Never mind Laws - I've got Osborne in my bedroom...

I was reviewing the newspapers on BBC Radio Ulster’s (sic) ‘Sunday Sequence’  yesterday and the resignation of David Laws came up. Did I feel sympathy for him, William Crawley wanted to know.  ‘Not one bit’  was my response. The man has a double first in economics from Cambridge,  he’s a former vice-president and Managing Director at  JP Morgan,  and Head of US Dollar and Sterling Treasuries at Barclays de Zoete Wedd. You think he’s going to be short of a bob? Or that he’ll not continue to be a big Liberal Democrat wheel, just as Peter Mandelson continued to be a big Labour wheel after each of his several disgraces?  I think not.

But I woke up this morning and realized David Laws isn’t the problem, it’s George Osborne. Laws is just a distant figure but I have Osborne in my bedroom. All over it. Or at least all over the walls, in the form of Osborne and Little wallpaper. Creepy. More galling is the fact that by buying that wallpaper, I’ve put money into the pocket of a vastly rich twerp who’s married  to the daughter of Lord Howell of Guildford and is getting ready to hammer the life out of public service provision and hard-working wage-earners in Britain. 

All of which should drive any right-thinking person on the neighbouring island towards Labour.  Until, that is, they hear the news that the champion of the common man, the working-class bruiser who gave credibility to Tony Blair’s Oxbridge cabinet,  the man who responds to an egg on the chest with a punch in the face,  has just been offered and greedily accepted a place in the House of Lords. It’s true what they say – you couldn’t make it  up. 

Just a little prick

Is it me?  A few weeks ago I visited my dentist. Normally I'm on time or early but on this occasion I came panting to the reception desk four minutes late. Stood there waiting for the receptionist to return. And stood. And waited. Some three minutes later the Unsmiling One arrived and spoke. “Mr Collins, you’re late for your appointment.  X [my dentist]  has started working with the next patient.You’ve missed your appointment You were supposed to be here at 3.40. ”  I try not to grind what teeth I’ve left and ask “What time is it now?”  “It’s  after ten to four”.  I look at my watch: it says 3.47.  I tell her this and and add that I was waiting about three minutes for her. Then, daringly, I add “The last time I had an appointment here I was kept waiting over twenty minutes. Shouldn't it cut both ways?”.  The Unsmiling One gives me a look and tells me she’ll speak to X. “Take a seat”.

 Much whispered conferring between UO and X. They peer round a door at me, whisper some more. Eventually X emerges, white coat, green mask, professional. “That’s all right – I’ll take you but you’ll have to wait a while – I’m with another patient”. “That’s good” I tell him. And then I make my second mistake. I add “But I think you should know that I wasn’t ten minutes late, I was four.  And I was waiting at the desk for another three”.  X looks at me, face now red and sort of annoyed-looking. ‘Yes, but you WERE late!’ And he strides away and half-bangs a door behind him. 

Twenty minutes later I’m in the chair getting  a filling,  which he precedes by giving  me THE most painful injection I’ve had in years. Coincidence? Or could he possibly have made it really hurt? Maybe not, although we'll never know. It certainly was a humdinger of an injection, leaving me groaning and panting in the chair.

There are two lessons here, I think.  Dentists (and doctors) can make you the patient wait  as long as they want, and do so on a regular basis.  You the patient on the other hand must NEVER keep the dentist/doctor waiting. If you do you’ll be sorry. I know I was. 

Cushy number

Few topics generate more heat and expose more ignorance than education. A couple of years ago I was on a radio panel with the everything-pundit Newton Emerson, who announced that talk of difficulties or even crisis within our schools was nonsense,  our school system was very good and was operating perfectly well.  I asked him if he’d had much experience of schools in the last year, and he told me that yes indeed, he’d been back into his old school  a couple of months ago. For how long? For an afternoon, and he saw nothing but classes functioning perfectly well.  I tried to persuade him that his old headmaster, who’d supervised his tour, was unlikely to show him the knuckle-draggers class, but Newt wouldn’t hear of it: he’d been in a school, he knew the score.  Crisis, what crisis?

And now today we have a shock-horror report about how many sick days teachers here in the six counties  take (ten per year, on average) and about the number of substitute teachers that are employed. Again I’m tempted to ask of those bleating about reducing the number of sick days: have you been in classrooms recently? Have you any idea what teachers have to endure from some of their pupils?  I have and it's not pretty.  Not to mention the mountain of course work and general bureaucracy they must struggle beneath. The wonder is that there’s so little sickness among teachers. As for substitute teachers: when a teacher is away for whatever reason – illness,  in-service training,  field trip -  his or her classes have still to be taught. To teach them you need teachers. These teachers are called substitutes.  Now it might be more desirable that pupils are taught by their own teacher or it might not. It all depends on the quality of the original teacher and the sub. But taught they must be, and whoever teaches them is entitled to be paid. And if retired teachers are drafted in to do that job rather than young unemployed teachers, that’s because subbing is, even by teaching standards, a helluva hard job, and those who do it earn every penny they get.  If you don’t believe me, try it sometime. You’ll emerge weeping and clutching my garments, saying ‘What a fool I was, Jude! You were right all the time – it’s hell in there!’

And that’s the crux of it. Those who haven’t taught can’t begin to imagine what it requires in terms of energy, judgement, knowledge, courage, compassion, firmness…The list is endless. If you find yourself whining about teachers, pause long enough to ask yourself ‘Would I do their job?’  An honest answer will end your whining and provoke feelings of deepest gratitude to those who, day after day, discharge the most valuable yet undervalued job in our society:  the education of our young.

Two into one...Forget it.

They say those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Having taken a hard look at the history of the SDLP,  Maggie Ritchie is determined not to repeat it.  John Hume may have put the interests of peace before party health but Maggie's going to do nothing of the sort.  Declan O'Loan had hardly uttered his words yesterday about the desirability of a single nationalist party when instruction came  from the top telling him not just to shut up but to eat his words.  Dutifully Declan did so: what he'd said about a single nationalist party wasn't party policy and he accepted that.  O'Loan should have known better in the first place.  His party  wasn't prepared to offer even the most basic of co-operation in Fermanagh/South Tyrone recently, so why would they want to merge with/be swallowed up by Sinn Féin?

That's OK, though, and kind of symmetrical as well, because Sinn Féin don't fancy a merger either. John O'Dowd was on the radio this morning and said so twice.  He even managed to get  a dig in at the disarray in which the SDLP is caught. What his party wants, O'Dowd  made clear,  is not merger but the most basic co-operation in places like Fermanagh/South Tyrone and Belfast South. 

What neither party explained was WHY they didn't like the idea of a merger.  Maggie Ritchie, a month or so back, made mumblings about nationalist co-operation amounting to 'sectarian politics' - 'And we're not prepared to go down that road'.  John O'Dowd dismissed the 'sectarian politics' tag as well but also made it clear that his party wasn't for merging with anybody - it just wanted to talk about co-operation and planning for the future.  

The one thing neither the SDLP nor Sinn Féin has done is give us a single convincing reason why they should not have a merger.  But the answer is obvious, and not very pretty.  Both parties have a system in place, with jobs and power at stake in the event of a merger.  Just as none of the parties in the south is keen on Irish unity, because it would mean the upset their carefully-constructed political systems. 

Ireland unfree will never be at peace?  Sounds like some parties, confronted with even the prospect of Irish unity and freedom,   go weak in the lower limbs. Party first, nationalist vote maximisation a distant second. Until they can explain why they're agin a single nationalist party in the north, we have to conclude our politicians' pursuit of Irish reunification is really just a pretend-race. 

Flouncing out of your faith

I never thought I’d say it but even in a subject like clerical child abuse there’s laughter to be found.  Thanks to a website called  Countmeout,  Catholics who want to leave their Church because 5% of its priests have been guilty of child abuse can now do so officially…   What’s that – you didn’t think you needed to go to a website,  you could just stop?  Well yes, but that’s so …undramatic.  Sign up at the Countmedownandout site and you’ll get to exit with a flourish.  Don’t worry if you  left the Catholic Church years ago – as far as I can figure, that makes no difference. You just go back and do a retake.  If you don’t, the Catholic Church will go on counting you as a member.   ‘Haven’t seen Mickey  Doherty for, ooh, twenty-three years now but  here,  he’s still one of our congregation, don’t I send him collection envelopes every month?’ Another reason for signing up with the Itsaknockout site is, they say, if you believe in the separation of Church and State in Ireland.  You thought you could believe in the separation of Church and State and still remain a Catholic?  Well silly you.  According to  CountthebeadsImeanclicks , you've been labouring under a serious misapprehension.  But the best bit is that the site lets you formally renounce your Catholic faith and still check in for the key bits!  If you were baptized a Catholic – and you’d have to be if you were going to renounce your faith, wouldn’t you? –  that doesn’t change -  indelible mark on the soul and all that.  Marriage? No problem  either -  renouncers can get married in the Catholic Church as well.  Best of all,  they can  get buried alongside people who, unlike them,  went on being Catholics throughout their dull,  undramatic  and un-site-signing-up lives.  Or even those dreary people who left the Church and didn't announce their actions online.  All gain and no pain, then, eh?  For God's sake, get  thee to an I-am-no-longer-a-Catholic site quickly, before you get knocked down by a lorry or something. 

Ooops...

Two things have cheered my weekend so far. One was the glorious weather: once I feel the sun on my back, I begin to get positively disposed towards life, fellow-humans, animals,  and nearly every life form providing it doesn’t fly  up my nose or get stuck in my eye. The second was the item topping the news on several channels: that sting video of HRH Fergie  swallowing wine at a sharpish rate while assuring the unseen conversation partner that half a million would be a reasonable price for the sale of her ex-hubby – OK,  not actually selling HIM, but selling access TO him. Cue lots of shocked people, several from the News of the World who organized the sting, saying she had let down her husband, the monarchy and sales of NotW… Well no, not that last one, but the others for sure.  The most side-splitting was that the sale would maybe damage HRH  Andy’s role as a UK ambassador for, well for sort of you know selling UKplc and that sort of thing. Not to be confused with being funded for poncing all over the world visiting interesting places and having people who should know better fawn on him.

They say the British people like having the monarchy because it provides them with a real-life soap opera. The line between soap and farce  is getting thinner every day, I’m happy to say.  

Cracking an Orange nut

I’ve expressed my admiration on a number of occasions for John O’Dowd. He’s a big, unflappable, highly-capable Sinn Féin politician and some day may be among the line-up as successor to Gerry Adams. However, last night he was on television and he was made to look clumsy and ineffective.

In part that’s because he was up against Eamonn McCann, an old classmate of mine and the possessor of a very sharp mind and an eloquent tongue.  In part it’s also because the subject under discussion was a  draft bill  (see blog a few days ago) which in its present form would forbid fifty or more people gathering to protest in a public place without giving thirty-seven working days’ notice.

O’Dowd tried to defend the bill on three fronts. One, he said it was aimed at coping with unwanted Orange marches in nationalist areas. Two, he said the idea of thirty-seven days’ notice came from the resident groups affected by the marches. And three, he said it was only a draft bill, subject to revision after consultation.

Sorry, John – it doesn’t stand up. Because you have a problem – and God knows the intrusion of Orange marchers into nationalist areas is a septic problem – doesn’t mean that you can use whatever instrument you like to remedy it. A small nuclear weapon would probably work to  remove an intruder from my house, but that doesn’t mean it would make sense. And the fact that the residents suggested thirty-seven days’ notice doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,  any more than demands by victims of sexual abuse that Sean Brady step down make sense because they come from victims.  As for this being only a draft bill: why draft it that way in the first place?

This does seem to be a classic case of using a sledge-hammer to crack a walnut. With the number of cuts and closures coming down the pipeline in the months and years ahead, those affected have the right to respond in as fair and flexible a way as possible. Sinn Féin should go back, not so much to the drawing-board as its conscience on this one.