FRIDAY MUSIC: Tom Petty, by JD

 Tom Petty (1950 - 2017) and the Heartbreakers: (the final lineup, 2017)

: Mike Campbell, guitar

: Benmont Tench, keyboards

: Scott Thurston, guitar keyboards harmonica backing vocals

: Ron Blair, bass guitar

: Steve Ferrone, drums

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Petty_and_the_Heartbreakers

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tom-Petty

Bump, by JD

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 - 

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Meet-the-GERM-team

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.

Education and the crab bucket

From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':

________________________________________________

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:

She was sacked for blowing this whistle.

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.”

IQ and racism

From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':

Research involving human behaviour is tricky.

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.

IQ - a right-wing issue?

From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':

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.

Warning signs

There are intermittent shortages of foodstuffs in supermarkets; now I hear from more than one source that they have noticed the sell-by dates on fresh fruit and veg have gotten much shorter and the perishables are looking less than pristine; presumably stocks are running low.

We already know that the harvest in Ukraine is likely to be badly affected by the war there. This post outlines some of the other problems upcoming:https://www.bournbrookmag.com/home/disaster-in-the-rye

Gonzalo Lira is predicting economic collapse and hyperinflation (25%- 35% in Europe 'minimum').

P.S. The Prime Minister has deferred the banning of 'Buy one, get one free' offers in supermarkets, citing the difficulties of poor families. The middle-class finger-waggers are protesting that BOGOF is linked to obesity. 

On the other hand a friend told us the other night he has seen mothers bringing used clothes into a shop in exchange for money so their children can buy lunch in school.

Perhaps it is time for overprivileged lifestyle lecturers to get their tanks off poor people's lawns. If the Goodies want people to be slim and healthy they should campaign for better terms of international trade so that the lower classes can earn a decent living.

WEEKENDER: The WHO, by Wiggia

                                           Or maybe we will………...

It appears our Churchill look alike! PM is about to sign up to the World Health Organisation’s proposal published in March for a global mandated response to any new pandemic…

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/coronavirus/pandemic-treaty/

If he does agree to sign or has done so already, this is another instance of a sovereign country giving powers to a world-wide organisation that the people of this country have no say in or any connection with. There has been no discussion in Parliament has been forthcoming, the health secretary has been mute on the subject, and putting the notion to the people is obviously not considered to be necessary. There is not little point in leaving the EU if you jump back in with someone else proposing blanket controls we have no say in.

You can guarantee it will involve large sums of cash, but Bojo is good at handing out our money to all and sundry. As someone succinctly put it:

“The gibbering Buffoon says we can't spend our way out of trouble, he made a good job of spending our way into trouble. “

One would like to think there would be a more cautious response to any future pandemic being handled in the same way as the world wide failures in combatting Covid. The one-eyed, tunnel vision official version of the scientific view that prevailed in that case proved not to be very effective other than in bankrupting nations. It is also very hard to ignore the less costly response in monetary and human terms of the Swedes and the States in the USA that did as well or better by not taking the lockdown route, 

Normally the official reply is ‘lessons have been learned’ but even that damage-limiting utterance has not been heard about the last two years, for good reason: the enormous waste of taxpayers' money on failed Track and Trace, poor PPE, huge sums given to companies with no manufacturing experience at all in the production of PPE, and the fraud that will never be clawed back. The last thing we need is a global organisation applying a one-size-fits-all solution across the world.

It beggars belief that the Swedes have agreed to sign up to this after their own way proved so much less catastrophic, not just in monetary terms but with the ability to maintain general healthcare and avoid the mental illness caused by lockdowns, plus keeping their schools open most of the time; unlike the experience of ourselves and others.

After the very obvious flaws in the way this pandemic was handled, why would any country want to put itself in a straitjacket treaty that prevents any straying from the chosen route? Something here is not right.

With the WEF meeting again in Davos in a couple of weeks with its “young global leaders” such as Trudeau and Macron on board, we are heading for New World Order lite, to be followed (if it carries on this way) by the full Monty. This is would have been sneered at two years ago as simply another conspiracy theory, yet it is becoming more credible as little by little the truth is revealed.

Even members of SAGE are backtracking in the light of damning new contrary evidence now coming to light…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10804993/SAGE-models-scary-held-weight-says-lockdown-architect-them.html

So why would we suppose that the WHO would do any better? The WHO also has Bill Gates on board with enormous funding and ever more say in the WHO's health strategies; he is unaccountable, unelected and yet through his wealth is at the table with world leaders influencing future vaccine programs among other things. Our own Boris has given millions to the Gates foundation. It is wrong, yet this seems to be a universal trend. I have no desire to have my health dictated to by such a person. It should stop now, but he gains legitimacy through the WHO and builds a bigger stage for himself.

He is not a scientist yet is invited to speak on scientific health matters; why?

Here he states that natural immunity with Omicron did the job ahead of any vaccines but he still wants to jab the world endlessly. He is, I repeat, not a scientist - and we have had some pretty rubbish scientists float to the top during this pandemic.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/bill-gates-omicron-did-a-better-job-moving-faster-than-covid-19-vaccines

https://vaccineimpact.com/2022/bill-gates-dream-to-control-the-planet-through-the-world-health-organization-is-becoming-closer-to-reality/

Why has no politician flagged for discussion the prospect of this country signing up to something like this? Nor has or any section of the mainstrean news media; yet they have plenty of time for cake and the Ginger Growler.