Not that he needs it right now to do his job, but when will Cummings get his peerage?

Recent link (my description): Dismantling government

I want to buy a book on world slavery.

History lessons until high school were fascinating, especially when taught by a teacher I had my first ever crush on. The English Mediaeval period quickly became my favourite, the feudal system in particular and of course the seismic change in the aftermath of The Black Death Plague.

High school History lessons, taken after PE and then Music literally brought on a headache. Literally, not figuratively, and every lesson. So I didn’t choose to study History.

Nevertheless ever since school I’ve retained a fascination with the broad brush strokes of history, just not the detail. I’ve been lucky enough to travel to Egypt twice, the USA a few times, and live in England.

Ok, slavery, why this, why now?

#BlackLivesMatter

I first attempted to buy Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook, but failed. Even the bookseller purporting to have stock ultimately failed to fulfil my order.

Racism, as I’ve said before, is a recent term. The roots of racism are far older, which is why I’d like to ‘study’ the topic to a greater depth.

Sure it’d be easy to jump into racism and there’d be enough to keep me occupied for a very long time. Sure it’d be easy to focus on anti-Black racism, and ditto.

Slavery hasn’t ever been quite as simple overall as just a master-slave ‘relationship’, there are many different forms of slavery, most of which are related to poverty.

So, I’m asking for book recommendations, for a readable book on the history of world slavery. Under £30/$50 unless it’s amazingly good (however that’s defined.)

Here’s one having something in common with most others, it’s out of stock too:

A Brief History of Slavery (Brief Histories): A New Global History.

I can wait; both slavery and prejudice aren’t going away anytime soon.

But I’d really, really like to start the journey now; suggestions please!

I felt the need to post this in my local Facebook group:

I’ve lived here for ‘only’ 13 years; in that time I’ve I’ve only once had to pick up dog poo* from our front garden or the path outside. Once. Today.

I’ve never previously had to worry about watching where I walk, and yet every time we go out now I see dog mess. (‘Best’ example is along the bushes both sides of [redacted] approaching [redacted].)

To those of you with new dogs, please:

– Carry some nappy bags with you every time you go for ‘walkies’. Pre-lockdown there was (and probably still is if you think about it) a legal requirement to carry at least 2 when you set out.

– Either drop the bags in the next bin you see or take them home with you. (Yes them, you might need more than one, appalling as it sounds. If you need 4 it’s classed as an epic!)

– Don’t leave the bag where your dog sat or dangling off a convenient branch; it’d be better to not pick it up at all (it’ll naturally biodegrade, but that’d be missing my point.)

One final thing: if you’re paying more than around 25p for 100 bog-standard nappy bags, though you’re not being ripped off it’s likely you’ve gone for the posh ones, the scented ones (very understandable sometimes!), the biodegradable ones, or the ones specifically made for dog poo. And that’s fine.

Actually no, this is my final word: don’t use not having bags as an excuse, leaving mess spreads diseases potentially fatal to dogs and actually harmful to humans too.

Quick Google result:

https://www.kingdom.co.uk/articles/issues-and-dangers-surrounding-dog-fouling/

Go on, carry your (dog’s) poo with public-spirited pride!

*I’d considered the possibility it might be a cat, but the size, no. No. Please no. (shudders)

On Wednesday I asked on our primary school’s school/PTA Facebook page if there was a plan to have video lessons now there’s no realistic prospect of a return to school before September.

Instead of publicly engaging they replied via a Facebook Messenger message.

Their focus is now on ensuring levels of staffing so those eligible to physically attend school remain safe, and they’ll email the other parents in the next few weeks to inform us about the transition up to the next year.

In the next few weeks‽

We’ve only a few weeks before term would end anyway.

Incidentally, the only outbound communications with parents since the lockdown began have been via Facebook. The school has a messaging (email, text) service as part of their payments system.

No, I tell a lie, there was a message sent via the service. It asked all parents to ensure they’d paid their bills for school meals, before and after school clubs…

So I replied:

Hiya! I’ve tried to keep [my youngest] to a timetable, motivated enough to do lessons and she’s been great, not needed too many bribes at all! However, my question started with Zoom/Teams video lessons – actual teacher participation in lessons.

*Weeks* ago we found that a friend’s daughter ([3 towns away]) started Zoom lessons the first day of the national lockdown, and today I heard of a school (local-ish, I didn’t ask) providing 5 Teams lessons *per day.*

It would be fantastic to have someone available for the years not catered for by current plans, it’s an awfully long time to go without *any* teacher contact.

I’ll be physically back in work in a week and a half; the adjustment to working at the dining room table was hard enough and took way too long for me to balance the needs of family and work. I’m not a teacher though.

Lots of words, sorry, but I’d love to hear of more substantial plans; transition’s going to be too late.

Ta, stay safe.

I’ve heard nothing back since Wednesday. I now know that I left it too late to ask the question; I now know that, at least at this school, years 2, 3, 4 and 5 are now adrift. The head’s going to be riding the rest of this school year out and accepting praise from most other parents for the fantastic work she’s done.

They have set lessons on an online educational platform they use, they have directed us to BBC Bitesize web site and the Oak National Academy web site, and to other online resources, of course they have. But meh.

I feel I should say at this point we’ve had other issues with the way the school has managed my daughter’s care in very specific areas but, short of involving the local education authority, we’ve gone as far as we can internally.

At this point I really don’t wish to talk about my oldest daughter’s high school; as well as only setting lessons and having no video/direct teacher involvement they don’t even respond to emails sent to the main contact address.

Well, maybe I’ll attempt to get things off my chest here when they contact us about an upcoming meeting with her teacher and the form – the opportunity to ask questions.

Oh, and be given a lesson on wellbeing.

Three fucking months after the start of lockdown!

They too will likely be congratulated on the fantastic job they’ve done.

One final thing, the only teaching department to give a flying fuck about my oldest daughter completing all the lessons the school has set is Mathematics. Not a single other teaching department has cared enough to offer up ‘Conduct’ points, not one. Given the ignorant, unsupportive arseholes I had teaching me maths from my first year in junior school right the way through technical college, I have to say my preconceptions have been utterly destroyed. To be fair, I did well in high school CSE maths, but I cannot recall the teacher so I’m throwing them under my bus too.

And yes, I’ve asked the school to comment on the lack of points and teacher participation. That, again to be fair, was Friday. To be unfair I’ve had no reply to Wednesday’s email asking about a specific point mentioned in their latest impenetrably-wordy newsletter. Hey, at least my blog posts have paragraph sizes one can pause for breath between!

Oh yes, I’ve been careful to mention what I see teachers failing at; our related circumstances, though not unique, are private.

As I said, at this point I really don’t wish to talk about my oldest daughter’s high school.

Much.

There’s an important distinction to be made between slavery and racism.

Throughout recorded history nations have both subjugated other nations and used slaves to work in fields, manufacturing enterprises, homes and to build major infrastructure projects like monuments, walls…

Perhaps the biggest difference between ancient slavery and racism, wars and poverty were once the biggest drivers of slavery. Some cultures even allowed their own subjects to temporarily designate themselves as slaves to pay off debts; and no, I’m not imagining a cosy relationship to their owners. The point is that slaves could be found anywhere in ancient societies, from any group internal or external to the nation. Think of the ‘caste’ system, it was never restricted solely to the Indian subcontinent…

I’m most past examples though, routes existed out of slavery: time passing, money earned, special rewards given to loyal servants; and of course as time passed, wholesale integration of slaves into a nation’s society perhaps as second-class citizens, and an absorption of indigenous cultures by the previous incoming masters.

It all took time.

You’d perhaps think we’ve not had time for the natural order of things to establish itself. But this is not how things have worked from the 18thr century onwards, and will never work again.

In the last couple of thousand years – at least until the 18th century – the term racism wasn’t specifically linked to slavery; indeed the word ‘racism’ itself is only around 120 years old. Yeah, I found that quite surprising.

So whilst slavery seems inextricably linked to imperialism and conquest it’s not the biggest driver.

Will it be enough when the slaver statues are torn down, the streets and public buildings are renamed, the physical remnants of past imperialist glories are defaced and sanitised in boxes?

No.

Concentrating on the superficial leads us down a dangerous path. It engenders antipathy in the minds of those who support and run the government, it increases the increase in the number of ad-hoc (Statutory Instrument/Executive Order) laws designed to further erode our rights.

It’s important to note at this point that I’m not a protester. I’m not militant. I’m not a lot of things, not yet anyway. I hope I’m judged by a lifetime of fairness but we’ll have to see, I’m not done yet.

I tried to buy a copy of ‘Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook’ online last week, found only one place outside eBay which seemed to have stock. A week later my money was returned. I then concluded I should cast my net of learning a little further…

Racism isn’t something that’ll disappear overnight as the statues are either quietly removed or boxed in and newly-minted protesters go back home. It’s more insidious than ‘modern’ slavery, the rise of fascism, and especially of inverted totalitarianism.

We can’t talk about it without awkward silences, we can’t draw attention to it without the perpetrator becoming at least the verbally combative or worse, indignant that we’d challenge what they learned from parents and peers.

Well, actually, we can and we should. Must?

Forget only looking to the past and trying to fix that by erasing it, the fact that right-won’t politicians and commentators are along for the self-righteous ride should be enough to get us thinking.

If you’re not willing to go out into the streets then vote. Vote in whatever way removes the right and the far right as a political and cultural influence. Vote to have anti-racism taught in schools.

Don’t waste the next opportunity you come across to change our future for the better. And don’t, after 4/8 or 5/10 years have elapsed make the mistake of thinking the grass is greener on the side the right occupies, it isn’t. Despite the extraordinarily effective propaganda machines the right use, we can see for ourselves it really isn’t.

And yes, I’m looking.

There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply

Oh just remember I don’t decide

I got no reason it’s all too much

You’ll always find us out to lunch

– The Sex Pistols, July 1977

Yesterday I responded to the English Prime Minister’s tweet about the Covid-19 track and trace system, asking simply how we could be sure, if called, that the caller was indeed a representative of the government’s system.

I don’t expect a reply.

It got me thinking how to attempt to engage with public figures when the subject could be even loosely described as contentious.

I recently emailed my MP to express my revulsion at the way his party had rallied around Cummings, especially given the sacrifices we ordinary people have made since the UK lockdown began.

I got a reply asking me for my contact details and address – for ‘data protection’. I replied with my ward, and that I only wanted to know he’d seen the email; why was I asked for details when I used words plain enough that it should have been obvious I didn’t want a reply.

Thankfully I haven’t had a followup.

This evening I involved myself in a chat on Twitter about the toppling of the Bristol slave trafficker’s statue into the River Avon. After earlier seeing @wefail’s offer of a replacement statue I’d offered the brilliant artist my opinion that the statue should have a diving helmet – to indicate how far the current Home Secretary is out of their depth and to symbolise more recent Bristol statue-related events.

(I really should cut the number of words!)

In the later reply elsewhere I didn’t see who I was tweeting, and had a bit of a squitty moment on seeing the vacant job holder’s name, and so I deleted my tweet, replacing it with something very similar indeed but without the offensive offending offensive name.

It got me thinking. I’m basically decent, inoffensive, and don’t wish to bring unnecessary attention on myself by a careless misunderstanding – whether mine or someone I mention on social media. I mean, I’ve been a party to the reactions of the followers of people with more charisma than I; charismatic person says something hateful, demonstrably untrue, and their cult piles on. Not pretty.

So, I need a strategy, a plan to make it obvious I’m doing what I believe is right, targeting the right people, whilst being careful to minimise the chances of being misunderstood.

Aside from withdrawing entirely from social networks I don’t really know where to start, but that’s not an option, what we’re all seeing now demands more of all of us.

Ok, of me.

Incidental, the English Prime Minister doesn’t, at least in my eyes, represent the 4 countries of the Union, moreover I’m having a hard time thinking he represents even his own people.

Also incidental, yes, the post title and the song lyric is indeed as clever as I get with puns and stuff. I’m impressed how prescient the band were, but then again, reporting on their times must have been easy; citizen journalists before their time, innit.

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

— George Santayana

Now, I’ve got a great admiration of what I’ve read of Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás’ quotations over the years. I know little of the man or of his wider works and that, I think, is how it shall stay; I’m honestly not much more curious than trying to fit his words to modern-day events.

I’m not sure I wish it were thus, but it is.

Anyway, the one at the top of the page is perhaps most relevant to today, but in a way I’d not really considered previously.

I’m not clever enough to create a plan that asserts authority over others in a way they cannot see, that blinds them to the loss of their freedoms and those they’re taught to despise. Neither, I think, are those who are in power here and in other places throughout this mad world of ours. Nevertheless, whatever it is they are doing, and for whatever reason they are doing it, it’s working.

I have to say though that choosing the insidious beginnings of populism/nationalism, fascism, all the other -isms from 1930’s Germany as a blueprint to govern, though lazy, though utterly abhorrent to me, is completely understandable; it worked.

But for fuck’s sake, given what they could have done with the power handed to them, why‽

I (perhaps we as a family) needed a distraction from the frustrations of politics and from the mental anguish of coping with the restrictions imposed/self-imposed during the current coronavirus pandemic, so I ordered the Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit game.

An aside: we have a typical board games Compendium. Only my youngest daughter (daughter 2) and I really spend much time with it. Chess is our game. She’s a keen student, a shame I’m a novice-level player and no teacher isn’t it! But we enjoy the contests, and that’s all that matters.

Honestly and perhaps selfishly, I didn’t want to play from the compendium (or jump into Minecraft despite daughter 2’s multiple asks), so bought the new thing.

My daughters have read the Harry Potter books and watched the films multiple times (understatement!), bought many and disparate forms of merchandise, and lived the franchise. Ok, ‘franchise’ is a rubbish word to use but I’m writing this in the early hours of bin day so yeah…

My wife isn’t particularly interested, but she knows enough that, after a visit to London’s and especially the pilgrimage to Kings Cross Platform 9-3/4 last year she booked us on the UK Harry Potter Studio Tour earlier this year, you know, during a time we could do things, go places, see people, drink Butter Beer…

If’s an amazing experience; if you’re even a casual fan it’s something I can recommend without hesitation. Go early, it takes literally (not figuratively hours to get round. It’s well worth saving up for too, it really is. (And the shop is nowhere near as tightly-packed as Kings Cross’s.)

Me? I’m a big fan. I’ve seen all the films multiple times, find something new each viewing. I even started to read the first book, felt the need to pause as I found out Vernon is a… (ok, I’m an engineer, it’s all good stuff this!)

Incidentally, I’ve not had the inclination to read anything other than bedtime stories to the girls in recent years, but wax a voracious reader as a child:young adult.

The game arrived yesterday and so around teatime I played a round with, ok against, daughter 2.

It gets Baz’s seal of approval both as game and as that distraction. There are questions that my wife in the other room answered (gleefully!) or are obvious to a fan of any level, or need a knowledge only multiple viewings/readings can bring, or are downright sneaky in their apparent simplicity.

Who didn’t play, and why?

My wife’s not interested in games much which, though puzzling, is ok. (This is a judgment on her character!)

Daughter 1 (the oldest) is a newly-minted lockdown teenager, with all the personal issues attendant. (I’ll bring her round to a session eventually, see if I won’t!)

Ruby dog, though she appreciated a tiny piece of my pastrami sandwich, her achievement unlocked after patiently nuzzling my knee under the table for a while, wasn’t even worth interested in the unused game wedges in the box on the floor beside our dining room table,

Mollie cat, who didn’t even attempt to cross the table after her teatime; perhaps she’d learned that interrupting me during my working hours wasn’t profitable, dunno. But today is indeed another day.

So, as distractions go, this game, oh yes, it is most definitely one.

Um…

Yeah.

Ah…

Daughter 2 beat me.

Which, though I expected her to, was nice.

Result.

Here are 2 comments of mine in the village Facebook page, responding first to the dilution of the government’s lockdown message, and then (indirectly for obvious reasons) to a couple of arseholes stating that care homes and the old should be left to it whilst the rest of us just get on with our lives.

[First, this:]

Whatever’s said, like everything else that’s gone before here, it’ll be unclear and thus open to interpretation. It’ll result in the broadening of what people wish to be the scope of their personal freedoms and will dilute the core point of *all* that’s gone before, that we’ve got to look after each other in the midst of the most deadly pandemic in living memory. And so, entirely unnecessarily, more people will die or have their lives blighted by the long-term effects of this virus.

Track and trace is months too late and shoddily implemented, the request made to the >10,000 people entering the UK every day to self-isolate is by this point risible. The sooner we’re treated like adults by the government the better.

[And, responding to said arseholes, this:]

For anyone here to even *suggest* it’s ok for people you don’t know to die simply to benefit the economy is morally indefensible. To bring cherry-picked statistics ignoring *old people* to the discussion, well…

The current official death toll – spread over just 2 months is 31,587 – which already exceeds the average annual rate by quite some margin.

From this:

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-06/how-does-the-wuhan-coronavirus-compare-to-seasonal-flu/

‘Although flu might not seem like a deadly illness, on average it kills around 17,000 people in England a year.

Public Health England told ITV News: “The number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications varies each flu season.

“The average number of deaths in England for the last five seasons, 2014/15 to 2018/19, was 17,000 deaths annually.

“This ranged from 1,692 deaths last season, 2018/19, to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15.”’

4 weeks in…

Nobody I’ve spoken to so far quite understands the concept of being paid to work from home and that the responsibilities continue despite being physically displaced. I’ve not been furloughed, nor am I on holiday,

The responses I’ve had so far range from ‘are you actually doing any work?’, all the way to compete disbelief that I’m taking this seriously, with an implication that I should be doing other things during the day instead of after work.

It’s hard work trying to get across that I’m a bit stretched attempting to process the situation, trying to do my best to assist the girls with a home schooling plan, and… trying not to be scared my loved ones could be affected in any way by this horrendous virus. (My wife’s already had it, we think, she’s not been tested though of course.)

It’s just hard work.