Temperama

Making Mock

Sir Alex Ferguson is not a man I often warm too. However, what he says about the barracking of Steve McClaren strikes a chord:

“What has happened in the last week is incredible. We have a mocking situation in this country now. Even on television, with that ice-skating programme [Dancing on Ice], the panel mock one another and criticise each other. It’s just a mocking society that we’re in. People are mocked and ridiculed, which is hard to take. Where you apportion blame, I don’t know. Is the press responsible or is that just our culture?"

The answer is both. And bored and revolted though I've become with the bloated industry Ferguson operates in, I share his distaste for the ritualised rubbishing of people, powerful or otherwise, as a new form of spectator sport. Have we become so ungracious that those who falter publically must now be stripped of all their dignity?

On Comment Is Free: The Racism Debate

As promised, my attempt at unravelling the tangled debates about race, identity, slavery and black children's experience of school.

Cameron, Values & Judaism

Knowledgable response by Michael White to an interview with David Cameron in the Jewish Chronicle.

EDW: Sir Ian McKellen

Wednesday has been moved to Saturday this week: soon everyone will be doing it. Anyway, my eye was caught by this from the Guardian arts blog where I learned that Sir Ian takes his clothes off during a scene from King Lear. I hope I have that much self-confidence when I'm 67. I wish I had it now. I used to have it back in the days when I regularly stripped off for a living (but that's another story and far too boring to waste your time with). Thinking of Sir Ian naked made me think of Sir Ian clothed - no offence, your knightship - and this was the image of him in that state that I liked best. Apart from being bright and cheery it will be of huge interest to those many who've always wondered what Widow Twanky looks like starkers. All they have to do now is head for Stratford.

Zimbabwe & Beyond

William Gumede in New Statesman:

"Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF has become the symbol of the descent of African liberation movements into brutal dictatorship. The great Tunisian writer Albert Memmi noted this phenomenon back in 1957. In The Coloniser and the Colonised, he wrote of the tendency of liberation movements, once in power, to mimic the brutality and callousness of former rulers. Backsliding liberation movements in Algeria, Angola, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia and other countries have left in their wake the lost hopes and shattered dreams of millions."

The whole piece is here.

Royalty Corner

Prince Chas's return visit to my part of Deepest Hackney was - you guessed it - to my younger kids' primary school. After this, Alan Johnson, Jamie Oliver and Tony Blair, head teacher Dame Anna only the needs the Queens of England - Elizabeth II and Elton John - to show up and she'll have had a full house of top flight national dignitaries. I couldn't be there to witness the royal arrival myself - I had a bun to eat in Clerkenwell - though I'm told the kids enjoyed it, and at the end of the day I greatly savoured the unusual sight of our niqab-wearing parents and their children clutching union jacks. Come to think of it, of any of our parents doing such a strange, unnatural thing.

Anyway, I'm sure Himself would have felt well at home even without the flags. Millfields, after all, caters to families of many faiths and its organic menu is fit for - sorry - a future king. My favourite story of his visit concerns the conclusion of a conversation he had with my Fifthborn's best friend, a tomboy called Jesse.

"You are a charming young young man," the Prince informed her.

"Thank you," Jesse replied, generously sparing any royal blushes.

Well, he's a delicate flower you know.

A slightly adjusted version of this post also appears on my local blog Claptonian.

Great Drama From The ITV

Michael Grade does the dream deal for the ailing commercial network. Does this mean that poor Gary will have to start working for a living soon?

The Reverend Dawkins Show

How's this for a definition of a waste of time? Three rather lofty intellectuals who ought to get out more debate a simple-minded question. I'm too bored to say any more. Matt Murrell, though, has greater staying power.

Gumbug

A dentist's wife writes:

"Most NHS dentists don't choose to become private (if anything the bureacracy and form filling is even more scary when you don't have the NHS behind you) but have been forced into it by successive government policies. And Tony Blair's promise of NHS dentistry for all is sounding increasingly hollow. But hey, what does he care?"

Comprehensive oral hygiene polemic continues here.

Truancy: Why Am I Not Surprised?

New DfES figures show that the truancy rate in England's secondary schools is 18% higher than previously thought with the true picture likely to be even worse. The data reveals that children from poor families were three times more like than others to bunk off, and that the largest rises were revealed as having been at the government's flagship academies and city technology colleges. Something hasn't been working. Has this fellow noticed?