To learn is to live

Just a quick one - a friend of mine recently shared this video with me and I think it is simply amazing.  I looked up the definition of "education" in the Oxford English Dictionary; apparently it's "the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university."  *Sigh.  Well, I guess for the last bit the UK will have to add an extra nota bene along the lines of "Available to rich kids and trust fund types only; plebs need not apply."  It's a sad state of affairs when education of the official type is only for the privileged - I think we all thought we'd moved past that stage.  


The hike in university fees couldn't have come at a worse time for an already cash strapped public.  It makes me angry that many of the next generation will be denied the opportunity of extending their studies (and the delight that is snakebite) but more that that it is the shortsightedness of a government who can't see that without the influx of bright, fresh talent the university system itself will falter.  A quality university system needs its strong research and even stronger teaching practise to be challenged - not just by fellow academics, neither simply by monied 20 year olds but by a diverse body of students from a range of backgrounds.  It's expected that because of this soaring rise in fees student numbers could drop by as much as 20% in the next few years - so this plug for axed funding designed to save money looks like it'll cause a whole other financial mess for our universities. 

But there is another side to this - perhaps the looming inaccessibility of a university education is a good thing.  Perhaps we need to focus on that other part of education, the part that says that what you need in your 80 odd years on this earth is not a piece of paper that says you can write essays and drink pints of buckfast in 10 seconds (oh, hang on - was that just my university?), it's life experience - and the very definition of that is getting out and living.  Yes, you will learn vital skills at university - but they are skills that can be acquired in the big, bad, real world.  For many, is university not an extension of the cosseting and coddling of the school experience?  It's being a grown-up, but with the stabilisers still on.  For that reason, I am attaching this video, brought to my attention by Carin Toso (who writes a fab blog by the way) - to celebrate that much of what we learn is from the University of Life.  

Maybe It's Because You're a Londoner

For anybody living, working or passing through London these days, the title phrase of this piece is a common sight in tube stations.  For anyone who hasn't seen it, this tagline comes from the CBS Outdoor Londoner campaign, apparently demonstrating to the world how fab and forward thinking Londoners are so everyone should, like, totally advertise to this demographic.  And yes, London is a terrific place to live.  There's a lot on, pretty much all the time; if people watching's your bag then London has some truly unique characters to satisfy even the most demanding of street-side social anthropologists; if culture's what you're looking for, the city's bosom heaves with museums, galleries and exhibitions, a great many of which are free.  These are, for me, some of the greatest points about living in London.  It's one of the only cities I've ever lived in where, having hurriedly put on two different shoes one morning, I easily passed it off as an ironic fashion statement.  Dammit, I garnered praise that day!

But this campaign takes London loving to a whole different level.  The premise of the campaign is that ordinary London-folk can submit their take on why they love London, which appears on posters around the city along with "universal truths" about the UK's capital and its inhabitants.  Examples of which are predictable; St. Londoners' commutes are longer, they earn more, have loads of cool gadgets and lead the way in opinion.  If that's true, surely us Londoners can take a break from rescuing kittens and fighting crime to spend some time leading by example? 

Yesterday evening, at leaving work o'clock, Southgate tube station was closed, with that all-too-familiar euphemism of "someone under the train."  For me, this didn't affect my journey too much, as I cycle (okay, okay I get the bus) but as I stood in line, the resulting crowd got ever more agitated.  The woman next to me struck up a conversation, "Terrible, isn't it?" she said, I nodded in agreement and was about to chip in when she went on, "I mean, it's rush hour and people want to get home - is it too much to ask that they do this at a better time?"  I stared at her, agog. 

Was she actually suggesting that this poor, desperate person, whilst making the decision to end their own life, should have said to themselves, "Oh hang on a minute, best not.  Half past five on a Wednesday is a touch inconsiderate of me.  Hmmm, let me see. 11pm on Sunday, yes, that'll do." Obviously, this response didn't come to me at that particular moment, because after all, comebacks are a dish best served cold. Oh wait - hang on, that's not right.  So I mumbled my dissent, or maybe I said descent - who knows, adages aren't my strong point (not from London, you see) and stalked off to another bus stop. 

Later that evening I thought about the differences between London and the rest of the UK.  I was genuinely appalled at the attitude to the tube incident that evening; as I'd sat on the packed bus, over and over I heard people on the phone to friends or family, apologising that they were going to be late because of "some idiot chucking themselves in front of a train."  I also saw pregnant ladies and elderly people struggling on to the bus and being completely ignored by all but two people who offered their seats. 

Coming from a country where people are generally a bit more chatty (no blarney stone references please), I've found it odd not saying hello to people when I enter a shop, though I am now accustomed to the ensuing look of panic if I smile at someone on the tube.  Mind you, coming from a country where the actions of a few are still spoiling it for the many; the fact that you get smiled at on public transport may be of poor recompense.  So yes, nobody and nowhere's perfect.  I choose to live in London after all and for the most part I absolutely love it - these posters endeavour to showcase all that is great about the city (and maybe show off a teensy bit) so I won't let a bit of after-work impatience sully its good name too much.

Let's face it, if your commute is a long one, you won't want to be delayed; if you have plans with friends, your annoyance will show when you give them a call to explain your tardiness.  But spare a thought maybe, for the friends of yesterday's tragedy, waiting for a call that never came.

Let's Be Honest With Ourselves About Hackgate

#Hackgate #NOTW #Murdoch - if you're on Twitter these are the go-to hashtags for proving you've got your finger on the political pulse.  If you're on any news site, you're urged to visit the live streaming of events; the latest resignation, confession, lawsuit.  My view on the whole debacle?  Disgraceful, absolutely.  Complete invasion of privacy?  Without a doubt. Something we'll probably forget about or get used to?  Pretty likely. 

Think of the issues that have raised our national hackles in the past few years; oil prices, cash for influence, expenses, bankers' bonuses...for a while we're appalled, outraged, demanding justice, or at the very least all the juicy details. And then?  Business as usual.  Should we do more or realise that we're a fickle bunch? 

It was an intrusion too far - way too far - when news surfaced that the News of the World commissioned a private investigator to hack into the voicemail of (at that stage) missing teenager Milly Dowler, with the hope that an exclusive would be forthcoming.  What was forthcoming instead, from this despicable action, was hope. But it was the worst kind of hope for the family of a missing schoolgirl - it was false hope.  The British public was absolutely revolted by this flagrant disregard for a family's privacy in the direst of times - so we started baying for blood; the News of the World's, the Murdochs', Rebekah Brooks', John Yates', our newsagent's for selling the News of the World...Fast forward a week or two and we've had a select committee hearing; whose sole purpose seems to be to satisfy the public's wish to humiliate the Murdochs and hear the words, "We were wrong."  As it turns out, what with #piegate and #slapgate, even if the Murdochs had prostrated themselves on the floor at Louise Mensch's feet and cried remorseful, earnest tears we wouldn't have noticed, we were all too busy giggling at Jonnie Marble's "You naughty billionaire" insult.  Rebekah who?

Having an ethical, fair media is something we believe we're entitled to, just as we believe we're entitled to politicians who aren't the bedfellows (reluctant or otherwise) of said media. So should we vote with our feet at the next election or our newsstand? By all means, if you genuinely consider your chosen alternative can provide you with the principles you crave, then get those shoes on. In all likelihood though, as you pause to tie your metaphorical shoelaces, you will hear the barely audible sound of hands being rubbed together in glee; and if you're lucky, you'll catch a whisper of incriminating emails, phone records and Facebook friends being deleted before they welcome you with open arms. 

I don't think we'll vote with our feet; neither will many of us protest, sign any petitions, write any letters or do anything more taxing than try to think of a pithy line on Twitter to demonstrate our displeasure. By August, there'll be a new hashtag, Murdoch won't be synonymous with Lex Luther and our national outrage will be directed towards something else.

Yes, we'll still respond with a grave shake of the head if it comes up in conversation, just as we do when someone reminds us of the moat we cleaned for Douglas Hogg, or the fact that we might have to fork out £9,000 to send one of our kids to university. I'd love to believe that this whole affair will bring about a change, but that's not fair on the thousands of upstanding, ethical people working in journalism and politics. Saying they're all as bad as each other is our way to feel comfortable with doing nothing, to excuse our short attention span and- OMG did you see Kate Middleton's outfit??

Hey y'all!  It's been a busy few weeks - and exciting ones too!  I managed to get myself a gig as a blogger for the Huffington Post.  Working for free....yes.  A million other people with a pun to share also doing it....also yes.  BUT t'is a foot in the door and a step on the way and all the other from-tiny-acorns-giant-oak-trees-grow-adages, so I'm happy. 

So far I've written three pieces for them - the first of which was pretty well received, the second of which was a little bit more controversial and the third, you'll be pleased to hear, dear readers, was a bit of a rant...well, I couldn't let you all down, could I?  So I'm going to post two of these on this blog, the other one - which was on sustainability - you've already seen most of, so I won't bother.  I'm going to do that first, then I'll come back with my offering on my latest adventure - my trip to Paris* and a bit of a general rant on politeness....

*Yes, you were right. You could smell cheese.

What I've learnt from The Apprentice

So that's it for another year. Along with about 10 million other people in the UK I watched The Apprentice final last night.  I'd like to say that I watched it for some noble, social anthropological research reason, which I suppose I did - I mean social anthropology is the study of people, which I do all the time.  Usually my Mum calls it being nosy though.  I am so good at being nosy that I did a semester of it at university, but it turned out it was mostly about the significance of yams for the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea (this is not a joke - I had to write a 3000 word essay on this sparkler of a topic.)

Wow. Digressing again.

So The Apprentice - I had an absolute ball watching the whole series.  I have been both admiring of the candidates' bolshiness and weary of their indomitable blue sky thinking and envelope pushing (don't they ever get paper cuts?)  Jim's capacity for clichés was exhausting, though worth it for Nick's cat bum faces in the background, Melody's voice made me yearn for my post-Christmas ear infections, anything to stop that noise.  Liam's ability to draw teapots will, in light of the Paris challenge, result in a downturn in modern languages GCSEs and a flocking to the nearest art studio.  Edward Hunter - now there's a chap - winner of the first P45 and owner of this honker of a defence: "Not only am I the youngest, but I'm the shortest." I howled at this.

Any time that the candidates were challenged with anything remotely non-British, was always guaranteed TV gold.  Susan's imbecilic "Are the French very fond of their children?" when they were perusing products to bring to market in la France was one such example. No dear, as a nation, French parents are Mr & Mrs Wormwood from Matilda, but in striped jumpers - ARE YOU SERIOUS??  This was probably only beaten on the penultimate week with Team Venture's "Caraca's" fast food joint, closely followed by some hum-dingers from the My-Py guys.

With Venture, I could *probably* forgive the kind donation of an apostrophe to a word that doesn't have one...apart from the fact that most people with a reasonable grasp of the English language were left wondering, "Caraca's what?"  Which Susan clears up nicely by waxing lyrical on its neat rhyming with maracas!  "Aaah! Caraca's maracas! Obviously!"  But then again it was Susan, she of the children-hating-French, so perhaps I'll let that one go too.  But then it gets a little worse, when My-Py's Tom - nice, smart, gentlemanly, geek inventor Tom - decides that yeah, Christopher Columbus is like, totally English.  Absolutely Tom.  It even says it on his birth certificate, y'see, right there next to his name....Cristoforo Colombo....and his birthplace - Genoa, that lovely hamlet in the Home Counties. 

But I think, possibly, the absolute clanger of the task was not a grammatical error that, let's be honest, only people as pedantic as me would care about, nor was it the moronic maracas reference; I'd probably even let the whole cockney Christopher Columbus mix-up slide as well because, come to think of it, "Would you Adam and Eve it, fellas? We've only gone and reached Asia*!" seems completely plausible. I think, on reflection, it was the small, teeny, 2.1 million people-sized whoopsie of Team Venture's Mexican restaurant, complete with its jaunty sombrero, being named after the capital of Venezuela.

As a small aside, I'd just like to finish off this post on an uncharacteristically non-ranty note.  Each one of those candidates was chosen for their terrific careers; be that in sales, entrepreneurship, youth work or just generally being a high flyer in the business world.  Yes, they were also picked for their appeal on TV, and - similar to Jeremy Kyle's only-if-you've-never-visited-a-dentist criteria - the Apprentice candidates must also have failed GCSE Geography, but they were each exceptional achievers and willing to put themselves out there, not only under the scrutiny of Lord Sugar, Nick's cat bum mouth and Karen's on-the-money insights, but in full glare of the British public. Yeah, sometimes they got their countries mixed up, sometimes they were pushing actual bullshit up a hill or nailing it to a wall, but most of the time, they were out there, fighting tooth and nail to do something special with their lives.  Except Edward, he was looking for a stepladder.

* He was convinced it was Asia he'd reached and refused to believe otherwise. I like this man.

If you're so inclined...

Afternoon!  Sorry for the delay, I'm sure you were all(!) beside yourselves with suspense!  Truth is, I've had a pretty busy week so my social life hasn't been exactly breathtaking.  On the plus side, this gave me the rare opportunity to watch some fantastic TV, which in turn sparked an idea for a blog post.  I watched Lyse Doucet's documentary on Afghanistan during the week - not only was I eager to find out more about a country that the average person knows little about - often only violence, political strife and pain - but I also was interested to see how a woman would be received in a culture which is often considered to be very male oriented.  Having reported from Afghanistan for many years, Lyse Doucet had no such issues, it seemed, I imagine because she had proved (not least by speaking the language) that she was interested in the people and their lives, not just the latest story or scandal or political maelstrom.  She is quite clearly in it for the long haul.

But it was something that was said when she visited an isolated community, called Paicotal, that really struck a chord with me.  First of all, let me give you an idea of the remoteness of Paicotal.  I'd love to be able to talk knowledgeably of the geography of Afghanistan and give you a really detailed (and smug) set of directions, along the lines of "Just head north on the A76 from Kabul, then hang a left and head westwards just after Chanikar, otherwise you'll be stuck on the A76 'til you get to turn off at Khenjan, which we all know is a nightmare westbound at rush hour."  But quite obviously I got these place names from Google maps, and I'm actually giving fake directions to Bamiyan, not Paicotal, because the latter is too small to be on Google Maps.  Moreover, Google Maps wouldn't give me directions, even to Bamiyan.

But this is more than geographical remoteness, (a clue to which might have been the fact that they went by donkey) it's how remote the community is from any of the luxuries that we've come to consider as absolute staples of "normal" life - our loved ones being able (should they so wish) to have gainful employment near to where we live, an abundance of meat if we're so inclined, wheat to make bread, electricity, news of what's going on in our own country, not to mention the rest of the world. At one point when talking to a group of women, Doucet asked what they knew of the situation in Kabul.  The answer was: very little.  To our minds this seems absurd - we of the email notification when a celebrity sneezes.

But I digress.

The point of the exchange was not to highlight the differences between our society and theirs, but some of the the similarities; having a giggle with your girlfriends and maybe a dance of a Friday evening.  It doesn't matter whether your dancefloor is a tent in the middle of the Afghan mountains or a disco-balled dance hall called the Sequined Supper Club (don't judge me.)  The point is that on the inside we're all more or less the same - we crave human interaction, a sprinkle of laughter and a lot of love.  It doesn't matter what your passport says; it doesn't even matter if you don't have one, we are all humans.

Right at the end of the piece in Paicotal though, Doucet made a comment that had me reaching for my notebook and swallowing an unexpected lump in my throat.  She observed that these similarities didn't change the fact that when she left Paicotal, she'd be going back to her life, and they back to their lives; "lives that are, for the most part, determined from the day of birth."  I've been thinking about this ever since.  In my mind it links to what I said earlier in this post, about the "staples" that we've come to expect; food, news, water...anything we want if we're so inclined.  Our lives aren't determined from the day our umbilical cord is cut, nothing tethers us, umbilical-like, to places, responsibilities, jobs, food types, people.  In some instances that's a bad thing - if we're so inclined we can leave our loved ones, shirk our responsibilities, all under the auspices of "freedom".  Sure, we're free, we get it, we can do what we want, whenever we want, alright?  But most of the time, we're just using that freedom in a negative way, or a lazy way.  A great many of us have the choice to follow dreams and nurture our talents without hurting people, we're just not inclined to, or we're scared to.  I rather think that the people of Paicotal would be pretty appalled at how we are determining our lives, or more accurately, that we have the choice to determine them and we just don't bother.

"Sustainability"

As evidenced on Twitter today I had a bit of spat with an associate at a meeting which I'd like to go into in minute, excruciatingly boring detail for all of those who weren't *lucky* enough to be a rock on my Twitter stream today.  Many (I am an eternal optimist) of you know that I am in the field of sustainability - I actually had to fight the urge there not to put the word in inverted commas à la most people who introduce me at meetings.  It turns out that if you work in the area of trying-not-to-bugger-everything-up-for-everyone-else you get your very own punctuation with your title - thankfully the ickle baby speech marks aren't as heavy as the tree we're expected to cart round with us at all times for impromptu hugging sessions or padlocking emergencies.

The spat stemmed from a simple - though evidently highly hypocritical - action of mine.  Imagine the scene: ten of us, small meeting room, smaller window, typical British summer weather outside (lashing rain and force ten gales) - so I, in all my wisdom, turned the lights on.  Cue the "witty" and clearly rehearsed "Ooooh! Turning the lights on, are we?? Thought you were into "sustainability!"  Yes, because clearly this bestows infrared vision on all of us treehuggers.  I'm pretty used to most people finding the whole concept of "saving the planet" at best new age-y and barefoot, at worst some sort of hare-brained, dope-fuelled scheme thought up by Swampy to steal money from innocent, tax paying citizens.  I am the first to admit that the science is confusing and can seem contradictory - but the root of it, to try and ensure that future generations aren't igniting their farts to keep warm isn't exactly a hangable offence, is it?

As you can imagine, the recent cold winters have been particularly frosty for us "green people" - "Global warming?? You're having a laugh!" as they shake the snow off their boots and try to stab us with the nearest icicle.  "Climate change, it's called climate change actually" can be heard, muttered, through the gritted teeth of fellow "environmental types."

Whether we've had an effect on global temperatures through our flagrant disregard for the laws of nature and our out and out greed is a matter for debate - whether we're using up our natural resources at a blistering pace is not.  Us eco-warriors aren't out to get you, steal your money, brainwash innocent children and puppies - making the world a better place is a bit grand, but even so, it's not exactly a bad aspiration. And what if we go all out to try and achieve this and it turns out the science wasn't right?  Well, I think this cartoon sums it up perfectly: