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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Febrile freedom fades


For the first time for five days I will have to get up at 6.30 am tomorrow.  And I will probably arrive home at 6.30 pm after a meeting to explain how to use the new computer “platform” for entering the most sacred thing in our lives – examination results!  And, as luck would have it, the new season of examinations starts tomorrow so that we will have something to put in to the new system!  Funny how things work together, eh?

Toni voted today (I am unable to vote as these are national elections) and, though not as a direct consequence, I think that we will probably have a new government tomorrow headed by the head of PP the right wing party which has this election to lose, given the awful stewardship of the so-called Socialists who have bumbled their way through the Crisis.

The other parties have no idea what to do, but according to the comfortable consumers who make up the student population of my school, as soon as the right wing government is elected there will be “lower taxes and more jobs”!  I am not holding my breath!

I have a feeling that many of those in power today are going to have a rude awakening tomorrow.  When Jack Straw was asked what no longer being a minister was like he said, “Well, being out of power is when you get into the back of a car and it doesn’t go anywhere!”

I fail to see what any government can do except for continuing the austerity measures that have already been started: higher indirect taxes; cuts in public services; continuing pay freeze in the public sector; possible “real” pay cuts in the public sector; closures of anything which the government feels it can get away with – and our new library in Castelldefels continuing to be empty of books and remaining unopened!

The polling station was in the school next to the British School of Barcelona (which is here in Castelldefels) and we had to fight our way through a positive phalanx of police who were valiantly guarding the integrity of the polling station by standing around and chatting with each other.  At least it keeps them out of the bars.

For the first time ever there was no queue at the pollo a last (the barbecue chicken place) though the quid pro quo for that was a rather scrawny piece of chicken and dry-ish chips – thank god I had the salad!

I have now read “Caliphate” by Tom Kratman an interesting if disturbing novel about what the author sees as an almost inevitable struggle between Islam and the rest.  He virtually writes off Europe as having given in to Islam on a continental cultural level which will lead to the indigenous populations being swamped by Islamic people.  It was written in 2007 and therefore long before the Islamic Spring, but it is a bleakly prophetic view of what is in store for the vitiated West with its lack of belief and its virulent (as he sees it) multi-culturalism.

I must admit that I have modified my views on multiculturalism over the years and look back and consider the emphasis that we placed on that aspect of education back in the days when I was active in the NUT. 

My mother always dismissed the high-sounding rhetoric about multiculturalism as building up a teaching resource that was really “nothing more than stories from around the world”!  I think it would have been of more benefit if we had given lip service to the concept and emphasised the acquisition of English (which to be fair we English teachers did!) and some version of our national literature and history more convincing than the shreds of cultural tradition which we were able to convey.

The television programmes have started to broadcast the beginnings of the speculation about the next government.  Virtually everyone expects the right wing PP to gain an absolute majority so Rajoy will become the next leader.  Not something I relish.

At least the sun has been shining today.

Which is more than it is going to do tomorrow.


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