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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