Remembering what day it is. Collecting a book and being told it’s not really for me. Selling property in the West Bank. And naming dead children.

 So this morning I got up relatively early to catch a bus into Oldham. I had an appointment at the ophthalmology clinic at 10 but before then I wanted to collect a book that Granddaughter Number Two had ordered from Waterstone’s bookshop. And I wanted to pop into the health-food shop for a couple of items. 

In the bookshop the assistant and I had a laugh about the book. I assured him it was for my granddaughter. He said he did not think a Japanese fantasy book was really for me. i reminded him not to be judgemental. After all, I might be an eccentric old dear who read such literature! He made sure I had an extra half point on my loyalty card so that the next time I shop there I can have £10 off! 

At the eye clinic they could not find my appointment. Did I have a text message? Yes, I did. I checked it. 19th June at 10.00. Unfortunately today is the 18th. All week I have been a date ahead! So tomorrow I shall have to get up early again but not quite sp early as today!

Back home, earlier than expected, I checked the news online. 

I read again about a real estate event in London that ‘advertised sale of land in illegal Israeli settlements’

Pamphlets from the event featured projects in West Bank and East Jerusalem despite previous denials by organisers

And here’s a photo:

Israeli settlers raise the Israeli flag during an inauguration ceremony for a new settlement on Mount Tarousa in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday. 

The London event was apparently the final stop in a series of international roadshows – after Toronto and New York – which had appeared to advertise the sale of land in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and invited individuals to “explore the best Anglo neighbourhoods” and find their “dream home”.

In yesterday’s blog I mentioned Harry Kane’s American Deam: “anyone can achieve success if they want it badly enough, if they pursue it with all their heart. It is known as the American dream.”

The American dream is transferred to Israel.

In contrast here’s a story from the National Catholic Reporter: 

“Seven hours. One name at a time. Until every child had been spoken for.

 

That was the vigil led by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, one of the most respected figures in the Catholic Church and a peace envoy who once helped reunite children separated by war.

 

He read the names and ages of every child who has died in the war between Israel and Gaza: the 16 Israeli children killed in the October 7 attack, and the more than 12,000 Palestinian children counted since. The names filled 469 pages.

 

He did it, he said, so the children would not be reduced to a number. "It is an insistent prayer so that the war may cease, so that humanity may prevail."

 

The reading ended late at night. Not one name was skipped.”

 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Catching up with the news: Andy Burnham, university entrance qualifIcations, Harry Kane, football.

 This morning I stayed in bed to catch up with my sleep. 

Later I skimmed the news on line. Here are some results.

Headline:

“Keir Starmer says he wants to offer Burnham ‘big role’ in government to avoid leadership contest – UK politics live”

Good grief! The guy’s not won his election yet!

Another headline:

“Students could be required to pass GCSE English to access university loans”

Goodness! Back when I was sixth form tutor it was understood that you needed GCSE English and Maths as standard requirements when applying to university. We regularly insisted students without those qualifications resit them, sometimes alongside the advanced courses they were embarking on. 

However, I read this: 

“Under one proposal being discussed by ministers, a pass in GCSE English would become the national threshold for students to access government-backed tuition and maintenance loans through the Student Loans Company. 

The change would affect more than 30,000 students each year who enrol on full-time first degree courses without formal qualifications such as GCSEs, as well as being a potential financial disaster for universities that teach large numbers of such students, often through franchise arrangements with external partners.”

So there you go. The push to get more and more people into university, and universities agreeing to franchise arrangements to teach large numbers of such students has led to this situation. 

But there is also perhaps a hidden racist agenda here. It’s an insistence on GCSE English, not Maths, the other basic for almost all degree subjects, that is being stressed here. Good English speakers required!! Or am I becoming a little paranoid? 

And then there is this article about footballer Harry Kane, who apparently has a dream:

Harry Kane’s American dream begins: ‘I’m coming into this in the best way possible’

He admires the mentality of US sports stars, the belief that “anyone can achieve success if they want it badly enough, if they pursue it with all their heart. It is known as the American dream.”

With so much negative stuff coming out of the US at present, I personally have no dream of going there but good for Harry Kane. I hope he has a successful World Cup season.

A friend of mine was getting agitated about the whole World Cup thing the other day. A lover of football, he was distressed at the amount of corruption in the organisation of the competition, never mind the arrant racism regarding certain teams and referees and such. Mind you, he’s still watching the games.

It’s a funny business team sport. Fans say they support their local team - or the team of another city that they have selected - but the members of the team usually have little or nothing to do with the city they play for. Like commodities, they are bought and sold  for the skills they possess. Surely trading people, even if the people concerned do rather well out of the deal, is morally suspect! 

That’s all.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Shopping expedition. Deceptive weather. The pessimistic young. Refreezing. Good police work. Loneliness.

 Today I’ve been to Manchester on a shopping trip with Granddaughter Number Two. She and my daughter picked me up at some ungodly hour this morning (before eight o’clock).My daughter dropped us off at Shaw Metrolink station on her way to work and Granddaughter Number Two and I caught the tram (which I had to pay for - too early for my bus pass!) into Manchester city centre where we had breakfast before going and spending money. We usually do this just before Christmas, a last-minute dash for Christmas presents we haven’t managed to find. Today she needed some materials for an embroidery project she has in mind. So we headed for a craft shop and took in various other places en route.

We were misled by the weather forecasts: cloudy with a chance of rain. So we equipped ourselves with lightweight coats and umbrellas … which we did not need. Manchester turned out to be sunny and quite hot and humid and we had to shed layers! Now in the early evening it feels as though we could have a storm. We shall see.

As we chatted about everything under the sun, Granddaughter Number Two told me that her generation is a pessimistic generation, probe to depression and suicidal thoughts. This is because they have been told that it is up to them to put the world to rights - climate crisis, racialism, violence and intolerance. It is apparently up to them to sort out the mess that previous generations have made of the world. It’s not just my generation, although we are the fortunate ones who grew up with optimism and the feeling that the world could only get better. Her parents’ generation also need to take the blame. 

Quite why her generation should feel especially responsible escapes me, but there it is. And quite a lot of them, I suppose, are doing their bit as activists for one cause or another.

My generation has been blamed for Brexit, however, and some statistics we saw the other day suggests that it is older people who are more likely to vote for Farage and Reform UK, not the younger people. Not me! I will not be tarred with that brush! 

Putting the world to rights, here’s a link to an article about scientists trying to refreeze the Arctic.

Here’s a sample:

“Five months earlier, the team had braved temperatures of -40C on the sea ice to drill holes and pump 50,000 tonnes of ocean water up on to its surface. It froze almost immediately, thickening the 1.5-metre-deep ice by about 50cm, according to the new measurements.

That has protected the ice, at the start of the melt season at least, and is an early sign that one day, perhaps, it may be possible to refreeze a significant part of the Arctic.”

As I read it, not fully understanding the science of it all, I was reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle”. A scientist invents a substance that will cause everything to freeze and so the world may well come to a frozen end. 

We need to be careful what we tinker with!

Here’s a more cheerful story from Italy. Antonio Smiglio bought himself a Garelli moped when he was 16, paying for it by instalments with money he earned from part-time jobs. In 1984 it was stolen. This year police stopped someone riding a moped without registration plates (not needed on mopeds back in 1984) and it turned out to be the missing Garelli. The rider wasn’t the thief; he had bought it second or third hand.the vintage bike has been returned to its original owner. It’s been well maintained. Well pleased, Signor Smiglio intends to ride it again! 

Everything comes to him who waits - even if he’s given up on it!

Getting back to young people, it seems that as well as “influencers” of a variety of kinds, there are also ‘loneliness influencers”, who broadcast tales of their friendless young lives to attract a following online. They make vlogs detailing their cosy Friday nights spent alone, at home, in vibrant aspirational cities like New York – the kind of place one chooses to live mostly for the social life on offer.

Wow, what a strange way to seek those five minutes of fame! Here’s a link to an article about it.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Nostalgia for summers past. Politicians and policies. Putting the social media genie back in the bottle.

 My Spanish sister recalls with nostalgia the summers of our childhood: gently warm but not scorchingly hot, long dry days when you could play out (yes, we used to do that and didn’t need out activities coordinated by parents)  and, of course, it didn’t rain. She exaggerates somewhat but I too remember the days when we spread a blanket on the grass and played or read or coloured picture books. Yesterday was rather like one of those days, warm enough to sit out in the garden, without fear of sunstroke. I don’t think the grass was dry enough to spread a blanket on however.

The long evenings at this time of year are good. It’s possible to go for an evening stroll - weather permitting - and last night it was not quite dark on the horizon at 11.00 at night. Somehow you feel you have more daytime, which I suppose you do. Now for the downside: it’s already June 15th and in just over a week it will be midsummer, the summer solstice and all that sort of thing! We know what happens after that!

Time marches on. Somebody commented that it doesn’t even stop for Mr Trump, who has just hit 80 years old. And politician/writer/etc Roy Hattersley has died at the age of 93, a very respectable age!. Politician Gordon Brown said of him: “History itself will remember Roy as a committed social democrat and egalitarian who grew up during the post-war Labour governments and always sought to ensure Labour was the party of all working people.” I wonder how many of the current gang will have that sort of thing said about them.

Meanwhile our current PM is trying to put the social media genie back in the bottle, planning to ban social media to under sixteens by spring next yeat:

‘We took powers, earlier this year to make sure we could move at speed.

I was very conscious that with the Online Safety Act it took the last government eight years from sort of identifying the beginnings of the problem to actually passing legislation, and [I] was determined that will not happen in this case.

He says legislation already passed gives ministers the powers to act using secondary legislation.

He says:

We hope to pass regulation before Christmas, and therefore to bring the ban into force in the early part of next year, probably about springtime, so we can move a real pace here.”

We’ll see how that works out. 

And there are labour MPs pushing for targets to be set for recruiting male teachers. ““There is a crisis of masculinity in this country and boys who are feeling vulnerable, not listened to and isolated are too often turning to the easy answers offered to them from the manosphere, who want to sell them on a very narrow idea of what it is to be a successful man,” he said. “Getting more male teachers and more positive role models in their lives has to be part of the solution.”

For as long as I can remember there has been difficulty recruiting men into the teaching profession, especially at primary level. Phil and I were thinking back to our own primary school experience. The vast majority of the teachers were women, quite often strong, rather fierce women. The headteachers were usually men though. I don’t know to what extent gender equality has hit primary headships’ statistics.

In my girls’ grammar school I believe the only male employee was the caretaker. When I was in sixth form we did make the revolutionary step forward of having a joint French film evening together with the boys from the boys’ grammar school - girls sitting on one side of the school hall and boys on the other, with minimal socialising! Bery correct and proper!

A male teacher was employed when my younger sister was in the sixth form. And a couple of years after I left, they organised a joint school leavers’ social for students from both grammar schools. A younger friend tried to gate-crash me into that dance but staff in attendance were having none of it!

Out in the wider world, Mr Trump says he has created peace in the Middle East but Israel still bombards Lebanon. He reminds me of a teacher declaring that he taught the class but they did not learn!

In these sometimes dismal times, here is a cartoon by Ella Baron on David Hockney. Food for reflective thought:

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Sunshine. Vandalism. Rants about language. New words.

 Today began bright and sunny. It grew dull later but maybe by late afternoon the sun will have come out again. This has happened quite frequently of late.

Around here we have lots of dry stone walls. It’s a local feature, marking the old boundaries of fields, sometimes tumbling down nowadays, but also bordering some of our back roads.

 Recently some local vandals seem to have discovered the joy of pushing the neat top layer of stones off the wall and into the undergrowth on the other side. If anyone ever gets round to putting them back, it’s going to demand a major piece of work retrieving them.

Writer Louis de Berniêres was having a bit of a rant in yesterday’s Guardian, or maybe the day’s before that. He was objecting initially to people throwing rubbish out of car windows, mostly wrappings from fast food outlets. I’m with him on that; when their is some sporting event at the cricket club up thenroad from here, it is very common next morning to find the grass verge littered with all sorts of mess, where cars have been parked and food of one kind or another has been consumed and the detritus left behind. 

Mostly, however, he wanted to talk about use of language, as like me he suffers from misosaskopeslexis whih is a “Greek”word he invented to mean hatred of pointless words. More specifically he objects to the use of the word “like”, liberally inserted into so many sentences. “I once went to speak to a sixth-form group, “ he wrote, “where one perfectly intelligent young woman said “like” so much that it took her five minutes to say something that should have taken five seconds. The effect was embarrassing and bewildering. Afterwards, in private, I begged her to stop doing it.”

Like me he also finds the disappearance of the letter “t” annoying: “Glottal stops are thriving like Himalayan balsam on the banks of a beck.

He even gave us a bit of Mardle - Norfolk dialect, probably now fading away like so many local dialect, replaced often by Essex-speak: “It is part of the continuing tragedy of our loss of regional dialect. Oi’m a proper vexed bout thaht, bor. Oi’d a rather be a hearin good ol Mardle, speakin pussnally.”

As for me, I find myself also seething about pretentious and incorrect use of foreign language, especially on signs and notices. A local cafe has a menu on a printed notice outside the door, including ‘soup de jour’. I have had ton restrain myself from going in to explain that you can have “soupe (with an ‘e’ please note) de poisson” - fish soup - and ‘soupe de tomates’ - tomato soup -  but not ‘soupe (even with an ‘e’) de jour - day soup, made from cooked days! It has to be “soupe du jour” - soup of the day. And why not just advertise ‘soup of the day’, using English? Which I think all the people around here speak quite well!

On the subject of language, here’s a word that was the OED’s ‘word of the day’ recently: 

Broughtupsy- Caribbean for good manners and courteous behaviour resulting from a good upbringing, decency, propriety.

I like to think our children had a good broughtupsy.

Life foes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Sentencing “terrorists”.

The Filton Four, Palestine Action activists who smashed up drones and other equipment at an Israeli arms manufacturer’s UK factory, have been sentenced as terrorists after the judge ruled that there was a “terrorist connection” to their offending.

Charlotte Head, 30, and Leona Kamio, 30, were each jailed for five years and Fatema Rajwani, 21, was sentenced to four years and 8 months for criminal damage in relation to a 2024 break-in at the Elbit Systems UK site in Gloucestershire. Samuel Corner, 23, who was additionally convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent for striking Sgt Kate Evans with a sledgehammer, was sentenced to seven years and eight months. Each will also spend an additional year on licence and be subject to 15 years of terrorist notification requirements.

Approximately 500 protesters gathered outside Woolwich crown court in south-east London, including some holding placards that read “Saving lives is not terrorism. I support Palestine Action”. More than 100 people were arrested for allegedly supporting Palestine Action, which remains proscribed under the Terrorism Act pending the court of appeal’s judgment on Monday on the lawfulness of the ban.

So that’s another 100 people who could be facing charges. Someone pointed out that under the Palestine Action proscription naming them as terrorists, the suffragettes would have been terrorists, as would the women who surrounded Greenham Common. 

Here’s something I “borrowed” from social media:

“The 1960s apartheid govt of South Africa labelled the ANC as terrorists and used a compliant judiciary to suppress their activists and supporters. Today's British govt uses the same tactics against Palestine Action and its supporters.

Here's a photo of Judge Quartus de Wet who sentenced Nelson Mandela to life in prison, and one of Judge Jeremy Johnson who yesterday sentenced four Palestine Action activists as terrorists, even though they were never charged with terrorism, because such a charge would have been thrown out by every jury in the land.

Johnson would have fitted in very well in South Africa's apartheid regime.”

Here’s Jonathan Cook’s comment on the sentencing: 

“There are lots of people drinking the security services Kool Aid over the sentencing of the Filton Four.

They believe the judge was right to overturn the jury's decision to convict four anti-genocide activists of criminal damage and make it a terrorism offence instead, overturning centuries of legal precedent.

Why? Because, they claim, the four activists broke / smashed / shattered a police woman's spine.

But that obviously can't be the explanation because three of the activists had nothing to do with that incident and yet they were convicted as terrorists by the judge anyway.

Even Samuel Corner, the activist who was convicted over this incident (which left the police woman with a minor fracture, according to the medical authorities who testified), shouldn't have been sentenced as a terrorist for it because that is not what the jury, which heard the actual evidence, decided.

The jury convicted Samuel Corner of grievous bodily harm *without intent*. The prosecution had charged him with GBH *with intent* because they needed that as his conviction to build a public mood in support of the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

If Corner could be presented as having entered Israel's Elbit weapons factory with intent to commit violence, then the implication would be that the other activists were in on that plan – a conspiracy – and the government would be off the hook of violating fundamental legal norms by proscribing Palestine Action.

By stripping out intent, the jury pulled the rug from under the government's feet.

Judge Johnson's task was put the rug firmly back in place by riding roughshod over the jury's decision and sentencing them as terrorists anyway. 

The timing couldn't be more convenient. On Monday, the Appeal Court will be deciding on the government's appeal against the High Court declaring its proscription of Palestine Action unlawful.

If you're peddling the "But they smashed the back of a police woman" line you've been fed by the Daily Mail and BBC, it's because that is exactly what the government needs you spouting as it upends our age-old rights to jury trials, as it stamps out an honourable tradition of direct action dating back to the Suffragettes and before, and as it gives itself cover for continuing complicity in a genocide.”

That’s all.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!