Less than 50 years since segregation…

… can Americans really vote in a black President? Of course the right person for the job should be elected, and both candidates are certainly a way forward. It is amazing to think that within the lifetimes of those that remember the situation of black Americans in the 60s, things can have changed enough for Obama to be really on the brink of the White House.

Marginalising them for the future

Does anyone think that you start to get immune to news of bad things happening to people? Not ignoring it, or not not appreciating the severity of it, just not being entirely surprised. It takes a little something extra, something particularly cruel and unusual to get our attention. Maybe it’s just me.

Most things I see at work don’t affect me a great deal, but there are exceptions, images that at the end of the day when I close my eyes aren’t that easy to forget. The homeless guy who got hacked around the face for no reason with the claw side of a hammer. A woman who was pinned down by her “boyfriend” and systematically beaten over a six hour period. Most of all it’s the kids who are abused – immersion injuries, and the anger I feel inside when I calmly listen to a supposedly distraught parent as they explain how their 9 month old broke their femur and got neck bruising falling off a chair. Things on the news – the bloke with the carrier bag standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square, the report on R4 a few months ago of the 30,000 women in Congo who have been raped in the last 10 years, about 500 of whom have been shot in the vagina afterwards. Nasty torture reports from Iraq and Zimbabwe.

Yesterday however really broke me up. A friend of a friend has an 8 year old boy who attends a local state school. This school has a good reputation, well known locally as a good state school which is why most locals want their kids going there. This kid is very bright (comfortably top of his class), and in every way possible, completely normal. I don’t know him or his mum personally.

He’s been bullied by three other 8 and 9 year old since October last year. One apparently has mild autism. It started by just verbal taunts and escalated fairly quickly into him regularly being punched. It got so bad, despite mum and the school knowing about it and trying to deal with it, that one day the kid was found by himself in a quiet part of the school grounds trying to hang himself by some rudimentary means.

The school took “action”, whatever that means, and things quietened for a while. The school said they would arrange some counselling for the kid, as he was understandably fairly traumatised by it. That never happened, and mum arranged some independently.

It started up again, with verbal abuse, name calling, saying he’s gay, getting other normal kids in the class to join in. Also, things like “we’re going to go to your house and fuck your mother”. The kid apparently didn’t understand the exact meaning of a lot of this, but clearly got the gist of it and the fact that it was extremely hostile. School again contacted time and time again, with lots of “we’re dealing with it”

A few days ago the three kids tied a noose around the kid’s belly and dragged him through the plaground.

They each got 2 days suspension.

The next day there was a face to face with the headmaster, with my friend going with the mum as some support. Throughout mum has been more than reasonable, worried to death, and having had to take her kid out of school for days at a time while the school was supposedly getting it’s shit together. The headmaster said of the 7 month incident :

“he didn’t know of the verbal abuse”

“it sounds like ‘japes’ “

“he can’t suspend for longer or expel the kids because they would be marginalised for the future”

“cannot guarantee the safety of her child”

Naturally the head got what he deserved, which was the fact that although the kids were less than 10, it would be reported to the police so that it can be logged for the future, they would expect an immediate end to this bullying regardless of cost to the school and a meeting with the head of governors to discuss why the headmaster cannot guarantee the safety of any child at the school despite the fact that he has a legal duty of care towards them. This on top of going to the press if mum hears, sees or simply doesn’t like anything that happens, and reporting the school to whatever local authorities that need to be told. Far far from satisfactory, and amounts to a grand total of not a lot, but there aren’t really a lot of other options.

The kid has actually gotten a full scholarship for an independent school up the road, starting in September, and the current school doesn’t know that, as the presumption is that if they knew that then they wouldn’t bother sorting out the problem they have. The fact that the new school is an independent is irrelevent. Quite what motivates 8 and 9 year olds to bully in such a manner is perhaps not the biggest worry. The question is what sort of cunt gets to be headmaster with that sort of attitude? In charge of a primary school?

Fuck me, an 8 year old trying to hang himself, and then being dragged across a playground by a noose around his waist. I had tears in my eyes last night.

Brighthouse

… is a shop that sells electrical goods – they market themselves with primetime commercials as an easy pay weekly affordable place to get washing machines and LCD TVs etc.

Typical APR 29.9%.

I know this sort of thing isn’t unusal, but still, what a bunch of twats.

Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground

Ry Cooder once said “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson as “the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music”. Cooder himself used a version of this in the opening scenes of Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas”, using a slide guitar to depict a vast, desolate landscape.

Johnson himself was blinded at the age of seven when his stepmother threw a handful of lye into his eyes, deliberately. He grew up in the deep south during the birth and early evolution of the blues, although he was a religious man who recorded spiritual and religious music. He is considered one of the best slide guitar players ever. The musician Marc Silber said ” “Dark Was the Night” is a “moan.” A moan is simply a style of wordless singing. And since it is a lament without words, we are left to wonder about the singer’s personal story, experiencing only his pain. Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night” moan is both gorgeous and eerie at the same time as the sliding notes on the guitar strings chase and match the singer’s haunting, wordless vocals”. “Dark Was The Night” is Johnson’s sermon on Christ, the Passion and his sufferring.

His work has been cited and covered by many; Led Zepplin, Ry Cooder, Bob Dylan, Springsteen, The White Stripes…

This link from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows the current position of the space probe Voyager 1, at 15,850,000,000,000 km from the sun

What is more amazing than the fact that Voyager 1 has left the solar system, having crossed into the heliosheath in 2005, and will enter the heliopause in 2015 (where the solar wind’s strength is no longer great enough to push back the stellar wind of the surrounding stars), is the fact that Blind Willie Johnson’s tune is on the golden record that is on board.

Blind Willie Johnson, who died of pneumonia in the burnt out remains of his house, penniless, and in obscurity. Listen to it here while contemplating where Voyager is right now.

Absolutely haunting.

Mistubishi Evo X

http://www.mitsubishi-cars.co.uk/evolutionx/postcards.asp?view=2

Having just had a test drive in the 300bhp with SST and the uprated ICE and sat nav, I can say simply that this is the most exciting car I have driven in the last few years. Finally, the Evo gets clad in some classy threads without losing any of it’s Japanese style, whilst being put together in a Germanic fashion.

Just before driving the Evo X, I took the Audi RS4 out. A second hand RS4 for £42k vs an Evo X for £32k? The Audi has an engine that is simply a force of nature, an exhaust note that raises the hair on your neck (and a few other parts of my body!) and is a car that feels like a £55k inside, but as a driving experience, the Evo X comfortably an equal.

Roll on a battle with the GT-R!

Woohoo! The Express gets screwed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7303801.stm

Regardless of anyone’s opinion of the parents, 100+ headline stories in that shitrag that are defamatory is an impressive list. Regardless of how the first sentence of the story qualifies the headline (usually will be along the lines of “it is alleged”), the headlines themselves are just horrible, making the average prole think you’re guilty.

Their headline writers, while they are at it, probably ought to apologise to everyone else they have screwed in a similar fashion. That is practically every single front page headline they have ever done.

Darling’s Budget

The overwhelming feeling five days on is of wanting to own the biggest, most polluting vehicle possible.

Labour isn’t Labour anymore. Maybe John Major was right in 1992 when he said socialism had been eradicated from British politics. Labour just seem to be moving to the right of every argument, opting for the most populist and Daily Mail stance of everything, such is their need for popularity and fear of losing the next election.

The West Wing

Perhaps the most intelligent and best written television programme ever written.

What gets me, more than the writing, the depth of the characters and the stunning acting, especially Martin Sheen, is the feeling it leaves you with. What would the world be like if there was a liberal Democrat as President, a hugely intelligent person who made decisions based on sound reasoning, with knowledge of history, religion, philosophy, and a sense of wanting to do the right thing, all this supported by staff that have the same ideals?

Russell Brand

I am not entirely sure how this guy has gotten so far so quickly in the last couple of years, given how he just isn’t funny. However, he has come up with one absolute gem.

Quoted from Wikipedia: “On February 23, 2006, [Russell Brand] hosted the 2006 NME Awards show. Upon reaching the stage to receive his award, Bob Geldof began his speech with ‘Russell Brand… what a c*nt.’ which later prompted Brand to strike back with: “Really it’s no surprise he’s such an expert on famine; after all, he’s been dining out on “I Don’t Like Mondays” for 30 years”.

Does Nader want the Republicans to win?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/24/nader.politics/index.html

Ralph Nader must know he doesn’t have a hope in hell of winning. Why draw potential Democrat voters away, much like in 2000? I suppose it says a lot about the people who do vote for him instead of the Democrats.

McCain must be laughing at his luck.