On the day we hear in the news media about the censure of a previous report claiming saturated fats do not increase the risk of a heart attack [I would guess censured correctly], I should like to confirm that any suggestion reading the pompous nonsense of Minister for School Standards Nick Gibb is also safe to consume is dangerously bad advice.

Waking up to the House of Commons Hansard transcript of the Parliament debate yesterday on the petition “Authorise open book examinations for GCSE English Literature 2017”, one could have fallen into the trap of tucking into its plateful of commentary like a few pounds of seemingly tasty sausages and bacon – but I am too health-conscious of the cloying effects of anything The Glib has to say on study and assessment in English, at any level.

The point is, I have only skimmed his response – a bit like trimming the fat from the bacon slices and pushing the sausage to the side – because the greasy gist of it all is a given. In a pompous breakfast feast, he trotted out all the old arguments for rigour and dated convention in examining, not understanding a single reality about teaching, learning and assessment. This is gleaned from a brief perusal of the traditional and expected fry-up he always sets before us.

The two Labour MPs speaking in favour of the petition, Helen Jones [Warrington North] [Lab] and Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck [South Shields] [Lab], did respectively and eventually speak convincingly to why the prevention of open book examination in GCSE English Literature – especially in the context of such examination from 2017 being entirely terminal – is a bad, educationally unsound decision. I was disappointed to see that these two both couched this within rather self-indulgent extrapolations on wider reveries about Literature and Chaucer and so on, but I suppose this is the convention of such debates. That Jones and Gibb were able to have a little oratory giggle about a Morecambe and Wise sketch made me want to regurgitate my breakfast.

Not that I had actually eaten, going on the computer with morning coffee and reading this causing me to lose any appetite immediately.

I will not trawl through The Glib’s response unpicking its saturated nonsense gristle bit by gristle bit. You can read the transcript, or actually watch the debate for yourself at the links below [Watch a recording of the debate? What kind of masochism would that indicate?]. The one piece of full blubber I will pick on is The Glib claiming the prohibition on an open book exam is all the work of Ofqual when we all know it is a part of the singular decision-making and/or suggestions of the previous Education Secretary Michael Gove, to which The Glib is simply another part of the continuing fatty sausage link.

Transcript here

Video here

I received the letter below a few days ago. My initial reaction was to laugh off its affront and incompetence: the audacity of thinking I or anyone else would fall for such a scam, and the ineptitude of its trying [e.g. the Chung/Chang error of its sender!].

However, having an elderly relative who is otherwise sharp as a razor but somehow continually believes in these types of scams, that reality does diminish any sense of humour. The fact this was personally addressed and sent as a letter, rather than the ubiquitous scammers’ email or phone call, demonstrated one kind of deceptive cleverness, as pathetic as that still is.

But I also considered, and became further wearied, how the blatant and brazen lying of its promises reminded me of current [and past] Tory promises as we enter this most cynical of all general election periods.

It does not originate from an illegal act. That’s all right then:

Pleased to have this poem here:

Source: from Theresa May’s speech at a Maidenhead GSK factory, 21st April, 2017:

Doing the right thing for ordinary working people across the country, who are

doing their best

working hard

just getting by

What drives me in politics – the passion that I have in politics – is to make the United Kingdom a country that works for everyone and not just the privileged few. But to do that you do need a strong and stable government…

Ping Pong and Table Politics

strong and stable

doing their best
working hard
just getting by

strong and stable

just getting by
working hard
doing their best

strong and stable

doing
working
not getting

not getting
working
doing

strong and stable

they’re
just
working

working
working
working

just
just
getting by

just
just
bye bye

they lose

Flying back from Manchester yesterday in the dark of night and somewhere over Bristol, I was naturally surprised to see quite clearly out of the window on the right hand side of the airplane where I was sitting, an easily visible, though not externally illuminated, flying pig.

It was at that precise point the stranger sitting next to me began to speak. That was equally unexpected as previously it was my friend sitting there, but this unfamiliar face and voice began to address me on the subject of the forthcoming UK general election in June.

He claimed in a calm and assured tone that for humane and caring voters the only sensible priority upon which to focus was getting rid of the Tories. He said – I think obviously and correctly – that no one Party at the moment could achieve this. He suggested there would necessarily need to be a coalition of opposition.

His idea, if I can quickly summarise, was how at the very least the Green Party, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party should agree to not oppose one another in marginal seats where it was likely any one of these [or other similar] Party candidates could be elected at the expense of the Conservative standing for election.

His further calculation was how statistically this would inevitably prove a successful means of reducing the Tory majority on the one hand, and on the other, if further factors additionally supported this, could possibly even displace them from leading the next government. Whilst acknowledging how that expedient coalition might well prove itself a problematic leadership, it would still be inherently preferential to a self-serving and mean-minded Conservative government holding power.

It was a longish conversation but this is the gist and it was very soon after the stranger had finished speaking that we landed at our destination.

No necklace today, but plenty of brass neck.

It is calculated and perhaps even cynical, but it is certainly an obvious decision. With Labour lagging, and with the reminder that she was never actually elected to be Prime Minister, Theresa May’s decision to call a snap general election is no real surprise.

So, little to say on this at the moment, but the major calculation that was even put into her not wearing a requisite necklace as she made the announcement today demonstrates how savvy political presentation currently is [is Labour watching?]. With her recent luxurious posing for Vogue magazine, and the previous expensive leather trousers debacle, the PR machine will have already been addressing how she is made to appear more in tune with the everyperson of the British electorate [assuming she already has the privileged in the designer handbag].

I have read Jim Burns’ fine 1996 poetry collection Confessions of an Old Believer this afternoon, sitting in the occasional sun, which when out was rather hot, and always genuinely warmed whatever the sky situation by the common sense of Burns’ poems where insight and honesty are so casually walked, without pretense, through ordinary streets of experience and memory.

These are largely reflections on writing poetry, a love of his parents [debunking in two poems Larkin’s famous negative aphorism on this], communism/Marxism and the working class, his growing up in the North, a disdain for lofty intellectualism, his travels to the USA and a few on Paris, and the world of the 90s [so just before too] where social inequality and other aspects of daily impoverishment in mind and body would seem to be as they are today.

He can be wry, teasing, always honest and candidly so at times, affectionate and knowing. Above all, there is such humanity in these poems, and their apparent simplicity – what I have called ‘common sense’ above – make them all the more resonant as you encounter their accessibility and then ponder the wisdom.

I suspect Burns would also debunk such observations with a healthy dose of genuine humility, so I’ll leave readers to experience his personal qualities for themselves when reading this collection – and I do encourage you to do so. Poems like Philosophy with George and Democracy both demonstrate how little has changed, these droll observations as pertinent today:

A number of Burns’ poems are lovingly reflective of his mother and father, the first here fondly conferring a philosopher’s gown to his mum; the second is another that reminds how little has changed in the UK’s social milieu:

I am closing with a fond reminiscence of his father, and I trust these extracts exemplify the appeal in their accessible wit, wisdom and warmth:

Chicago Morning

To Philip Guston

Under a red face, black velvet shyness
Milking an emaciated gaffer. God lies down
Here. Rattling of a shot, heard
From the first row. The president of the United States
And the Director of the FBI stand over
a dead mule. ‘Yes, it is nice to hear the fountain
With the green trees around it, as well as
People who need me.’ Quote Lovers of speech unquote. It’s
a nice thought
& typical of a rat. And, it is far more elaborate
Than expected. And the thing is, we don’t need
that much money.
Sunday morning; blues, blacks, red & yellow wander
In the soup. Gray in the windows’ frames. The angular
Explosion in the hips. A huge camel rests
in a massive hand
Casts clouds a smoggish white out & up over the Loop, while
Two factories (bricks) & a fortress of an oven (kiln)
Rise, barely visible inside a grey metallic gust.
‘The Fop’s Tunic.’
She gets down, off of the table, breaking a few more plates.
Natives paint their insides crystal white here (rooms)
Outside is more bricks, off-white. Europe at Night.