I was going to blog this morning about all the things we have not collectively done this year.
You know the sort of thing. Tackling climate change; inequality in all its forms; social security reform that really works; education for the real world. The list goes on.
But you and I both know this stuff. And we both know that a government hooked on delivering economic, social and geopolitical failure for this country has ensured none of these things can be addressed. So what is the point on dwelling on the failure?
Next year is going to be tough. Maybe very tough. But this is the time to dream about what is possible.
And that's not just tackling climate change, and all those other things. It's about the things that matter every day.
I've never been a massive fan of the commercialisation of Christmas. I never will be. But when it's about caring I do think it matters.
The single biggest change to wish for next year is a bit more caring. That would make a huge difference. I could do with that for Christmas.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
You’re spot on Richard. “The single biggest change to wish for next year is a bit more caring”
As usual your points get to the heart of the issues we face in today’s world.
Let’s hope next year we can start to see real change happen. Hopefully by focusing and helping direct our leaders on issues they are out of touch with (after all, the are not super humans and cannot do/see everything).
In my opinion they are overlooking vital issues. From an economic point, Tax justice is at the crux but also how the proceeds are used it to educate youth about important changes and the subjects that should be forming part of their education syllabus, environment, resources, extinction of wildlife, etc, etc, and how wealth is being distributed/transferred and controlled by a small percentage/group, as you say in the real world, the list goes on………but are today’s youth being taught to focus on the appropriate subjects and issues that face them in a rapidly changing world? perhaps their subjects are outdated and need replacing.
My thoughts will be on how to influence the Government to make real change and retrieve tax avoidance money that can help all those poor people who have nowhere to shelter this Xmas. Your work in this area has been priceless, more need to read it.
Merry Xmas and best wishes in your endeavours in 2019.
Trevor
Thanks Trevor
I think that you right but how I would say it is that we now coming to a period of time where the hyper-individualisation and the negation of the state begun the Thatcher era starts to generate even more chickens coming home to roost.
When the Tories got into power in 2010 vowing to ‘finish the job’ of their figurehead, the tore up social housing regulation only to have to start to tell us to care more about our tenants once again only later this year as a result of the Grenfell Tower fire.
At Gatwick Airport, the lack of intertest in what people do with drones and budget cuts to security plus laissez faire attitudes to almost everything resulted in people’s Xmas travel plans being aborted and many people’s year ending in misery.
The NAO has manfully stuck to its job pointing out that more homeless people than ever before are dying on our streets and in our parks. Brokenshire pretends to care.
And insiders and outsiders everywhere have pointed and still point out what a mess Universal Credit actually is.
I think that you are right – next year is going to be really challenging. Let’s enjoy the break whilst we can.
‘Like the new picture of yourself BTW. Very distinguished!
15 years old…….
PSR
You may need a visit to Specsavers
“…..15 years old…….”
Surely not ! It looks like the photo of a man approaching middle age rather than in his teens 🙂
🙂
A LOT more caring.
Thanks to all on this blog who made me think until my head hurt.
Happy and peaceful Christmas
Well, I’m going to wish for more cooperation first, it might be more achievable, and would lead to better understanding of others…and more caring from there…? Ok, that’s me dreaming again, good time of year for it.
In reality, there are probably too many un-evolved or badly evolved Humans ‘leading’ us for your wish to come true, and mine too…it seems to come with the nature of badly understood leadership.
My question is what can we do to side-step them?
Many of those Humans are leaders because they have unscrupulously trampled or cheated on many weaker, quieter, or more honest than them.
If the Law of the Jungle doesn’t get checked by those who’ve learned that cooperation is the only way to survive, caring more widely will not happen.
Many mechanisms have been invented by society to regulate this natural trait, but often, they are by-passed or perverted by too many, too often.
The balance has gone haywire right now it seems.
You know all about this in your work, you know the creativity used to by-pass rules meant to protect fairness, so that not just the very rich and powerful, but everyone can be looked after and given a decent standard of living.
In my field, later in my career, I saw Education being by-passed, it was becoming exam coaching.
Increased competition between schools had caused that. The Law of the Jungle was winning in our State Education system, this started in the 90s.
Caring became a useless distraction from reaching the top of the league.
Management went along, for fear of Estyn (Welsh Ofsted).
Good, confident teachers carried on teaching, not obsessing about league tables, but many became obsessed with delivering 100% A to C, with kids along the way who, not being great at particular (usually academic) subjects, must have felt inadequate. What sort of a system is it that makes kids feel inadequate!
Vocational subjects, Arts or Sports were often a way for those kids to feel valued. Now, funding for those subjects is being cut.
Most of us were in the job to see each child, academic or not, discover what makes them tick, and feel valued for their skills, whether that’s woodwork, hairdressing, or physics.
I wanted those learning French with me to love learning as much about the culture as about the language, and not be discouraged to take the subject because the management thought they wouldn’t get a C. (One of my biggest joys to this day was to see Nathan, a boy with autism, manage to get a D! Big smile on result day…well, almost a smile anyway…).
I want to see a push for more high quality vocational education and for it to be recognised as just as important as academic education.
Many of us were really frustrated by the turn things were taking in the 90s, but unable to influence decisions made in Government.
There was little listening to practitioners, I don’t think that has changed much.
The biggest frustration we had was to see half-baked academic theories being pounced on by politicians as a means to ‘put their mark’ on their new Department for Education, many of them (not all, there were some good ones, not for long enough…) not having understood that if ‘chalkface’ practitioners weren’t included, or consulted during development of promising innovations, these theories would hit the wall of reality when poorly implemented and funded, and produce educational victims along the way.
There is an important point here: theories need practioners to understand them, put them to the test, evaluate them and discuss possible application (or not) with academics. Cooperation. Again.
Education Ministers moved on to the Departure for Transport, or the Economy, or the Environment…caring? Some did, too many didn’t, career first.
Many of those Ministers come from the same type of schools…a financially selective private system which some have tried to copy&paste practises and values onto the State School system.
Making competition into a virtue, they believe.
I’ve seen the results. It makes far too many victims and at educational level, at least, is counter productive.
Cooperation works far better, and promotes caring, in the long term, far better, not just in Education.
Do they promote enough cooperation in those schools, or too much competition?
More of the former, then the rest might follow?
The pressure for particular grades is horribly destructive
It shows a total lack of appreciation for the person
Marie Thomas
“…..there are probably too many un-evolved or badly evolved Humans ‘leading’ us …..”
No, No, No, Marie. Tut tut….nothing to do with anything as fundamental as evolution.
It’s all down to bad potty training.
Politicians caring enough to represent the majority view of party members would be a nice start!
Might you have someone in mind?
I love the Christmas message of “Joy as an act of resistance” from Robin McAlpine
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/13694/robin-mcalpine-joy-act-resistance
Wishing for some kids to build a blanket fort or two!
I like it too
It’s not what you mean and I know that, but English being English and a strangely ambiguous language at times, I’m deliberately misinterpreting your use of ‘caring’ applied to my own thinking and attitude..
I’m really beginning to not-care in the sense of ‘not give a toss’. This has to change.
We’ve had decades of the not-caring politics of self-centred self-advancement alluded to above and in contributions too. Two and half years of the nonsense of Brexit has taken the attention of far too much energy, at every level of society, away from many of the issues that affect our day-to-day lives, and our faith in the future too.
At bottom, it has all been about money. As if that somehow is what defines our lives as if it were a force of nature we are unable to control or influence. Yet it is entirely our own creation….thinks ……Dr Frankenstein’s ‘monster’. To some the overriding consideration of Brexit is whether or not and when ‘we’ have to pay £39 billion, or some other sum, to the EU….as if the numbers matter. As if that price ticket means something. I don’t, personally, think it does. One way or another it is of minimal consequence.
Brexit has been a disaster. And that’s before we’ve even got there and resolved the essential in-out issue. Brexit has been such a waste of time because we have argued about the detail of something which is ‘fantastical’ in it’s intentions. We might just aswell in terms of resolution have discussed the population of angels on a pinhead. I truly believe it has been that pointless.
Having engaged in spurious point-scoring politicking our political class has ignored the issues we need to ‘care’ about. The issues you raise and which are endorsed and referred to by contributors above.
2019 is crunch time for Brexit and how we extract ourselves from this ‘clusterfuck’ is going to shape our lives for the foreseeable future. I live in hope that our politicians will have time over the winter break to put their brains in gear and come back to the Commons in January and take some responsibility for the mess they have allowed to develop out of nowhere. To behave in short like responsible adults and sort it. Only then are we going to be able to address the important issues of making the component parts of the UK function as societies fit to live in.
How you have managed to fairly consistently keep your eye on the ball, (balls; plural, really) of the issues that matter relating to tax and financial,economic, and political accountability in amongst this background maelstrom of bullshit, I really don’t know, Richard.
I take my hat off to you.
And my resolution to myself for 2019 is going to have to be what my friend, Mo calls ‘putting on some big pants’.
……but there are the festivities to survive first.
I rarely feel I do that well
But there is always tomorrow morning, I tell myself
A little more caring? The Tory version might be to wish universal credit on us all! Paid weeks late after we’ve shelled out for child care with a payday loan.
Discussions are great!… A little bit care needed as said!
A bit more caring and a good deal more caring in action. Smith, in his greatest book, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” discussed virtue and drew a distinction between actions which seemed designed to attract praise and actions that were “praiseworthy”. If our politicians gave more thought to the latter rather than the former perhaps we wouldn’t be in the current mess.
I cannot hear the term ‘Moral Sentiment’ without recalling this:
“A Moral Principle met a Material Interest on a bridge wide enough for but one.
“Down, you base thing!” thundered the Moral Principle, “and let me pass over you!”
The Material Interest merely looked in the other’s eyes without saying anything.
“Ah,” said the Moral Principle, hesitatingly, “let us draw lots to see which shall retire till the other has crossed.”
The Material Interest maintained an unbroken silence and an unwavering stare.
“In order to avoid a conflict,” the Moral Principle resumed, somewhat uneasily, “I shall myself lie down and let you walk over me.”
Then the Material Interest found a tongue, and by a strange coincidence it was its own tongue. “I don’t think you are very good walking,” it said. “I am a little particular about what I have underfoot. Suppose you get off into the water.”
It occurred that way.”
Ambrose Bierce (1824 -?) Fantastic Fables