To say that I am exhausted would be an under-statement. However, to say that I think I have found a job (teaching) that I love, in a sector (education) that, while I may not agree with every direction it is heading in, nor appreciate the rules 100% of the time, at least doesn’t make me want to give myself a lobotomy, would be true. And this makes me rather happy.

What doesn’t make me happy is the recent McCormac Review, which paints teachers in some ways as feckless layabouts who can’t be arsed putting in the hours. At the same time, it contradicts itself by stating that teachers are wonderful and angelic professionals who always go the extra mile. It then says that teachers should not be allowed to leave school premises during school hours, like we are a bunch of fourth year lads and lassies who might scare shopkeepers by entering the outside world in more than pairs at a time… It is quite bizarre to me why this point is even in the Review, as, in my albeit minimal experience, no teacher leaves school during school hours unless they are on a school-trip or have forgotten to pack their lunch…

Ah – teacher’s hours. Teacher’s holidays. Two subjects likely to cause outbursts of denial and anger, rage and individualism in many a trolling commenter. If I were to be defensive at this point, I would state the hours that I have worked since August – penning you a detailed list of the 60 hours, 80 hours, 38 hours, 72 hours a week that I have variously worked since starting. I would also point out that, as a teacher of current affairs and politics that, to be any good at my job I have to pretty much constantly be updating any of the minimal resources available for my subject, while also planning lessons and contributing to departmental work and the wider school. I might also mention that it is exhausting, faintly stressful even at the best of times, and often involves young people speaking to you as if you had mortally offended their heritage and stolen their lunch money. I only do the latter occasionally…

It is only when I read overly-economistic drivel like the recent McCormac Review that I want to be defensive in the slightest. Teaching is very rewarding, and even when it feels like it isn’t (which is often – hey: I know this sounds contradictory) something will happen that makes it really rewarding.

“I just found out that you teach my brother in S2 as well – he loves your classes, he was saying the other night.”

Or “Miss Lindsay – you know that Chinese artist you mentioned the other day, well I asked my Dad about him and we looked on the ‘net and there’s this campaign to try to get him freed…’

Or even, though a small victory, when the boy who has spoken to you like you are every adult that has ever ignored, upset or belittled him, finally hands in his homework and it gets a C. And it makes him smile…

Shit – even when some kid says Good Morning, Miss it can make my day on occasion.

Anyway: I think teacher pay is nice. That there are no jobs whatsoever, no chance of progression, an increased pension contribution in the pipe-line, a seemingly ever-increasing public attack on teachers, an onus to solve every single one of society’s problems, a complete lack of time on occasion, behaviour issues, a changing curriculum characterised by an almost complete lack of concrete detail, an age-old debate about what education is actually for and all the rest of it (such as the fact that even with a nice wee salary I still can barely afford to pay my bills because of the wider societal issues that no doubt it will be put on teachers to solve), it still doesn’t take away from the fact that, as a vocation as well as a profession, teaching can offer a teacher who loves it an exceptionally enjoyable work-life. Overall. You’d have to be deluded to like it all of the time, of that I am quite convinced…And you would be mad to stay in it if you hated it consistently: it is a job that requires a general love of it and empathy for teenagers that I can’t quite imagine in a lot of other jobs…

I hated school. I have no way of knowing if all schools were as bad as the one I went to, but in my experience of working in schools over the last year I have been overwhelmed by just how damn good some of the teachers in Scotland are. When I allowed myself to be, I was quite saddened by the thought of the teachers that I had in my own High School, who were clearly in the main de-motivated, cynical, fire-fighting all the behaviour issues at my school, unable or unwilling to meet the needs of able students (one of many examples: I was put in a cupboard to ‘teach myself’ in Higher Music, because the teacher couldn’t control the rest of the class – no wonder I plunked off…), and, as I understand it, fighting a system that needed a kick up the butt at the time for how much it expected for how little pay and recognition. Though I know that the McCrone Review has had its problems, it seems to be undeniable that it aided teacher motivation, retention of professional staff, and also gave teachers a much fairer pay deal that recognised the fact that the hours can be, on occasion, bloody awful. The notional ’35 hour week’ at the very least made a calculation of the average hours a teacher may work if they worked 52 weeks a year or whatever the bloody calculation was…

The suitcases under my pink eyes tell me that the holidays are needed – at the very least because I haven’t seen many of my friends since August… That the holidays are amazing and are undeniably long when we are all used to being flogged for every drop of ‘productivity’ that our employers can eke out of our creaking bones is unquestionable, but I think that we often forget that the salary of a teacher is based on the hours AS IF they worked the full year. To put it more simply: you are paid for the hours you work: nuff said. You have to work like a dog for the school year, and, since you have done your hour in that time, you have holidays…  What Cosla et al forget is that the teacher is the most important resource in the class: and while the school year may well be based on an “old, outmoded agrarian-based system” of harvests and what-not (Cosla spokesperson idiot), you will physically maim any teacher or pupil who you ask to be part of an institutionalised education for 52 weeks a year. Which is my crux…

Rarely is the educational rationale of changes to teacher pay and conditions explicitly laid out. In fairness to McCormac, he doesn’t hedge his words when he admits that a lot of his proposals are based on economistic criteria, ie, getting more for less. But, what is education for? Where does it happen? That schools are places that you learn how to socialise and how to learn are undeniable (hence the onus put on schools to solve problems as diverse as teenage pregnancy and writing a CV), but they are also where you can learn in-depth subjects that are important – not for any economistic or ‘skills’ based reasons, but because they are just…important. Heck – they are important for humanity, if that doesn’t sound too overblown…

Hannah Arendt wrote that “education is the point at which we ask ourselves if we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it”. That is the world. As it is. As it has been.

Basing the future of Scottish education on an imagined future, which is almost inevitably described as “un-knowable” (what the frick is the point of basing anything on that then, eh?!?) is misguided, dangerous, and damaging to the folks who are the point of this entire post: young adults; teenagers; children. You can be as pragmatic and economistic as you like, but if you are simultaneously saying that education is expected to solve society’s problems, then you damn well better make sure that you ensure it thrives instead of flounders. If education is, as I believe it is, about more than just schools, institutions, exam results, then you had also damn well make sure that you don’t demonise the folks who deliver it. Who deliver education. That would be all of us.

Assume responsibility, or, as the wonderful poet Graeme Hawley would say, “Show some f**king leadership.” Pitting the public against teachers is dangerous, wrong and, in terms of education it is about as rational as shoving a Grade 5 pianist in the cupboard to teach herself guitar…

Recently, Claire Askew, Harry Giles and Matt Macdonald have written really open and honest pieces about their various and varied struggles with anxiety and depression. I think this is an important thing to do. Sometimes, I struggle to know exactly how we can tackle the stigma of mental ill-health, as ill mental-health is part of a complex and possibly integral part of the way we live, the system we live under. Surely though, sharing mutual experience of the old Black Dog is a decent start?

While I am not a Marxist in any sense, I don’t think any reasonable person can deny that having the longest working hours in Europe, the highest childcare rates, a fractured sense of community and family, and, where we do have close family or a sense of community, we also have several factions that blast holes through it at seemingly any given opportunity – I don’t think anyone can deny that can lead someone to feel just a little bit shite. There is a frantic need for ‘achievement’ in life, defined almost exclusively in monetary terms, and a frantic need for admiration, because – well, by heck, we could all do with a bloody hug to be quite honest…

Because of all of this, having mental ill-health is often viewed either in terms of taking yourself ‘far too seriously’ or ‘over-exaggerating.’ At the same time, it also makes having mental ill-health far more likely.

Just get on with it! That’s life! What are you moaning for, lazy-bones – go make some bloody money! Go pen a glorious work of poetry if you really must – but make sure you sell it to an advertiser! Schmooze the arse off the media – go on, sell yourself!

In the arts and literary scenes, it is not enough to write well or to be talented: you must be known too. That creative people are trying to share a message of sorts to others isn’t really arguable, but the increasingly economistic way in which creativity is valued undoubtedly leads many creative people to depression and anxiety.

All of this isn’t to say that anxiety and depression are wholly systemic: that would be even more depressing and more than a little bit daft. Claire, Matt and Harry weren’t just writing about healthy, run-of-the-mill jitters and misery in the face of things that should make any right-minded person feel a bit miserable. It’s the under-current of it. The repeated ‘oh, here you are again…’ of it. The longevity of it. The ‘oh for christ’s sake, why are you here again?’ of it. There are warning signs that one starts to notice after a few years of recognising the important truth that, actually, not everybody feels like this…I reckon something might be a wee bit askew here… of it. Facing that little nugget is really difficult, and I applaud all three of them for really eloquently describing how that feels.

I used to suffer from really quite terrible mental ill-health. From the age of 15 – 20 I prolifically self-harmed, at first in the unfortunately ubiquitous way, hidden by many a long-sleeved jacket and then, from the age of 17 when I left home, through abusing alcohol too. This came to a head at the age of 20 when, after a prolonged period of experiencing life through either a drunken haze or a helluva hangover I ended up in hospital. During the prolonged run-up to this event, I didn’t appear depressed in the slightest. I socialised a lot, I held down a job, I paid my rent, I comforted friends far more depressed than I – and who I believed had far more reason to be depressed: why bother them with my rubbish? I don’t think I even fully realised how crap I felt. I would wake up and instantly burst into tears some mornings, but didn’t everyone do that now and again? I drank to sleep as I couldn’t otherwise – aren’t there poems about insomniacs doing just that? I was hardly unique. Plus, wouldn’t anyone feel a little bit anxious that most of their friends were at university while I was working a £6 an hour job that involved talking shit and separating people from their money? Ok, so I was plying my musical wares at gigs and open mic nights, but I was hardly doing what I had adamantly set out to do upon leaving home: y’know – ruling the world…

I was peacock-confident; I was young, slim and feisty and I embraced it. Even after getting out of hospital, I returned to work within two days and decided adamently to forget about it. Now that I’ve done that I know that it isn’t what I want to do. I had wanted attention. I had wanted to say to friends and family, Oh, for fuck’s sake, guys! Can I just rely on you a little bit? Can you not grab me and just tell me to stop being an arse? No? Oh. You think I am ‘reliable’ and (I quote) ‘a low-maintenance friend’. I was sick of it. I wanted to let people know I felt like shit, when I couldn’t even admit it myself. It didn’t really work…I just made people worried about me, and that is the very last thing I wanted to do.

I discovered live poetry about eight months after leaving hospital, entering my first slam in the April of 2002. It changed my life entirely – not least because I recklessly packed in my job, abandoned ship, subsequently spent time sofa-surfing at the Edinburgh Fringe that year winning a Tap Water award in the process and deciding that, hey, I’m moving back to Edinburgh… Glasgow had been bad for me, I decided. I blamed the city rather than my choices, and still refused to see that it was not circumstance but something else that had led me to that god-awful hospital bed with the drip.

During that year I think I first realised that I was actually depressed. It was pointed out to me that it didn’t matter if it was circumstantial: it was real, and I was ill, and I had to find ways to live with it. My lipstick might be perfect, I might be frickin smiling and I had no obvious signs of illness, but I was goddamn ill… I had times when I couldn’t remember conversations I had with people only days before. I got confused between what I had dreamt and what had actually happened. I have always had particularly vivid dreams, punctuated by bouts of sleep-paralysis: me and sleep have only lately become, (excuse the pun) happy bed-fellows.

 I slowly climbed out of it through a combination of changes. I stopped being such an, er, ‘social person’, when really, all I had been looking for was someone to love me enough to tell me to stop.  I had a lovely relationship for a year, moved back to Edinburgh, decided to go to university and use my brain.

University was wonderful. I discovered that I wasn’t stupid (something that still bothers me sometimes: feeling like a complete dumbo). I had always thought I was a little bit thick really. I hadn’t engaged with school, all of my friends were very clever – I just assumed there were two types of intelligence, and my type was well-hidden. I was good at writing poems that swore but were hardly readable by anyone who cared about things like, well, poetry… University changed that. I studied politics, religion and media for my first two years, focusing on politics and literature in my final two years. I got a first, won two awards and graduated in the year the banks imploded.

I continued to suffer from periodic bouts of depression while at university, but more prominent were the heart palpitations, the chronic sense of unease, a creeping agoraphobia and a sincere lack of social confidence. I no longer felt pretty, I no longer fet confident in my own skin – but by heck I would talk in seminars… I created a false dichotomy in my desire to put the old reckless Jenny to bed – you are either pretty or you are clever – I wanted to be clever and put all of my energy into that.

 I could walk on stage to 300 people while promoting a slam poetry event that I had co-organised and gained funding for, but if I had to meet a friend one-on-one for a coffee I would sweat and panic. Dating? Jesus…I almost messed dates up on purpose. Classic control-freakery. I started to leave swiftly from the stage after a reading and go straight for a cigarette, or to the loo’s, trying to avoid hearing any kind of judgement. I had plenty of that in my earlier years of performing sweary poems about shagging and alcohol. I was different now, was I not? So why was there something that felt just the same…?

When I eventually rolled my eyes and patted my Black Dog I was in a long-term, loving relationship with someone whose dog wasn’t so much a dog as a Wolf. This was in 2007, about a year after we came together – and though it was really painful, this time really sorted my noggin out.  It gave me perspective, though it was heart-wrenching. I purged myself once again of the things that were making me unhappy and we both helped each other to become a semblance of ‘happy’ in the loosest sense of the word. We had a lovely, quiet relationship punctuated by periods of mutual anxiety. We still do, though we are no longer together. We have both embraced the world, and while being left in any way is gut-wrenchingly awful, being left for the world is no bad thing – particularly when it was fear of that self-same world that held both of us back.

Studying politics and religion helped me recognise the systemic factors that had impinged on my ability to conquer the pursuit of happiness, while a loving relationship showed me how beautiful that world can be.

These days I feel healthy mind-wise. I am still prone to bouts of sadness, but I have had a helluva year and would have to be some kind of gerbil not to have been upset by some of what has happened. What this year has taught me though, is that the light at the end of the tunnel needn’t be the sign saying ‘dead end.’ However, there is still that sense of something missing – I can’t tell if that is something real or something fictional. I do know that it doesn’t feel – whatever it might be – out of reach. I don’t quite know how to explain that, but I guess it might be ‘hope’. Dreaming, hoping are very important. I think they are an integral part of being human, and when they are lost it is no wonder that we feel inhumanly alone. I don’t anymore.

It would be a nonsense to say that I am absolutely fine. I was officially diagnosed with anxiety and depression in my last year of university and remain un-medicated for both, having wanted to see what happened. I am aware how daft that sounds, but one of the things that causes my anxiety is not feeling in control, and, as the doctor agreed at the time, I have quite a remarkable hold on controlling it without medication. I think that, medicated, I would worry that I didn’t feel fine but that the drugs were hiding it and so I would be achieving nothing. I know this is slightly ridiculous, and perhaps I will change my mind at some point! However, having had this since I was 15, like Claire, I have become attuned to the times when I am likely to feel unreasonably rubbish and can take the necessary precautions. I eat well, I try to sleep better, I try to read a lot… I recognise when I am perpetuating the situation and try to force myself to ask for help from those friends who understand it. I am lucky to have such people!

That is why Claire, Harry and Matt’s postings are quite so important. It is knowing that you are not the only person to be feeling like this that helps. Ironically, almost – as a classic sign of depression and anxiety is going over-the-top in trying to make sure everyone else is okay even when you feel like a big bag of shit.

Each of the wonderful bloggers ended their piece with a list of things that scare them and a list of things that make them feel safe. Some I identified with  and others I didn’t – which completely negates one of the lines in my poem about depression, The Visit: “he might feel yours only, but misery is a sailor/you are but one of many ports…’ It is different for everyone – which is why it is so hard to treat. Anyway: here’s my tuppence-worth:

SCARED

1: Dying before I am ready. If there is one thing that I am definitely and emphatically *not* it is suicidal. I worry that this post reads really quite darkly, but I hope that nobody gets the wrong impression. Death is inevitable and perfectly natural and I have absolutely no designs to bring it any closer!

2: During agoraphobia/muddy head season: leaving the house. For any reason – even to go for a pint of milk. Unlike before though, I now force myself to leave the house. It sucks – and then sometimes it doesn’t…

3: Being called or thought of as ‘stupid’. If you even hint that I am, I am likely to attempt valiantly to prove you wrong, possibly insult your heritage, and then worry about whether or not you are actually right (even if you are a Class A moron) for at least a month. I haven’t found a way of controlling this one to be honest…

4:  Being ‘found out’: This is classic ‘I feel like a fraud’ syndrome. (There is a fancy name for it that I can’t remember).

5: Relationships (future): I just dinnae see em happening to be quite frank! This scares me a little. It takes a lot for me to forge a relationship in the traditional sense. I am almost 30. And (see point 1).

6: Confrontation with PSYCHOTIC CAPS-LOCK PEOPLE: Working in the arts, you inadvertently insult a lot of people, often completely by accident. (See point 7).

7: Not being in control: I don’t partake of the drugs (never have done to be honest), nor quite so recklessly drink of the nectar as I once did, for this specific reason.  I am a control-freak when it comes to me noggin… I want everyone to know where they stand with me, and I like to know where I stand with them. Instantly.  I like to know what is going on, and to be able to have sensible conversations with myself about the times when I act like a twat. Advantages of this for other people are that I will usually answer emails straight away, be perfectly honest with you at all times and am a terrible liar. Disadvantages are that I am a control-freak 

8: Poverty. I don’t know why this still scares me, given how used to it I am, but I worry about money far more than is probably sensible. I keep a diligent record of every single time I take money out of my one and only account, have no debt other than a stupid overdraft from my reckless years, and hate that I often have to refuse to socialise because I have no money. Having no money makes me act like Comstock in Orwell’s Keep The Aspidistra Flying, ‘cept no-one has so far described my debut collection as ‘full of promise’ 

9: The fact that feeling like this has most definitely held me back from doing things I should have done that might have made me happy.

9b: people constantly fricking reminding me of this…Grr…arg….

SAFE

1: Being on my own at least 3 nights a week. I like my own space. I know where I am with myself. And if I am being boring, then it doesn’t matter. I also use this time to write, with helps negate some of the ‘scared’ issues…

2: Being with those friends that I can trust.

3: Being ready.

4: Live poetry events where I am in no way responsible for promoting the event.

5: Home. This is why I am so utterly devastated whenever letting agents inevitably tell me they are selling the place I live to rich people. The house I grew up in was repossessed when I was 16 and I’ve been trying to go home (metaphorically) ever since.

6: Love – of family, friends and ‘misc’

7: Being tidy. (Oh my days, what a complete case study I am…)

8: Having enough money to get by.

9: Knowing that at least somewhere, someone completely understands all of this…

Thank you to Claire, Matt and Harry: that was both cathartic and kind of welcome…  I might well delete this within an hour of posting it, but I enjoyed writing it anyways… ta xxx

 It would definitely be going too far to point out that Letwin’s insistence on having an Aga in his constituency home and charging the taxpayer to service it on a regular basis (pre expenses scandal of course) was ‘inefficient.’ It just wouldn’t be fair to point out that the millionaire with a tennis court and a former part-time (8 hour per week) job with NM Rothschild at £60,000 per year might have been a little more ‘efficient’ if he had tried to understand the plight of the people that he is supposed to represent instead of pursuing his City career, but hey! That wouldn’t be fair…

Letwin loves ‘efficiency’, especially in public services. He seems to have forgotten that being a Member of Parliament is a public service and thus falls under the purvue of his efficiency drive… But then, he is certainly efficient at making use of his office to further his woefully inadequate view of the public sector as a sort of flimsy nonsense that can only be made better by his mates at KPMG, Serco, Capita, G4S and others coming in, taking over, and hot-desking nurses and teachers like a bunch of crazy dictators…

At least, that is the vision implied by Letwin’s recent assertions at the London headquarters of KPMG, and as reported by Daniel Boffey in The Guardian on Saturday 30^th July 2011. According to Letwin’s definitions, our public sector has ‘atrophied’ over the last 20 years and needs a good kicking. In fact, what is needed is some good old-fashioned “discipline and some fear,” in order to keep “providers” on their toes.

Spouting the usual thiny-veiled contempt for the public sector and its workers that has become so tiresomely regular from the government, Letwin proposes (and has already set in motion) policies that aim to turn our public services into a kind of mad supermarket aisle, where you can excercise “personal choice and power” by, presumably, deciding that the supermarket own-brand looks a bit “boring” and “vaguely socialist”, and getting Heinz to educate your kids, Branston’s to sweep your streets and fricking, I don’t know – Poisonous Bleach Co to perform your vasectomy.  And hey! If Poisonous Bleach Co accidentally castrate you, you can excercise more of that “personalisation and choice” by getting Cack-Handed Doc.Com to sew you up! It is a fabulous new world of power for the consumer! As Letwin states: “If you have diversity of provision and personal choice and power, some providers will be better and some worse. Inevitably some will not, whether its because they can’t attract the patient or the pupil, for example, or because they can’t get the results and hence can’t get paid.”

Makes sense, huh? It is capitalism after-all, and that works really well, doesn’t it? It doesn’t fail by its own rules at all…no sireee. And here’s the first problem, apart from, well, all of it. Talking about ‘choice’ is all very well if you are picking between colours of nail varnish, but if my ovaries get infected or I develop cataracts, I don’t want a bloody ‘choice’, I want a good, regulated doctor. Importantly, as a skint bugger, I would also like this to be free, which is one of the best things about living in this country. Currently.

But really, in the above scenario, I don’t want all of the doctors and nurses to have been snapped up by private healthcare providers who then charge the government by results. Nope. I want my ovaries disinfected and my cataracts treated by someone who isn’t terrified their management consultant boss is going to fire them if they don’t ‘fix’ me in ten minutes and get along the production line all-the-while being whipped by a dominatrix with a clipboard and a financial expenditure spreadsheet.  This happens already to be fair, but the heels will be sharper and the whip more barbed… Letwin talks like the public sector isn’t already held to account by the public – of course it is! And the fact is, Mr Letwin, that it is the very fact that it is the sole provider of most services that makes this easier to do…

But let’s look at another area of government policy with Letwin’s fingerprints all over it. Unrealistic Scenario:  I have a little baby one day and move to England (whose educational policies re: even getting your child a frickin’ place at secondary school are completely insane). I would like her to go to the nearest school to where I live, with the knowledge that she won’t be at the behest of some mad fundamentalist business tycoon oligarch and his interests, setting essay questions like, “Explain, in detail, why PFI is the saviour of Britain?” or ‘Citizenship’ classes on how to fleece the poor when you grow up. Unfortunately, my nearest academy is run by this very outfit.  I work and cannot drive, and so cannot really send my child to the next nearest school, which is ten miles away and is unfortunately a faith school anyway.

I don’t want ‘diversity’ of providers. I want my child to read, write, do math, perhaps learn some stuff…But why would I insist on this boring old socialist-indoctrination type of school? After-all, according to Letwin, it is precisely a “diversity” of providers that leads to efficiency and “excellence” in public services? Mad Fundamentalist Business Tycoon Academy may not be for me and my little lass, but what about Airy Fairy Jotters Are Antiquated High, just down the road? Or, perhaps, Gradgrind’s Academy for Progression to Eton? They have excellent results in the league tables you know. Oh… Really? There’s an entry exam? You need to be a genius at 9 to get in? And there’s a £20,000 a year (hidden) fee even though it is supposedly a state school? Ah – I see. So, all humans have choice, but some have more ‘choice’ than others, depending on how much money they have… That’s progress…if your head is on backwards…

Of course I am exaggerating. (I am, aren’t I? I bloody hope so…) But the logical conclusion of Letwin’s insistence on the wonderful transformative power of “diversity of providers” in, it seems every aspect of the public sector is, as in the private sector, a measuring of ‘efficiency’ by reducing people to mathematical equations. Public services are that – services. For the public. Can they really be measured with recourse to this? More importantly, Letwin says that it is “inevitable and intended” that some providers will fail. “Things may go wrong if they don’t live up to the aims that society as a whole is demanding of them.” So, using a ridiculous measure of ‘success’ by numbers, schools will inevitably find themselves unable to afford teachers and resources, hospitals will inevitably have to reduce the services they can offer while private providers cream off the lucrative operations and charge the very people – the taxpayer – that they are purportedly supposed to be providing a ‘public service’ to, and, presumably, this will provide us all with a lovely, efficient, streamlined, less bloated, more 21^st century system of public service…

I think Letwin maybe needs to meet the public before he implements any more policies…It would be wrong and dangerous to write him off as a crank, as some are wont to do. Letwin is at the heart of Conservative policy – as he was with Thatcher – and is an ardent believer in the power of privatisation as a force for social good. It is perhaps scariest in that he knows full well that he might be full of shit, but he wants to do it anyway.

In 2006, in a piece in The Times (Nov 26^th 2006) Letwin gave us a hint of things to come by saying that, in the public sector and in government “if no failure occurred this would have indicated that too little risk was being taken.” Also, “risk-averse bureaucracy is one of the causes of poverty. In a bureaucracy, there are no significant rewards for taking successful risks.” To unpack: get away with checks and balances; roll back the state; give any willing provider a go at helping abuse victims get off drugs/get back into employment/raise and educate children/treat your illness. It’s boring not to take risks! And, if it all goes tits up, well… It’s only the general public after-all…

It would be false and misguided to say that every aspect of the public sector is amazing, that all teachers are ‘efficient’, that every council worker feels a sense of public service…But Letwin’s desire to turn the idea of public service into a desire to jump through hoops for ‘stakeholders’ (that’s you and I, buster) risks turning us into an even more consumeristic, litigious society than we already are. We’re paying for this, don’t you know, we will yell at our children’s teachers, at the last lollipop lady, at every underpaid nurse… And, to add to the chutzpah, our money will not be going into rejuvenating the public service ethos, nor helping its workers. It will be going to the increasingly ubiquitous names on the government’s expenditure – A4E, Serco, Capita, KPMG, Babcock, G4S…

It wouldn’t be fair , and perhaps might be a little ‘inefficient’ a use of my time to look at how many of those organisations/’providers’ have ex-MP’s on their books wouldn’t it? Would it? And then compare that with the percentage of contracts they have been awarded? Maybe next time… In fact, if someone else wants to do it can they email me and let me know? I will then choose from the willing providers of the information, because the government makes it kinda difficult to find out exactly the correlation between the two… Wee bit inefficient, like…

Now: festival survival tips abound every year, so I have avoided the usual ones like ‘Make Sure You Rehearse.’ Pah! Boring! Oh, and you won’t be reading Make Sure You Hydrate either. You know this already, I am sure… What follows are tips for the man and woman of steely belly, ardent hedonism and passionate self-belief…

My credentials? I ran Big Word during the Fringe festival from 2002 – 2005, and then worked in a busy cabaret venue in 2006 – 2008, plying my wares at the odd late night burlesque show and slam, and generally grabbing what gigs I could. Last year, I was a consummate resident, convincing myself I would take in many an avant-garde theatre show, but instead hanging out constantly at the Banshee Labyrinth, home to all of the finest spoken word shows. Which are also free….(plug, plug, plug….Oh – and go to The Forest too!) I have been both exhausted promoter, gallant wee performer and entertained audience member – all of which have informed the tips I lay out below…

So – to these survival tips! Well, it is the 28th of July, so, let us start with some well-meaning preparation tips and advice….

PREPARATION TIPS/ADVICE
1: You Are Just About To Pass Your Last Solid Stool For TheForseeable Future

 For the whole of August, you will be living mostly on shit rolls from corner shops, Auschwitz chicken sandwiches from Greggs and the odd smoothie, that you will convince yourself is adequately healthy to counter-act drinking the recommended weekly alcohol levels for ten men. In a day. Enjoy this last movement, for yer bowels will not be working til late September. Buy some Rennies. Oh – and Alka-Seltzer. In bulk.
2: Tell Your Significant Other (where applicable) That You Love Them

 You aren’t going to see them for a month. They will be pissed off with you. They will be Very Pissed Off With You. As you crash in the door from the latest late-night cabaret/List/Three Weeks/Fest magazine party, where the object is to schmooze a review out of any reviewer you can charm enough, they will be making voodoo dolls out of your non-biodegradable flyers and going to their mothers. You won’t notice. So – to prepare for this, get your loving in now. Buy in a set of ‘with apology’ cards from your local card shop. You will need them.

If your significant other is another performer alongside yourself (but in a different show), prepare for being pissed off with them. Prepare for being Very Pissed Off With Them. Also prepare for blazing fights and passionate making-up in the third week. If you and your significant other are part of the same show, make a Plan B for your current living arrangements. Oh – and if you are single, prepare to fall madly in love with someone. It would be cynical to comment on how this will turn out in the future…Enjoy it! (*sobs*)
3: Do Not Be Afraid

You are talented, you are beautiful, you are wise, you are a frickin’ genius! Self-doubt de damned! Cultivate a skin thicker than the layer of fat around your liver by the end of the month: you will need it – people; reviewers can be very cruel – particularly freelance media studies students on a placement with their Dad’s mates mag. Make a list of people who like you. Call them before the run of your show. Apologise in advance for ignoring them for a month, including when they come to see you…
So! You have your Rennies, Alka-Seltzer, apology cards, People Who Like Me list (keep a black biro pen near this list to score off names as the month progresses). But how to survive the actual event? Well, obviously every show is uniquely different, but here are a few tips to save you time and sanity…
1: Lying Down On The Royal Mile Pretending To Be Dead With A Bunch Of Flyers In Your Hand Does NOT WORK In Terms Of Getting An Audience

…but, it is a nice sleep, something you should get at any possible opportunity other than on stage. Prepare to get five hours per night, which means you will get 3 and a half.
2: Know Your Competition

 There are thousands of shows to see in the festival, and you are in competition with every one of them – yes, even the kids shows. No matter how much of a left-leaning truther with a show about how capitalism wrings us all dry and makes us ‘objectify’ and ‘commodify’ the very air we breathe, you will need to objectify and commodify yourself until you feel like eating your own voice-box if you want an audience. Unless you are one of those bastards with funding. This advice isn’t for you, you lucky shits…
3: Think Local

 People blustering as swiftly as a snails-crawl down the Royal Mile, steadfastly ignoring exuberant Oxford Youth Theatre flyerers while clutching a briefcase and a mobile phone are not likely to react kindly to being mime-danced to in front of the cash machine on North Bridge. See that woman smiling at the juggler? And that guy with a fringe programme gazing at the architecture? GET THEM! Sidle up, be human and give em a flyer, a brief explanation and a smile. And, if you are a promoter from oot o town, try not to piss off the local scene by claiming it is shite and parochial in Scootch-Land. That always goes down pretty badly…(NB: my ‘scene’ is spoken word, but this is as common (if not more so) in theatre, dance and comedy…)
4: Irn-Bru, Deep-Fried Mars Bars, Haggis, Shit Scottish Accents, Buckfast etc…

 Any joke mentioning any of these things has been done before. Sorry… Of course, they might not have been heard before by folks outside of Scootch-Land, but they are as common as giving cigarettes as prizes in schools the rest of the year round… Och Aye!!!
5: Sit Down, Idiot!!

 This will be the mantra running through your head by the Tuesday of Week 2, I guarantee it, so I hope that you are not insulted by my saying it now: Sit….the….frick….down. Ideally, you will have a couple of other folks helping you promote your show (very important for yer sanity), so, with apologies – perhaps with one of the aforementioned apology cards – take an afternoon off if ye can. Don’t queue for another hour desperately checking yer ticket sales at the box office, don’t text the fellow performer you think you might have fallen in love with because they like the same tequila as you (too important to be a coincidence), don’t say ‘yes’ to every cabaret promoter with a slot…Have another smoothie….Mmmm….yes….Calm….NOW GET GOING AGAIN! AUDIENCE AUDIENCE AUDIENCE!
So, there are some tips for festival survival for performers. Of course, they are only really applicable to lesser-known acts and performers, rather than those with PR agents, funding, sponsorship and perhaps someone to pay their rent for the month, but all are valid I reckon…There are thousands of others, including tips on avoiding alcohol, reformed meat patties, late-night kebabs and being upset by hecklers, but hey: what’s the use? You will do all of these things and more… Maybe more than once. OK – a final tip…

 Get At Least One Hug A Day

…the reason for this will become clear after a week, and requires no explanation to anyone who has ‘done’ the festival, or indeed promoted a regular event of any kind…

 But, what would a festival survival guide be if it didn’t include some tips for punters?? It is all for our benefit, y’know. So – how to be a good punter?

TIPS FOR PUNTERS
1: Most of the acts on the fringe festival are losing money, or at the very most breaking even. If you happen to attend a show where it is ‘come in for free, pay what you like at the end’, Don’t Be A Bastard…

 
2: Comedy isn’t the only thing at the festival…(Note To Self: Neither are spoken word events….Though they are the best… oh yes!)

3: For Residents: IT IS LOVELY LIVING IN EDINBURGH

Yes, yes, I know that we have to leave the flat an hour earlier than we usually would if we want to even nominally get to work on time; have to deal with our friends from out of town forgetting that we have to get up at 6 am for work; have to put up with a 20% hike in alcohol prices every…single…year,  but look! It’s a guy on stilts juggling in the middle of the Mile! There’s a poet spitting venom about our silly government! There’s a theatre show about alienation! There’s a comedian summing up life, love and everything! Oh my – and there’s someone famous! An there’s A LICENCE TIL 5 A.M!!!!

Ahem. Lovely fellow Edinburgh residents – embrace this wonderful festival… Cynical as I am about the prospects for those who fall in love at the festival, falling in love with the festival is easy if you try!

…And finally: good luck to everyone I know running a show this year. I will be along to as many of  ‘em as humanly possible in between lesson planning, teaching the sullen yoot of East Lothian and trying to get my futile amount of sleep… In fact….I’m thinking that some of the tips above may well be valid for probation year teachers….

His problem with the strikes planned for Thursday are two-fold, he said. Firstly, it will be “a massive inconvenience for working parents (and it is)… wrong for people who are working hard to have their lives disrupted in this way.” Ah – the ‘hard-working families’ rhetoric. Beautiful. An image of a loving couple worriedly stroking their little Jimmy’s head while looking into each other’s eyes and saying, “Gosh sweetheart, I just don’t know what we’re going to do…” while candlelight flickers because they work so hard they can’t afford electricity and the… Wait a bloody minute. Apart from anything else, teachers themselves are pretty ‘hard-working’, and I’ve yet to meet one who relishes the thought of striking. As with all strikes that the government wants the public to oppose, Gove used the interview to try to drive a wedge between the teachers aims and the made-up ‘interests’ of the taxpayer.

I don’t have any little darlings myself, but I’d like to think that if I did I would want them taught by people who weren’t expected to live up to impossible demands of ‘professionalism’ by never questioning anything at all, and that they would be paid a decent wage for the important job they do. I’d also like to think that, after educating my little darling that they would not be expected to have the decency to die (preferably at their desk after an 80 hour week) before drawing a pension.

Gove went on to say that “the public, I think, have a very low tolerance for anything that disrupts their hard-working lifestyles.” Who are these people exactly? I know a whole bunch of folks who have kids and aren’t bastards…

The second ‘issue’ Gove has is a ‘concern’ that the “reputation of teachers in this country is not as high as it should be” and that “being involved in this kind of militancy” will set back any positive impression of the teaching profession in England and Wales. Now, far be it from me to challenge the image of teachers as work-shy, lazy alcoholics who can’t spell, but the reputation of teachers is such due to an inherent lack of understanding of what a teachers daily work-load actually involves, a false impression gained through remembering bad teachers from our own schooldays, and an effective gagging order on teachers who can only anonymously challenge the ineptitude of their local authority employers. Strikes aren’t taken lightly by teachers and the one planned for Thursday reflects the gravity of the proposed changes to the education system, and particularly to public sector pensions.

Gove attempted to present himself as a fair kinda guy, who wanted dialogue and conversation and a nice wee cup of tea with his friends in the unions, but he ever-so-totally ruined that hammy act by also adding that he wanted to provide “pensions that are fair to teachers, but are fair to other taxpayers as well.” After I had scraped my jaw off the floor and re-listened to that little nugget of unspeak, I wrote it down and under-lined it. My pen almost went through my entire notebook (and it’s a hardback) but I wrote it down because it is evidence of a wider streak of nasty that has been emerging for some time now from the coalition.

Them and us. ‘Us’ being the mythical ‘hard-working families and individuals’ and ‘them’ being those nasty public sector workers with their pensions and their, you know, blatant lazy-arse attitudes and their non-jobs. ‘Us’ being the taxpayers who don’t want ‘them’ ugly, pregnancy-prone, drug-addled poverty scum getting benefits when ‘we’ have to go out to rub our noses to non-existence in the ‘hard-working’ world of Red Bull fuelled work. ‘Us’ being the taxpayers and ‘them’ being those lazy arsed teachers who can’t even spell write and can’t edyucate de yoof and have the audacity to want decent working conditions when, you know, they have all those holidays the greedy bastards.

Don’t get me wrong – I do know some people who aren’t bastards who think these things too. But they believe them because that is what they are told, because most of us don’t have the time to find out the inner-workings of the vast behemoth that is state education, and because quite frankly, school can be a brutal place of pain and hormonal anguish, so who wants to think about it too much once you have escaped it?

The final quote from Gove that I saw fit to write down in between repeatedly stabbing myself in the eye, was his view on what ‘professionalism’ is. This was a requisite part of my teacher training course, and the essential point of the debate is that it can mean all things to all people. Gove reckons that the Conservatives deeply held belief that teachers should not go on strike in any circumstance shows “that we are treating teachers as professionals.” No, Mr Gove. It shows that you have no idea how angry your teachers are. It shows that you have no respect for your teachers or the job that they perform. And it shows that this strike is completely necessary.

Though he was trying to present a rational argument for We The Hard-Working Taxpayer hating the teachers who Disrupt Our Little Darling’s Day and maybe lead to us having to take a day or afternoon off from our Very Busy And Important Hard-Working Lifestyles (God forbid!), he actually ended up showing why we should all support this strike. A disrupted day is nothing when compared to what this government is trying to do to the public sector. There may well be a real ‘them’ and ‘us’ in this fight: but it aint the one that Gove attempted to present today…

Iain Duncan Smith and his fellows repeatedly state that their welfare reforms will ‘make work pay.’ They will mean that people ‘are always better off in work than out of it,’ by which they mean economically better off, rather than emotionally, mentally or physically. Their policies include re-assessing those in receipt of incapacity benefit, asking ‘what work can these people do rather than what can’t they do,’ making single parents look for work and move on to Jobseeker’s Allowance by the time their child reaches 7 years old, and slashing or in the most extreme cases completely removing people’s welfare payments if they ‘consistently refuse available work.’

Their supporters trot out the argument that all of the rest of us hard-working, nose-to-the-grindstone taxpayers don’t want our taxes spent on the feckless workshy who have got ideas above their station and think that even though they are feckless, stupid and ill-educated they should somehow strive to find jobs above poverty-level wages and think that they somehow deserve to cream off the rest of us by living ‘at taxpayer expense’ in social housing. Hence, a parallel policy is to remove the security of social housing; turning council housing – an increasingly rare commodity – into a mirror of the private rented sector where you have to move if your circumstances change. Why should a couple whose child has left home continue to live in a 2 bedroomed high-rise in the Gorbals when they should be in a one-bedroomed tool-box apartment? Never mind that when you are lucky enough to get a council flat you have a bare shell with no carpets, furnishings or even fittings in a lot of cases: if ‘your circumstances improve, you’ve got to move.’

So what is the motivation behind these policies…? (Yes, yes, I know they are: but what else?) Two words keep cropping up: “Mobility” and “Aspiration.”

“Mobility.” Ah yes, the ideology of the cancer cell. The logic is that as you get older, you will become more ‘mobile’, ie, ‘rich.’ You will acquire more, you will earn more, you will be ‘self-reliant.’ And if you don’t? Well, you will be one of the bastards who, as Alex Morton, Senior Research Fellow for Housing and Planning Policy at the think-tank Policy Exchange points out, burden the state to pay “£7billion (in housing benefit) to the over-65’s who never got round to owning their own homes.” They ‘never got round to it.’ It is expected that you will own your own home, eventually, to these people. And why not? There are more graduates than ever before, there is more credit than ever before, we live in a period of boom where our economy is…Oh. Yeah. I had thought that the recession might curb the excessively twisted view that property is king, but that doesn’t seem to have caught on. There is still a prevalent attitude that you are irresponsible if you don’t shore up in bricks and mortar for your retirement – regardless of whether you pay your taxes, work your entire life and set up pension provision. This is also what is behind the Tories housing policy. You are ‘irresponsible’ – not if you choose to forego the crazy housing ‘ladder’ (ladders can be fallen off of as well as climbed up remember), but if you live within your modest means or live below the poverty line and have to live in social housing. Rowan Williams was right in many ways when he said they had re-earthed the ‘deserving and undeserving poor’ argument. But only in a sense – it was not ‘re’ anything: it has always been with us, and the Tories see any kind of contentment with not ‘owning’ your own home as evidence of a lack of that other word – ‘aspiration.’

Both in work and in housing we must ‘aspire’ to more, to be the best we can be, to not throw up in a sick bucket when we hear the word ‘self-esteem’ used out of context and repeated like a mantra until it loses all meaning. ‘Self-esteem’ is, presumably, being content within yourself and believing that you can manage this little old life to reach a certain level of contentment, but unfortunately, ‘self-esteem’ under the Tories and their friends in companies like A4E (you know, that Fairy Jobmother/Benefit Busters monster with the scarves) simply means ‘being a thrusting yet simultaneously accepting bastard.’ How dare you take money from the state? How dare you think you deserve more than the minimum wage or more than 14 hours a week? How dare you think you should have the help to look after your 6 year old? Your bed, lie in it! In fact, don’t lie in it – get on yer bloody bike and get a job you lazy shit!

The contradictions in Hayley Taylors approach to the unemployed are glaring. While simultaneously telling her cohort that they are worthless if they accept their situation (presumably because their situation is all their fault – “there are jobs out there, you know!” she tells them, and later giggles like a bullying school-girl when the eldest of her cohort, a fiery Scouse man, forgets to iron his shirt) – but she also tells them at the same time that they ‘have to believe in (them)selves!’ What Hayley is teaching them is cognitive dissonance, not ‘self-esteem.’

Now, acting skills are important, and we all present ourselves as a parody of our own abilities in intervierws, but this type of programming reinforces the idea that the unemployed are unemployed through choice – all of them – while that is simply not true. It is true of some, I would never deny that having met several such people. But the single parent with a kid of only 7 being forced to find work or have her benefits withdrawn? The disabled 44 year old who hasn’t worked for ten years since an accident and struggles with daily tasks never mind having to find work? The albeit functioning alcoholic whose alcoholism has been proven time and again to worsen under stressful conditions? As a taxpayer, I am quite, quite happy to have my taxes support people who, through no fault of their own, or through competing responsibilities (eg raising a child with no help from anyone else) simply cannot find work in this utterly insane jobs market.

I have been unemployed a few times. When I was 20 I tossed in a job, moved in with my dad in Glasgow, got chucked out, came to the Edinburgh festival and crashed on peoples couches – this ended up kick-starting my poetry career in earnest so it ended up being no bad thing eventually… But, when I was older and perhaps more sensible and less reckless than when I was 20, after doing my degree from 2004 – 2008 I was turned down for interview from several graduate and non-graduate roles, even with a first class honours.

After a few months in bar work and then another stint of unemployment, the job I finally managed to get was manual work, non-graduate, and changed my life. Working with people in temporary accomodation or at risk or experiencing homelessness in Edinburgh showed me exactly what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had relatives or friends I could rely on. It suggested to me that when people talk about ‘taking self-responsibility’ they don’t know what these people are facing – and how could they, given how people in poverty are portrayed in our papers and on TV? It drove me to despair at times, as I met several people who very adequately fit the cliched stereotype that IDS and his cohort wish us to believe are typical of people in poverty: people who actively refuse work, who scam the system, who neglect (often unknowingly) their children. It made me feel powerless at times, as the housing system is so insane, caused in the main by the dire lack of it, that it actively encourages people to lie to get housing (and so would I if I was in half the situations some of these folks were in), and the benefits system is so screwed up and complicated that it is no wonder many people are terrified of taking on part-time or insecure seasonal work.

IDS recognises at least the latter – but his proposals will do nothing at all to counter this. Hayley Taylor says ‘there are jobs out there!’ Yes, there are. And I took one that required no qualifications and no training whatsoever, even though I am more qualified than that. Go me! Woo-hoo! Self-esteem! Not hanging out for a graduate post during a recession! Woo hoo!…While the person who aint academic, and who could quite easily have done my job was rejected because I had a degree which pushed me above her in the interview. Even though I didn’t need it for the post. This is not a good situation, and it is not one that Hayley should be celebrating.

There are (some) jobs out there – but they are few, they are often part-time, they are often incredibly low-paid, and they are usually several miles away from the ‘communities’ that people who live in poverty are housed. Most people who live in poverty actually work (little known fact), but the Tories are aiming their hatred of the poor at those who cannot. Hayley attempted to scare and shame her cohort at the start of Tuesday’s programme by showing them the statistics about welfare: that the UK spends £87billion on welfare payments every year. ‘That can’t go on.’ But that figure includes the complicated system of tax-credits, brought in by New Labour precisely because, regardless of the minimum wage, work for the most part, does NOT pay well enough to ensure a decent standard of living.

‘Making Work Pay’ entails employers paying a living wage to their employees, and it entails having a government who drop the ‘we’re all in this together’ crap and recognise that talking about ‘self-responsibility’ to people who have often never had an inch of help other than financial in their entire lives from the omnipotent but soulless state/council system they have found themselves in, is about as sensible as trying to raise ‘aspiration’ by telling people they are worthless. The heart-breaking words of the kids on the BBC documentary ‘Poor Kids’, where one 9 year old girl talked with real fear about getting older should shame IDS of his proposal to take away her mother’s support if she can’t find work – as if finding work is easy when you have three young girls to care for. I struggled to do it as a single woman with a cracking degree and job experience.

Poor Kids, if you haven’t watched it already, is a must-see documentary about the struggles of 4 families living in extreme poverty. By using the voices of children it is particularly effective in responsding to the seemingly prevalent view that people who live in poverty choose to somehow, or that if they just exerted ‘self-responsibility’ they could improve their lot. The housing system is also shown in all its damp, shocking, grimy glory. “You have to be quite bad” to house children in the damp flat 10 year old Paige lives in with her family in the Gorbals, she says, explaining that she is bullied for smelling of damp at school, and that her kitchen ceiling fell down at Christmas. Sam, 11 and his older sister, 16 year old Kayleigh, live with their Dad after their mother walked out on Sam’s second birthday. Kayleigh has been bullied at school and has attempted suicide, and both she and the 9 year old Courtney talk of self-harm as a means of releasing their frustration.

I wonder what kind of ‘self-responsibility’ IDS would like Paige, Courtney, Sam and Kayleigh to exert? Presumably, despite watching their parents struggle with debt, having welfare payments held back, terrible housing that in some cases has aggravated their eczema and asthma, bullying from better off peers, needles in their playparks, a lack of job opportunities, they should get on their bikes and go clean some chimneys? That their parents have a palpable sense of guilt over what their children are living with is obvious, as are the barriers that the parents who are not employed face in getting work. If Hayley were to meet these Poor Kids parents, what would she say? If, stripped of the ‘entertaining scenario’s’ Hayley sets up for her unemployed group, the Fairy Jobmother actually engaged with the serious and multi-faceted subject she is making overly simplistic by using as her only reference article from the Daily Express, what then? Paige and her friends sing out of their high-rise window “I could really use a wish right now..!” Many children wish for a Fairy Godmother to grant them wishes. The Fairy Jobmother on the other hand only serves to give credence to the lie that unemployment is always the fault of the unemployed, and poverty always the fault of the impoverished.

The company A4E, of which Hayley Taylor used to be an employee shortly before being catapulted to ‘stardom’ after the series ‘Benefit Busters’ was aired – a programme, incidentally, which exposed several fraud cases in the use of some of these welfare-to-work companies – is lauded by the government as the answer to getting long-term unemployed people into work. A full analysis of how crazy that is should wait til another post I think…But for those of you who, like me, find yourselves watching this type of ‘poverty porn’, if only to get angry at the society we live in, then, if you don’t approach it with a pinch of salt already, take a pinch and add a bucket-load. Making Work Pay is an empty mantra that ignores the reality not only of unemployment and its causes and consequences, but also of the nature of the market system itself.

If you are happy to live in a society of turbo-capitalist boom and bust; if you are happy to live in a society where Darwinism has been bastardised and applied to economics; if you are happy to live in a society that actively encourages selfishness, alienation, hatred and self-love; where ‘charity begins at home’ and ‘home’ is the distance from one’s couch to the front door-step; then you will also have to accept that such a system tends to produce a scenario where kids like the ones on Poor Kids grow up into adults who are terrified of the world we have created for them. Such a situation is not inevitable per se – our economic system is as ‘natural’ as Cameron’s smile. None of this is inevitable, and to believe it is means giving in to a sense of powerlessness. But the Tories policies will perpetuate the worst of this situation, and add more to it to boot. I wonder if IDS and his fellows have the ‘self-responsibility’ (or the stomach) to tell the Poor Kids why they believe their parents don’t deserve our help.

I came late to Laurie Penny, the ‘voice of a generation’ now causing quite a lot of controversy on the blogosphere.  It was only a few months ago that I read an article of hers on a friend’s Facebook page, and her catch-line in the New Statesman irked me too much to bother very much with her for a while afterwards. “Politics and pop culture with a feminist twist” reminded me of many things that are wrong with my own and the younger generation (and also summed up why I stopped reading the New Statesman about three years ago).  I expected all of her writings to be vaguely researched, overblown, hyperbolic and shockingly populist, individualistic opinion pieces on how evil all politicians are, how we should all get to know our vulvas more, and how if only we harnessed the power of the internet then we could create a socialistic leftie utopia on earth…

…And there’s a great deal of that in Penny’s writing (not so much the second part…) Her anger froths at the baby-boomers, who cocked it all up and allowed our society to become the fractured, turbo-capitalist, alienated little place we live in today. She scorns (very eloquently – my favourite of her writings have been on this subject) the fluffy-go-lucky 21^st century feminists, who can’t seem to stand up for women without apologising for it first, and she attacks with aplomb the nonsensical argument that it is only graduates who benefit from their university education. I share her anger at many of the coalitions policies, I agree with her wholeheartedly that the previous generations decisions have made the lives of my generation – despite a relative rise in material comfort – very much harder. She apologises slightly too much herself for her own privileged upbringing, but is an honest writer who recognises that if she did not do this she would (and frankly, is) attacked as a guilt ridden class tourist. Critics who attack her on these grounds alone put her in very good company of course: Karl Marx, George Orwell, to name but two…

So, what is the problem with Laurie Penny? There are plenty of other commentators I disagree with more: why this musing for her? Is it because I find her youthful energy and often incredibly emotional writing off-putting? Is it because she very stupidly advertised for a personal assistant at less than the minimum wage and also flouted equality laws by stating a preference for a female researcher? Is it because I am a lazy fuck who can’t make up her own mind about how to solve the crisis of Britain and so I prefer to sit back and twiddle my thumbs and eat cheesecake while attacking anyone with their own solution? Is it because I am at heart a flaky liberal? Is it because I am heartily sick of people with supportive families and a pile of money to fall back on telling me I can’t join the revolution until I get the latest technological gadget made by starving peasants in China?  Is it because I know that technology – something I have never a) been able to afford until relatively recently and b) am slightly terrified of, is vastly important and that maybe she is right and I really need to get with the programme? Is it because of her outright rejection of the state and all state structures – something that I really do not agree with her on? Is it because she is really a little bit vague about what she believes in?

No. The main problem with Laurie Penny, despite all of the above, is that there aren’t more people like her. Writers who make you angry, who make you think. I find her manner absolutely infuriating at times, and find her Red Penny blog a little cringeworthy in its attempts at self-reflection, but when she is on fire, as when she recently attacked veteran SWPer Alex Callinicos for his insistence on the utility of spreading the word through selling papers on street corners – she is erudite, eloquent and bloody entertaining.She is also far better read than many of her critics (and I count my initial reaction to her amongst this) give her credit for. She highlighted a natural ageism in most of us – that those younger than us have nothing worth saying. I speak like a 40 year old – she is only five years younger than me, but I find our exaltation of youth abhorrent, and wrongly put her ubiquity and popularity in the category of ‘celebrating her cos she’s like, young n that’, instead of giving her the courtesy of reading her work first (which is particularly awful of me, as many a fellow poet has said exactly the same thing about my one-time popularity as a performance poet). And some of her work is slightly overblown, naive, idealistic. But hell – being idealistic in this world is something worth championing…

In saying that, she recently published a post for the New Statesman in which she listed ‘recommended reading’ : what we should read in order to understand the current crisis. Unfortunately, she didn’t include any right-wing tracts (a huge oversight – know thy enemy afterall…) And this is one problem with Laurie Penny – that she is tagged as a ‘journalist’ but she is in fact a commentator. As a commentator she is under no need to be unbiased: commentators seek to influence opinion, they are not meant to be balanced, they are making a point, and thank God for commentators. But,  I feel that Penny’s future should be in doing this – not, as she recently did, doing ‘documentaries’ for Channel 4 where she ended up almost risking arguing FOR student tuition fees as she interviewed the wrong people for Dispatches… But she is passionate – and while that is never an excuse for lazy writing or overblown or exaggerated nonsense, I think that in time she may well live up to some of the more (currently) ridiculous tags that have been assigned her. “The Voice of a Generation” being one of them… Nae pressure, Laurie…

Currently, she is the voice of a certain part of her generation – the part that, like me, feels that we arrived late to the party, when all the drink was drunk, all the cheese was scoffed, and someone was burning the garden down…But she is currently too parochial to recognise that probably most of her generation have little to no interest in what she is passionate about, beyond hating authority for the sake of it. She, with her brilliantly brash use of plain language could be one of the people who inspires the kids I will soon teach to challenge this: so long as she realises that not every one of them is with her already… Teaching politics in a Scottish school I recently did a rather depressing activity in a fifth year class where 98% of the class expressed individualistic, rather than communitarian tendencies towards poverty, the poor, taxes and welfare… And they all hated the Tories, because that’s what you do…without any inkling that this was contradictory.The point is this: the baby-boomers that she rails against are perhaps not the target she should be aiming at forever – our entire country is more individualistic, more anti-tax, more anti-welfare than ever before. (And if you only read things that prop up yer own opinion, ye will, as JS Mill pointed out, know little of yer own case…)

  I don’t agree with her about a hell of a lot of things, particularly her insistence on some kind of technological revolution, as that fairly alienates a heck of a lot of people from said revolution. The most leftie guy I know is my Great Uncle Stewart (78)  – and he would ice-pick ye if ye told him that Twitter was ‘revolutionary’. But in essence, Laurie Penny has reinvigorated a felt need within me to engage with the more radical left – something I lost a few years ago after feeling pretty ostracized from elements of the leftie community in Edinburgh. She does not suffer fools – and it was suffering fools that turned me away from the left and towards the centre a few years ago. While I still consider myself centre-left, rather than ‘left’, what I admire about Penny is her plainness, her abruptness, her courage to attack those she shares other opinions with: it is almost a disease of many left-wing commentators that they do not do this – and her unthinking willingness and drive to do this is admirable. While she is certainly no Orwell, this is something that he was particularly brilliant at. It earned him a lot of enemies (and Penny is experiencing a wave of vitriol and bile from many corners at the moment – some of it warranted, some of it cruel and pointless). If she can rise above this, I cannot wait to hear what else she has to say next. I might well disagree with it wholeheartedly, but by God I will understand it, as she uses plain language, is an honest writer, and invites debate. (NB: one thing I have recently noticed is that she makes the effort – unlike to lot of mainstream commentators – to reply to critics on her postings.) The problem with Laurie Penny? Och – various. But the good thing about Laurie Penny is what she has the potential to do (regardless of whether this is aided by the knowledge that she has a family or money to fall back on if it all goes to shit).  I hope she does it, and reinvigorates a debate within the left. I won’t agree with her about most of it, but goddammit the left (particularly the feminist left) needs a good kicking. And it needs good, brave writers. I think she is one. Regardless of the fact I don’t agree with her a heck of a lot of the time, I have not enjoyed seeing her kicked about the blogosphere by right-wing commentators who fixate on her class, youth and gender like it means a damn thing. I look forward to disagreeing with whatever she has to say next…

The audience member did not have an opportunity to reply, but if she had read the social mobility policy document “Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers: A Strategy for Social Mobility,” she could have answered that the coalition is doing very little of the sort. Hunt, a member of the party, lest we forget, who only a month and a half ago auctioned off lucrative internships at their notorious Black And White Party to raise funds for the party, said (predictably) that “I think we made a mistake on that…” but then proeeded to present some sort of moral high-ground that said anyone who opposed the laudable aim behind the new document was some sort of elitist who didn’t want to ‘extend privilege.’ What kind of a gold-tapped, silk-sheeted bastard are you, not to want to support ‘social mobility?’

His retort may have had some weight if the policy document did more than merely present the evidence for our lack of social mobility, before completely  ignoring the reasons for those problems and arguing for an extension of the status quo (but with some poor folks being allowed better access to the unfair system). In the entire document, the word ‘class’ has been replaced with such chutzpah as “the opportunity deficit” and “aspiration challenge”, giving the impression that someone’s lack of social mobility is very much a personal, individualistic thing, rather than a sign of a completely unfair system of (shh…whisper it….) class.  Wherever the document presents evidence that social mobility is hampered by ingrained structural inequalities, it then hoofs off in the other direction.

Predictably, the task of curing our social ills falls largely on the education system, where, they admit, students in independent schools routinely have more opportunities, better access to elite universities, better exam grades (at least up until the end of compulsory schooling), more one-on-one tuition and, (though I’m not entirely sure how they quantify this) better teaching. Just as predictably, the document does not talk about radically overhauling this unfair education system where, by virtue of Dad you can buy your way to privilege, but talks instead of improving scholarships to private schools, making state schools more selective and giving parents more ‘choice’ (which, always remember, means some other parents have less choice), and ‘taking from the best of the independent sector.’ How very radical…After pointing out the inequalities that exist between independent and state-school kids, they then throw in “The most important factor in determining how well children do is the quality of teachers and teaching,” which is simply not true. The opposite is not true either, ie, that bad teachers always produce good results, but it is equally untrue to say that good teachers always produce good exam results. People are more complex – education is more complex – than our politicians could possibly realise, given that 36% of them went to private school.  The document does not mention investing in any meaningful way in schools in England and Wales. It does, however, talk about how “The education system should challenge low aspirations and expectations…(and so they propose) a drive to get 100,000 people going into schools and colleges to talk about the jobs they do. Every member of the Cabinet has already signed up to speak in schools, and we are encouraging civil servants to use special paid leave to do the same.” Oh. Given the quality of oratory of our crop of MP’s, I’d be very surprised if this works…This also suggests that they think (as Jamie Oliver seems to have thought with his “Dream School”) that the problem of ‘NEETS’ is ‘uninspiring’ teachers who don’t give a crap about their pupils…

Improving attainment in exams is a big feature of the document, which recognises that without qualifications there is really very little a young person can do to find work, and this is why they are raising the participation age to 18 by 2015. However, leaving school with little or no qualifications at age 16 has not always been as, ahem, ‘aspirationally/opportunity deflating’ as it currently is. The massive expansion of the ‘qualification-ocracy’ now means that bright kids who are just incredibly un-academic have literally no chance of finding work, unless they can get a piece of paper saying they can write essays about the practical job they want to do! It is quite an insane system, and, unlike in the early 1980’s when my former partner’s mother set up her own hairdressing business with no qualifications, it disallows many young people from having autonomy or finding out what they are good at and want to do. Nowadays, she would have had to have done some kind of FE course before anyone would even look at her. But, rather than removing  the layers of bureaucracy one must wade through in order to try to make a living, this document argues for pretty much more of the same. It does, however, state that many vocational qualifications are pretty useless as they don’t lead to work…That’s as maybe. But employers and most universities do not take risks with young people who have no qualifications. (Would HG Wells have gone to university if he had been born in 1985? I doubt it…)

The onus is also put on universities to draw up action plans for ‘widening access’, which means that they must have a strategy to get a certain number of ‘disadvantaged kids’ through the door. In some ways, I can appreciate this…(and perhaps HG Wells would have too!) as I wasn’t particularly brilliant at school, but graduated top of my year at university with a first class honours, though this was as a mature student. Research shows that kids from state schools are much more likely to receive a first class honours degree than their independent school counter-parts at the universities of Bristol and Oxford amongst others, despite starting with less A-C grades than those at independent schools.  There could be a few reasons for this, not least that going to an independent school can often stifle yer independence in many ways…though it will undoubtedly raise your ‘self-esteem’, whereas, set free from an often crowded teaching environment in a massive state school may well improve your ability to work on your own. In this part of the document, I did find myself nodding:  the coalition are right to say that qualifications at school are not the only indicator of how bright someone is…Whether it is the job of universities (which are centres of academic knowledge and research) to address this is another matter…

 How universities are expected to implement this new system is murky, though David Williets hinted on Dispatches to reporter Laurie Penny that universities should perhaps award more credit to kids who get B’s in schools where the majority get C’s, compared to kids who get A’s where everyone does. That’s pretty controversial, though it isn’t clear how rigorous the government would be in actually implementing it, as he also said that it wasn’t the job of the government to tell universities how to run their own affairs. Well then. What the document doesn’t address however, is the problem that a degree in absolutely no way guarantees you a job anymore, and those getting top paying jobs are routinely creamed from the rich and well-connected, regardless of whether they have a first, or even a third class honours degree. While university should never be seen as a jobs-factory, the coalition’s policies have turned universities into such, and damaged academic learning and knowledge as a result. The entire document is overly economistic, and does not talk in any way about improving society at all levels. Merely, it seems, they will be happy if they can tick a box saying ‘a lot of poor kids managed to get rich’, rather than addressing the system that keeps have’s and have not’s (no matter where they started from) firmly in place…That’s hardly surprising of course. They are liberals and Tories, not socialists…

The area of the document getting most attention is the section on ‘reforming’ the system of internships. Unpaid internships are notoriously the reserve of the rich and well-connected: we know this, we always have known it, and despite Jeremy Hunt’s volte-face on Question Time where he said that, in the space of a month and a half that the Tories en masse suddenly recognise this, they have always known this too. They just didn’t care. There is still more than a whiff of almost-Shavian “poor people are disgusting sub-humans” within politics (and journalism), despite lip-service to the opposite. With an ideology like that, who cares if your staff are made up of your well-bred relatives?

 Sadly, journalism is also a profession where’informal’ (read: not advertised, I ken’s yer Dad) internships are rife, as is law and the upper echelons of the charitable sector. Reforming this in politics is much needed, and ending the system of informal internships in politics(read: ‘One day you too shall be an MP, my son), is long overdue. However…don’t believe them when they say that ‘unpaid or low-paid  internships’ are to be ended…What the document actually says is that interns should be paid the minimum wage or “alternatively, payment of reasonable out of pocket expenses in compliance with national minimum wage law.” This is not about ending the privileged position of those who manage to get an internship: it is about not being sued. Trying to live, as interns have to, in central London for at least 6 months on the national minimum wage is virtually impossible. Given that most will be recent graduates and thus ineligible for most benefits that are only given to those who have paid sufficient National Insurance contributions, this means that internships will continue to go to those with the financial backing of rich parents.

And what of income inequality? Even allowing for the potential of some of their proposals to improve social mobility, what of the extremes of poverty and wealth; a system where top CEO’s earn 44 times that of their lowest paid workers? Well, luckily for the Tories and their ilk “the challenge in terms of social mobility is to understand the key components of a more mobile society which do not appear to be related to simple measures of income equality.” So, no need to address the disgusting levels of wealth and extremes of dire poverty many people find themselves in: so long as enough ‘disadvantaged’ people get into the realms of the rich, then all will be fine.

This is not a ‘radical’ document. It contains several dubious paragraphs that need a lot more research to understand the full implications of, for example where we are told:  “The Department for Education is currently undertaking a competitive process to award contracts for family services delivered online and through telephone helplines.” Really? That sounds potentially lucrative for Serco and Capita et al (hey, if they can empty bins, run recycling facilities and manage hospitals, why not have them tell expectant mothers what they can eat?); but that is another post altogether…

What is radical about the document however, is that it shows a breathtaking alienation between those who run our country and decide our laws, and the reality of life for most of us. Should we, as Jeremy Hunt asks us, say “Hey, okay, so they are all privileged rich white men, but they know it, so don’t be too hard on ‘em, they want us to privileged rich white men too!” ? No: because they do not. To answer Hunt’s question therefore, what do we want?

I want a system that, even accounting for the fact that some people may be richer than others, income inequalities are addressed and  it is made impossible to become wealthy on the misery and pain of others. I want a system where families do not “choose” a life on benefits, sure – but I don’t want to, as the document proposes, starve people into submission that leaves their children in worse poverty than they already are, and I, as a human being, see that life on benefits is far preferable (to an individual and to society) than having children left uncared for and parents run ragged with stress and the same level of poverty. Iain Duncan Smith often talks about the poverty trap of benefits; how, because the difference between working and not working can be very minimal, that we need to ‘incentivise’ people to work, lest their children will end up on benefits too…But, instead of introducing a minimum LIVING wage (which could radically transform the ‘opportunity deficit’ eh?), he proposes cuts to benefits so that “working is always more lucrative than benefits,” meaning the structural and societal reasons for long-term unemployment, single parent unemployment and youth unemployment are ignored, and the argument is presented once more as one of ‘choice’ rather than necessity or misfortune.

 The takeover of public services by private companies is short-termist nonsense, and will do nothing to address social mobility. New Labour were just as bad as this current crop are for thinking that ‘private’ = ‘efficient’. That several millionairres have so been made through renting ‘social housing’ through local authority contracts is disgusting. That state money has paid for several people to become millionairres out of taking over state-run employment services is disgusting. That a cabal of Tories auction off lucrative job opportunities to rich kids while telling the poor to ‘get on their bike’ is disgusting. That the social mobility manifesto contains the phrase “incentives to work” when they mean “cuts to benefits that will starve those lazy arseholes into taking shite jobs” is disgusting. That our schools are asked to address social inequalities for which wider society has no answer (and teachers are blamed for problems which they instinctively, as teachers, try to address everyday), while the government allows the fundamental educational inequalities inherent in our system to stay in place is disgusting.  That the document also argues for an increase in the right to buy council homes is as historically-bankrupt as it is nonsensical. But, if you believe, as they do, that home ownership makes people ‘aspirational’ then we are sure to have much more of this nonsense to come…

“Social Mobility” is never going to be enough if we leave in place a system of increasing disparities between the have’s and have not’s. I am far from a fiery socialist, but what this document does is give the appearance of ‘opening doors, and breaking barriers’ where, when you get down to the crunch, it does nothing of the sort. Doors to where? Barriers to what? Where it should mean doors to opportunity and breaking down barriers of structural inequality, all this document really does is argue that, while leaving a bunch of super-rich droogs at the top, and a bunch of ‘lazy work-shy scum’ at the bottom, some folks who maybe couldn’t do things before because of an ‘aspiration deficit’ should, you know, try a bit harder. And, given that we live in a Big Society, we should all push them to try harder too. It is a scizophrenic document, presenting well-researched evidence into the reasons for a lack of social mobility, before ignoring them and presenting the ideology of individualism throughout.

It may be that anyone who reads this will think, ‘Heck, what does she expect?’ But, I don’t think that is enough. We have to question everything that is printed and writ by this government, as each time a policy that seems quite non-descript and essentially vacuous becomes common parlance (my thoughts on ‘The Big Society’ mantra below argue this) we lose a battle. They will argue and decry anyone who opposes the aims of the document because once again they have presented us with a false dichotomy that suggests that the choice is between ‘social mobility as we define it’ and ‘doing nothing.’ There is always, always an alternative…

Like most successful propaganda, the Tories flagship ‘Big Society’ policy mantra is initially quite difficult to oppose. This is partly due to the intended – and it is intentional -  vagueness of the project, and also because of the skilled use of obfuscating policy-wonk language: plain and simple, but hiding layers of horrors. Words like ‘communities’, ‘more powers’, ‘fairness’, ‘communities’ and more ‘communities’ and ‘opportunities for communities’ hide the radically controversial reality of what this project actually entails.

I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t grasp at least slightly that ‘The Big Society’ is an ideological manure pile of latent individualism and that it is probably going to completely cock up the country, but it is quite difficult initially to say why. After-all: society is a good thing, right? And they want to make it bigger, right? And what kind of a monster are you to say that you don’t think ‘local communities’ and ‘voluntary agencies’ should have more ‘power’? “More power and opportunity into people’s hands,” reads the document Building The Big Society. Who could oppose that?

The main reason this dung-heap of a project is hard to figure, is because it is being hammered on our ears at the same time as state funding is being slashed in pretty much every area, leading to several indignant voices in the voluntary sector stating “We ARE the Big Society!” by which they mean that they offer services outwith the public sector that provide real benefit to peoples’ lives. How can they square their supposed new ‘freedom’ and ‘power’ with depleted state-funding? This is the first mistake in the debates about the meaning of the policy: The Big Society is not about providing ‘real benefit to peoples’ lives’, and we should not do it the justice of assuming that it has, or ever had, such an intention. When the document states “Building the Big Society isn’t just the responsibility of one or two departments. It is…the responsibility of every citizen too”, it does not mean that they envisage a kum-ba-yah gathering of happy citizens sharing picnics with the elderly: they envisage an opportunity to assert the need for ‘self-responsibility’, for which we can read ‘cuts to welfare’. So far, so Tory. The Conservatives are individualists: and while this often leads to good policies like stopping ID cards, this isn’t because they love our civil liberties: it is because they really don’t want to be involved in the minutiae of our everyday lives. This is great in some ways –  but as soon as you are unemployed, disabled, in need of help? The Tories Big Society ideology lays the blame square at yer own feet…

This explains the party’s appeal to a lot of people, particularly middle-class ‘aspirational’ voters, who just want to get their heads down and get on with this little life without too much interference, thanks very much. People like to think that the wealth they accrue is necessary and befitting, because they have ‘worked hard’ or ‘deserve it’. The Big Society encourages this way of thinking. The document states, “Only when people and communities are given more power and take more responsibility can we achieve fairness and opportunity for all.” And you are responsible, right? You look after yerself, you wonderful 21^st century being! If some idiot child gets herself up the duff and sprogs a couple of future criminals, what is it to you? She should have had more ‘self-responsibility’. The guy with a heroin addiction, smacked up to his eyeballs and refusing help – he got himself on the streets so it is up to him to get himself off of it! The fact that we live in a society that dulls our ability to love, our ability to be autonomous, and grinds many of us into an almost daily alienation from each other and ourselves has no bearing on the argument when your fundamental position is that people should ‘take more responsibility’ for their lives.

But still: so far, so Tory. We know that the Tories are individualists, we remember Thatcher, we remember mass unemployment… What is new? “We will introduce new powers to help communities save local facilities and services threatened with closure, and give communities the right to bid to take over local state-run services.” Ah…now we’re getting there. This is what we call ‘passing the buck’ – and note the loose use of the word ‘communities’ again… Point 1: Why would such vital services be threatened with closure? That’s right – government cuts to local authority budgets. And what ‘communities’ might want to bid to take over these services? That’s right, the ‘business community.’ And if you can’t be arsed banding together with yer neighbours, then it is your own fault if your library shuts down, or your council cancels respite for carers. It is your ‘responsibility’ to make sure you put yer bid in to make sure that The Big Society works, remember? And if it doesn’t then you must remember, as the document states, “Government on its own cannot fix every problem. We are all in this together.”

The latter sentence has quite rightly been roundly satirised and denounced, but the first sentence is the important part. It is a false dichotomy: it assumes that anyone thinks that government can solve “every” problem, which I don’t think I have ever heard anyone say. So, they have fostered the idea that any opposition to their proposal is unreasonable: by presenting an unreasonable statement as fact that isn’t actually anything to do with their proposal. Clever.

(Another clever sleight of hand is the proposal to set up a Big Society Bank from funds in dormant bank accounts, and use this to fund social enterprises and other non-governmental bodies. Previously, these ‘funds’ were known as ‘taxes’…)

Initially, I wrote off The Big Society as a doomed policy that would never have legs. It reminded me of Nicola Murray, the floundering cabinet minister in The Thick Of It, proposing to launch ‘The Fourth Sector’ but blustering around in her presentation of the policy as she talked about how ‘Entrepreneurs! Er…the Fourth Sector is made up of…other, people’ who would transform our ‘broken society’ or something like that. Unfortunately, it seems to have benefitted from the fact that it is almost too flaky to satirise, it is almost impossible to define because it doesn’t mean anything in itself (society is neither big nor small: it just IS…), and people have already internalised the statement ‘Big Society’ and even gone so far as to apply it to themselves or their groups whenever they do something nice for someone. I would like to propose that we don’t do this civic society destroying ideology this kindness. It is individualism: pure and simple. People sometimes talk as if the cuts and The Big Society are two separate policies: they are not. They are part and parcel of each other. Choosing to slash funding to arts and humanities courses at universities is Big Society. Asking paralysed people to think “what work COULD I do?” is Big Society. Charities, voluntary agencies, you, me, nice people – they, we, are NOT the Big Society.

The Big Society is, rather, a chance for Serco, Capita and other massive organisations to plunder the public sector even more than they already have by ‘bidding to take over’ those ‘failing’ state sector services that the Tories keep trying to remind us about. The reason Labour aren’t harping on about Serco et al should be pretty obvious… That is will save money is probably a given. But it will wreck many people’s lives into the bargain.

For those of you who have read it, The Big Society can best be summed up by Malcolm Goodberry, the title character of my poem, The Joyless Optimist. Saying charity begins at home to the homeless; floating through life with a deadened empathy that leads you to think that, because your own life is so unhappy and miserable and you haven’t done anything you wanted to, that nobody else should. Because ‘life wasn’t meant to be fair.’ You get what you pay for. You are what you eat. You get what you strive for. If you don’t get it you aint tried hard enough.

That is The Big Society: and it aint a society. It is individual men, women and it is families. And it is terribly, terribly familiar…

 I used to think these signs were bad. But now, after four years I see the need for them. After-all, everyone knows that smoking anywhere but your own abode and on the street is illegal: so we have to be reminded. That’s why we have signs everywhere telling us not to do other illegal things in public. Like, murder for example. ‘Please Do Not Murder In The Doorway’ read the signs in every establishment doorway. ‘Knifing in Front Of Children Passively Harms Them’. ‘Murder While Pregnant Causes Future Imprisonment’: I’m sure you have seen these signs warning you of all things illegal. No? Keep looking…

 ‘No Ball Games’ is the standard sign on all housing estates where the houses, designed by pile-em-high-stack-em-up-oh-oops architects changed the landscape of our cities. Now, it is joined by signs along the lines of ‘Do Not Loiter In The Only Area You Can Actually Stand Between Your Blocks: The Doorways’. This is really sensible. It is not illegal to loiter, or to socialise, but it is anti-social loitering behaviour to loiter in a sociable area in a place where there is nowhere else to socialise because…well, there’s nothing else there. It is good to remind people that they should stay indoors or be on their way somewhere. Interestingly, these signs are not yet on the walls of Hyndland or Stockbridge tenements: this must be rectified as soon as possible. Come to think of it, perhaps we should erect signs telling Comely Bank children not to jump on their trampolines in their vast gardens: they might inadvertently break, or perhaps annoy other residents or maybe have fun or something. Bad.

We need signs now: people need to know how to behave. Only with instruction can we be nice people. Because of this realisation, it has been easier to cope with my recent commuting in inner city Glasgow. As well as signs on the low-level trains reminding me to use the handrail and stand to the right and walk to the left, there is also a fairly Bearsden-accented female overture saying: ‘Customers are reminded to always use the hand-rail and beware on the stairs.’ It may be ‘take care on the stairs’; but that doesn’t matter: being wary is better than being, er…’care-y’… This is a really important message. I have to be reminded to take care on the stairs, as my first instict is usually to put on roller-skates when I leave the train and try to free-run my way over the heads of my fellow commuters. If it wasn’t for this message, repeated (I counted) every SIX seconds, then I might forget. And if I hadn’t been told to take care and accidentally stood on a discarded peanut and slipped, well, you know who I would contact, don’t you? That’s right: Injury Lawyers 4 You. A company so responsible they use numbers instead of words to show how ‘with it’ they are. These guys know the importance of signs: if you haven’t been told, then how on earth would you know? And if an accident happens, then you have to have someone to blame because the definition of an accident is that its not accidental is it? Someone must’ve not accidentally done something that accidentally caused your accidental accident. Yes?

It is so very important that we have signs telling us what to do and how to behave. If not, I might smoke in a nursery or defecate in a flower pot. I may know so little about our society and how things work that I might sue my local authority for not telling me to ‘take care’ when cycling or when I take part in my child’s sports day. If the council hasn’t warned me that ‘land is sometimes bumpy’ and I then slip, then, well, my accident is their accidental responsibility.

People should always sue councils and local authorites, or their local school, or their supermarket, or their employer, or their friends, or their neighbours, when the appropriate signs haven’t been put up. How else will they learn, eh? Your sprained ankle at sports day could be a single mother’s broken leg in the future: think about that Mr Authority! Yay! Power to The People! Suing is responsible. It is protecting future generations from accidental accidents. It is trailing a blaze, or whatever the appropriate saying is. As a trainee teacher I fully approve of parents suing me if I accidentally give their child a paper-cut. How else will I learn how to teacher the learners?

Another thing that signs help us with is being moral. This is the admirable reasoning behind Edinburgh City Council’s recent rolling out of their anti-homophobic posters that are bright red, simple, and read: “Some People Are Gay: Deal With It!’ which are emblazoned in council buildings and on bus-stops around the city. These signs really help me. As a quiet homophobe who believes in the sanctity of man on woman action (not vice versa of course), these signs remind me that some people are gay and I must deal with it. Since seeing these expensive glossy signs I have since put down my Bible/Koran/(insert relevant religious text) and seen the light. Some people are gay. Although I knew that already, these signs help me, in a completely non-aggressive manner, to confront my prejudices in a non-judgemental and helpful manner. A gay friend of a friend’s friend’s cousin pointed out that, as a gay man, he found the signs really unhelpful, but what does he know? He should be thanking the council for being so overtly open-minded that they would spend money on posters informing citizens that some people are gay when cases of homophobic violence are dropping in the city. ‘Ah!’ I replied to his silly reasoning and logic. ‘This proves we care! You should be thankful! What, are you saying that posters against homophobia are WRONG? What are you, some kind of homophobe?’ I think I won that argument; as I said to the gay.

Signs are really important: without them, I wouldn’t know how to leave my house. I would really like a sign that told me how to tie my shoelaces and also one that would stop me feeling so alienated in a world where truth is relative and noone knows their neighbours; but still: signs. Man, they’re important. I heard that someone once suggested that instead of signs we should have inspirational quotes postered on bus-stops, and philosophical ponderings repeated once every six seconds over tannoys in railway stations. Things like “The very existence of human life is scientifically miraculous!’ on the underground; or ‘He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that,’ in religious bookshops. Someone once suggested playing the soundtrack to the film Amelie throughout the rail network to encourage good will among men. But that’s just stupid. You can’t make people nice by telling them what to do, putting up a stupid sign or playing a stupid track. That’s just stupid. You can plaster as many signs as you want over the public sphere and you won’t win a single convert. Without debate, there is no public sphere. That’s probably a good thing though, right? Right? Good. Now: who do I sue about this whole shoe-laces thing?