In the news.

On the one hand I read that the wealthiest 1% of the world's population own 50% of the world's wealth and on the other I find reports of schools in England that have had to set up funds to provide help for pupils whose families simply cannot afford to feed and clothe them or get them to school. Schools receive "Pupil Premium", an allocation of money intended to help improve the school performance of disadvantaged pupils but the schools are not supposed to use that money to provide "social" help. If they use the money to set up a breakfast club, for example, ensuring that children at least start the school day with food inside them, they need to justify this in terms of academic outcomes. This is the 21st century. This is England. Something is very wrong. 

The headteacher of a primary school providing social help for the families of her pupils reports visitors to the school commenting on her pupils being generally smaller than pupils of a similar age in other schools they had visited. Consistent under feeding will do this. And most of us are unaware of these problems. People hide problems. Children ask staff who take them home, if they are taken ill for example, not to go into the house with them. Already at primary school age they are aware and ashamed. 

That's one aspect of the child poverty, global crisis, what-are-we-doing-with-the-modern-world? problem. I came across all that stuff this morning. Then this afternoon in the Italian conversation class our teacher Adalgisa talked about the problems primary teacher friends of hers are having in Italy. In one case, the school is so underfunded that they cannot even afford loo paper. It's already an accepted fact, as in Spain, that parents buy school books but you might expect that loo roll would be provided. But no, the parents are asked to send the children to school with their own roll of toilet paper. Is the world going crazy? 

So what are we leaving behind for those who succeed us? 

Well, according to something I have just found online, some people will be leaving their tattoos. Now, I have never felt the least inclination to have pictures inked into my skin but a surprisingly large number of people do so. Now I have found out about something called the "Foundation for the Art and Science of Tattooing". 

A so far still quite small number of people have signed up to this so that after their deaths, pathologists can remove the skin carrying their tattoo, pack it in formaldehyde and send it to a laboratory where the water and fat will be removed and replaced with silicone. They then become the property of the foundation, put on display or “loaned” to family and friends of the deceased. I have heard of tattoos being photographed by tattoo artists so that they have a record of their work but never until now have I encountered a suggestion for preserving the tattoo itself. Rather gruesome! 

The model Kate Moss apparently has two swallow tattoos at the base of her spine. These were done by the artist Lucien Freud, who learnt the tattooing trade in the navy in his youth. The tattoo is said to be worth a million pounds and Kate Moss is reported to have joked to Vanity Fair, "If it all goes horribly wrong, I could get a skin graft and sell it.” Now it seems she may be right and she can pass it on to future generations. 

Is this the kind of thing the 1% spend their wealth on?