27 - Uniform

Okay. So I'm going to rant about school uniform. 

Now, I'm not against the actual concept of school uniform as it makes things easy for kids and parents in that there's no worry about what a child is to wear each day. Without a uniform, this can cause anxiety for children - especially teenagers - as then there's a pressure on them to ensure the outfit they wear complies with the ever-changing idea of what is "fashionable" today. With uniform everyone wear, essentially, the same things.

What twists my melon is the nature of much uniform these days, and the expense of it all. Especially given that one of the reasons often cited for uniform is that it means richer and poorer kids are wearing the same things, and don't have to worry about the costs of things.

But that's not true... so many schools - especially secondary school - insist you buy a blazer with the school's logo, jumpers with the school branding, specific school branded PE kits, the school tie, and so on. And these branded/logoed items are only available at a single store who therefore have a monopoly and can charge what they want. 

Back in the day when I was in secondary school the only things that we wore that were specific were the school tie, and a PE top; neither were branded as such. The rest of the uniform could be sourced from anywhere else as long as it was specific colours. This did lead to a bit of variety in style, but all were close enough to be recongnisably uniform. And we didn't have to wear an expensive blazer.

The sheer cost of so many branded/logoed items is ludicrous, and makes a mockery of the idea of uniform being a leveller between the well of and the less well off. 

We need a return to the old days. We do not need so many branded/logoed items of uniform; it's sheer ego and vanity on the part of the schools. And I wonder exactly what their cut of the cost of the uniform is? Must be a right little earner. The school tie is enough to identify a school. We don't need all the rest of the clothing to have so much corporacy on it. And kids don't need blazers. Simplify the uniform. Make it cheaper. 

Also; I guarantee that in the next week or so there'll be articles in the press about how kids have been sent home from school for minor uniform breaches, or some other spurious reason due to a lack of clarity in the specifications. Some of these are very badly worded and open to interpretation. Especially around things like hairstyles. 

For example, my daughter's secondary school says this about hair that it should be "Well-groomed hair (no extreme styles and not shorter than a grade 2). Long hair tied back."

Which at a first glance seems reasonable, until you look at that one word;  "extreme". Now, the problem is that what one person counts as "extreme" another may think is entirely normal. This is where ambiguity comes in to play, and where you'll get disagreements about whether something complies or does not, especially where the line between what is considered extreme, and what is not considered extreme is not clearly defined. 

And to my mind there should be no room for ambiguity in any such guidelines. But if there is ambiguity the benefit of the doubt should be given to the child/parent. 

This should apply to all elements of any uniform code. Clarity is good. Ambiguity is bad.

And uniform should be as simple as possible, with as little branding as possible...

26 - Context

I'm going to start this piece with a simple statement; context is everything. 

Specifically here I'm going to talk about context in respect of art - and I'm using the word in its broadest definition - and how evolving attitudes mean that over the years what is acceptable shifts and things that were once deemed okay are now deemed not to be when viewed with modern eyes.

A recent example of this is a 1970s Doctor Who story called The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The official Doctor Who Magazine has a feature called The Time Team where a group of young fans sit around and watch a few old episodes - many of whom are seeing these episodes for the first time - and discuss them. In the current issue, one of the episodes they watch is the first part of Talons...

Now, the thing about Talons is that one of the mmain supporting characters is a Chinese character called Li H'sen Chang; but he's not played by a Chinese actor, he's played by a white actor made up to look Chinese. Furthermore, there are many racial stereotypes in the story. 

Understandably, the Team take umbrage with this, and express their dislike for these elements of the story. One of the team - who has seen the story before - gives a bit more context to the background of the production of the story, and helps the rest of them get to grips with it a bit more. They eventuallly come to the conclusion that it's not wrong to enjoy the story, but to understand that elements of it would not be considered appropriate today.

The editor of the magazine then gave further context to why certain production decisions were made in his editorial, which expanded on the context of how things were done in those days, and made reasonable points. 

In fact, the whole thing in the maazine itself was quite reasonable indeed. And then an obscure academic took umbrage at the article and the editorial and called for the editor to be fired, as apparently it was wrong to show this story to the Time Team, and giving more context in an edirorial was selling them out. 

It all then exploded when a former DWM editor took umbrage at these words, and replied to them; which was apparently bad Twitter etiquette by quoting her words when he has 5 times as many followers as her. Which seems odd, as if you reply to a tweet it shouldn't matter if a person has 10, 100, 10,000, a million folowers if you're engaging in debate. It then got even messier with the academic essentially sugesting that every DWM editor was a "fuckhead". 

I could quote acres of the tweets that were said, but I think it's getting too far from the point of context. The thing is, looking at Talons from a 2018 perspective it is undoubdtedly racist. If you were viewing it in 1977 you would almost certainly not have thought it racist. Times change. Opinions change. What was acceptable then is not acceptable now. This all has to be borne in mind when looking at any art, be it painting, sculpture, books, movies, TV, whatever.

[As an interlude, whilst writing this I was watching an old episode of EastEnders and that had a scene where an old white lady said to a young black boy that "you all look the same" and that she can't help her upbringing any more than "you can't help being black". It was actually a really well written, and well acted, scene and served to make a point about the character of the old lady. You'd not see similar in a 2018 episode. But; is it racist to show such a scene. I would say no.]

This is shifting all the time. We all think that right about now were are more enlightened than at any point in history. Yet, I gurantee that there are some things happening right now that will be looked back upon in 10, 20 years or so and thought to be terrible. We all thouht it was great in the 90s. But look at some of the things that happened then - the rise of lad culture, and an increased objectification of the female body by the likes of Nuts and Zoo etc - and you realise that things hadn't changed much. 

I guess the key thing is that different people's tolerance to the things that were done "wrong" in the past varies. What some will overlook will be the thing that will make others reach for the off switch. Who is right? Both. Clearly. 

There are many other examples I could cite - some may even have isues with Mr Tojamura in my beloved Twin Peaks - but then this piece would go on for much longer, and I think I've waffled enough as it is. I guess I should just end this article by repeating the point I made right at the top;

Context is everything!

25 - Yerp

Okay. Who is the most influential UK politician of the last 20 years?

Think about it.

Depending on your political bent, I'd be willing to bet you'd be thinking of the likes of Tony Blairs, or David Cameron, or (oh) Jeremy Corbyn, or Nicola Sturgeon, or...

…well, whoever you say, you're probably wrong, as the answer to the question is someone that has never been a Member of Parliament, and has in fact failed to be elected about 57 times...

(That number might not strictly speaking be accurate, but my disdain for the person I speak of is such that I don't actually care if the number is correct or not; and hey, this whole piece is just a bit of opinion on a blog... I'm not trying to win a Purlitzer prize here...!)

...can you tell you it is yet?

The answer is that it's that moon faced poltroon, and hero to the UKIPs; Nigel Farage.

And the reason is this...

...seeing the increase in the popularity of the UKIPs, prior to the 2015 election, and after a couple of defections from the Tories to the UKIPs, in an effort to cling to power, Prime Minister David Cameron (hereafter referred to as “PMDC”) made a manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the UK's membership of the UK.

Still, it didn't stave off an increase in the UKIPs vote, from 919,456 votes in the 2010 election (no MPs) to 3,081,099 in the 2015 election (one MP. But not called “Nigel”. I forget the name of the MP; the only other one of the UKIPs whose name springs to mind is Paul Nuttalls, and I know it wasn't him.)

(Curiously, in the 2017 election, the UKIPs vote collapsed to 549,068 (no MPs); anyone would think that was a resounding snub of the party and all it stood for... And these numbers are accurate. I checked them.)

So, with Farage getting the one thing he'd always wanted, a second referendum on UK membership of Europe...

...wait, what I hear you say; SECOND referendum? Yes. Second. The first was in 1975 in which the question asked was “Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?” The result was “Yes” 67.23%, “No” 32,77%

Yes! The will of the people was clear. Remainers got over 2/3 of the vote, so all those Leaver whingers should just respect the will of the people and the likes of Farage should just hut their cakehole and accept that the will of the people had been implemented.

But no, Farage and his ilk (I accidentally typed “elk” there; might have been interesting!) ignored the will of the people and constantly harped on about a second referendum, and PMDC gave it to them.

So.

I could write reams about how rubbish the referendum campaign went, and how things were rubbish on both sides, and how there were BIG WHOPPING LIES about the NHS written on the sides of buses, and how things that people said would happen didn't happen, but that's a whole other article.

Actually before I continue there's an interesting quote that someone said the the lead up to the vote. Read it, and see if you can work out who said it;

"In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the [the opposing] campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it."

I've edited one word so that it doesn't immediately make it obvious who said it.

I'll come back to the first sentence later, when I talk about the actual result. The second sentence is very interesting as it indicates that if there were such a result that would be an end to the matter... oh, wait... of course. That 1975 result... why didn't that end it?

So, there was the day of the vote, where the question asked was “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” 51.89% said “Leave”, 48.11 said “Remain”.

Then, surely the person who said "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way” proudly repeated this assertion? Well. no. Because the person who said this was the moon faced poltroon himself, Nigel Farage. Curiously this result went from “unfinished business” to bein a clear mandate from the people, nay, it is THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE, and any attempt to frustrate Brexit is anti-democratic.

Within hours of the result PMDC had quit, leading to the chain of events that led to PMTM taking over, having a disastrous (well, for her) general election, and a chaotic series of negotiations over Brexit that, with only seven months until that fateful day we leave, has a Government that can't even agree what it wants over Brexit; how can they hope to negotiate with the EU and come to an agreement when they can't even reach a consensus amongst themselves.

And all this is because of the moon faced poltroon, who now just sits back and berates people on his radio show for not doing Brexit right. Which is why he is the most powerful politician of the last twenty years...

Postscript

Given that we now have had two EU referendums – referenda – maybe we should have just one more. Like a best of three to settle it?