6,000 seat majority.
I smiled and nodded as I listened to her say that it was a wee bit embarrassing that tweets of hers/Facebook stats were being dredged up from five or six years ago to disgrace her. Yeah, like any fourteen or fifteen year old could beam with pride at everything they’d ever said or done.
Or any of us could at any age.
And what does all of my reading and listening have to do with writing report cards for 26 kids I love have to do with each other?
If I have to explain that.
If I have to explain that we already know what is good for us and our children, for the weak, the impoverished, the homeless, the disenfranchised.
If I have to explain that a lifetime watching and listening and reading and being part of the system surely equates to more knowledge and understanding than 1000 hours of close proximity of love and care can produce.
I have the wrong audience albeit a small one.
What is wrong is endemic everywhere.
I’d like to leave the last word on the subject – before I go back to writing reports on my little ‘angels’ – well, they are! – to a new find to me today.
A voice. Not from Scotland.
Because what I know, what nearly everyone in Scotland knows, is that this is not nationalist as previously known. I’m glad to know that others know this too.
This is civic.
This is debate.
This voice.
Of the people.
This is basic.
And as surely as a 20 year old MP can eat a piece ‘n’ chips on the steps of the established powers that would hold us to values we don’t hold, we have voices that will flout established thought till we get to know the hearts and minds of children of the future.
And Mancunian Spring, proving that people voice exists across the whole of the UK. And the day of reckoning is dawning. Perhaps everywhere.
And, if you don’t believe me, I find this more than a little worrying. So many familiar names in the newly appointed Tory cabinet in roles that ‘if at first you don’t succeed’.
In other news,
– someone resigned from The Simpsons. Apparently the map of the UK now resembles Maggie. Does that mean that the body hasn’t caught up with the head yet? Or what?
-and women say bigger might be better. Jury out on that one here. Quality counts.
Now going back to nursing a cold – first one in I don’t know how many years – and catching up on reports that I know inside out. Because, let’s face it, we know what we know already. No one need to tell us what is self-evident. Right?
It’s no secret that I voted Yes in the referendum for Scottish Independence in September of last year. Around 45% of the populace did. 55% did not. Whatever their reasons for voting No, democracy was seen to be served. More or less.
Immediately after the referendum, and since then, membership of the Scottish National Party has swelled. The popularity of the once favoured Labour Party here in Scotland has plummeted.
Where once Labour represented people who cared for a fairer and more just society, it has become almost indistinguishable from the Conservative Party, political pioneers of the ‘I’m alright Jack’ club.
Labour lost all credibility to many voters when they made a pact with the Tories and Lib Dems to help keep the union together no matter the consequences to the people and ideology they purported to represent.
This, together with their ongoing self-sabotage, while attempting to pursue self-preservation, has made them a joke in many parts of Scotland. And elsewhere.
Losing so many seats to the SNP would be an affront to them and impact on whatever position they may hope to hold in central government. Either in power or as the main opposition party.
The major parties are in a shambles, trying to cobble together ‘what if’ scenarios, making for some strange bedfellow combinations. At least, in name. Not perhaps so strange when their political compass is identified.
Perhaps the, yet again, negative scaremongering that abounds comes more from the fact that SNP are left of centre in their politics rather than the fact that they still threaten the union.
But let’s feed the masses what fuels the fire.
Perhaps no one will notice.
We might even get to keep the status quo.
Perhaps.
And we all know where that leads us.
Right, right, right again, straight ahead and saluting authority and austerity at every right turn.
It’s all in the name, you see. The name of the game.
If you’re interested in knowing your own political compass the test can be taken here.
I’m not fighting for Scotland as an entity over all others. I’m fighting for justice and freedom from right wing authoritarianism. I don’t care what you call the parties. The only parties I’m interested in are all the wee lassies and lads. From wherever they hail. Party enough for me. And, by the gods, I’ll party when we have a government that’s for the people, serves the people and has aspirations beyond self-serving agendas.
Find your political compass.
Vote with that. At least let it be from your heart.
Mums, dads, anyone who gives a shit, find your compass. And, for fuck’s sake, vote with that. At least let it be because you know and not because you believe what you are told.
Walking into the super store, I get the feeling that everybody wants to snap my neck.
Everybody hates everybody in super stores.
My mom’s going to the pharmacy to pick up our anti-depressants, my grandma’s going to get groceries, I’m heading to the CDs.
I rob this place blind of CDs.
I’m walking passed the posters now, I’m giving them a quick look over. Nothing but a bunch of boy bands. It’s their fault that I can’t get a woman. I don’t look like a half chick like they do, so I’m fucked.
But I feel a little bit bad for them, the boy bands, they’re nothing but salesmen in tight pants that are pushing sex on preteens.
It’s sort of pathetic, in five years they’ll be remembered as jokes.
One thing I do like about super stores is that there’s half naked woman everywhere.
I’m glad that summer’s coming soon. Summer heat waves and sweat is God’s gift to horny teenage boys.
I’m a horny teenage boy, and I blame the media. I told my counselor that television’s turned me into an idiot, and it did.
There’s a woman in the lotion and candle section with four children. Her daughter’s at her side, her little boy is in front, staring at his feet, bored, she’s got a new born in a car seat in the bottom of the cart and a three or four year old in the little seat near the bars.
She’s sniffing each candle with her eyes closed. She’s in sweat pants and a bleach stained t-shirt, her hair is wiry and put back in a bun. She looks stressed. She looks like she really needed to sniff those candles.
Oh, God, I think she caught me staring.
I actually have a staring problem. I start staring and thinking about people and I sort of forget that they can see me.
I’m in the CDs now. I have “Dark Side of the Moon” against my balls.
That sexy red head is behind the counter in electronics. Who else can look sexy in those lame gray work pants? I’ve been checking her out since I was eleven. This place would lose it’s magic for me if she stopped working here.
I’m going through the clothing section now. I’m bored. I remember when I was a kid, when I got bored in super stores, I’d hide in the middle of the clothing racks so I could jump out at people when they looked through them. That never got old.
I wish I could still do that.
Super stores were fun when I was a kid. I remember when I use to be able to run through the aisles without being thrown out by management.
I remember this one time I got one of the bikes from the bike rack and I rode around the whole store, no one said a damn thing.
Now I’m fifteen and expected to behave.
We live in a cruel world.
We live in a world where everyone wants to snap your neck.
scottishmomus 