Minnie’s Musings

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

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  • 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.

  • Breaking News

    Interrupted Question Time. It was greeted with applause. And probably a sigh of relief.

    Perhaps this rather unpleasant individual who has done The Firm no credit whatsoever for decades will now go away.

    He might wander down to the local shop from his shed at the bottom of the garden, but he will inevitably feel as if he is imprisoned (in the lap of faded luxury, maybe) but so be it.

    He has been more than disingenuous. He has lied. To his employer (us), presumably some of his friends and his family. And he cannot claim that he hasn’t had a chance to defend himself. He tried and look what happened. His sidestep to avoid grubby exposure in a court of law has resulted in a far more protracted and painful process, namely trial by the court of public opinion.

    Immediate members of the family (late or otherwise) may well have chosen to do that thing which people choose to do when children and siblings are attacked, which is take protestations at face value and defend their own. How many of us have a knee jerk reaction to defend first, think later when our child, our brother, our sister is attacked? It starts in the playground and continues throughout life (with a marginal hiatus in teenage years).

    Therefore the statement from the King is quite some thing. He has made a very public decision to let the bus his brother threw himself under, reverse back over and deliver the fatal blow. One can only hope that his brother has too great a sense of his own victim hood and self-importance to top himself, as he clearly feels no shame.

    But most importantly the final note is for the victims. Because – whether or not he would have been branded a paedophile here (as Virginia Guiffre was 17 and therefore above the age of consent according to UK law) – Andrew Windsor was guilty of the kind of abuse of power that has been exercised for millennia by men, particularly towards young women and girls.

    Goodness me, it has taken a long time.

  • The Flick

    Je suis avez le hump. Bad Franglais, I know, but have the hump, I do (is that Yoda-speak?)

    A new bus driver (well new to me) actually flicked my phone (with which I was trying to pay my fare) out of the way yesterday. And he did it with one of those nasal sighs that my children emit when exasperated by my lack of technical expertise.

    Barely old enough to have a driving licence let alone one that permits you to drive a double decker bus, he was.

    And then he had the temerity to scold me for standing beyond the line when I was rushing to get off, thinking I had missed my stop.

    It’s a drizzly day, so I might let this fester for a while.

    Until my hair frizzes. And then I can grumble about that.

  • Suspicious Mind

    Now what’s-his-name has been caught and everyone and his mother has huffed and puffed with real and feigned outrage, the minister (oooops, sorry, Secretary of State no less) has fumed and two police forces have doubled the overtime bill for the weekend, it is time for some wanton speculation.

    My curiosity has been piqued… How can a prison officer – presumably someone who will have been party to a canteen discussion or two on which news worthy criminal is gracing the cells this week and who might possibly have followed a news bulletin or two (especially when the location is down the road) – fail to recognise a man whose image and name has been all over the place for weeks?

    Checking my knowledge of libel law by clearly flagging this as “opinion “ on an individual who hasn’t been named and therefore isn’t be publicly shamedI would be interested to know if Christmas presents have gone up a notch or two this year at chez prison officer.

    Switching hats from conspiracy theorist to sanctimonious scion of society, one might argue that this is what can happen when a wad of cash is waved under the nose of an over worked, under paid, under
    trained public servant trying to make a broken system work in the face of punishing cuts.

    Anyway, this farcical episode has been a welcome break from speculating over how long the Gaza ceasefire will actually last, Prince Andrew’s personal housing crisis and which head of state DT has insulted, shouted at or greased the palm of this week.

  • Giving One a Way In

    I am still beetling my way through my data analysis course (after a brief hiatus while I started two new jobs and attempted to turn over a new leaf of the exercise front – both works in progress, needless to say).

    I have now taken up my cudgel again and am working through the revision package for Exam No 1 and learn Python on a Jupyter notebook (grow up, learn to spell). Again, needless to say, my laptop ate my link to the revision program, hence leaping ahead to start in Python.

    My computer likes to eat anything that is remotely useful. Anyone would think it still holds a grudge for when I spilt a cup of tea over the keyboard. Maybe it was two. Or three.

    Anyway, it is clearly not familiar with the concept of forgiveness. Well that is its right. And it is my right to consider upgrading it to a newer, prettier model.

    Anyway, as a Maths teacher one of my standard practices when faced with a student who responds to the question, “What don’t you understand?” With a n unhelpful “”Everything” is to go step by step through a method until we get to the sticking point which is usually rapidly resolved with a single tweak to the explanation. Then the student can fly off to Mathematical Elysiium.

    This type of tiny hurdle comes up in learning new software or coding or whatever you want to do. If you don’t know how to get onto the platform, or understand what it does, or how to tell it to do something you want, all you need is some nice, time rich person to explain what to do and off you go.

    So, my youngest came to the rescue the other day when I was trying to get rid of a bright green screen in my online class. For which I am infinitely grateful.

    But it is so much better for the soul to pop and see a husband of friend who can walk you through it (grumbling about techie foibles and the current state of the nation) without flicking your hand off the mouse and snapping at you because you haven’t yet absorbed such obvious information as dual screen functions by osmosis.

    I now have a Python friendly IDE (no, don’t know what it means either) and a useful online idiot guide to support my ongoing learning. I am blessed to have friends with spouses who know things.

    One day I will be a spouse who knows things. In the meantime I shall content myself with being a spouse who folds the laundry properly.

  • ‘I Swear’, I wept

    I Swear is a blub fest par excellence. Bucketed through the family tensions, the isolation, the abuse, the lack of understanding, the redemption through a handful of people showing both compassion and a capacity to look beyond the surface.

    At one point (probably when a family meal is disrupted by an explosion of tics) my hand slid into that of Best Beloved and stayed there for the duration. I suppose it is because there are some experiences which are universal to families of the severely neurodivergent .

    I have a strong memory of the original documentary on Tourette Syndrome and discussing the condition with my parents. Therefore when walking down Finchley High Road with a friend almost 30 years ago, and a lady with Tourette’s shouting “Dirty English slut” at my friend (who being Scottish shouted “I’m not English” right back), I recognised the condition.

    I have an even stronger memory of we mums of His Nibs classmates congratulating one of our number when her son made it all the way through the Christmas show without telling the audience to f-off.

    Anyway , we were with our youngest whose passage through life was profoundly affected by the antics of her brother. Her observation was “I didn’t even hate the mother. I’ve been there. I get it.”

    And with that, almost without pause, we morphed from wiping tears and thoughtful quiet into laughing about compulsions, such as meticulously wiping rainwater off railings and bollards, wherever we go. Not quite the same as kissing lamp posts, but hey.

    So, take a packet of Kleenex with you, and enjoy. Its worthiness towards the end is actually a paean to the power of education to engender understanding. And make life just that little bit easier for people and families whose lives are on a different path.

  • On a Scale of One To Ten

    Watching The House of Dynamite tanks at roughly negative two as something to watch to settle one’s equilibrium after a long half term. A vivid account of the US response to an imminent threat, it is heart in mouth stuff very well done.

    As our world tips ever more on a precipitous axis, I have long had a plan that Best Beloved should go for the girls and I would race to Oxford to get to our son.

    A friend – failing in their attempt not to scoff – pointed out that there would be no time to do either.
    “I’d rather die trying” muttered I in manner of John Wayne pretending he was at the Alamo (rather than a dusty backlot in Burbank).

    Of course one needs to share said plan with Best Beloved, and then refrain from arguing about whether to take M40 or zip along the back roads. Or whether a the train or car is best for a rendezvous with the girls somewhere between central London and our front door.

    And let’s not even go near what we do about the cat (likely as I am to observe “She’ll live. She’s got nine live.” Which will invariably precipitate a piercing glare full of accusation that I am inhuman etc etc.

    I shall go forth and plant some daffodil bulbs to make myself feel better. That will put off the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation and give me something to look forward to.