We were in the ancient port town of Rye, West Sussex, staying at the Hope Anchor Hotel up a cobbled street at the top of the town. We'd topped off our celebration with some overpriced whiskies in the small bar downstairs.
The weather was beautifully warm - almost too much so for our non-airconditioned room - and so to bed and a heavy sleep.
I very rarely have nightmares, and never one like this. It was blood, blood everywhere, a dream coloured red. It was horrible and felt significant.
When I woke next morning, shaken, I turned on the TV as much to restore banal normality as anything, and got rolling news on a suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena the night before, killing and wounding many children as well as adults.
I don't claim psychic powers, but to me the dream seemed connected; as though a signal had been broadcast, of outrage at being robbed of life so early and unexpectedly.
I remember reading that many people contacted the FBI before the 9/11 attacks, with descriptions and drawings of dreams and visions that troubled them enough to make that effort; it's hard to find links on the search engines now.
Some will hurry to discount all this; but then there are two kinds of explanations: ones where you come up with various hypotheses and test them to see which one fits best; and ones where any explanation will do and no evidence is required so long as it explains away the phenomenon, like putting St Paul's blinding light down to an epileptic fit, despite there being no reference to his ever having had another one before or since.
Anyone who has watched it’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, will have viewed the scene where Jonathan Winters loses it and destroys Ray and Irwin's garage. At one point in desperation Ray turns to Irwin and says “We will have to kill him.” They fail, of course.
This last week has been a bit like that. After my last piece on the WHO it appears many have grasped what is being proposed and have come to the same conclusion. Naturally many who have a stake in this madness have given us a watered down version of the treaty and said it is not yet written in stone.
That may well be, but as the general public have no say in this it will be too late should the ultimate version be put into effect.
Still as a reminder of what we are up against, further statements and videos have come to light.
Remember this as a starter, later to become a classic reverse ferret and we are supposed to believe in the science…
Naturally no one mentions the dubious head of the WHO, one Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian with a rather chequered past - see under Election Campaign and other matters.
And needless to say he has a close affinity with a certain Klaus Schwab…
Two people I would not trust to run a food bank let alone world affairs, yet world leaders flock to their gatherings.
With the Chinese having a major input and Bill Gates treating the WHO as a subsidiary of his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as he funds most of it, this is not an impartial organisation despite being under the ever more useless United Nations. We have every right to be worried.
Neil Oliver, as usual, sums it up better than most:
The pandemic has certainly afforded these organisations the opportunity to advance their cause while most of the world had other matters to attend to and still does.
From a personal point of view I can see a trend that started near the beginning of the pandemic, and that was the distribution of vaccines by the richer countries to the poorer ones. Looking after our own looks ever more so last year. You can guarantee a ‘fair’ distribution of vaccines paid for by us will be baked into any treaty and signed up to by bankrupt states.
This fair distribution of wealth and everything else is behind the WEF agenda. The ‘you will own nothing and be happy’ phrase touted by Schwab doesn’t sound quite the ramblings of a looney in the Swiss Alps any more rather the beginning of the great reset, whatever that might be. Far too many of our elected leaders seem happy to play ball with unelected individuals, organisations and have them on board.
It will be interesting to see if anyone who is supposed to represent us will actually mention any of this?
Elsewhere the NHS continues its downward spiral with reports of crumbling infrastructure everywhere. Nothing new in this, we are the nation of crumbling or non-existent infrastructure as I pointed out in a previous article. With the vaults empty we can only hope the government does not revive the disastrous PFI initiative in an attempt to look good before the next election.
The Hospital in Kings Lynn not far from here is a classic example of a building not fit for purpose and hasn’t been for decades.
This is one of three local hospitals built in the Seventies to a price! And all have a concrete with a best before date that has long past.
Must be reassuring to lie in a bed post op wondering if the ceiling is going to collapse. Envy of the world, hmmmm!
It beggars belief that without a new hospital very soon bills could come in to this level to maintain the current structure.
“The QEH has been given £20m by the government for urgent repairs. Its roof will cost an estimated £550m to maintain for another 10 years - almost as much as the cost of building a new hospital.“
Like the potholes, putting off the inevitable always costs the taxpayer a lot more.
Bureaucracy has doubled since the outbreak of the virus we are told. With the NHS top heavy anyway in this area, are we surprised? Front line staff meanwhile remain static in a population that is increasing by a minimum of half a million a year with migrants.
They also have had some damning reports on hospitals ‘never’ events which are on the rise. Strange choice of word, 'never', when it keeps happening, but still.
The NHS are also guilty of cooking their own goose. With waiting lists getting ever longer for everything and no sign of an end game, they then advertise for people to come forward with problems such as a possible cancer; they get a large response because they have failed to treat anyone for two years then tell the same people they will have to go on the ever-lengthening waiting lists. True, they are stuffed, but advertising as though one can come forward and get treated when the truth is something else does seem to be a waste of money and just virtue-signalling.
Yes, of course people are coming forward: you asked them to.
It has been yet another good week for the non stop nonsense we call news these days. I finish with Nancy Pelosi, that plastic pneumatic octogenarian still tottering around on six-inch heels who has threatened through her dentures to cancel the trade deal between the USA and our nation if the changes to the NI protocol go ahead.
I am pretty sure she has no idea about any of it other than what she has been briefed on and as there is no trade deal to cancel as they won't give us one anyway she can be ignored for what she is, another addled politician hanging on for what can be leached from the nation.
Two of a kind, how did we get here…?
Perhaps Ray and Irwin were correct, there is only one way out of this as they suggested in the opening clip; but they will have to use the plural.
Last Friday (the 13th!) I was checking emails and then browsing for more music videos and I felt something on my head. Put my hand there and it was blood, lots of it. What the .....
I grabbed a small hand towel which very quickly turned red. I realised that I must have had another epileptic seizure, first for ten years, because there had been a momentary very intense 'aura' surrounding the screen and a blurring of vision. I had fallen off my chair, banged my head on something and then got back onto my chair without any memory recall of what happened. That pattern has happened before where I had a blip in my vision similar to seeing a film projector jump a frame in the reel.
So I dialled 999 and called for an ambulance after explaining the situation and two paramedics arrived within about twenty/thirty minutes. They went to a house further up the street but I was by then sitting at my open front door and I went out and waved them back down the street. They patched me up as best they could and loaded me up into the ambulance. They had a quick word with my neighbour who had just then got back from work and away we went with siren blaring and they delivered me to Cramlington Emergency care hospital. Meanwhile I'm lying there trying to work out what had happened.
They wheeled me into the 'arrivals lounge' which is just a long row of curtained off beds, a bit like a field hospital. Doctor arrived and started to assess the damage and eventually I ended up with ten stitches in my scalp. Must have been a hell of a clout to leave such a deep and extensive wound (but more of that later)
Waited for a while longer and then they moved me onto a ward, told me not to move or try to get up. They checked my BP which was dangerously low and eased me onto a waiting bed then threw a pair of NHS 'luxury' pyjamas which turned out to be 'one size fits all' in style. Almost wearing these ill fitting garments I lay on the bed while a nurse put my bloody (literally) pullover and shirt into a bag. 'Bloody' trousers and not so bloody underwear were on a chair in the bath/WC.
The style at Cramlington is a circle of individual rooms radiating from the central nurses desk area. They brought some food and the essential cuppa char and then checked my BP again which was too high this time and then the usual fussing about and sundry poking and examining etc and I just lay there and waited. Not much else happened, nothing of importance that I remember anyway. Around 3 in the morning nurse wheeled in the BP machine and it was 124/77 which is good. All subsequent BP measures were in a similar range so perhaps my BP problem has been resolved accidentally. Well, you never know!
Saturday morning and weetabix for breakfast. Where's the all-day-breakfast? That comes at lunchtime. Well it's obvious innit. They wheeled me around for a CT scan of my brain and later another room another machine for a chest X-ray. And then more waiting around lying on the bed and talking to the various nurses who wandered in and out to do whatever they were doing. Eventually a proper consultant arrived and he turned out to be better than average simply because he was willing to say "I don't know." which was one of the three options for what had happened to me; the other two being the epileptic seizure and a diabetes related episode. Finger prick for diabetes being one of the tests the nurses were doing.
And then they signed all the bits of paper for my discharge. While I was sitting waiting for one of the nurses to put a fresh dressing on the head wound I was idly peeling away the tapes around the cannula on my hand which had not been necessary but they do it as a matter of routine. I had managed to extract the valve and the needle without doing any damage to the skin or hand just as a nurse came in to do it. She told me off and said something about germs as she put a plaster on. Oh, I've met lots of germs in my life the only germ that worries me now is this one -
And the into an ambulance home wearing my bloody trousers and the jacket of the bile green NHS pyjamas, carrying the bloody pullover and shirt in a bag. And back in time for the end of the Cup Final which was as bad as my sore head.
---------
I think I've worked out what happened. Looking at the mess on the floor which now resembles a Jackson Pollock painting, I must have fallen off the chair and cracked my head on the radiator, ending up lying on the floor. That would explain why the backs of my pullover and shirt were soaked in blood and the front was splattered with blood dripping from the wound. I cannot remember falling or getting back up. My auto-pilot, the subconscious part of the brain which controls the functioning of everything in the body, took over and restored me to the last known conscious position before switching me back on. That is my understanding of it and is the best way I can explain it. If anyone has some other way to describe it I would be glad to hear it.
That was very strange sensation and explains how I didn't realise anything had happened until I felt that trickle of blood from the wound. The more I think about the auto-pilot function and how it works the more I realise that those who advocate the fusion of man and computer, the transhumanists, are insane. They haven't the faintest idea of what they are dealing with. The brain is not a computer, in fact it is nothing like a computer or any other mechanical device. I have learned a little bit from my experience with epilepsy; enough to know that I haven't the faintest idea of what goes on inside my head or anybody else's head! And neither does anyone else.
So it must have been an almighty blow on the head which is why they kept me in hospital and why the nurses were so keen to monitor my movements to the toilet and back.
The nurses were very good and there seemed to be a lot of them. One of the more senior nurse offered to take a photo of my wound as a souvenir; cheeky monkey! I talked to her quite a lot and I directed her to visit Broad Oak Magazine where she would find lots of wonderful posts. And during my brief stay I picked up a 'vibe' of exasperation with the management and stupid systems of the NHS. Just a few comments now and then which I overheard. It is the nurses who keep it running, the management is an impediment.
I rang my GP Monday morning to arrange for a nurse to call and inspect and clean up the wound, there had been a bit of leakage with a trickle of blood onto my scalp. A nurse arrived about twenty minutes after I had phoned. She said she had been doing her rounds and received a text message or something and she added me to her list. She cleaned the wound and changed the dressing and arranged to return the following monday.
When I read some of the tales about the NHS and people's experiences it can be alarming even frightening at times. I have had my own bad experiences to add to the list. But at the moment I seem to be blessed with the prompt arrival of the ambulance on friday and with a very good GP, having ditched the previous GP two or three years ago, plus a day visit to the local hospital recently has shown it to be much improved since I was last there about ten years ago. The previous GP once told me that the NHS has many problems but money is not one of them. A guarded reference to the NHS management, obviously. We deserve better.
Stupidity is not the greatest barrier to achievement...
Discworld author Terry Pratchett said that those who want to get on are held back by others who try to keep things as they are, like crabs hanging on to each other as one is hoisted out of the catcher’s bucket.
This is true in school. Those who know they will never be top of the class will find ways to prop up their self-respect, either by disruptive behaviour or by forming a cosy clique of failures.
Within this they may accept a leader. In a class I taught, it became clear that one individual was gathering a group about him and making underperformance a cool thing. How to prove it, and what to do?
A senior colleague told me about sociograms (see here for an example.). So I gave everyone a slip on which they were to write two names: one, the person they would like to sit next to in the classroom, and the other, which person they would nominate for form captain (boys for a boy, girls for a girl.) Obviously, this would test for empathy and respect.
Then I drew a diagram based on the results. The subgroup of underachievers became plain, with the suspected leader right at the centre. The clincher was that I wrote next to each person’s name their grades for effort (yes, you can tell, roughly) and attainment. This showed that the poorer the student, the more closely they linked themselves to the Leader, who was the poorest of all.
When I showed this to my colleague, he discussed it with school management and they decided to remove this negative influence; but instead of shifting him to a less able group, they moved him up to a class of higher achievers who were success-oriented and not minded to buy into his mission to spread failure.
Mixed-ability schooling may sound socially just and non-discriminatory, but has this tendency to form clustered resistance to maximising potential. If the teacher aims material and tasks at the middle, there will also be more able pupils who can do the work with little effort and leave themselves time to mix with Joe Cool the Charming (or excitingly Rebellious) Failure, who has developed his social skills instead.
This particular school was a ‘comprehensive’ but the classes were not. Pupils would be regularly assessed to decide which of three broad bands of ability they fell into, and within that, which sets they should go into for Maths and English. This encouraged the more able to compete with each other, and reduced the demoralisation of others by sparing them close working with the upper element. It wasn’t perfect - children would still know what band and set they were in - but better than a pedestrian educational mishmosh. There are worse things than ‘I know my place.’
An exceptional teacher might possibly handle a very wide spread of ability in one class, but by definition such people are in short supply; I think it was Brecht who said that you can’t have an army exclusively composed of heroes.
Key to a successful school is discipline - and this is where management earns its corn. Teachers will vary in their pedagogical skill, but students need to know that if they take on one they are taking on the whole establishment.
Unfortunately, for some time they have been able to do that last; I left teaching in 1989 and when I returned ten years later I was astonished at the rudeness and sense of entitlement of young people in schools; it may have had something to do with the Children Act of 1989:
“Central to this was the idea that children’s wishes and feelings must be taken into account when making decisions that affect them. Traditionally, parents were seen to have rights over their children, but the Act reversed this stating that children had free standing right.”
I have been looking online for a speech by someone at a political conference who said children were roaming the corridors ‘drunk with power’; very oddly, neither Google nor Bing has helped me find it.
But I can give an example of what happens as a result of this empowerment. A friend went from the disciplinarian school where I used to work, to another in the south-east where the management instructed the staff, as a standing order, not to confront students. During a surprise visit by Ofsted the inspectors saw the children running in from breaktime yelling and with fists raised, expecting teachers simply to let them past without comment. The management was ordered to a meeting and fired that day, and the school closed.
The adults need to be in charge.
This is where Katharine Birbalsingh comes in. In 2010 she addressed the Conservative Party conference on how a culture of excuses, of low aspirations and expectations has failed economically poor children, and how the Left’s well-meaning condescension has kept them down; her realisation led her to the ‘shame’ of voting Conservative for the first time in her life:
But she fought back, setting up a ‘free school’ - the Michaela Community School - in a disadvantaged and multicultural part of London. This school is based on a culture of rigid discipline and no excuses.
‘Right-winger’ (i.e. a moderate conservative as perceived by middle-class ‘revolutionaires’) Peter Hitchens fears that ‘progressives’ will seek to bring her down, rather than let her demonstrate that decades of fashionable soft-handed nonsense in education has failed. I do so hope he’s wrong.
Would it not be ironic to see the lower classes benefit from so-called ‘right-wing’ interventions when the Left’s policies have so clearly worked against their interests? If that seems an unfair characterisation, remember Anthony Crosland’s infamous statement when (Labour) Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1965:
“If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every f*cking grammar school in England. And Wales, and Northern Ireland.”
For example, a famous postwar study of London Transport workers was thought to have shown that people in sedentary jobs, such as bus drivers, were more likely to develop coronary heart disease than those whose work involved more vigorous physical activity, such as bus conductors (in the days when a human went round collecting fares from passengers.)
Much later, my GP friend told me, a flaw was discovered: it could be the case that those who intuitively felt their health less robust would choose sedentary roles. So it was possible that despite the large sample of people in the study and the fact that they had the same field of employment in common, like was still not being compared with like.
The notion that IQ is the most important element in success may also have its weaknesses. When the self-styled ‘Masters of the Universe’ bank traders have finally destroyed the economy and are dangling from lampposts like Il Duce the scorecard may read differently. During the Great Financial Crisis one broker is reported to have bought a flock of sheep from a local farmer in order to ensure his family’s survival. Your own imagination will supply a hundred practical difficulties and dangers that could follow from this decision. If he was that clever, why hadn’t he foreseen the crisis and planned for it well ahead of time?
Some maintain that IQ is heritable and that the average level varies according to ethnicity. As to the first bit, Sir Cyril Burt’s research on twins proved it - so people thought, until it was re-examined after his death and judged fraudulent; his notes and records were no help, as it turned out that they had all been burnt. Nevertheless, other studies appear to support the hypothesis.
As for the second assertion, the link just given says ‘The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.’
This doesn’t stop some people from trying to show otherwise; historian Simon Webb recently released a vlog citing the indirect evidence of a spatial aptitude test applied to applicants to the Royal Air Force. In this white British scored - on average - higher than Afro-Caribbeans and black Africans, but - oh dear - not so well as Chinese. Those of mixed b/w ethnicity scored - on average - in between b&w.
Remember the London Transport study and look for flaws: were the applicants all aiming for the same roles in the RAF? With the same long-term career ambitions? Why did they apply, but not others of their peer group? Who was advising them on career options? Did they (as seems very unlikely) all come from the same kind of family upbringing and expectations, go to the same kind of school?
It may be possible to improve your IQ; though there may also be a ceiling to that, just as you may train to run faster without ever achieving Olympian standards.
But more significant may be factors that permanently lower the individual’s IQ ceiling: ‘poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease are known to have lifelong deleterious effects,’ says Wiki. Poor nurture in early years may also hobble the child, which needs both sensory and mental stimulation to foster its development.
Poverty - or relative poverty, inequality - may well be a meta-factor behind many of these factors.
Then there’s the social environment and the development of one’s self-image, but that’s for another day.
Cartoon: two mammoths are lumbering along together. One has just stepped on a caveman, squashing him flat, spear and all. The first mammoth says to his mate, ‘Take it from me, brains are overrated.’
There is a theme of IQ threading through right-wing comment on immigration and ethnicity, implying that society is weakened by allowing less intelligent people into the country, or letting them have much of a say in how it runs.
This opens a can of worms, as the saying goes.
Let’s take just one of these worms: the usefulness - or otherwise - of high academic ability.
I’ll give an illustration from somewhere I once taught, an outstanding British comprehensive (all-ability) secondary school. One day, a local businessman phoned the headteacher and said, ‘I want one of your school-leavers to work for me. But he must have an O-level in maths.’ The old Ordinary-level examination was aimed at the top 20 percent of ability.
‘I’m happy to recommend someone for you,’ said the Head, ‘but why is the O-level necessary?’
‘He’ll be working in the storeroom, checking stock levels.’
‘You don’t need an O-level to do that.’
‘No, I really must insist, I won’t have someone who can’t count.’
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ said the Head. ‘I’ll send you a copy of an O-level maths paper and you tell me if that’s the level of skill you need for the job.’ This he did.
Next day the businessman was back on the phone. ‘I looked at that paper you sent me and I couldn’t understand the first two questions. I’ll go by what you say.’
So the Head recommended a youngster from the C band - the bottom quarter of the school, which then streamed children by broad ability. This lad was perfectly able to do something as simple as counting, but even more importantly he had a perfect record for attendance and punctuality, and was always smartly turned out, affable and obedient.
It was a perfect match, and got secure employment for someone who might easily have been overlooked because of daft selection criteria. Someone much brighter would have been climbing the walls in frustration and boredom after only a few weeks in the job.
The rat-race wind-up slogan says "Aptitude plus attitude equals altitude"; this misses the point that not everybody can, or should aim for the top.
