Learning Resilience at £25 an hour

An article in the London Evening Standard on Wednesday 15/2/12 reported that teenagers are having to be taught resilience to be able to cope with failure in sports or exams and general difficulties in life.

Surely this is proof positive that a good many children are overprotected - having to be taken to and collected from school, phoning parents to be picked up instead of finding their own way, not expected to undertake any tasks at  home not having any understanding that money doesn't grow on trees, never having the idea they could do a paper round or a bit of gardening for an elderly neighbour and earn a bit of pocket money.  Not, in fact, wanting to get their hands dirty.  Not willing to do anything they don't want to do.  Not understanding that, usually, people will only pay you to do something you wouldn't do otherwise.

We seem to propagate and even enjoy the idea that the streets are dangerous and allow the children to believe it.  In fact, the more we believe that, the fewer pedestrians there will be and the very emptiness becomes a temptation to evil doers to have their wicked way.  Children, on the whole, prefer to go out  in twos and threes anyway.  Let them build their courage together and have a bit of pride in, for example, reaching 11 and finding that they can go down to the shops alone and get that forgotten litre of milk or buy some fresh rolls for breakfast.  Without scaring them, they will have to be told the same old things that we who used to walk to school alone from age 6, were told.  Don't talk to strangers, don't get into anybody else's car, don't accept any food or sweets from a stranger, if you get lost ask a mother with a child to help you - or a policeman, who were to be found walking their beats in those days.  The dangers were there in the 1930s, as they are now, we just didn't expect to go through life without meeting any.

Peter White, that successful totally blind-from-birth broadcaster tells the story in his autobiography of being sent out on his first solo trip to the corner shop at age 11, the fear he felt and the consequent pride when he got home triumphant with his purchase.  He did not know that his mother had followed him all the way.  Parents of sighted children can't do that, but just have to bite their fingers till the little darling gets home.  But we do owe it to the children to see that they aren't so pathetically over-protected that they need lessons in resilience later on.  Life itself is meant to be the lesson in resilience.

Why would Prince Charles be in a hurry to be King?

I wonder why everybody, including those very clever clogs at Private Eye, thinks that Prince Charles is in such a hurry to be King?  He now has the freedom to do all the useful things he does do, above all at the Prince's Trust, which has substantially helped 650,000 young people over the 35 years of its existence.  As is evident from all the publicity there has been about the Queen's life recently, a whole lot of it is spent doing her duty, which involves endless handshaking and being the figurehead for the Country and the Commonwealth.  The Prince probably observes her doing a very good job and appreciates all the more his present ability to do what he is most interested in.  Being the Monarch doesn't seem to me a very pleasant task at all.  Thank goodness the Queen can still perform it so well - and thank you to her.

Ski-trip coach accident in France

I feel so sorry for the poor coach driver who has had his whole life and career damaged irrevocably because he dozed off at the wheel, killing a teacher and injuring several children and traumatising the rest.  This is yet another example of essential extra staff not being hired in a cost-cutting exercise.  It is well known how soporific night-driving is and there certainly should not be only one driver on such a trip when it is taking place at night.  Every driver knows of the danger of dropping off, even for a second, and surely the people responsible for setting up this trip are drivers themselves.

No law is needed.  It is sufficient for parents and teachers to refuse to allow the children to go if there are not going to be two night-time drivers.  What is the cost of the wages of one extra driver divided between so many?  And how worthwhile the expenditure of these few pounds!  We have to extend the range of our own responsibilities if those in charge are not able to take them on.

Mega-Concerts in Hyde Park

Hyde Park belongs to all Londoners, not just the privileged few who live around it.  How can the desires of 100 or so of those outweigh the pleasure of the thousands of people who enjoy the concerts?  To me that makes no sense at all.

Let the killjoys go out to dinner on the nights of the concerts or enjoy one of the other entertainments London has to offer and leave the park to the pop fans.

The Price of Food

Yesterday I went to Croydon Market.  I bought 8 huge, lovely navel oranges for £1; 12 bananas for £1 (neither too green nor too black); 3 large avocados to ripen, £1; a large bowl of tomatoes (12, red and firm) £1;  a bowl of  9 pears (granted, not pretty enough for supermarket shelves, but, from experience know that they will not taste any worse for that) £1; 1 pound of good-sized, white, closed button mushrooms £1.  I could have also bought 3 Savoy cabbages for £1, but am old and can't carry too much and anyway how long does it take for 2 people to eat 3 cabbages? 

Taking into account the huge bargaining power of the supermarkets for wholesale prices it is hard to imagine how these small traders can manage to sell their produce so very much more cheaply.  Avocados, for example, are usually 65 pence each, or more in the shops.

Apart from that, it is so much more fun to go to market and have a bit of banter with the traders.

What makes anybody a Christian?

Richard Dawkins has raised the question of what constitutes a Christian.

When I go to hospital, which is usually the only occasion on which I'm asked to state my Faith, I always put "NONE" on the form because I absolutely don't want any parson to come along and pray over me or exhort me to confess my sins or ask me to prepare to meet my Maker.  So in any official census I'd put myself down as an atheist.

However, there is just one rule I find most useful in life, and that rule was laid down by Jesus Chist, "Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself", or "Do as you would be done by."  If we all adhered to that there wouldn't be any need for the police.

So I think Jesus Christ was the greatest of all the philosophers, but that still leave me an atheist.

Danger of Electrocution

Everything in my house is old, like me, but I feel that my life-experience is up to dealing with them.  I like to soak in the bath in the morning and listen to the radio, plugged in in the corridor just outside.  Recently it has taken to talking very softly, so I put a stool in the doorway and listen to it from there.  However I am conscious of the danger.  Years ago somebody I knew electrocuted themselves just by adjusting the radio while in the bath.  Probably this was because it was before all plugs were earthed, but there must still be a reason why there are no electric outlets in bathrooms.  I am very, very forgetful, but did not forget not to touch the radio while soaking.  I wonder if this is an out-of-date precaution?  Decided not to put it to the test!

Basildon and the Dale Farm Travellers

I'm so glad I don't live in Basildon, for they do seem to have spent millions of pounds very unwisely and unsuccessfully in trying to move on the travellers on the Dale Farm site.  They knew they needed a big budget for this - surely the best thing would have been, with this huge amount of money to spend, to make some arrangement with the travellers as to where it would be acceptable for them to move to instead of just spending it all on lawyers' fees.  Even if they had succeeded in evicting them all by this method, they are not just going to evaporate into thin air.  They must be allowed and to be willing to live SOMEWHERE.

I go back to the same old theme.  Isn't there anybody there able to come to a common sense solution?

Being a Bin-man in Indonesia

Congratulations to the BBC for this 1st in a series of 3 programmes in which British workers discover what it is like to pursue their profession in other, much tougher, parts of the world.  Wilbur Ramirez leaves his magnificent vehicle and rubbish neatly wrapped in plastic bags in a London borough to join Imam on his quite different work experience in Jakarta, population 28 million, the capital of Indonesia. He spends 2 weeks there.   The first shock, the vehicle in question is a handcart, which has to be pulled from the terrible slum where Imam lives with his wife and child, to an elegant neighbourhood of enormous houses.  These have a hole in their front wall, and the rubbish has to be pulled out of that, loose, all jumbled together and loaded into the cart.  Imam jumps on it with his bare feet to reduce it as much as possible.  He also has to sweep up and clean out the drainage ditch which runs along in front of the houses.  He works for a Housing Association and is meticulous in leaving all clean, for at the least complaint he can lose this arduous and poorly paid job, but he is desperate to keep it.  Four trips are made in the day, taking the rubbish from 100 houses.  But the work is not finished, for then the family, together, sorts through it all to separate out anything that can be recycled, paper, tins, plastic, glass.  Then that has to be taken to a merchant who will buy it for a little more much-needed money.  Only a short night's rest on the floor amongst the rats and the flies and early next morning the punishing routine starts again.  They deposit their loads quite close to where they live and a lorry comes occasionally to collect it, but, in that heat, they have to live near this horrible, smelly pile.  One day Wilbur went to visit the landfill where the lorries deposit their loads.  Several, even poorer people live there, on what they can scavenge from this pile.  That is why there is no hope of Imam and the others creating a union and claiming more money, the people from the landfill will gratefully take their place.

This kind of documentary, involving a person to whom one can relate, for Wilbur deals so well with his change of working conditions and, in spite of language difficulties, makes  himself loved by the family,  is very effective.  Big, strong Wilbur is moved to tears by the conditions about which he could do nothing.  The representative of the Housing Association did, for the cameras,  promise to increase Imam's wages in 3 months' time, but we don't know the real end of the story.

I look forward to the next in the series, even though they are gruelling viewing, for I do think we need to know.