When Terrorists Stop Killing

You may have heard that ETA, the bunch of mindless, blood-stained thugs we have in this country instead of the IRA, have declared a ceasefire. The reasons for this are not easy to establish, as there are many possibilities.

They are weak, perhaps very weak. They have lost the support of their friends in Ulster, and probably of their friends in Libya, over the last few years, the French government has been co-operating properly for a decade or so, so they have nowhere to tun to, the courts have illegalized their political mouth-pieces and they are having trouble keeping their favourite recruiting grounds poor, making it harder to get people interested.

It may be all of these things or none, but they have been much weakened over the last few years, they have lost their leaders several times and the government has refused to contemplate negotiations (at least publicly). So this is probably an attempt to gain some public support for 'dialogue', by which they mean 'give us what we want'. They thought, years ago, that they might be able to force some kind of Blairite 'peace process', but there are many differences, and not only the will of the government to surrender.* In the Basque Country there is no opposing bunch of blood-stained thugs turning the streets into a battleground, and, outside the few towns and villages that they still control, it's a wealthy place, and a pleasant place to live. It's not hard to ignore the terrorists, it's not like they're on every street corner.

So the ceasefire is probably an act of desperation, and will last precisely as long as they think it useful to keep it, and, as on other occasions, it will be broken without warning, so there isn't really a ceasefire anyway in any meaningful sense.

In any case, the regional and national governments, instead of fawning over the 'reformed' terrorist and pretending that this somehow made them wonderful, democratic and people you can do business with, basically told them where they could shove it, and that unless they disbanded themselves and surrendered all their weapons they would continue to hunt them down (they've just got a few more of the scum, a day or two ago). ETA complains that the government is not entering into the spirit of the ceasefire, and is told what it can do with itself and its mother.

The Basque government is new, and very different from the old one, but in Madrid we still have that buffoon Zapatero, so his reaction to it has been surprising, and heartening. One day we will see the end of that particular mob. There will be more of course. There's money to be had in terrorising people, and all the bas girls like a man with a loaded gun.

*I imagine it's a pleasant change for the people of Ulster to live in relative peace and not be controlled by gun-toting friends of Gerry (or Ian) all the time, as it is to see a bit of money returning to the place, and it's not up to me to say whether the price of that peace was too high, but it certainly was very high.

Education is a Privilege

Schools have become associated with many things which have nothing to do with their original purpose.* It is accepted that they serve a variety of functions and that that is what they are for and it can't change. There is a general, unexamined assumption that schools are places that look after your children while you do other things (work, go shopping, get pissed and so on); there is a further assumption that society needs somewhere to keep its perverts happy (this is true, although we pretend it isn't), and that if we shove children in rooms with people who have studied something they will learn and make something of their lives. That's not the way it is.

Most children never understand the point of school, and think they are wasting their time. They are. They accept the idea and as soon as they are free, they do whatever they can. Which will not have been the original purpose of their 'education.' Teaching, showing the young what they could be if they wished, the things it is worth understanding, is a much more difficult business than most people realize. And teaching is controlled by the unions.

Today's lesson- it shouldn't be compulsory. There are many children who can take no benefit from education, or who don't want it. Teach the ones to whom it can be useful. That's a good start.

*Real life is a great nuisance. The curse of the blogging classes. But I also know- because I read a lot of blogs as well as writing them- that no one cares why a blogger is not writing, they want to read what he writes. So I offer minimalist blogging, but it is at least blogging.

The End of Summer

Summer is pretty much over. Most of you will already have noticed that, but to me it doesn't so much mean I have put the t-shirts and shorts away- it's still hot here- as that I have to do some work again.

I have no children, cars or expensive hobbies. My favourite activity is walking in the country, which is what we did when we all lived in caves and the price hasn't gone up. I do like good food, though, I like a decent roof over my head and I like to travel regularly. All of which implies that I can live comfortably without collapsing from stress every five minutes, but I do have to earn money most of the time, and that time has come again.

So we're back in the city, with its comforts and its inconveniences, the people, the noise, the shops, the friends nearby, the restaurants, the single, poor and poorly-used theatre, but Madrid, Córdoba and Seville are not far away, and so on and so on...

In short, real life has crept up on me and whacked me with its weapon of choice, which I suppose we could say is time, or more prosaically, the bills. It means I get to catch up on the news, and find out waht's been going on the last couple of months, and maybe write about it, rant about it, make perceptive comments on it, misunderstand it, expose the shallowness of my thinking and the narrowness of my vision, and just possibly, change the world a bit. In short, I shall blog. Oh, and I shall also live.

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

Yes, those people in Florida are entitled to burn the Koran. It is not a crime. It’s important to realize that in the US they are free to express themselves in that fashion.

No, they are not destroying knowledge. Other copies exist.

Yes, it is an infantile act.

Yes, it is likely to cause harm to happen to people who were not involved.

Yes, Hilary Clinton is perfectly entitled to criticise the reverend and ask him not to do it.

I hope they are not stupid and childish enough to carry out this act, but they are free to do so, and it matters that they can. It also matters that the people who are waiting to be offended by it realize that they can do it and no one can stop them except by persuading them not to.

There are deeper, much more complex matters involved, but these questions need to be clearly understood before the rest can be seriously considered.

Fun with Rabbits

The one who walks on his hind legs has been hogging this a bit lately, so since he's off somewhere doing that stuff he does I'll take the chance to have a word. I've complained before that he will insist on making me share the house with fluffy, furry things. It's bad enough having to share it with him. Well, there's this rabbit.* There's a photo of him somewhere around here. He's not too hard to get along with, as he gets spooked by the spines, so he doesn't get in my way much, but he's a long beast and you find him lying across doorways or in interesting corners all the time. He eats my chocolates, too.

Anyhow they started letting him out into the garden. He's not very bright, and a bit wobbly in the backbone, by the look of it. It took him two days to stop running back inside every time he saw a pigeon. But he got used to nosing around, eating flowers, playing with dry leaves, digging a bit in the sand, sitting on the cool grass, and started feeling really big about it, acting like he owned the place. Till he found a gap by the gate-post and got out onto the mountain. Started thinking he was the king of the countryside, sprawling on the ground like a lion that's just eaten the last local hunter.

Of course, he's never heard of a fox, or an eagle, and he doesn't realize he's a great white lump against the brown earth. You can see him from miles off. He was lucky that it wasn't one of those that found him first. It was the gamekeeper's Landrover. A huge creature making a tremendous noise that suddenly appeared in front of him. He lost that serene superiority he'd been working on rather quickly. The point of these toy rabbits is that they're small and fluffy and can't run. Well, he suddenly remembered his ancestry and ran like a greyhound. Down the hill, through the hole into the garden, inside the house, to the darkest and deepest corner of the storeroom, where he spend the rest of the day. I think he's lost the urge to annex continents to his great majesty.

So, I had a big laugh, and I'm still number one around here. Result.

*Hedgehogs don't do semi-colons.

On the Charming of Crayfish

I have spared my public endless repetitions of my thoughts on the beauty of the local lakes and the pleasure of walking around them, because most of what can be said about it is already in the archives and, even though they may well be more interesting than my rantings on politics, education and associated matters, you can only say the same thing so many times before running out of words, and probably readers.

It should be possible to write a new post every time I go to see one or other part of that area, which is most days- after all, I go so often because every time I experience something new- but much of it is impossible to put into words that would make sense when read by someone else. I could baldly state what I have seen, I could try to explain why it was worth going there yet again, but it would hard to get someone else to understand it- not least because these things are so fleeting and ephemeral that even I can scarcely remember what is what that I felt, let alone put it into words. I could, of course, just make things up, but what would be the point of that?

Yesterday, however, I persuaded Mrs Hickory to come with me, since it’s not quite as hot as at the height of summer, and we saw a couple of things that are highly unusual (another reason she came with me is that a couple of weeks ago a group of deer trotted across the hills and down a valley a mere 50 yards ahead of me, and she was very jealous because she hasn’t seen any yet).

The first thing was an eagle owl. As we rode up a hill path between trees on the way to the lakes, it emerged from behind a tree 15 yards ahead of us, lazily spread its wings, rose into the air and flew away. These things are enormous, they can have eight foot wing spans, and this one must have been around six feet across, and to see one so close up is unusual and rather startling. If it took fright, or had had one of those days, it could pick you up and smash you against a rock. Fortunately, it was either an equable bird or it just didn’t think of it.

Later, at one of the more popular bathing spot we took a refreshing dip. We were alone when we arrived, except for a Russian waitress wiping down tables with studied concentration and, I suspect, considerable boredom. She needn’t have worried, as a group of thirsty cyclists soon appeared to chat her up and keep her busy, and other groups kept turning up in cars until by the time we left there were some thirty people trying to pluck up the courage to jump into the water, or just milling around. One of the millers was surviving the tedium engendered by said milling by hypnotising crayfish.

He assured me that, by holding them upside down and stroking their heads carefully and repeatedly, he could send them to sleep, and this he did to one he pulled from the water. He left it standing on its head, completely motionless for several minutes before it seemed to come back to life and wandered off towards the water. Definitely the oddest thing I have seen for some time.

Education and David Willets

It appears that David Willets, a well-educated man who is generally held to be intelligent, has said that universities should mentally knock a few points off the exam results of middle class applicants, in some kind of levelling exercise to get (yet) more state school pupils doing degrees. He talks about ‘balance’, and picking students on ‘potential’ rather than ‘performance’. He doesn’t use the expression ‘social justice’, though he might as well. He is, of course, talking nonsense, but then, he is a politician, a member of a highly unstable government that isn’t at all certain that it has real support among the electorate. (The electorate isn’t too sure, either).

Good universities did choose students on a variety of criteria, including what Willets presumably means by potential, as much as on exam results. They held interviews and entrance exams which were intended to tell them much more than what A Level results alone could. Then they made specific, personal offers of places to students. They were more or less prevented from doing this by Labour governments who thought it benefitted the wrong sort of people. Now we have a government that wants them to start doing it again, but only if it benefits the right people, who are, broadly speaking, the sort of people whose votes they can’t count on but think they might win over. Why is he wrong?

Is it a good thing that all those capable of getting a degree in a serious academic subject, and thus increasing their options in life and having a chance of being more successful, which in turn will be good for the country as a whole, should not be prevented from doing so by their parents’ lack of money? Most certainly it is. You don’t have to be a socialist to recognise that.

But reducing inequality by shooting the rich doesn’t work. As Willets obviously realizes, state education is, in general, very poor. There is much variation, and some good schools but large numbers of children in Britain with the potential to do well have to more or less educate themselves as best they can, forced as they are to put up with classmates who don’t want to learn, teachers who can’t teach and an education system that structured and operated for the benefit of politicians and trade unions rather than for the children (or the taxpayer who foots the bill).

It’s a mess, it leaves millions of children with empty heads and no hope of anything but drudgery or crime and it needs to be completely recreated from scratch. Denying any kind of decent education and opportunity in life to generations of children, deliberately condemning the poor and unfulfilled to remain that way for ever, purely for reasons of ideology, is one of the highest crimes of British socialism against the people it claims to represent. But pretending that young people who do not know things and have not demonstrated a particular competence have in fact done so is not the solution.

And David Willets is well aware of this. He simply wishes to shift the blame onto the universities, which the great majority of people haven’t attended and treat with distrust, and to avoid having to do anything meaningful, which would be difficult or, worse still, ‘brave’.

The whole idea of education needs to be completely dismantled, depoliticised and rebuilt. What it is for, how it should be paid for, what forms it should take, now and in the future, who should do it, and how to deal with the problems caused by people who don’t want it.

To be continued...