Is It Just Me: Who Thinks Its The PLP That Need to Get a Grip, and NOT Corbyn?

Is it sufficiently safe to come out now?

Good.

Fucking hell people, I thought England was a screwy place to be born in but my god. We have this thing called DEMOCRACY. We have argued with countries and had wars with others where democracy doesn’t exist. We have it but some people want to revoke it as a vote they thought they’d win didn’t go their way?

Hell.

No.

Anyway, that’s all I’ll say further on the matter of second, third and infinity referendums apart from to clear up:

I do not support Trump being the next President. I think he is a dangerous warmongering twat BUT being that the American people have voted in ex-movie stars of negligible ability, there is every possibility that he will win. And no matter who wins, when we are a tiny island with no great shakes in the armed up to the balls stakes compared to America, it’s nice that we can enjoy a special relationship with them and hide when the inevitable war occurs.

I have never, ever voted UKIP. Nor would I want to.

So, moving on. The party I do vote for.

Seriously, what the actual is going on there?

I’m no political expert, more a pundit, but it seems to me the Parliamentary Labour Party are killing the whole team from the inside.

The fact is, if Brexit can teach us anything, and it really should teach our elected members a big few home truths, is that for too long, the needs of the few have outweighed the rest of us.

I have long cried that we’re seen as plebs and here for the jobs the Toffs don’t want.

Well, the Plebs seriously gave a clear voice and vote on just how much they’ve had it up to here with Toff Politician one after the other running the country.

For too long, we’ve had a powerful version of an Eton Old Boys Club in office, and they have no concept of what the majority in the country, many of whom now have tough choices to make as they see their outgoings exceeding their income, want.

Since the Austerity measures came into place, whereby we were told everyone had to make sacrifices, it isn’t the minority who have suffered.

Food banks have been taking the strain, people have to choose between heating and food, kids are going to school hungry and yet many are working longer hours just to pay rent.

If the PLP had any kind of sense, they could have capitalised on this result and frankly taken power off the Tories for years to come.

Yes, Corbyn may be a bit of a scruff. He may not have posh connections.

Good!

Look at Blair, and then Cameron.

Both charismatic men. Both fond of rousing speeches that go nowhere.

Both epic utter prats and posh one’s who are self serving and only interested in their old school ties.

I am personally sick of the Elections race being run like a gameshow, almost like X Factor. That’s reality TV, not politics that makes a massive change to the country and affects people’s lives.

Blair is responsible for the shit we’re in without a doubt. He led us into a war which we could not win, in a country we have made worse, causing deaths of our armed forces, and the deaths of civilians. What is he doing now? Earning millions in speech giving.

Cameron had no concept of the way the vote would go on Brexit, he was completely out of touch with the electorate, and I’m personally glad he is going soon.

Corbyn is grass roots. He is liked by students as he has quite rightly stood up for them in regards the unfair fees they have to pay.

He is liked by single parents who he said in his maiden leadership speech get a raw deal in terms of work and raising their child/ren.

He is liked by the old school Union side of Labour, always previously a big deal when it came to the party as a whole but who had been sidelined in favour of “Tory in a Red tie” politics of the Blairite years.

You only have to look online at the petitions, the tweets, the blog posts to know that Corbyn is well liked.

He won the biggest ever majority in a Leadership battle, and has continued to add new members to the party.

Under him, we now have a Labour London Mayor. We have new seats in previously held Tory strong points after the Local elections.

His problem? The PLP didn’t want him, they wanted Burnham, to continue the smarmy version of Labour we have all come to grow tired of. It may have worked in 96, at the height of the London love in of Britpop and Euro 96. But it has grown as old and weathered as Gazza.

All “Blairs children” such as myself have seen after he left power has been misery and despair, in this country and others. We have become worse off and far more disillusioned than our parent’s ever were under Maggie. He made this country worse than it’s ever been.

Margaret Hodge, who was the most vocal of the two who first lodged a no confidence notice against Jeremy argues daily that they don’t like that he wasn’t very vocal on the Remain side. He didn’t contact Alan Johnson who led the Labour campaign to stay.

Erm, Margaret, love, I don’t recall seeing YOU being very vocal either.

If Alan Johnson was happy to campaign, then that’s up to him, who told him to in the first place?

If Corbyn did indeed vote Leave, then that should be shouted from the rooftops! So did 52% of the country!

At a time when our elected leading government has been proven to be so out of touch, Labour could, and should, have capitalised on this fact. Who wants a team making decisions that only 48% agree with?

Especially when you consider that people are so up in arms about the fact the Conservatives are stalling on Article 50 until the Autumn, we have a possibility of the worst possible Tories getting in without being voted as PM (Johnson, Gove, May I’m looking at you bunch), the only no confidence vote that should have been lodged in Westminster should have come from the Labour party in respect of the government, triggering an election that I am almost certain the Tories would have been humiliated in.

Instead, the PLP are arguing amongst themselves, with their “corridor coup”. This has nothing to do with Brexit, but everything to do with the PLP not getting their own way last year.

I am glad that Jeremy finally sacked Hilary Benn. A warmonger on a par with Blair, his own father would have been shamed by his stance on Europe, and on Syrian airstrikes. If the Blairite masses want to leave then great.

Look at their media heavy behavior (led, many believe, by Chief Blair spin Doctor Alastair Campbell from inside his PR team), they are on BBC News and others every day, they cannot wait to slag their leader off. That in itself is shocking, and any internal wranglings should have been kept within the party.

The prospective new Leader they want is unheard of, and if we do have an election imminently, it doesn’t give her time to make her mark, leading the way for the far more heard of Tory prospects to romp home in a “better the devil you know” scenario that we UK voters are known for.

It makes no sense to put someone up, in either party, who was vocally in support of the Remain campaign. Again, they lost, so who wants another out of touch with the majority person in power?

To win the next election- whenever it happens- all parties need to get the media on side, the electorate on side, and their party on side. They need to be vocal on what way they feel is next for us and the EU, quash this ridiculous second referendum, and fight, tooth and nail, for our rights as we leave.

All anyone knows regards Labour is that the Parliamentary lot all hate each other, all hate Corbyn, and have no concept of the fact that he is the most popular leader they’ve ever had- more so than even Blair, who seems to have been granted a Sainthood by them.

Meanwhile, the Tories are being rather polite, and any anger within is kept more or less where it should be- internally and out of the press.

Corbyn, in all of this, has acted as cool as a cucumber, whilst his party disintegrates around him. That makes me respect him even more.

He could get out there and slag the leavers to death. He hasn’t. He has merely gone about his normal routine of meeting supporters and has said, again quite rightly, that if we had of gone to the EU with a strong purpose and told them we were unhappy and changes needed to be made, maybe we wouldn’t have voted leave.

The scary part is, and something I think many have not yet realised is that if the party which would have been most likely to get voted for by the disillusioned majority are too busy fighting internally with each other, and we have the real prospect of NHS hating Gove, useless on Immigration May, and Boris- how is he not a fake comedy Politician- Johnson in the PM seat, who is the alternative?

With an increase in racist incidents bringing shame to the country, the only party who is not arguing publicly, who has had a leader go and give as good as he got to the EU Parliament on Monday, and is smug in the knowledge they have long been in step with the electorate is UKIP and Farage.

So, for the good of us all PLP, shut up, leave Corbyn alone, and let him fight for every single seat he can get.

Even if that means admitting he voted Leave.

 

 

Dear (Some of the) Remain Camp: Shut the F Up

I voted Leave.

This does not mean I, or anyone else who voted this way is necessarily:

• Racist
• Anti-British/Scottish/Welsh/Irish
• A UKIP voter
• A massive fan of Boris
• Uneducated/Under-informed

I don’t doubt, that some people, who voted yesterday to leave the EU, did so without the full facts. I don’t doubt that some people voted leave because they are under the impression that we won’t be able to be attacked by Terrorists. I also don’t doubt that some voted leave purely to get rid, once and for all, of David Cameron.

However, I also have not one doubt in my mind that the same can be true for some people who voted Remain too.

Yes, we don’t know what may happen next.

That was true no matter what way we voted.

To see now that there could be other European member countries taking their lead from us and demanding their own referendums says a lot for the klout that Europe now possesses. It is a joke, an autocratic system run purely for the profiteering and perks of those unelected, almost self appointed “MEPs”.

But you knew I thought that anyway!

As my inspirational mate and fellow Blogger Alice puts it so well (no really, go read her post here), the usual bullshit wars have started the minute the first vote was counted.

But why?

Yes, Leave won.

That, my friends, is called Democracy.

We all had the same right to register, go to our local polling booth, make an X in the box we believed in, and change history. We all had ample opportunity to read, research and ask questions from either side. There were plenty of debates on TV.

We all made our minds up, we all had that choice and that is what makes us bloody great in my view. What’s the alternative?

From many weeks ago onwards, throughout the In/Out debate, the Remain side has almost been smug in the assurance that their side would win. Not everyone on the Remain side I hasten to add, but quite a few.

Some had even started to refer to Leave voters as almost on a par with Hitler, Terrorists and jackbooted racists, just for daring to suggest they felt the EU was no longer working in our favour.

It’s little wonder then with this smug sense of self assurance that the end result has hit some hard.

However, it’s the will of over 51% of the UK who voted, so why the need to be so bloody nasty?

How is this going to help anyone? If you are so sure we have made such a massive mistake, surely the best thing to do is to unite and work together?

Surely, with everything being so uncertain, with the Pound briefly falling, and companies like Morgan Stanley realising they can no longer scam us and thus pulling their workers out of London, the last thing we should do is fight amongst ourselves?

Show some bloody respect!

Some of the behavior on Twitter I have likened to the Hunger Games or Game of Thrones. I have been unfollowed by at least 30 bloggers. And for what reason?

I exercised my democratic right as a UK citizen and put a different cross in a box to them.

I did not grow an extra head and turn racist overnight.

In fact, immigration was the least important reason why I voted Leave. The financial reasons were of far higher importance to me.

The way some Remainers are talking, you’d think I had personally seen to it that their children’s children would be flogged in the future by Farage Clones in the Badlands formerly known as London, in ragged clothing.

Almost on a par with a storyline from Planet of the Apes.

I was told I was once again disrespectful to the memory of Jo Cox (with no more understanding that actually, if we needed a reason to think out was best it was the death of a woman who should have had full Police protection caused by a man who begged for psychiatric help and got nothing the day before). I was told I had let my kids down. I was called every type of UKIP voting, anti immigrant bullshit you can shake your stick at.

I will mention the people who voted differently to me who had a very classy way of dealing with the outcome, but for every single one of those intelligent people there were many more acting like utter idiots, being rude and making a sorry show of their fellow voters.

These two were pretty ecstatic about Brexit and Cameron going too.

We had every right to celebrate. I honestly thought that we would lose. I literally couldn’t sleep last night and still haven’t, as I watched the results slowly come in.

I am happy as larry that Cameron fell on his sword, in fact it’s probably the classiest act he’s performed in 6 years of governance. He backed the wrong side, and he clearly did not know what the will was of a large amount of the country and that made a mockery of him as Leader.

Who and what is next?

Who knows.

The Pound has already started to regain momentum, despite the doom laden anger of this morning.

Other countries are already suggesting they are happy to trade with us.

Like it or not, Trump is very likely to be the next President of the USA and he’s happy for us all to have left and taken our country back, and whether we’d been in or out it’s always better to keep America onside.

We will survive this and we will be better for it.

For now, the best thing to do is stick together, stop acting like utter twats and weather whatever comes next, united, and with confidence that we can succeed and we will be as Great as we once were.

Europe is about to implode and I for one am happy we have got out early.

#OneLove.

 

 

Just Going to Leave This Here (and Duck From the Twitter Abuse)

*I do not own the rights to this tune, but think it’s quite fitting for today. Thank you to The Specials for making such a great song *

Taking Back Control: Why I’m Voting to Leave the EU

Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the last few months, you couldn’t have failed to notice Brexit, in, out and in-between being everywhere.

I have read up on it. I have watched all the videos, both official or otherwise. I have watched the debates and seen all the leaflets.

After all that, I can wholeheartedly say I am voting Leave first thing tomorrow.

Considering the people I find myself agreeing with, from Boris to Gove, who personally I cannot stand- they’re Tories for a start, it has not been easy for me to support the Leave side.

However, my reasoning for voting Leave is this:

We are a tiny island.

Yes, we are responsible for the current refugee crisis. Despite my Labour beliefs, I wholeheartedly believe that Tony Blair should be tried for War Crimes, as we all know that he and Bush lied through their smarmy teeth about Weapons of Mass Destruction. They made the situation in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries worse.

The problem is, if we had a country the size of America, we could be more open to allow free movement and those who need help.

However, we’re not that big. The population has grown.

We cannot chose to help those who genuinely need it, when we allow European Free Movement.

I don’t believe we benefit from this Free Movement clause. I think the Eurozone is in massive crisis, and thus, if I happened to be in any of those countries that were struggling, and knew I could go over to the UK, with free healthcare, free school places, free everything, I would be on that plane in seconds.You’d be mad not to.

I also don’t believe that we have a sufficiently safe way to vet who is coming here. With Germany opening their borders without our say so, we have no idea who is claiming to be European when they are not European at all- the people responsible for the Paris attacks had European passports, but they were not from Europe at all.

It’s a hard thing for those of us who wish to Leave to admit- we have been called racist, we have been accused of being bigots, and even had some say we are partly responsible for the death of Jo Cox- but we have to protect our borders in the current climate.

I also feel that being governed by people we haven’t voted in- most of whom were rejected when they did come forward for election in our country and others- makes a mockery of us having a democratically elected parliament of our own.

I may think differently if these people were voted in. But that’s not the case and never has been.

What right have these election failures got to tell people who are voted for that what they wish to implement is incorrect? How do we know half of it is not sour grapes? There are 10,000 Bureaucrats who earn more than our own elected Prime Minister who we’ve never even heard of and never voted in.

I am not happy that whilst our NHS fails, whilst schools are underfunded, whilst our core industries have died and whilst unemployment and homelessness sores, we are legitimately expected to fork out around £350 million a week to Europe.

Then, when a country’s economy fails, through no fault of us in the UK, we are expected to fork out even more. Where are Europe when we need help?

I am sick of hearing that parent’s cannot get their child into the school a few streets away due to there being more children than school places. We had to fight tooth and nail for Littlest’s place. Some people are forced to take their children to different schools often miles apart. How can we expect parents to gain employment, and not clog up roads in the morning, when we are expected to go to schools nowhere near our homes? It never happened in my school days and it shouldn’t happen now.

The promises and doom and gloom laden rhetoric of the Remain camp is shocking. Just last night, after the BBC debate, the Remain camps “facts” were torn apart. We cannot trust a group of people who use the death of a Mother for publicity for their cause.

We have no respect in Europe. We are not listened to. David Cameron can promise he is going to demand change, but he hasn’t managed to bring this about in the previous 6 years of his rule, so why would he be able to afterwards?

To vote Remain lets Europe really slaughter us, we will have no hope ever of getting our voices heard.

Let’s remember, we joined the EU thinking that Free Trade was coming to an end and financially we would suffer.

That never happened. Plenty of countries outside the Eurozone trade with Europe. They get the benefits of this trade without the added hangover of no say on movement, possible dangers of Immigration allowing terrorists to gain free access to an EU passport, financial ruin from shoring up other countries- the list goes on. Why would be any different?

We buy more from European members than they buy from us. Germany for starters would suffer a massive hit to it’s already struggling economy if it refused to trade with us, as would France. It would be economic suicide.

We could then trade with America, China, India, Japan, the list goes on and these countries have had the biggest trade growth compared to the economic stagnation in the last ten years of the Eurozone. Why is that not attractive?

Why should our fisherman not be allowed to fish in our waters? We have to gain permission from Brussels to fish in our own seas, and as a result, 100,000 fishermen have lost their livelihoods as a result of the European enforced fishing quotas.

If we no longer have to pay to a zone we have no benefit from, our NHS can be the pride of the country like it once was. No child will have to leave school without the ability to read and write. Our students can go to University and not pay.

Why should someone like my niece have to pay thousands of pounds for her studies and accommodation, when once she is a qualified Doctor she will be a benefit, an asset to this country?

Why should we have to continuously beg for healthcare for Littlest? At nearly 8 years old we still have no firm diagnosis , no action plan, no adequate medications, for him.

Why should anyone who is disabled have to be told the country can no longer pay for them, help them, and treat them like scum? Just under 10,000 disabled people have died after being taken off PIP, either through dying due to the stress or being forced into work that they could not do.

Osbourne doesn’t want us to leave, because then all his lies, all his screw ups over the budget, there will no longer be any excuse to penalise the poorest, the sick and the vulnerable in this country.

The Remain campaign keeps suggesting we who wish to leave are anti multiculturalism. We don’t care for workers rights. Why would voting out remove workers rights unless Cameron uses the vote to revoke these rights afterwards? We were Multicultural before we joined Europe, and we still will be afterwards too. We opened our borders to people in the 50s, and they helped rebuild our country at it’s lowest ebb after the war. They still live here happily to this day, and long may that continue.

We cannot trust Cameron to be truthful or act in our best interests, just a day ago we find that he lied that he would put a cap on Free movement when he knew full well this was not possible under the terms of our membership. Saying that we feel we are full and our country is suffering as a result does not make you racist. It makes you aware.

Our country needs to take back control, it’s that simple.

All the while we have to bow down to the wishes of unelected people who don’t have any respect for us apart from as a never ending cash machine at the detriment of our own economy, we have will have a country that is on it’s knees, financially, socially, and in every other way you can think of.

I hope we wake up on Friday to a new dawn. To a better Britain. To freedom from the EU.

Is It Just Me: Thinking the DM Should Focus on the Real Issue of Lily’s Stalking

I’ll fess up- I like Lily Allen. I have liked her since her first album as she was quirky and a bit of an antidote to the usual high heel and boobs out style of females acts of that time.

However, I feel that no matter whether you like or loathe her, you’d agree the recent news that Lily had been stalked for seven years without much help from the Police was shocking and you felt sympathy for her.

It has all been a bit quiet since the guy responsible has been indefinitely sectioned, and no doubt Lily could sigh a big relief fuelled sigh and get on with her life.

Except, despite it all dying down, and people moving on, and hopefully the lacklustre response of the Police shaming them into not being so ignorant again, the Daily Mail has run an article today bringing it all up again.

Why?

Well, it seems the same misogyny I have called them out on previously is at play again.

The headline screams this:

Now, notice, if you will, as I did, the big point they are making here. It’s not the stalking for seven years despite begging for the Police to do something. It’s not in big capitals about the stalker getting not just into her flat but into her sodding bedroom.

Nope.

The point the DM feels is most important to its readers (and those like me who like to shake me head in scorn at some of their comment leaving weirdos) is that she happened to be in bed with her boyfriend at the time, whilst married.

Why the bloody shock, the horror, the utter strumpet! She deserves everything she gets!

*Said no one (other than twattish DM readers) ever.

Why is it necessary to bring this up if it hadn’t already made any difference to the court? The judge quite rightly threw shade at the Police and the Stalker, not Lily and her boyfriend/bed guest. The judge didn’t throw the whole case out down to Lily not being in bed at the time in her jamas alone or with her (as we all know and have done for ages) estranged husband, did he?

My first thought on hearing that Lily had Danny London with her was thank god for that. Imagine if she hadn’t?

This stalker was an angry guy who had frequently turned up pissed off with Lily, accusing her of stealing a song from him, taking millions of pounds from him, and, even more screwed up, killing his father! This was not a guy who wanted to innocently fan boy her and snuggle up with her for a hug, he was bloody murderous at her and would not leave the poor woman alone.

If she had of been alone, with only her two very young daughter’s Nanny in the house with her, it does not bear thinking about the tragic outcome of this guy breaking in.

What is bloody wrong with the DM?

They should be agreeing with Lily that the Police fecked up big style. It just makes me cross that the fact she happened to be in bed with someone other than her husband was of far greater significance to the DM than anything else, especially in light of Jo Cox’s murder this week by a mentally unhinged male.

All the while newspapers like the DM are printing headlines like this, almost in justification of the Police ignoring stalking, women are going to be raped, attacked and driven round the bend by mentally unwell people making their lives miserable by following them.

It’s almost archaic and frankly beggars belief to dwell on the love life of a woman other than that someone could have killed her, her daughters and their nanny.

Personally, I hope Lily sues, and that the DM apologises and pulls the article pronto.

Hate Breeds Hate: Why Jo Cox’s Murder Says More About Budget Cuts Than EU In or Out

Yesterday, for us English folk, should have been a day of happiness and of celebration. In my house, we geared up for the football, put out flags, and I readied myself for some typical Twitter banter.

It was during this banter that I noticed a breaking news story on my timeline. An MP had been attacked (as it was reported at that point) in Leeds. Her name was Jo Cox, a prominent Labour party member.

As further news came through, it changed from attacked to shot and stabbed. I was horrified.

My first thought was not to go find out what side she was on in the EU debate. It was not to see whether she was part of anything to do with rights for Immigrants, or her standpoint on ISIS.

It was just of pure shock and horror that a woman could be leaving a library, such a mundane and typical thing to be doing on a Thursday daytime, and be shot by a fellow human.

This doesn’t happen here. We don’t have politicians attacked with anything more offensive than an egg usually.

I did not ask what race or sex her attacker was, I just asked why this had happened, as most people online did.

Straight away though, the usual bandwagon jumping, rhetoric spouting media and politicians had to make it about politics, about Brexit.

This was about a man, a loner, with long term mental health issues, clearly having a psychotic episode and killing a woman. Simple as that.

We had early online headlines of him shouting “Britain First”, reported by an “eyewitness”.

This, although papers who falsely trumpeted this as fact are now strangely quiet about, was not said at all. The “eyewitness” Aamir Tahir, later said in the London Evening Standard that he had not heard the attacker say those words, at all. He wasn’t even at the scene, but stuck in traffic. His colleague had told him that “Britain First” was shouted as she had heard a rumor it had been said. An actual eyewitness- Hicham Ben Abdallah- was later filmed categorically denying this was shouted.

Online Remain supporters immediately decided to blame Farage, Boris and Gove, and anyone else who is on the Leave side, with  suggestions there was “blood on the hands” of Brexit supporters.

In my view, this has nothing to do with Leave, Remain, refugee children or anything other than two very salient points which do not suit the media, and which certainly do not suit the likes of Cameron and his Remain and Tory supporters.

Lost in all this awful, atrocious death, a waste of life and the loss of two children of their Mother, is this could have been avoided.

Jo Cox had reported threats by way of letter for many months.

The Police had cautioned one male for some of these letters. Not the murderer, but we are yet to hear how many different forms of threats Ms Cox had suffered.

Despite these threats, the Police were only “considering” upping her security. She certainly had none with her when she died. This despite the Police knowing she could be targeted and had been threatened.

Jo herself campaigned tirelessly for women to have rights in this country and beyond. That she has been killed by someone who very possibly could have been stalking her or writing to her in a threatening way just makes the whole thing worse.

If we didn’t have over stretched Police forces, with budgets being cut left right and centre, Jo could very well have had a Police escort should she have wanted one. And if a prominent Politician can’t get any form of actual help when they are threatened, what hope do the rest of us have?

The second point is that Mental Health care is being cut too. The NHS are shutting many mental health wards, and patients almost have to beg to be helped.

Its seen as easier and cheaper to simply give them medication, but if we don’t have a system in place for those- like the murderer- who are alone to ensure they are taking this medication, then what is the point of them bothering at all?

It is often the case- and I speak from experience- that when one becomes ill, you are the last person to agree. It then becomes difficult when you do realise something is not right to get any help other than more tablets. In my case, I felt as my GP wasn’t taking me seriously, I clearly wasn’t ill like every close to me said, so I didn’t take any medication at all.

I wasn’t violently unwell, but this is far from the first time a mentally ill person has attacked or even killed someone down to a lapse in proper care.

There is no such thing as care in the community, it needs to be constant, with experts who come in daily and can notice changes as soon as they start. You can barely even see the same GP who can notice a pattern of behavior, thus, people like yesterday’s killer don’t become apparent until it’s too late.

This murder is shocking and it makes for very uncomfortable reading. But it’s not the case that anyone involved in the EU Referendum should have a guilty conscience.

Hate breeds hate, and anyone spouting the kind of moronic twattery I’ve seen online in the Remain camp make themselves look just as bad as those Right Wing parties that they profess to hate so much and blame for Jo Cox’s death (incorrectly).

 

Yes, it could have been avoided, but for God’s sake, before the usual suspects turn this into a vote winner, (and I am referring to all sides) have some bloody respect, read the actual truth of the matter, and ask yourself this- why do we live in a country where a woman cannot walk safely down a street and where a man killed her down to not getting proper help and falling through the cracks?

RIP Jo Cox.

 

 

 

Shit We Never Needed What We Learned at School

…That our teacher’s told us we would. The feckers.

After doing #LifeSchool posts of stuff they never taught us at school that they probably should have, I have been thinking more and more about the stuff we did get forced to learn but actually didn’t need after all.

I have included some on here from Elder too. He was at school in the mid 70s to mid 80s and of course, education was different then. In the case of the naughty buggers, thank fuck for that.

MATHS

Maths, of course in a lot of ways was probably helpful, if you went on to do a job that was hardcore and you needed more than just adding up.

No matter how many times I used to try watching Carol Vorderman Maths Videos, I hated maths and found that no matter how hard I tried, the minute it hit my brain it refused to stay, like blue tack that’s run out of stickiness.

I remember many times and many teachers who told us all when we complained that one day we’d need maths. We might be in a supermarket and need to work out our money. We may need to pump up a tyre at a garage. Yes, pythagoras theorem would come in handy one day.

Except, actually, it hasn’t.

Mental arithmetic is just bollocks and outdated now. We all have mobile phones these days, and can Google that shit.

(Which was rather handy this morning as Littlest was asking me, pre- coffee, what half of 9.6kg is. I have no idea what maths he was doing that at 7 he would need to know this, but fear not, thought I, and Googled it whilst he wasn’t looking).

I do the odd sum in my head- as long as it’s not times tables, division or hard subtraction I’m all good. But my brain just thinks to itself, look love, you pay £30 a month for a mobile phone, put down the Facebook feed for two seconds and use my lovely shiny calculator instead. My brain knows and cares. So I do.

So, that’s a few hours a week off the timetable. What’s next?

LATIN

I have to hold my hand up- we didn’t do Latin at RNS. I’d like to think it was down to Elder’s generation not having technology lessons, hence why it was compulsory for his lot. I know however that my sister’s grammar school did it so know it’s more likely that we were considered to thick to try to teach it to.

What the hell was the point of Latin?

Who actually speaks this anymore?

According to Elder, a lot of our language derives from Latin, so it was worth knowing.

I then asked if he can actually remember any Latin as it was so important to know it in the 80s. Even he must recall some swear type words of Latin wonder, surely?

Erm, no. He can’t remember any.

He can however remember lots of hip obscure bands and acts from the 70s and 80s though.

Sure, Latin did shape our language as we know it now. But we know it the other way now. We don’t learn language before that time so why Latin? In fact, why waste years teaching a language no one speaks anymore, when you could just do a lesson on it in History over a term. We don’t learn Roman Numerals as part of maths, so why a few words that sound a bit like words we use now?

If that’s the case, should we learn text speak now for when it takes over the English language entirely? And why do we not learn Gaelic or Welsh in English schools, we’re far more likely to bump into someone speaking these than Latin.

Quod attinet Latine didicisti?

Punctus non est meus.

Next up, my second most hated part of school.

PE

PE. God, I hated PE, and I was quite good at some aspects of it.

I think I hated PE so much as our PE teacher was hugely overweight. I never once saw her actually manage to jog. She was good at shouting at us though. How anyone as grossly overweight as this cow was could comment on our ability to run round a field or jump in a sand pit was frankly questionable. I do recall one brave soul remarking that perhaps she should try running round the field in blistering heat 3 times and see how far she got before keeling over. I think they got detention.

And the showers, oh God the showers. We didn’t have to use them anymore, but you knew that should one of the evil cows who liked to torment you be bored, they would always throw you in fully clothed and turn the coldest, brownest water on all over you. And what would our fat teacher tell you? Drip dry, that’s what, no sympathy was given, no fucks taken for the poor child who had to walk around stinking of old water in wet clothes all day.

I hated team sports too. All team sports did was set you up for Office life when you get asked to go on a Team Building exercise and revert to school days of picking off the weak one by one. I was shit at team sports (dyspraxia was not my friend), I nearly lost teeth during basketball.

You can, if you want to, just go to the gym now, or have a tummy tuck. Easy peasy.

Time for something from our EU cousins now

FRENCH AND GERMAN

Remember the times of trying to remember whether a word had the female “la” or the male “le” a the beginning of a word?

The amount of times I would have my French teacher tell me off for using the feminine rather than the masculine is not worth repeating. I often used to wonder why words had to be girl or boy words, as ours aren’t, but was too scared to voice it.

I didn’t do German, but Elder did French, German (and the aforementioned Latin), I was too scared of the German teacher (who once gave me a detention for waiting outside a classroom. It was a minute before the bell went and the classroom was a mobile one outside which my Geography lesson was in. I was given a detention for being keen to go to class. Figure that shit out. And no, I never went, I got out of it for pointing out how ridiculous it was to be given a detention for being on time for class).

But like my French teacher, our German teacher used to say that we needed these important languages for our future job prospects.

Correct me if I’m wrong on two points:

Have you ever gone for an interview in the UK, and been asked to tell them where a swimming pool is in French and how to get to it?

Me neither.

Also, now that it looks likely we may leave the EU,  if you believe the scaremongers (which I don’t by the way- I am so far out if I could move us further away from mainland Europe I would) we won’t be able to trade with the French or the Germans so why should we bother to know the female or male of a word or how to tell them I have a headache in their native lingo?

I rejoice for a generation that will no longer need to bother.

Why have we never learned any other European languages? I’d have rather learned Spanish, or Swedish. I could sing Waterloo in actual Abba language then. How cool would that be?

SCIENCE

Like Maths, another lesson I was a) shit at, and b) assured that I would find useful in my adult life.

Our science teacher was nice, don’t get me wrong, but his constant promise that we would one day encounter chemicals which, when incorrectly mixed with other chemicals, could possibly explode and we’d die awful deaths (or turn into Spiderman perhaps?)  was utter tosh.

Never have I ever been in that situation. Sure, if I ever watch Breaking Bad I may find the whole meth lab set up easier to follow, but we didn’t know the kooky Dad from Malcolm in the Middle would make that show in the nineties.

I have never had to work out magnets- apart from those I put on my fridge. I have never needed to know the Periodic Table of Elements. I can recall the rhyme we were taught to remember the order of our GCSE ones. I cannot, however, remember which element each letter of this rhyme was meant to represent.

I always felt Science was a boy subject, and frankly, I don’t know why I wasted years learning any of it.

WOODWORK AND SEWING

Yeah, I’m not sure they do these anymore, and good job too.

Woodwork just ended in a wonky bird box, a wonky Barbie table (no idea why I made that, it looked easy) and lots of splinters and near misses with an old rotary drill.

I was never allowed on electric tools.

Sewing class was horrendous, I had no desire to be a seamstress, the rag trade as it was known as had long since died out. I was rubbish with a sewing machine and even worse at hand stitching. Knitting makes me come out in a rash.

With both of these, they may have been worth the bother back in the pre-Elder days. Now, we have Ikea. And Primark. I do not need, and have no desire to bother, to make my own clothing or furniture. It would fall apart in both cases the minute anyone went near it.

Pointless.

So, what would I keep?

Music, for a start, as I had two kick ass teachers (one of whom sadly passed away recently- RIP Mrs Gregory) and found it far more interesting and diverse a subject.

English as I love books and still do (and, well, I was good at it, so am biased. No really, I got two As in English. I got a D/D in Science and an E in Maths).

History as its infinite and then you could teach children days of yore when we didn’t have mobile phones and had to learn long division. How they would laugh.It also teaches you not to fuck up like previous generations and start crappy wars and join Europe.

Geography as it’s nice to know about other places round the world. I loved Geography so much I did it and History for GCSE and am still able to read a map down to Miss Parker.

See, it’s not all bad, but I definitely think there is more scope to teach actual life stuff if they just ditch the outdated nonsense we had to suffer as kids.

No matter how many teachers tell how many generations that one day they will need to know what pie squared is or whether Hydrogen can be mixed with Potassium (answer? No idea I’ve forgotten as I’ve not studied it since 1998), there are certain subjects that have no place in the modern world.

I’m off to lobby parliament.

If I can just work out my change for the bus…..