nineveh_uk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nineveh_uk) wrote2010-04-15 04:23 pm
nineveh_uk) wrote2010-04-15 04:23 pm
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A couple of interesting articles
The single mother’s manifesto, JK Rowling, The Times.
The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.)
…
Child poverty remains a shameful problem in this country, but it will never be solved by throwing millions of pounds of tax breaks at couples who have no children at all. David Cameron tells us that the Conservatives have changed, that they are no longer the “nasty party”, that he wants the UK to be “one of the most family-friendly nations in Europe”, but I, for one, am not buying it. He has repackaged a policy that made desperate lives worse when his party was last in power, and is trying to sell it as something new. I’ve never voted Tory before ... and they keep on reminding me why.
The village that shows us what society really means, The Guardian:
The early workers built the walls of their crude dwellings from stone, freely available in this landscape. But they had to get permission to take the turf and the heather to put on a roof. That belonged to the estate. If the estate wanted you out, they had the right to burn you out by setting the roof on fire; the roof that belonged to them.
It does no harm to remember how those with absolute power over employees, tenants or employee- tenants used to treat their meal- tickets, given the freedom to do so. But it does no harm either to remember the astonishing resilience with which a community can join together in mitigation of cruelty and dehumanisation, and change things for the better.
There is a reminder of that in Wanlockhead as well, for this remote hamlet boasts the second oldest miners' subscription library in the world; a library that was assembled by men who lived and worked in appalling conditions, yet set money aside for books and for a place where these books could be kept and shared. The library itself was open only once a month, but the building also hosted meetings of the village's silver band, its quoits club and its curling club. Literature, music, sport, leisure – all these were nurtured, and paid for, by the miners themselves. What a Big Society those people made, from so little. No state to sap their get-up-and-go, you see. No welfare, no rights, no easy distractions to featherbed them all and make them indolent.
“The books in the library attest that these miners were very serious people. There is nothing frivolous – barely any novels. When asked if any particularly unusual books were included in the collection, the library guide explains that there were dire punishments for those who suggested the acquisition of books deemed unsuitable by the strict Protestant churches, which wielded the moral power in the village. She suggests that brave souls indeed must have argued for, and won the right to read, the Koran and The Origin of Species, the only books in the collection that could be said to challenge a Christian fundamentalist view of the world.
And bingo! There's the part missing from David Cameron's vision of a grassroots-up, sober, self-help society. It was not ordinary people who needed the state to keep them in line – fearful authoritarian religious leaders did that. It was the ruling elite, who abused their power without restraint, that made "big government" necessary.”
I forget which stately home it was I visited in the north-east that boasted that its wealth was not founded on slave-ownership (perish the thought!) but lead-mining.
Finally, how’s this for nonchalance? The captain of the BA flight caught in an ash cloud following the eruption of Mt Galunggung in 1982 made the following announcement to passengers:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
Funnily enough, the newspapers don’t appear to be quoting his comment about the landing: "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse"
The single mother’s manifesto, JK Rowling, The Times.
The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.)
…
Child poverty remains a shameful problem in this country, but it will never be solved by throwing millions of pounds of tax breaks at couples who have no children at all. David Cameron tells us that the Conservatives have changed, that they are no longer the “nasty party”, that he wants the UK to be “one of the most family-friendly nations in Europe”, but I, for one, am not buying it. He has repackaged a policy that made desperate lives worse when his party was last in power, and is trying to sell it as something new. I’ve never voted Tory before ... and they keep on reminding me why.
The village that shows us what society really means, The Guardian:
The early workers built the walls of their crude dwellings from stone, freely available in this landscape. But they had to get permission to take the turf and the heather to put on a roof. That belonged to the estate. If the estate wanted you out, they had the right to burn you out by setting the roof on fire; the roof that belonged to them.
It does no harm to remember how those with absolute power over employees, tenants or employee- tenants used to treat their meal- tickets, given the freedom to do so. But it does no harm either to remember the astonishing resilience with which a community can join together in mitigation of cruelty and dehumanisation, and change things for the better.
There is a reminder of that in Wanlockhead as well, for this remote hamlet boasts the second oldest miners' subscription library in the world; a library that was assembled by men who lived and worked in appalling conditions, yet set money aside for books and for a place where these books could be kept and shared. The library itself was open only once a month, but the building also hosted meetings of the village's silver band, its quoits club and its curling club. Literature, music, sport, leisure – all these were nurtured, and paid for, by the miners themselves. What a Big Society those people made, from so little. No state to sap their get-up-and-go, you see. No welfare, no rights, no easy distractions to featherbed them all and make them indolent.
“The books in the library attest that these miners were very serious people. There is nothing frivolous – barely any novels. When asked if any particularly unusual books were included in the collection, the library guide explains that there were dire punishments for those who suggested the acquisition of books deemed unsuitable by the strict Protestant churches, which wielded the moral power in the village. She suggests that brave souls indeed must have argued for, and won the right to read, the Koran and The Origin of Species, the only books in the collection that could be said to challenge a Christian fundamentalist view of the world.
And bingo! There's the part missing from David Cameron's vision of a grassroots-up, sober, self-help society. It was not ordinary people who needed the state to keep them in line – fearful authoritarian religious leaders did that. It was the ruling elite, who abused their power without restraint, that made "big government" necessary.”
I forget which stately home it was I visited in the north-east that boasted that its wealth was not founded on slave-ownership (perish the thought!) but lead-mining.
Finally, how’s this for nonchalance? The captain of the BA flight caught in an ash cloud following the eruption of Mt Galunggung in 1982 made the following announcement to passengers:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
Funnily enough, the newspapers don’t appear to be quoting his comment about the landing: "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse"
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Love the badger's arse comparison.
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And good for JKR not turning Tory just because she's now ridiculously wealthy. Too many people in the US did just that and see where we've ended up.
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(Which is to say, we did it that way!)
I am oddly excited by the cloud of volcanic ash. It is a bit like one of Arthur Conan Doyle's more sci-fi offerings.
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Fair makes you proud to be British!
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Many years later, I happened to be in Sainsburys on a Sunday morning. I glanced - as one does - down at the News of the World and saw a headline which was something like, "Redwood in Sex Romp Split" and the usual stuff about the "tight-lipped" "brave" wife. And then I saw the photo of her, holding the kids tight against her. And I went, "Oh, shit."
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I have an ex-colleague and facebook friend standing for Parliament this time round and with a genuine chance. I wouldn't vote for him (because I don't trust the Lib Dems as far as I could throw them. They have literally failed to empty the bins in Leeds), but I can see him as a conscientious, if not ultimately inspired, MP. I'd say he's not conventionally attractive enough to be a risk in the infidelity stakes, but then there's John Major and Prescott.
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I don't want to admire it, but considering how many rich people don't pay their taxes, I daresay it's worth being grateful to those that do.
And I admire JKR too; it's so easy for that kind of success to go to your head and turn you into an awful person (see just about any reality television star, for instance), but it doesn't seem to have done so in her case.
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I am currently in the throes of AS Byatt's The Children's Book, and am fascinated by (among other things) her portrayal of the working class as hungry for knowledge despite the appalling conditions they work in.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
Oof! And reading the Wiki article, that was some seriously heroic manoeuvering.
I love JK Rowling's article. I even posted it on facebook, and it's brought all my female friends out of the woodwork.
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Yay for the JK Rowling article. Mum bought the Times and I was reading her chunks of it and cheering.
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I LOVE seeing what people from our school are getting up to: I've been listening to people talk about the poor middle-class parents' terrible dilemma about whether to send your kids to private school or DOOOM them to a life of misery, ASBOs and underachievement at the local comprehensive since about 1993, and I love seeing it all proven absolute bollocks.
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Always satisfying ;-)
I don't peg any of my ex-classmates as politicians, though this may be a good thing.
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Rowling's article is great - I don't put too much store by the comments, as newspaper comments are almost always grim.
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