starts with the young, heart-driven, radical socialist. Ends with the much older hard-nosed capitalist realising that the only way to keep his/her grandchildren on side is to offer education, adventure, and justice to all young but especially the disaffected. Who will be the majority when China's one-child-per ..
[ add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink |
( 3.1 / 172 )In thw West we vote for A or B, where A=B which makes us cynical, and the very poor – mostly in spirit – are given shelter to keep them off the rich streets.
Elsewhere the rich-poor gap widens and the marginalised fall off the edge.
Both societies see the central bureaucracy as corrupt and non-fixable. All governments that thought about repairing it failed.
Murdoch did much good by moving to Wapping, even for the compositors whose children now have had to stand on their own feet.
It is perhaps time to start again with the civil service, all those myriads of us who depend on government for income, pensions, welfare, healthcare, education and moral fibre. Anyone want to go first?
[ 2 comments ] ( 14 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink |
( 2.9 / 174 )So Thatcher was right in saying we need to stand on our own feet, and wrong in thinking we could do it. We need civil service feet to stand on.
Gilligan, luckless co-accused killer of Kelly, the BBC, and the Blair government’s reputation, has a walking, talking memorial in his look-alike Nick political broadcast Robinson. Driven by the same make-news fires, the moral irresponsibility of the hack for consequent collateral damage is a nightly reminder to the nation of the mess we are in though having no one we can trust. Nick’s job is to slag off the pols; in doing so he flags up own tribe’s iniquities. Especially the tabloid front of prurience masquerading as virtue.
Luckily we are ruled by an electorate that watches more football than news. We do have some faith in our feet.
[ add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink |
( 2.9 / 159 )The irony of sex is that shortly after psychiatry allowed us to understand why we have sexual fantasies, our multisexual nature is now driving us into a wilderness of camps.
Until we realise the full functions of sex in our bisexual species – among them gene mixing for upward evolution, gene blocking for removing incompetence except where slavery benefits the tribe, a distraction for the masses now that the opiate of religion is fading, and all-consuming therapy for the separate problems of male and female – we will not understand our own natures.
By then the game will have moved on: the multiple mental couplings of Olaf Stapledon’s First and Last Man are only a possibiliy, but the successes of the googles that start a fire and the attractiveness of wikipedia to its contributors, and the sheer joy of give-back all suggest that our search for immortality is a stronger driver for the tribe than our this lifetime only love life, deeply satisfying as long term partnering is.
[ add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink |
( 2.9 / 161 )Found a good school subject for the disaffected recently: Resistive materials in design and technology. A doing thing with woods, metal, plastics with lots of useful handskills. A school subject always under pressure because workshops are expensive, technicians and teachers more so, but not needing math success at foundation level means that anyone who gets on with teacher can find a career basis in a trade. Worked as classroom assistant for disabled youngster, amazing what he could do for himself. Now marking the public exam paper shows lots of good thinking by beginners as well as the confidence of kids who are comfortable in the subject. This is real life, perhaps for their first time in school. A seriously useful project is start and heart of it.
Possible paths are a toolkit for home use or school use without workshop or power (think developing world), or parent guidance, or self-study. Lots possible from website. More anon.
[ add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink |
( 3.1 / 165 )
Calendar
