Oh My God, What Have We Become

"Call up the craftsmen

Bring me the draughtsmen

Build me a path from cradle to grave

And I'll give my consent

To any government

That does not deny a man a living wage

Go find the young men never to fight again

Bring up the banners from the days gone by

Sweet moderation

Heart of this nation

Desert us not, we are

Between the wars" 

From "Between The Wars" by Billy Bragg
 http://youtu.be/xjUA3RU4B8E

A while ago Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head because she wanted an education. For the perpetrators the concept of articulate and questioning young people who challenge the cherished principles of bigotry, power and loathing of difference is so frightening it is better to carry out summary execution and face the temporary wrath of a world that will move on to the next media hit than it is to accept the inevitable outcome of a developed and inter-connected generation with a strong and growing sense of justice, access and liberty. Malala was shot in the head. Well known in her native Pakistan for her Blogs that spoke about the importance of access to education for women and indeed the right to access to education for women. And because of this, she and two of her friends were shot.

Having been given life saving surgery in Pakistan Malala was flown to the UK where at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth hospital, her shattered brain was repaired by experts and her body and spirit were restored by a dedicated team of the passionate, compassionate and dedicated. It was with some considerable emotion that I heard the restored Malala speak at the opening of the New Birmingham Library speak to her "fellow Brummies." I was proud to be considered part of a process that was an iconic testament to what good people can achieve. And that this had happened in our hospital, in our city gave further energy to the hope I felt that day. A hope that we are bigger than we seem, better than we are judged, technically skilled beyond the ordinary and compassionate above what is needed.

I remember too the chill experienced as I heard a strident caller to Radio WM declare that Malala shouldn't have been given this role-opening the Library because, she shouted "She's foreign!" And then there's Facebook and its fellow travellers.

I fear that any re-positioning of access to and use social media is a bit like getting toothpaste back in to the tube: yet what I have read about Malala being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has saddened me. The energy vampires post their ill informed venom and puss on thread after thread wherein one abscess after another erupts and bursts like this:

• We should look after our own first 
• She;s already had an operation and opened the Library, now they're giving her a prize!
• What about an award for hard working people who have to wait for operations?
• She soon forgot about her friends in Pakistan
• What about pensioners who fought in the war?

And the liturgy of spite goes on: a bile-bitter cocktail of ill-informed nastiness, the flirts with comedy with its devastating capacity to jolt assumptions about reality. But it's not funny: it's awful.

We have repaired a broken icon: an icon who has spoken to the United Nations on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed everywhere making  it clear that a better world will emerge as a result of the changes brought about not by armies and hatred but by education and the capacity to draw judgement between right and wrong as we consider what connects us rather than immerse ourselves in that which divides us. We, in the Great City of Birmingham have done this and we should embrace our new citizen, celebrating her bravery, her ambition and her capacity to reach out and include others in her simple, powerful words.

It feels we are in danger of sleep walking into a new reality as: a tiny outpost of Northern Europe, changed and worsened not by change but by the way we have dealt with change, As we have sought to find the monster in others we have it would appear, discovered the monster in ourselves.
                                                     Sweet moderation

Heart of this nation

Desert us not, we are

Between the wars"

The Times We Live In-Society Has Gone Soft/Bring Back National Service/Make Prison Tough/It's An Immigrant Thing

I was saddened to read about this Youth Worker Slashed In Wolverhampton it's a pretty grim overview of what appears to be a pointless crime: the assailant got away with a set of earphones.

Social Media is a great way of communicating our thoughts and feelings and the outrage provoked by the above skipped like a flat stone on still water creating the following sentiments as it danced into the emotions of the reader

• They are scum
• Prisons are too soft
• Bring back National Service (in war zones)
• This is what happens when loads of immigrants get into our country.

and it reminded me of this.

A man in his early forties took his seven year old son to see a film. The person concerned was a Site Supervisor at a local school. From time to time he was asked to assist in keeping good order in a sometimes pretty rowdy Youth Club. As he was walking back from the film he and his son were surrounded by a group of teenagers who threatened to "sort him out" because he had been instrumental in removing and banning a couple of them from the club. They were tooled up, it was frightening.

He reached into his pocket and slipped a bunch of school keys onto his fingers. pulled out his hand and said something along the lines of:

"Right, lads, there's a few of you and I'll go down here but before I go down, definitely one of you, possibly two of you and there's a chance that three of you are going to be scarred for life.....now get out my way."  And they did.

At the time this happened, there was National Service, the Borstal regime was a brutalising experience, prison was harsh and there were no obvious immigrants in the group-there wouldn't have been, there was a great measure of anti-immigrant feeling by and large groups of youths stayed "within their own".

This happened in 1960. I was the seven year old in awe at my Dad's handling of the situation.

I understand the anger generated by the attack on the young man in Wolverhampton. I'm saddened by the simplistic, tired and clichéd responses that are no more of our time than is the willingness of some to opportunistically attack others for gain, revenge or fun. 

And here's a photo of him taken around 3 years before the incident, with the F.A Cup, won by Aston Villa. A light, wiry man of purposeful strength and strong purpose whose only short-coming was to support Ast......ah well: It's been almost 22 years since he passed and his legacy grows in my heart, those of his grandchildren and I think many of those who remember this quietly-considered, kind and dignified man as a person of conviction and courage.

He would have found the responses outlined above and present on today's Facebook thread irrelevant, poorly considered and offering little by way of solution or balance.

First We Turn Away from Democracy, Then We Turn On Ourselves

The reportage and images from Wolverhampton City Council over the recent past have caused sadness, disbelief and in many cases anger. As is often the case when we're being asked to accept the unacceptable, there's a temptation to go straight to "blame" without touching "understand."
Some of the comments made under the general heading of "angry/blame" have made hard reading. Hard because correspondents and contributors have too often done one or a combination of:

• Blaming councillors because they have "huge expenses"
• Too many Chiefs and not ......
• Mad-cap schemes/Pet projects
• Money spent on useless things like needy groups/translation services
• Money spent on useful things like museums and libraries
• Failure to "grasp the nettle"

Some observations have been truly scalding, criticising the very existence of services who reach out to the weaker and marginalised members of our society. Others have mocked the notion that a museum should be funded from within the Council budget, stating that those who want to use it should pay for it.

 There's something missing: the principle of municipality, the concept of describing the kind of City that's wanted and to capture its meaningfulness to those who live and work there and would want their families to do the same.
The polarised and unhelpful clichés, that only the Tories can manage the budget and it is only Labour that will protect services are demonstrably untrue and distort a more pressing truth: local government, democracy and engagement are apparently held in contempt by Westminster as it relegates the provision of services that build an inclusive society to the level of the parish pump.
Social cohesion is always tested during difficult times and the positive contributory elements of belonging to and caring about your area, town, city have synergy and are powerful. They are well worth nurturing. The wrong questions are perhaps deliberately and confusingly, being asked of us: all too often there appears to be a pre-prescribed answer. Yet the question, "What do you want your City to look like and be like and what would you like it citizens to be able to achieve?" is never asked in a meaningful way. For me it is one that prompts a dialogue of potentially irresistible power and potential.
It's Easter now: a powerfully symbolic time of the year: I wonder what renewal is possible and what we would seek to resurrect from the bold days of high order municipal commitment and thinking? I wonder what will be left, impoverished and weakened to a point of incapacity?

"I Have A Feeling We're Not in Kansas Any more"

There's something powerful about this time of year. Loss, pain and renewal are never too far away from an internal dialogue that cuts across faith, belief and religion, hopefully re-emphasising something we all know and might not quite understand: that we are part of something bigger. Just how big can be a surprise.
I found out earlier this year that the excellent Red Shoes  http://www.redshoes-music.com/ were due to play at Birmingham's Symphony Hall "Folk for Free" event on the 17th of April.

And here they are sound-checking the set, looking out over Birmingham's Centenary Square. I found out on arrival that this was to be the last one in a series of Folk for Free events that have been held in the reception area.
As the reception area filled the growing audience used the upper tiers to see and hear what turned out to be heart jolting event. The sound check was better than some gigs I've attended and as it tool place old acquaintances were being renewed and people were connecting and smiling and anticipating.
The band honoured the special nature of the event, the last of its kind and I'm guessing, a casualty of what are blandly labelled as "spending cuts". They honoured it because they are exceptionally talented, unfailingly gracious and ever so "unaffected" by their talent teaming socially accessible and fun to be with. And then they play and sing.

.....and something transcendent happens. I looked around the auditorium as the band weaved a collective narrative of powerful imagery, strong emotions and music so technically well crafted it is neither the portrait or the frame of a beautiful sound picture

I watched casual observers become enthralled and felt the unmistakable "vibe" of an audience willing the band on to give them more. Unobtrusive percussion, a violin that has a breath of its own and an always "oh so appropriate" input from two skilled and gifted guitarists who work off each other seamlessly.

Applause didn't happen: it burst! The Red Shoes songs touch painful places, challenge the assumed right of the privileged to ride (sic) over the law of the land and so doing hold an engaged audience in a very special place throughout.
Their encore was a unique event: an ending not only to a great set but a great idea, that music and meeting people are one and the same thing and that this should be allowed and encouraged to happen producing a healing and renewing balm in an increasingly disjointed and fractured society. Without stretching the  Easter metaphor too far, I hope a resurrection of a great idea isn't too far away and wouldn't it be great if Red Shoes could open the next incarnation.

"Nec valet a rat asinam"

Here's a picture of my old school. It was a bit more than a school for me: it was my home too-Dad was the caretaker

The above photo shows the first phase: one of three as the school expanded in a radical growth process that saw other local secondary schools close as the needs of an expanding population were addressed on huge sites. We moved there in 1962 just before a winter of epoch-making weather. Dad retired in 1979 having been part of the fabric of the place for 17 years.
It's tempting to look at Perry Common and assume that this huge enterprise represented everything that went wrong with education. It's tempting and it's inaccurate because far from it being a de-personalised education factory it was held together by a brilliant team of idealistic, inspirational and caring people many of whom would attract some pretty vicious labels in contemporary newspapers, ones I wouldn't use to line a ferret cage.
We had great profile in sport, superb dramatic productions, a high quality school orchestra and a range of outdoor activities, arts and debating societies were run by people who cared and were given space in which to help us develop and challenge. Aspirations were high and all of this was underpinned by a strong sense of identity and belonging. And guess what, it didn't work for everyone; things seldom do. There were pinch points: higher achievers by and large went to grammar schools arguably defeating a truly comprehensive ethos. For the 60's and the main part of the 70's jobs were easy to come by and academic shortfalls didn't remove employability. It was only later that the rapid shifts in the economic prosperity of the area and our City weighed heavily against hopes and aspirations. We had a Latin motto "Quod Possum Perfectium" (To the best ability) and it was chosen on the assumption that everyone had a key strength, a "something" they could develop. We were, although we didn't get it at the time, riding the wave of a post-war culture that had experienced crippling austerity, the re-drawing of nationhood and the re-definition of where power lay in complex societies.
I had a notification on Facebook Today from NewSchoolsNetwork who tell me that they're doing this

"Next week we'll be visiting the #BlackCountry as part of the New Schools Challenge - give us your views on education via our short School Survey."

Here it is:

 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wnPyCe2p6Y9A7Q__JFjrFLybg0HMcvJEm4hIUVBhPjQ/formResponse

.....and it seems to me at any rate to continue to reinforce that which doesn't work-or more accurately is perceived not to work. It's been around 11 years since I worked in Education on an employed basis. Here were some "folk rules" that emerged during the mid eighties onwards:

• If a school changes its name-it's in trouble
• If a school shortens its lunch-break-it's in trouble
• If a school publishes a new Behaviour Policy it's because the old one was perceived not to work-so it's in trouble.
• If a school changes its uniform it's in trouble
• If a school carries out a purging of long-established teachers who know their way around the community it's in trouble-but no where near as much trouble as it's going to be in soon....

The new schools network is, I guess a sad and inevitable outcome of the removal of Local Government as a significant partner in education and it appears that we have lost the inspirational voices that aligned themselves to the quality of the educational experience rather than a tightly focussed series of "run faster/jump higher educational outcomes" that by and large have little to do with generating confidence, flexibility and resilience.

And here's the rub. Our old motto was made to mean something to us-"Do your best, you'll feel better" (The mantra of self-help!) and it could now be replaced by "Nec valet a rat asinam" (Not worth a rat's arse): it's the how a number of my ex-colleague teachers feel (possibly worse) describes how our mercilessly vilified and too often abandoned kids feel about themselves.

A closing observation. I was taught history by the Deputy Head Teacher, Jimmy Conchar-a mercurial mind that was always up for a challenge. Our fierce debates about the outcomes of the Peace Treaty of Versailles and the causal relationship with the rise of Nazi Germany embraced the Scramble for Africa, The socio-economic conditions that inspired Marx, Engels and Dickens and the inevitable recognition that Eastern Europe was the coin to pay for 21 Million plus Soviet dead and at the same time ignored the pre-war Stalinist purges. This man's knowledge and eclectic mind taught us beyond facts: he taught us how to think. He would have no place in our contemporary world of measuring achievement and I'd like to think that he wouldn't want one.

A Knight in A Museum?

Always first to support local government the Express and Star put this little beauty out today
http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2014/01/13/historic-bantock-house-museum-faces-axe-in-latest-wolverhampton-cutbacks/

I like Bantock Park lots. A very accessible space that caters for a number of leisure and recreation interests and the house and gardens are exquisite, managed by a dedicated team that takes visible pride in its work. There's a smashing cafe and meeting/exhibition facilities.
It's great but it's not essential and the Express and Star has, whilst wearing a bright waistcoat and a rascal's hat, taken an opportunity to raise the temperature on an already pretty-much battered council. And the "usual suspect" voices squeak for attention.

• Expenses
• Wages
• "Mad projects"
• Lining their own pockets
• I could balance the books

...type statements proliferate and as this kind of noise is made, a quieter and more sinister agenda embeds itself.

Governance without the capacity to direct assets held by those in Governance is administration. And there is a strategic component to Governance: an important dimension of being able to somehow envision what a "better future" (remember that?) might look like and what we might need to do to get there. For councils it is a tough, tough plate spinning act between statutory duties, spending constraints and "what we want to do."

That the electorate has systematically disengaged with local politics is a greater risk to the people of Wolverhampton (or anywhere else) than is the re-configuring of how we might keep open a community asset that though valuable, could barely be described as "essential". Yet in rejecting that which is of aesthetic value we deprive ourselves of that which is, in its own right "good and improving" whatever the historical context.

We have it would seem arrived at a place where the visionaries of the 19th century would have shied from. A place of "essentials only". We are offered a political context that seems to consist of the self-serving when for the vast majority of the elected members the reverse, in Wolverhampton and elsewhere is nearer the truth. Good people, hard working and kind people give their time for expenses that reflect only in part the importance of their role.One that is all too easy to criticise from a point of often poorly informed prejudice.

Local Authority employees work, by definition in an uncertain and challenging context,  certain sometimes of the certainty of the perverse semi-truth "You can spend all of your life doing good and better on a day-to-day basis and no-one knows: screw up once and everyone knows." And these are free-loaders, spongers and time-servers? Really?

So Express and Star, perhaps you'd like to dedicate some space to the real impact of cuts on centrally held services that reach out and touch people every day. Maybe some of your bright waist-coated,  rascal-hatted mischief might direct itself at the effectiveness of services now delivered by the private sector-particularly for the recipients of something that is decidedly less than it once was. Perhaps you'd like to call to account the relentless assault on local democracy and decision making and the abandonment of the high values of civic pride and social cohesion.

Bantock House is beautiful. So is aspiration, access and a sense of belonging, purpose and security in your own parish, town or city and perhaps we should start from there.

British Gas Insurance Part 2: It's The Hope That Destroys You!

The grim farrago of indifference and incompetence continues. Here's an update for readers everywhere. Please feel free to copy and share. Here's the transcript of an email sent today. Enjoy!

Dear Sirs,

Here's a link to a recent "Boxing Day Blog" in which I take a largely entertaining and light heated side-swipe at your organisations capacity to do anything at agreed times and dates.

http://eoin17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/british-gas-insurance-confederacy-of.html

In a continued and it would appear continuing, display of organisational ineptitude appointments have been made, cancelled only for people who weren't expected to turn up when they shouldn't be there. To your credit, you have achieved almost perfect symmetry in ensuring that "yan is yinned" because tomorrow (the 8th of January) people who were supposed to turn up have told us that they wont. I wonder if you could find another customer with whom you might continue to balance the Universe? This one is massively hacked off and here's why.

·         Dec 9th-Shower fuse blows: it is clear to anyone that this is a seriously burnt out fuse.

·         We sent for someone and the first in a string of broken appointments is made. We have no doubt that the job was a priority for you because your engineer turned up on Friday the 13th (We should have known) and at mid-day told us that he had to turn off the electricity and this is what he did. He also stated that an engineer who possessed powers in excess of his would arrive later that day and do what was necessary to restore our supply.

·         It became dark-that's December for you-and in a bizarre combination of aerobic training and begging I took the contents of our freezer to a nearby restaurant for safe-keeping.

·         After a few hours one of your more senior wizards arrived. He was clearly a red-hot graduate of Hogwarts and with not some much as a Snape-like curled lip pronounced that he (yes he!) could turn on the power, power that shouldn't have been turned off in the first place.

·         Other appointments were broken and more wizards came. The decision was made: "An isolation switch must be fitted, then the power (and the shower) might be restored following the installation of a new fuse box-something that couldn't be done without said isolator. This would not happen until 2/1/14

·         We were advised (1/1/14) that the appointment made for the 2nd was no longer possible-very busy-and that it would happen on another date.

·         On the 2nd, an engineer who shouldn't have been here turned up and fitted an isolator switch that existed only in an uncertain future,

·         We were advised that another engineer would arrive tomorrow (8/1/14) and yes: fit the fuse box.

·         We phoned tonight and have been told that this too is a fable and that we must, tomorrow, phone other people "The Really Difficult Work" (Long Duration) team or something like that: I fear that they too will join in the casual "Make and Break Appointments and Damn the Customer” approach that infests your organisation.

·         In between the above bullets we have spoken with a member of your Customer Services team. Now I have to advise you of this. Either it is that calls to this office are being intercepted by a malevolent force or it is a requirement that to in order to qualify for the simple post of answering a phone, evidence of post-doctoral research in Oily Patronage is a an Essential Requirement on the Person Specification. I don't, under any circumstances expect to be told by a C.S rep that there are "people worse off than me..." (couched)

To date you have been a disgrace. We have been without a shower since 9/12/13, there is no bath and whereas life is not impossible, it's certainly not what we signed up for. I'm a self-employed person: diaries have been changed, appointments re-arranged and schedules interrupted and this lamentable approach continues.

What are you going to do about it?

There's More Than One Way To Skin A Window Cleaner!

My Dad, Pat Dooner: fishing at Loch Owell, near Mullingar, Co. Westmeath. ROI.

He's the one in the mustard cardigan and knitted hat: this was taken around 1978 I'm guessing, just before he and Mom moved back to Ireland. Dad had worked for years as a school-caretaker at a 2000+ place site in Birmingham. When I decided to go into teaching he was able to offer me occasional jobs to cover absent cleaners and so on: it worked well during the vacations. Working for your Dad is a misery-he pushed me harder than any of his other colleagues, his cheery explanation was "I can't be seen to be going easy on yer." What he was doing for almost all of the time, was teaching, training and mentoring me. I was young and headstrong and didn't always appreciate the lessons.

As an Irish family we like many others, had a hard time of it as the IRA brought its campaign to the mainland. Dad took it in his stride: brushing aside the anger, mutterings and sharp words of others. Me? I decided to become over-sensitive and lay on with a vengeance anyone who insulted my Irish background. I should have known better. I'd been around enough to developed a thicker skin but had a tendency to leave it at home and put on a thinner one with narrower shoulders.

Dad used to tell me that you have to learn to "Work with people and they'll work with you," regretting his more hot-headed and "direct" approach of the past which had achieved little in achieving results and much in ensuring useless conflicts and pointless arguments. I know now that as admonished his past self he was showing me a different and better way. However, what you're shown and what you choose to see can be two different things and it was often this way.

One of the arrangements Dad came to was with the window cleaners: he'd sign off their work relatively early so that they could do their "private" rounds later in the day. It worked well, the accommodated Dad by arranging their visits to happen in the school holidays-better for everyone. They used to gather in the Boiler House, the size of the engine of a ship of fair displacement. Dad and I were about to enter the room when I heard the foreman state "Don't worry, the Duck Egg will sign us off early so we'll be all right.." This was a thin-skin/narrow shoulder day: I was white and tight lipped with rage and told my dad that I was going to " make this *&$£! eat his words," and with a restraining hand he said "Slow down you, I'll take care of this." My indignation was complete, calling Irish people Duck Eggs generally was an insult, to call my Dad one specifically was and outrage and he as far as I could tell, did nothing!

Three hours or so later he asked me to come with him to sign them off the job and I was licking my lips in anticipation. Now we would confront them and make it clear that we're not the sort of people about which you make any egg-related unconventional metaphor or simile: the Duck one particularly. But no. At the point at which they expected to be signed off to spend an afternoon privateering, my Dad pointed out that the Gym hadn't been done. So they did that and came back. He repeated the process with Science Block and the internal staircase (main). Only after the third episode and well into their additional income generation time did he sign off the job: he wrote "D.Egg" where his name should have been. Some window cleaners and a short-fused young man were taught, trained and mentored that day by a generous minded, sure footed, clear thinking expert.  He died in 1999 and I miss my teacher, trainer, mentor-dad to this day