Bnfires for San Juan. Homes for young people. Earthquakes. Technology in schools.

 Today is the feast Saint John. In Spain and Portugal last night they will have lit bonfires on beaches and in public places. In one place they burnt effigies of Donald and Melania Trump. San Juan becomes political. 

It’s Thursday. So Granddaughter Number Two has come round, as usual, this time with her laptop for Grandad to fix. Later, we”ll go and collect the smaller grandchildren from school. So far there is no suggestion that their school will close early. We shall see.

Granddaughter Number Two would really like to buy her own house, or even an apartment, ideally in Saddleworth, even more ideally in Delph. Unfortunately she has been amassing student debt so buying a home of her own is still a distant dream. Here’s a link to an article about young people in Cornwall who are living in vans because they can’t afford to rent accommodation, let alone buy a home. In most cases, these are not unemployed young people but people earning a living. In Cornish places the situation is exacerbated by the existence of holiday homes. There is a a fundamental wrongness there. But there are people who are helping create a community of van-dwellers, providing facilities for showering, washing and drying clothes and so on. Part of the trouble is that, unlike traditional ‘travellers’, these young people have not grown up with the skills necessary for a gipsy-like existence.

In Venezuela, on top,of all there other problems, they have had an earthquake, in fact two, with the current death toll standing at 164. I suppose it’s debatable whether the frequency of earthquakes is a result of global warming or os just part of a natural cycle. However, you might think that we could now build “protectively” in areas where severe earthquakes are likely to happen.

Amidst all the kerfuffle about banning social media for under-16s, the fact remains that computers are useful in the classroom. Even before computers were busy in every classroom I was using video clips in my modern foreign language lessons and I had a digital language laboratory. Here’s a link to an article about hybrid schools, using a mix of online lessons and actual face to face lessons as a way of helping school refusing readapt to education. Interesting stuff.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!