Minnie’s Musings

Random ramblings of a middle aged, middle class, middle income woman

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  • Somewhere in the Middle

    Lies the truth.

    I am a big fan of Katie Razzle – lately seen on the News, failing to conceal her irritation with the powers that be which run her employer, the BBC.

    She also does a podcast which pulls apart a current phenomenon. In this case cancellation culture.
    In Anatomy of a Cancellation she has a good go at giving all and sundry in the hoo-hah over Kate Clancy’s memoir on teaching, The Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me a hearing.

    It is fascinating.

    First we hear from Ms Clancy and listen to her bewildered pain and anger at the loss of reputation and career.

    Then we hear from the critics whose own lived experience of racism in the classroom inform their pain and anger.

    Just now, I have listened to the deafening silence of the publishing world who choose to play possum rather than engage with an important debate (only to be exposed by a selection of internal emails which shed a modicum of light on the whole thing – an no one comes up smelling of roses).

    I shall listen on my way home to the episode on the most important and central people in this, namely the students who featured in the book – unnamed but described in what many now see as problematic detail – and how they feel about their portrayal and the enormous fuss that has ensued.

    At the end of this binge listen, I will weigh it all up and conclude – I have little doubt – that people offend, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. People get cross and the nature of social media that this upset is frequently screaming with expletives and capital letters. But also that change tends to result from challenge, particularly when it is vigorous. There are casualties along the way, but a norm will shift and progress in one direction or another will be made.

    Or I may not conclude this at all. Being a white, middle aged woman, former teacher and would-be writer who has made many errors in navigating the modern world of education, largely without malice and usually with much reflection on what went wrong.

    This kind of piece is why the BBC and its journalists deserve our support. Because every once in a while they get to do long form, well-researched pieces that allow all possible parties to have their say. The rest of the time we can but marvel at their endless capacity to sum up major national and international events in a 90 second piece to camera, keeping us informed.

    And they strive for balance continuously.

  • Trump to the Rescue?

    Okay, there is some decidedly twisted logic in this one…

    The BBC is on the rack. The Conservatives and Reform are howling with vigorous outrage. Ed Davie is being sensible (though likely deciding against diving into a silo as an illustrative stunt). Phone ins are lit up by people who really do have better things to do, but welcome the distraction of waiting on the line for their 30 seconds of fame.

    The country is divided – like it wasn’t already – and BBC executives are holed up in wherever they are held up in these days, frantically waiting for the Board (on which I have already pontificated) to stop making a pig’s ear of this fiasco.

    I digress. Back to DT.

    If there is anything more likely to induce a volte face among the Great British Public (GBP) it is DT threatening a law suit. For one billion dollars no less. Not one to waste an opportunity to make some money, he has slapped a big figure on making a big fuss. In a state where the judiciary will take a sympathetic view of the anguish and trauma that he has “suffered”.

    As the BBC keeps telling us – in the gaps between Strictly and Casualty – it is Our BBC. If the NHS is our national religion, the BBC is our front lawn. The occasional weed doth pop up on occasion but it is otherwise a well tended display of what is best about our Sceptered Isle.

    Therefore we will indulge in a rare bout of national unity not involving a royal wedding or a football, and rally ourselves to defend Our BBC. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the skies… etc. And we are right to do so. Because it is an institution we should be proud of and protect.

    Of course, this may be an own goal on the part of DT. As it is an opportunity to rehash the whole January 6th episode and examine what he did say in that “perfect” speech (in which he came dangerously close to inciting sedition if not leaping over that particular legal bar) Americans may sit back with a furrowed brow and contemplate the precipitous slope they are trundling down.

    So let us gather our hoes and shovels (who has a pitch fork these days?) and sit in a traffic jam trying to get to the beach. Let us all cry England (Scotland, Wales, Nothern Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands…) for Harry (or Charlie) and St George, (St Andrew, St David, St Patrick… ). Enough inclusive crow-barring for the morning. You get my point.

  • Rolling Heads

    They have indeed! The BBC DG and Head of News have been allowed to resign (not sacked, you note). But I am curious as to the position of the commissioning editor of Panorama from whence the two key scandals of this year have emerged.

    An otherwise interesting and heart breaking documentary on the children of Gaza was blighted by editorial impartiality (though it would take a seriously determined ostrich to wilfully ignore the terrible trauma being inflicted on a generation of Palestinians).

    And why an incendiary speech clearly inciting violence on 6th January needed splicing is beyond me. Foolish if not downright idiotic.

    The Board needs to go in my none too humble opinion. They have dealt with this poorly and ineffectively. I am now listening to a bloke I was once on a student newspaper with, talking about what should be happening now. Failure of governance. Yup.

    But he has also made an important point. Namely, a huge news organisation will make mistakes. It’s inevitable. Where the senior managers have fallen short is in the way this has been dealt with. And that has been farcical.

    As the Royals have recently found. The response has been more of a problem than the original “crime”. The fizzing of journalistic wrath was palpable on last night’s news when two senior correspondents were quizzed by Jane Hill. Their reputations are on the line and they have been failed by the powers that be.

    Personally my measure of whether the BBC is getting the balance right is whether both sides of any debate are squeaking. They are. And that , if there is anything remotely resembling a light at the end of the tunnel, is a good thing.

  • Cannot Wait

    For the fashion for kinky hair to go out of fashion. I am currently watching Nobody Wants This on Netflix as my antidote to insomnia. Kristen Thingumy has one of these kicking haircuts. At 4am it vexes me in a quite irrational way.

    Do none of these women see that it makes them look like they went to bed with wet hair and/or took a pony tail out and didn’t apply a hairbrush?

    Many moons ago there was a fashion for smoothing hair in the manner of folically challenged man. I went to the hairdresser prior to presenting at a PTA event and met the results of the youthful salon artiste with dumbstruck horror. She had blithely delivered the latest fashion without a thought to my high forehead and thin, prone to frizz hair. I don’t know who was more mortified. Her or me.

    Anyway, for some reason I am coupling this foolish trend with the recent Vogue article which purportedly declares that having a boyfriend is embarrassing.

    Now, it is extremely important that no women is defined by who she spends her time and possibly her bed with. It galls me no less than anyone else when a successful woman receives praise for achievement in the same sentence as a quick aside on who she is married to.

    However, no one, categorically no one, should find being in any relationship of whatever sort embarrassing. That is ridiculous.

    By jumping on this bandwagon and declaring the person who – with any luck – thinks about you and what makes you happy more than once a week, to be an embarrassment, is a nasty, hurtful message . Namely, I am ashamed that I have a ‘“boyfriend “ because I am independent, self assured modern woman, so could you please duck behind a bush when we are walking in the park, and see one of my independent, self assured friends .

    Getting the nuance of this kind of debate is essential. “Embarrassing” and “embarrassment” are negatives. No one should be made to feel the first or suffer the latter, whatever their gender. It’s an easy adjustment.

    Namely, I am happy to be on my own, doing what I want to do without having to check in with anyone else or credit him with holding down the fort while my career scales stratospheric heights (which you would likely be expected to do without credit the other around…).

    And it is fine that when and if I meet someone who I want to argue over the dishwasher with, I will still be independent and self-assured and available for anyone who needs supporting while smashing the glass ceiling, this Tuesday week or next. You never know, you might even persuade him to hold the sledge hammer while you climb the ladder.

    I slightly struggle with the empathy demonstrated by some men who express support for women and make the arguments to their fellow fellows. So long has this been my cause celebre that I still struggle to hear such protestations as genuine and heartfelt. However, I am turning over a new leaf this week and am going to give these young whippersnappers the benefit of the doubt. And stop laying private bets that they still take their washing home to mummy.

    Must find that Vogue article and read it…

  • Second Sleep

    After reading Robert Harris’s – not up to his usual standard – book a year or two ago and then a BBC article on the sleeping habits of medieval Brits, I am obsessing about the concept of the Second Sleep.

    Primarily this is because I wake up at roughly 4am almost every night and fail to go back to sleep.
    If I was a medieval huswyf (just made that up) I would be doing some household task and getting ahead of the game. Rather than sitting on the sofa, trying to find something other than the shopping channel to watch while I have a cup of tea and play on my phone.

    I have decided to accept this nightly ritual and stop fretting that my eight hours has been interrupted yet again. I am embracing a BBC News travel programme on Mozambique and its renewal after decades of civil war, pictures of which littered the nightly news as a child.

    Oooo someone is about to be charged by a bull elephant. He’s 40+ years old and doesn’t like cars because it reminds him of the civil war and rampant poaching. A fascinating take on “elephantine memory’’.

    Now we are hearing about a programme to show school girls that there are other options out there other than early marriage and children born from children. A female park guide is busily recruiting the next generation of wildlife wardens at a school where the students joyfully engage with learning.

    What a hopeful piece of journalism. Reminding us that Africa is a huge continent which isn’t mired in conflict, foreign exploitation and famine, everywhere, all the time. In a lots of parts, maybe. But not everywhere and not forever.

    And it’s back to Stav and the weather. Plant some bulbs tomorrow methinks. Or today, as is.

  • Expensive Promises

    Are the purview of left wing politicians. Universal childcare and free buses are the new order of the day in New York following the victory of Mandan.

    These are not promises that will be easy to deliver and may indeed be impossible to deliver. The electorate may know this. Or they may be delusional in thinking the magic money tree can be shaken and gold will rain down. Rather than migrate to the Caymans where the gold can sit in a shiny pile earning even more money.

    But were they voting for the idea of greater fiscal equality and an end to the punishing expense of living in America’s gateway city? Was this a resounding chorus of “Enough, already!” as the president adorns his toilets with marble and solid gold sinks?

    I hope it is a signal. That you cannot promise the earth to the electorate and then deliver only unto yourself and your equally wealthy friends.

    Now a major coastal metropolis built by and occupied by immigrants is a different kettle of fish from small town rural America where immigrants parked their wagons 150+ years ago.There are still plenty of Trump fetishists who think chaos is running through the streets of Portland and Chicago and the antics of ICE are entirely justified.

    But it is an important signal. To the Democratic old guard who seriously need to consider whether they have too much baggage and too little speed and agility to give DT a run for his money.

    Baraka Obama sailed to the highest office of the land because he was a new, fresh face, with energy and ideas that moved the m country forward.

    The electorate may have been disappointed in the end as promises were either not fulfilled or only fulfilled in part, but they were still signalling a desire for change.

    And that is the end of this bout of pontificating. My parking is about to run out. Tatty-bye.

  • Change for the Good?

    This may be another post where I change my mind half way through…

    Former candidate for the second to top job, Bridget Phillipson can now focus her attention back on the job in hand and model the hard work and concentration she would like to see from students throughout the land by actually running the Department of Education.

    A focused Secretary of State for Education who stays in the job for more than five minutes is a novel concept these days. One could even say that numerous incumbents have been modelling the current trend for flight over fight in teaching whereby recruitment and retention has become a national crisis.

    But she is here to stay and the two things that I have so far picked up on from the curriculum review – which has already plummeted from the news agenda as another manhunt is launched for another couple of blokes mistakenly released because another prison guard didn’t pay attention in primary Maths – are quite good ideas.

    Item one is teaching students about mortgages. This is a thoroughly good idea. Primarily because it involves compound interest. Around 30 years ago, Best Beloved calculated 23 years of compound interest by hand. It took him most of a Tuesday afternoon*. I quote this at my students as an example of why knowing the compound interest formula is a useful thing. If I have not had coffee of a morning I may leave this useful anecdote aside and let them beetle away without said formula for 20 minutes or so…

    Item two of which I approve is teaching students critical awareness in relation to the Internet and social media. About time. Because we desperately need our young people to become sceptical consumers of online hogwash, rather than gullible fools who swallow tripe wholesale. In the Maths classroom we deal with this in a half hour or so, looking for bias in data collection strategies.

    If I were in charge I would make the separate Statistics GCSE the third compulsory paper in Maths and spend more time on interpretation and misrepresentation of data. Particularly for those doing Foundation where there isn’t enough content to warrant three 1.5 hour papers and but there is a need for more on statistics (and compound interest, loans, taxation, personal finance… but I digress).

    And if I need to make my point any more clearly (which I shouldn’t need to but will anyway), I am forever reminded of the early days of the Pandemic – before frightened teenagers were cut loose and sent home. Over and over and over again, I and other colleagues urged students to get their news from trusted outlets. Because doom mongers and conspiracy theorists are the quickest off the mark in a crisis.

    * In defence of BB, he likes a year on year calculation as it allows him to see the minutiae of our debt slowly shrinking as time creeps onward at its own petty pace, like a snail.

  • School Runs and Teenagers

    Goodness me, aren’t secondary school runs hell on earth?!

    And I thought primary ones were a nightmare with parents risking their lives of their moppets because the five or ten minutes it might take to park up and walk junior to the gate is time they do not want to waste. Add in the odd double parking punch up to spice it all up, and these chicanes of idiocy bring the nation to a griping, grumbling halt twice a day.

    But God save us from teenagers who add their own element of flabbergasting stupidity to the mix.
    Pootling home from my latest gig on Monday, my gob was well and truly smacked by the antics of the four wheel drive brigade as they took up residence on double yellow lines, bus stops, pavements.

    And then a teenager cheerfully walks across the flow of traffic, not to the pavement opposite but straight down the middle of the access road to the cul de sac. All the time grinning at my fellow gob smacked drivers as though inviting a round of applause. A cul de sac choc-a-bloc with pavement parkers revving their engines to speed off the moment their offspring sling their school bags into the boot.

    Of course it is easy for me to be virtuous now my children are grown and no longer participate in a plethora of extra curricular activities and my own SUV is used to transport me to my places of work and/or a variety of coffee shops in which I waste my pay on a daily basis.

    In my view I have earned it. The right to polish my halo, that is. If you were just five minutes late in any one day to my job of 10 years, you had no choice but to sit in your car on the lane up to school, watching parents fail to park up at all but jump out of their vehicles and flick their offspring out of the back seat, in front of cars crawling in the opposite direction, in the hope they might reach the pavement without being mushed to a pulp. I rest my case.

  • Taking It Back

    In part. He isn’t advocating for a return to the fifties. He is advocating for proper and effective restrictions on social media where the views of violent misogynists are so prevalent and powerful. In fact he also points to the link between social media and self harm among girls and boys. Good for him.

    My assumptions were based on the trailer which emphasised the ‘danger’ of disaffected young men. and the portentous tone it took. The result was that my mind closed and I reverted to embedded prejudice – born out lived experience – and deep, deep frustration. TBH I forced myself to stay in bed and listen to the interview rather than stomp downstairs to get some breakfast.

    I don’t take back the too prevalent recourse to violence by too many men illustrated by the rioters at Southport who responded to violence with violence (many of whom also neatly skirted round their own convictions for domestic violence while professing to ‘defend’ women and girls).

    Power is inextricably linked with violence. Hence Hollywood’s interpretation of equality for women as taking up the cudgel and kicking ass ‘like a man’ . Atomic Blonde with Charlize Theron was one of the most depressing illustrations of this I have seen.

    But the light at the end of the tunnel is our economic power. We are the sought after audience on the telly because we go out and spend. We appeal to advertisers and therefore the commercial world because we make purchasing choices every day.

    Hence the plethora of dramas and comedies created by and starring women. These might be ‘aimed at’ women but I would call on gentlemen out there to make like women have for millennia. Watch what’s on the box with and enjoy.

    So engage with ‘Riot Women’ and the like. These are the stories of the people with whom you share your lives. They are interesting, they tell you something, they are profound. Goodness me, you might even be entertained.

  • Depressed

    Almost in the same breath as trailing yet more analysis of the Andrew Windsor saga (though how one can find a breath to draw in the breathless coverage of the demise of HRH Sleaze in Chief is a mystery) an interview with the author of a book on the danger of unemployed and lonely young men was announced.

    Because, apparently, we need to have a good long think about the crisis in masculinity that is happening around the world. The deep rumble of an American man warns that there is nothing more dangerous than disaffected young men.

    That may well be the case. Violence is largely the recourse taken by disaffected young men and men in general. Not exclusively. But largely.

    My expectation is that this man will advocate a rowing back on recent progress. That women and girls will have to go back to the days of sexual harassment, rape, discrimination and inequality when we have no authority over our own bodies.

    My hope is that he will advocate instead for education, enlightenment and a major, international, culture shift. That consent is the norm, equality is the norm, choice is the norm. That young men will understand that they are not being required to relinquish their toys, they are merely being required to share them.

    We have been asking to share the toys for hundreds of years. Asking for respect, asking for equality, asking for personal safety for hundreds of years. Now we require it. Because we have power. We went back to work so we have pay packets. Therefore, we have economic power. And that is more powerful than the fist or the gun. Get used to, it gentlemen.