Jobs!

I used to know young teachers who took on extra jobs - bar work in the evening and stuff like that - to supplement their income. I always wondered how they managed to find the time. But then, I suppose, if it was bar work they could pretend that it was part of their social life as well. Nowadays I suspect that it would be even harder for teachers to take on extra employment as there is so much paperwork added on to the usual marking and preparation.

And then I read an article where the journalist was wondering whether Boris Johnson will go on writing his Daily Telegraph column. This pays him far more than his salary as an MP together with his salary as Foreign Secretary. I bet ordinary journalists don't earn that sort of money. No, it's his name that earns the fat salary.

However, it strikes me that if a government minister has time to write a regular column for a national newspaper he cannot be working as hard as the average teacher!

Names, of course, are very important. I hear that Samantha Cameron has launched her own brand of designer clothes, no doubt selling at quite extortionate prices. Now, I know that some will say that she is simply taking up her career where she left off to play that important role, wife of the PM. (As an aside, do the male partners of female politicians give up their career when their wife becomes PM? I seem to remember Denis Thatcher carried on with his business interests. And is there a Mr Merkel? What does he do?) However, one wonders how successful Mrs Cameron might be, no matter what training she has had in art and design, if she were not an already "known" brand!

Which brings me to the American designer Tom Ford who was asked in a recent interview whether he would be dressing the First Lady elect, Melania Trump. Apparently he has declined to design clothes for her in the past, saying she is not his type or shape. Now it seems that he has said that his clothes are too expensive for a first lady to wear because they have to 'relate to everybody'. Well, Donald Trump has said he wants to be the president of ALL the Americans, so that would be about right.

The fact that Tom Ford designed dresses for First Lady Michelle Obama is neither here nor there. 

Read more.

More seriously, Donald Trump is said to be on a celebratory tour of the States, thanking his supporters for electing him. On the television news last night I heard one of his fans praising him for saving 1000 jobs in United Technologies, a company that was going to send the jobs to Mexico (behind a wall?). And this before he is even in the White House. Bernie Saunders, however, writing in the Washing Post, points put that originally 2,100 jobs were to go to Mexico. So presumably over 1000 jobs are still disappearing. What's more, Trump has apparently promised tax concessions to United Technologies in exchange for keeping the 1000 jobs in the USA.

 Getting the job done!