Don't Bother...

In Britain, harassing, mobbing and libelling colleagues does not seem to constitute an offence that puts into question the mobber as much as the mobee. 

When a female broker took her employer to work over turning a blind eye when she found out that a male colleague had been bad mouthing her to her clients over a period of years, it was HER who had to defend herself in front of the court of law providing evidence that she was not a “psycho bitch” and “chronic druggie”. 

The BBC reported about the case recently because it was a rare occasion where the victim actually took her case to the court instead of accepting hush money – mostly because to save her career she did not really have another option.

While the BBC report correctly emphasised the importance of this step taken, they concluded that it may nevertheless not be the preferable route to take, since the time and energy spent in addition to the considerable financial burden and emotional trauma and possible social backlash the victim may face may not be worth the trouble.

No mentioning on how to improve the system and forcing the perpetrator to provide evidence for HIS claims and placing the financial burden as well as the social stigma on HIS back.

Needless to say he has since taken a pay out from his former employer and moved on.  She is still dealing with the consequences of the libelling campaign.

Not so Phun

Z. has to decide what her A Levels are going to be.  Here Physics teacher seems to think that she should try to take Physics alongside with Maths – especially because she is a girl – and handed her a leaflet “Physics is Fun” featuring a “fun loving” blonde writing convoluted formulas on a blackboard.

Hm.

What’s worrying is not only the haha connotation of blonde and “Fun” - which clearly has grown a bit moldy over time – nor the peculiarly odd way in which this seventeen year old adolescent girls is reduced to paddy-cake calibre nincompoop…

What really worries me is that it matters whether girls like Physics or not.   

And unless at my next PT meeting I will be handed a foldout entitled “Social Careers are Hip” brandishing a football jock in warrior pose, I am wondering whether people will ever understand that intelligence actually means to think creatively for yourself and not just to follow others.   

In fact I think that is is preferable to have different interests from men.  The problem is in the disadvantages that go along with that.  

Now there is a problem that awaits solving and me think its not Physics that's gonna do it.

Patri-ego-tism

Although I am not a Brit, I would feel sad to see this union fall apart. 

Just imagine not having the union flag on every tea mug purchased on this patriotic shoal!  Or think about how sad the Queen must be to let go of Balmoral...or was it some other illustre place where she likes to roam around in her jeep?  Who would be Queen of Scots actually?  Some Mary?  Would there still be Haggis in the frozen section or would British...uh...Smaller Britain patriotism forbid that? Hm. 

Well, we will know soon enough whether we will have to grab a passport on our next trip to Edinburgh...but then, it always felt a bit foreign up there!!

On Democracy and Narcism

An electoral system is by no means a guarantor of democracy.  Multi-party banana republics abound, where a ruthless clique at the top behave like rabid monkeys.  

But even though the system of checks and balances may function better in so-called Western Democracies, one is well-advised to double check.  

How independent is the media?  Can one trust the information on public networks?  In fact, is there any relevant information transmitted at all?  The BBC, for instance, revels in atrocities...children abducted, quartered, raped - but rarely provides in-depth political analysis. 

What links do political leaders have to key industries such as oil&gas and the media?  How closely are their ties to weapon manufacturers?  

How much of the state budget is appropriated to education & health versus defense and industry subsidies...?

How independent is the judiciary?

Barak Obama is maintaining an aura of transparency by having an active online interface where he (his PR unit) provide information about current policies and solicit comments from the public.

At least, he and his staff thereby acknowledge the existence of a populace for whom fast food and HBO don’t work as tranquilizers.  But let’s not be fooled...his goal is no different from all of the other ones who made it to that most distinguished spot where all eyes are focused on them day and night...

Oh, look at his turd...isn’t it sublime!

Baah-aaah!

It is a sad time, when trust in well established institutions has to be revisited.  

The Catholic church has probably done some of the worst damage to its own reputation and in many places now only a few die-hards and other desperados continue to fill the pews week after week.  

As for those who have shown the courage to sacrifice old certitudes for moral rectitude, the trust in that institution has eroded, especially since those who committed the crimes were protected by the church's hierarchy.  

A closing of ranks against a bleeding flock hardly stirs feelings of renewed belief.  

It is a well-know and keenly repressed fact, that sexual abuse cripples many institutions.  

Mostly it is men at the top who commit the crimes and it is mostly women and children who suffer.  Whether within the revered institutions such as the BBC or schools, orphanages, and care institutions where children supposedly are to feel save from harm, male abuse (and all too often female complicity) has a history of corrupting what has taken long to establish.

The strange thing is that these scandals often become material of denial or simply dissipate with passing of time.  Interest in the deeply troubling matters of human interaction is usually short lived, probably because it would be too disturbing.  

And so these events are eventually swept under the carpet in the hopes that everyone will forget - too absorbed by the upcoming Olympics or discount event - and with time will return to the trough.  

Generally they do.  Like a flock of dull-eyed sheep.  Whether it is the way we consume, worship, or live...old habits die hard.

Baaah! 

Stubborn Love

Another enchanted walk.  I love this country for its stubborn love of the countryside.  Despite soaring house prices and the resulting pressure to build more, the Brits remain firm.  This, after all is for everyone.  It's not one man's little paradise.  It's bigger than that and it's just minutes outside of London...

Not OK

Sometime in the seventies, most Western school system moved away from the idea that children’s heads simply had to be filled with information to produce a desirable outcome.   

My generation grew up relatively free of pressure and expectations. We did what we were asked and often more.  We played instruments, joined orchestras, theatre groups and sport clubs in our free time.  

On warm summer days we would all meet at the pool or go for bike rides.  We listened to music, hung out together and engaged in heated discussions about nuclear power and the the cold war.  During our holidays we plowed through mountains of books, wrote songs and travelled on InterRail from Athens to Amsterdam.  

Despite all the tough talk of cold war politics and all the acid rain in the world, life was good.  We were okay.  

Why can our children not grow up with that same certainty?  Why is the generation, that enjoyed all the freedoms and opportunities one could wish for, so adamant about testing children, measuring their achievement and suggesting that it is all not good enough and that they are not enough?  

Education is on the agenda in many countries in the EU - but mostly for the wrong reasons.  Everywhere policymakers are bemoaning low standards of education.  South Korea and China now are being hailed as the great paragons of educational achievement, while the considerable wealth of worthwhile educational philosophy and experience that has been generated in Western societies since the Enlightenment is blatantly being tossed over board. 

Be curious! Be industrious! Be independent! Be interested! Be self-motivated! Is what we are telling our children, thereby hoisting our own existential angst on their narrow shoulders.  

However, isn’t the most important role of an educator to create a safe space for exploration, questions and ideas?  

Shouldn’t we demand an education system that respects individual creative forces instead of expecting normed results?

What are we so afraid of?

Not a Piece of Pie

For a while now I have been concerned about recurring headlines on sexual child abuse cases involving major British institutions including the BBC, Labour and, most recently, The Coalition Government.  

In fact, Patrick Rock, a long time friend of David Cameron and the very person put in charge of designing online filters that would bar offensive sites, has stepped down recently because he has become the focus of a child pornography investigation. 

News about this scandal only broke yesterday.  Another cover up as in the case of the BBC’s decades of turning a blind eye to the ghastly pederast, Jimmy Savile?  

Two days ago, I stumbled over a sweet acronym - PIE - the British Google site, only to find out that it not only stands for a rather disturbing network by the openly depraved name “Paedophile Information Exchange”, but also demonstrates how awful realities hide behind seemingly benign appearance in this country.

One begins to wonder about the boarding schools where Britain's scions are welded... 

This you should know...

When moving to the UK, it is important to realise that one moves onto a shoal, an island, set apart from the rest.  Island nations are singular, tossed into the sea.  They are at the same time fiercely independent and completely lost, their populace amazing survival artists as well as gloomy fatalists.  

In England this deeply engrained dichotomy takes shape in many different forms.  For the less cognizant, it may take a while to pinpoint, but after some time it is hard to miss.  It took me six years, but here it is:

Everyone here has their assigned place - for generations.  Names matter, accents and connections, more than either intelligence or integrity.  There is a way to do things, and many ways not to.

The pecking order is harsh and unforgiving.  While bound together against all that lies across the sea, it is a national pass time to hack at each other like chicken in a coop.

A harsh wind blows over this island.  Many who leave it don’t like to return and those who come, charmed by its beauties, sooner or later will find out why.

The proverbial stiff upper lip is a feature engraved into the pale features of a true islander, as if they had to prove a point.  Life is life and that seems to be the problem.

Nein !

There are bounderies that I set at times where I may find myself alone on the other side - but that has never bothered me.  

In fact, I don’t believe that majorities are right.  Nevertheless I usually respect majority decisions, even if I don’t necessarily let them dictate my life.  

When George W. Bush decided to terrorise the good Americans and send their children into battle unter false pretense, I gathered our belongings and moved our family to Costa Rica. When George W. was re-elected, we decided to stay away and later on moved everyone to Europe, where life seemed less volatile.  

For a few years we came to enjoy the benefits of a state health care system and a generous yearly leave as well as affordable child care.

Life seemed more secure and with the abundance of cultural events and endless trails and sprawling natural beauty for everyone to enjoy, life quality also got a considerable boost.  For a while, the hair raising deals of Wahington lobbyists seemed a thing of the past.  The NRA, Halliburton & Co., Texaco et al., they all  seemed to recede into the background.  

In the meantime, England was getting rid of its airplane carrier and, in the wake of the financial crisis, it went after banker bonuses.  All seemed good.  

But of course, no honeymoon lasts forever...and now, once again, I find myself googling after everyone else has gone to bed.  

Once again, I am looking for an escape route.  But in this gung-ho winner-takes-all euphoria of our post-industrial age, is there really anywhere to go?

Collective Blindspots

Every country, every nation has them, collective blindspots.  Those aspects of a given culture that just like with your best friend who holds on to his ponytail although he is going bald, are unflattering but somehow unchangeable.

Gun ownership and the obsession with private property are the top of my list when I think of the US. 

Elitism and classism are the obvious ones in the case of the UK.

In Germany, it is the fascination with efficiency that has  allowed asphalt wielding maniacs to turn landscapes into transit routes.

  

France, uh where shall I begin?  Vive la France!!

But this phenomenon of collective amnesia can be applied to all kinds of groups from families to institutions and from religions to men and women.

Similar to individuals, groups of people like to believe that they have figured it all out when, really, we all are but scattered ants on a forest floor.

No wait.  Not even that.

Cheap Food

£60 - that’s how much the average household in Britain wastes each months by letting some of their food go bad.  

Why does food go bad in times of tight-belting, one wonders?  Are our fridges too deep for us to reach the back or have we lost our appetite?  

If so then maybe for cheap food!  

I have noticed that I value the food that I buy from our organic farm cooperative much more than the prepackaged pale looking food items that come from the big retailer.  

Cheap food and lots of it creates bad habits and lots of them.  From over-fertilization and mass production to animal cruelty and malnutrition.  

Waste per capita is the least of them.

British Schools - more BS

Here is another downer:  The British education system.  Nine out of ten Brits will readily attest to that. 

Not only is it horrendously skewed since anybody big in politics and finance usually comes from a handful of private schools - mostly boys only - it also has a regional, or should I say linguistic, bias. 

Getting yourself into one of the red brick institutions of higher education will be just that bit harder, if there is a trace of Cockney or, worse even, an Irish drawl discernible.

Once, after an audition for a leading part in The Mighty Mikado, which her choirmaster had recommended her for, but which she in the end failed to get, it was commented that my unfortunate daughter was lacking a “posh English accent.” 

That bit of blasé alacrity coming from a choir director of a children’s choir located in the Greater London diaspora was quite telling of the daily frustrations with the British class system. 

No it is not easy being British!  While this is a lovely country - indeed the best I have ever lived in - it is much more fun doing it while assuming the role of the eccentric outsider.

The British Bullshitting Corporation

BBC Radio 4 has an hourly program every morning called “Woman’s Hour” - during the hour in the day (from 10am to 11 am) when women can leisurely tune in to listen to a show that invites studio guests (mostly women) to talk about everything .  

But, of course, they don’t.  

Mostly the talk is about the arts, being famous, cookery and other pleasantries including the inevitable radio play sequel.  To be fair, topics including violence against women, arranged marriage, the double day and occasionally even the pay-gap do come up every once in a while, but they are never put in a broader context.  

The question why women world wide continue to be victims of sexual violence, why being a women still carries the risk of poverty, violence and the lack of access to resources and self-determination or, differently put, the blatant fact that sexual discrimination continues to be systemic across countries, religions, cultures and families is never raised.  

Too hot for the BBC?  Undoubtedly.  After all, we now know that even in public broadcasting a few guys determine what is aired.

I always had a feeling that “public” was a euphemism.

No Easy Time

It seems that the longer a society experiences peace and stability, the more likely its social cohesion is to weaken.  

In the immediate wake of war, a degree of social leveling can be observed, where the haves and have-nots are brought together by the shared misfortunes of violence and destruction.  A society pulls together by forming solidarity pacts on local and even national levels that transcend differences.  

Carefully crafted identities tied to income, heritage, education and religion are overcome for the common good.  The trauma of suffering is shared by all and acts of compassion by those who are more fortunate than others provide a bridge between the camps.

But this empathic phase usually diminishes within a generation.  As peaceful times provide the basic needs of shelter, food and clothing and welfare systems see to the provision of secondary goods such as healthcare, education, and safety, cohesion erodes.  Social strife supercedes social collaboration.

These dynamics can be traced throughout human history.  The peaceful Beaker Culture was replaced by warmongering societies whose chiefs bolstered their prestige by amassing precious metal works.  

Great civilizations were not immune to it and in fact generally thrived on the exploitation of many by few - that is unless they failed to provide the basic necessities, which then would lead to civil uprisings, revolutions and coup d’Etats.  Examples of this abound and often mark the cornerstone of a new era, such as the beginning of the Roman  Republic, the drafting of the Magna Carta, and the passing of the Code Napoleon.  But none will withstand our competitive nature - the call of the wild.

After the extensive rebuilding of civil society in the aftermath of two horrific wars, many European countries experienced a phase of social stability and shared prosperity which culminated in the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties.  However, a gradual erosion has set in since as we witness income gaps increase and wealth distribution curves move away from the median.  

Primatologist Frans de Waal likes to evoke the image of the empathic ape in making an argument for our human potential to build empathic societies.  However, I tend to keep to a  an old adage when dealing with humans:  trust is good, watchfulness is better.  

Standing Firm

After my level of cynicism threatened to reach a new peak, I am relieved to report that the High Court in London ordered that the eviction notice had to be withdrawn and the protector camp can remain in place until further notice.

As a celebratory gesture, trays of orange juice were delivered to the site together with other goodies and the mood swung to light on this sunny late September day.

How much does it take, though? How many to stand up against a few?

No Way Bobby!

In the kerfuffle that ensued at the site, the coppers clamped down and arrested our barde, Simon Welsh.  As he was bellowing the Fracking Anthem (by the same Simon Welsh), they came down on him - he didn’t have a fighting chance.  Poor guy, but where he left off an ad hoc mom’s choir took over.  

This clearly is not a one-man show.    

Holding the Fort

I am off to Balcombe again first thing in the morning. Despite the positive national and international press coverage and media attention it has received over the past seven weeks, the protest camp is suddenly under threat of eviction. Time and date: September 10th, 9am. 

So off I go, Jules with me - another day in the life of a home educating family.

The Summer of Simmer

It's been a great summer.  Not the kind I was expecting.  At least not just.  There were waves and sandy toes and camp fires, but the one most fulfilling thing that emerged in the past two months was something far more rippling.  

As the heat continued to roast this land and simmered it in its own sod, there was a gradual coming together of the different sized bits and pieces, like in the making of one steamy hot succulent stew.   

From amidst all the horror of drilling wells and cover ups, out of deep frustration and disenchantment grew, like a spring out of the rock, a fresh feeling of commitment and determination. 

In these past weeks, communities across the UK have moved closer together and what began as a three-mom show outside a small village in the South has grown into a full blown protest movement.  

Frack Off indeed !