All the Commotion

I went to work at Monoux in 2007.  I left a grade 1 (outstanding) college in amazing financial health for a grade 3 (requires improvement) college with ropey finances.  It was like stepping back in time further than when I had started at NewVIc in  1993 – Monoux’s systems in 2007 were ones that would have been unacceptable in 1993.  Why did I go?   A massive promotion with a hell of a lot more money, which I needed as I was now buying flat on my own.

One year later – a year I hoped that I would look back on at the end of my career as most gruelling and difficult of my career (it was worst to that date but it has been beaten half a dozen times since) the financial crisis happened.  I vividly remember driving home and realising when the first news was announced that we were in for a disaster.  Usually I drove home round the North Circular, but an accident meant I had gone the back way through Leyton and Stratford.  I was on the roundabout in Maryland when I heard it.  This track came on after the news.

I had become pretty good at forecasting financial disasters.  In the days of the first dot.com boom two people I knew were heavily into the shares (I had no spare money, so it was not a game I had any skin in).  One of them I worked with and refused to get out, doubling down by mortgaging her house.  The second one listened to me.  I knew her far less well, but she told me that she had put her life savings in dot.com stocks and the money had doubled already.  I advised her to take out her original investment and put it in safe blue chip investments, that way she would always have it.  Also, to decide at certain points to take out more money, so she would have a profit.  Fast forward and the dot.com boom collapsed, the first lady lost it all.  When I saw the second lady she was incredibly grateful as she had tripled her money.  She had lost a load too, but only even more profit.  I am not a genius – every crash in history (1929, the Dutch Tulip disaster) has been preceded by non experts believing investment is a one way bet.

In 2008 I realised that this was going to screw the country for a long time, and it has.  2020 and we are still caught up in the aftereffects of this disaster.  Austerity, ultra-low interest rates and squeezed public services.  We spent billions bailing out banks but there are less services for public health, the elderly, schools funding is (in real terms) lower than it has been for over 20 years and Sure Start centres and careers services have all gone.

This has had a terrible impact on society, especially as the cuts that were made always impacted on the poorest and those with least voice to protest.  We could save banks with billions but have forced the most vulnerable in society to live on scraps.  The Conservative government talks of shirkers and frauds, yet benefit fraud costs less than 1% that tax fraud does.  When you have a society that ignores the circumstances children start in it is just storing up problems for the future.

Children born in poverty, to parents with low educational attainment or mental issues, or in “chaotic” circumstances are being hobbled in their chances to succeed (not that there aren’t incredible success stories from some children).  This has consequences for everybody as it means society pays the cost later in their lives.

I am an accountant, but it is ridiculous that for Treasury purposes building roads or houses is capital spend and can legitimately be paid for by borrowing.  Training and paying teachers, social workers and medical staff as well investing in early years support for disadvantaged kids is not.  Thus it is subject to government spending rules and a target to be cut when money is shorter.  The stupid thing is that paying for these things would save money in the long run.  A society is as strong as its weakest.

I can’t say I predicted all of this in 2008, but I knew we were fucked.  Hopefully we don’t screw the next generation as much in the aftermath of the 2020 crisis.  They are going to have a hard enough time anyway.

But I expect we will.

Sex On Fire

Per ardua ad astra

There used to be a radio show called Forces Favourites, playing requests for families where one of them was stationed abroad.  Later on it became Family Favourites.  It was on Radio 1 in the early 70s presented by Annie Nightingale (the only national female DJ).  Radio 1 had a very limited schedule in those days on a Sunday.  It actually stopped transmitting between 4 and 5pm in the afternoon and finished at 10pm that night.

When we camped as a family in the early 70s we would hear this on the way home.  That is where I first heard this track.

I do not remember when I first became interested in space.  It was pretty young.  For a birthday, my fifth I think, my Dad assembled a model kit of an Apollo rocket.  It was amazing

Apollo 11 Saturn V Rocket Model Kit (Scale 1:96) from Revell | WWSM

By the age of six my favourite TV programs were Doctor Who and Star Trek.  I had the Observers Book of Astronomy:

Observer Book - Astronomy 1973

I was even bought my own telescope to make observations from the back garden.

This interest lasts to this day – as people who have been subject to my Facebook shares about black holes, dark matter and Snowball Earth will attest.  (Snowball Earth is the theory that in one ice age around 700 million years ago the Earth was entirely glaciated).

I am fascinated by the origin and fate of the Universe.  Is inflation what happened at the start of time?  Why is there more anti-matter than matter in the early universe?  Why does time move in one direction only when movement in every other dimension is two way?  Wil the universe end in a big crunch or in heat death?  Will gravity ever be combined with the Strong Force and the Electro-weak force into a unified theory?  Is the universe in a false vacuum state that could collapse at any moment?

I am lucky to live in an age when these are being considered. 

Telstar

This Is Not Enough

In my earlier posts I spoke about the depiction of women in music videos (https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/39) and then there was Sabrina (https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/65). 

Now at least Sabrina was in the 80s – to me that seems like yesterday, but society has changed a hell of a lot.  Yet you still get videos like Call On Me, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qetW6R9Jxs4 , Studio B’s I See Girls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UCupN4wSoc or maybe the worst ever – Blurred Lines, a song about rape featuring three topless women in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwT6DZCQi9k .  In many ways the casual disregard of the songs rape lyrics is worse than the video.  People sing it – a group of charity workers were singing it outside my local Sainsburys.  I am not in favour of censorship – but some people do not seem to engage their brains when listening to music.

Rap videos have a bad reputation, even Katherine Ryan, a noted feminist, said misogyny is built into the genre – plenty of examples here – https://www.xxlmag.com/eye-candy/2015/08/16-memorable-bet-uncut-music-videos/ .

Of course, while less explicit than these videos, female artists acting provocatively in videos when they have an audience of young women does not help (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4  or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8  or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtIRArhVD4)  I am not saying that women should not be allowed to make videos like this.  The argument for them is that they are female empowerment – I suspect that is female empowerment as seen by middle age males.

I’m a Hetero CIS male.  When I was younger I would not have through twice about any of this.  Age changes that and having daughters makes you think too.

My response to a lot of these things, when people say it is harmless, is to say would you watch it the other way round with men in the women’s positions?

It is really hard when there is a creator (music or anything else) that you like but includes dubious imagery of women in that work.  Much like a lot of people still make excuses to listen to Michael Jackson despite the posthumous allegations against him (though remember Jarvis Cocker at the Brits?  His pay off in the 90s?  Some of us suspected then).

I cannot claim innocence.  One of my favourite comic creators is Howard Chaykin.  He wrote the seminal American Flagg comic in the 1980s.  It was about a distinctly dystopian future, elements of which look prescient.  Chaykin appears to be unable to draw any comic book without featuring in her underwear, particularly stockings and suspenders.  Despite this I still like reading his stuff (and let’s not even talk about Black Kiss – google it if you want).  I just read Satellite Sam, which Chaykin only illustrated, not wrote, yet the imagery is the same.

American Flagg (1983 1st Series) comic books

Female empowerment – but why does she not wear trousers?  Not to mention the top left corner…

A MOMENT OF CEREBUS: Howard Chaykin

(Google it.)

Some American cable TV channels are (in)famous for gratuitous nudity.  HBO picked up a lot of grief for Game of Thrones, but Starz is the one to note.  Spartacus is a really good TV series, but if you took out the gratuitous female nudity it would be 20% shorter (take out the gratuitous violence and it would be a mini series).  Outlander is a better example – a strong female protagonist in an historical romance.  It includes a lot of nudity and sexual violence (to be fair it does actually include male nudity and male on male on rape, but I’m not sure that is quite how we want to improve things).  Outlander would seem to a series aimed at women, but this does not stop this.  Obviously a lot of people put there qualms aside to watch shows where the content is not all to their taste.

So, I don’t approve, but you have to very strong willed to turn your back on favourite creators.

Finally, the track in question.  I am a big fan of Trevor Horn.  Producers are vital in the music industry but few make it to general name recognition on their own.  Horn achieved this, though he was a pop star as well in his early career.

This track used the fake lesbianism of the group members to generate controversy and attention.  This was especially shocking given that Russia is one of the least tolerant countries for LBQT+ in the world.  I just can’t stop liking this track though.  More Trevor Horn to come.

All The Things She Said

For Your Eyes Only

In the early days in the sixth form we had plenty of time on our hands.  Obviously, there is “No such thing as a free period.  It is a self-study period” – copyright just about every teacher ever was repeated to us a lot.  Of course we ignored it.  We spent one entire morning with no lessons trying to work out which track to request on some Radio 1Breakfast show feature.  I mean, obviously I realise now, our chance of being picked were pretty low, but at the time we just assumed we would get on the air.

Trying to get a group of 16 and 17 year olds to pick one track is a nightmare.  Michaela Briggs actually went home to get James Bond’s greatest hits to demonstrate to us why we should pick one of theme songs for our choice.  She was pretty annoyed when we didn’t, after walking home and back again.  It gave me the chance to borrow the LP though.

I can not even remember what we picked, but that does not matter.  It was something that we did together and was a good bonding activity. 

In the sixth form we had a head and deputy head boy and girl.  There was a vote for these things, but it was subject to staff approval.  The usual idea was that one head and one deputy would come from the maths/ science side and the other two from the arts side.  We knew Michaela had won the vote (as there were more on our side) but when the posts were announced not only was she not head or deputy, there were two girls and one boy from the arts side.  We raised merry hell about that and were told that Michaela would be in if one of the two post holders left (the inference we made is that they did not expect her to stay and that she was seen as a disruptive influence).  These kind of promises are also a hostage to fortune – either the head or deputy head girl left very quickly and Michaela took the post of deputy, much to the chagrin of Mr Betts.  Lesson for life there about promising things like that.  (At NewVIc 15 years later I saw the same thing happen.  We wanted a senior Arts technician and Phil Supple got the job, upsetting Lin Cummins.  The Vice Principal, Michael Dowd, told Lin that it was incredibly close.  Phil resigned a month later and they had to give Lin the job, even though they did not want to.)

Octopussy was the only Bond movie from Moonraker onwards that I did not see at the cinema.  For Your Eyes Only was dull and Roger Moore did not look the part of a suave secret agent anymore.  Dave, F, Neil, John (I think he was with us), Richard and I went to see Never Say Never Again, the best Bond film from the 80s.

The theme from Octopussy was not on Michaela’s Bond Greatest Hits, but it was on an updated version that I got hold of a few years later.  There are far more famous Bond themes, but for years it was my favourite.

All Time High

He Ain’t Heavy

Apparently, I was desperate for a little brother – I am not sure that was true, I only have my mother’s word for it.  My parents repeatedly told me this as Mike and I ripped 50 shades of crap out of each other.  My parents were both only children, which is why they wanted a sibling for me, so they had no experience that it was natural for children to bicker all the time.

I think it got worse for him when Alison and Frances were added to the family.  Mike and Alison went from the being the youngest and oldest into joint middle child hell.  Sure I resented them getting every privilege I got six months after I got it, despite them being over two years younger, but I do think middle kids get none of the benefits of being either the oldest or youngest.

Mike loves his football and has a lifelong devotion to Ipswich Town.  (Famously Alan Shearer once said that there are no easy games in the Premier League, except Ipswich at home).  I have given up home of him ever seeing that Rugby Union is a far superior game.  Or Cricket.  Or American Football.  I guess his love for Ipswich is just a cross he will have to bear.

(Alison, Frances and Mike, Victoria Crescent, Royston in the 70s).

Mike found music well before me.  I’m sure that his taste in 70s music, which included Boney M, Showaddywaddy and Pussycat, are not something he necessarily wants shared (though Mississippi by Pussycat is a guilty secret for me too).  However, he became a proper muso and is the only person I know with a bigger music collection than me.  Luckily, our tastes do overlap in a lot of areas, which was particularly important as teenagers without enough money.

Mike has led an interesting life, some of which is in his book that I namechecked in an earlier post.  He has managed two impressive things recently One is that he had a major knee operation years ago, yet is now running marathons and doing the London Ride 100.  He may have mentioned that a few times to the family.  His friends.  On Facebook.  Down the pub.  In the Street. At work. To random strangers.

(Ride London 2019)

The second is that he has found happiness with his amazing wife, Karen.  I don’t know what he did to deserve her, but I am really glad that they are happy together.  She organised a surprise 50th birthday for him – his reaction was totally hilarious.

My Dad, Karen and I met up to cheer him at the finish in Ride London.  We had lunch in a rather nice Italian near Charing Cross, L’Ulivo on Villiers Street (well worth a visit if you are in town).  We were tracking him on the Ride London app and got quite worried that we would not get our dessert in before he got to the Mall.  Luckily a cycle pile-up (not involving him) slowed him up and we got our tiramisu in with plenty of time to spare.

(Dad, Mike and Karen after Ride London)

This was released in 1968.  The same year my brother Mike was born. 

So, this is for best brother I could have. And the best sister in law😊 (though Karen was born much later than 1968).

Burt Bacharach is an amazing songwriter.  Dionne Warwick has a beautiful voice.  I am not sure when I first heard this song, but I loved it at once.  Whitney Houston got the kudos in later years – but for me her Aunt was the better singer, as she knew you don’t have to soar and emote at maximum volume every second.

Do They Know the Way to San Jose

Listen to What I Say

I have been line managed by 8 people in the last 28 years (since I left Grant Thornton).  Seven men and one woman, which says something about power structures in the UK all too sadly.  I am also lucky, as I would say there is only one of them who I would say was an idiot – this post is not about him.  In my first seven years at NewVIc I was initially managed by Bill Barker and then directly by the man who had been his boss, Satnam Gill.

The John Major Conservative government had decided to free Further Education Colleges (mainly adult learners) from local authority control, but had decided to put sixth form colleges in with them (16-19 year olds), even though the vast majority of 16-19 year olds attend schools, which would stay with local authorities.  A typical Government piece of idiocy, but one I will always be grateful for.

Newham’s educational performance was terrible, one of the worst boroughs in the country – even by London standards it was awful.  The local council had decided to build a sixth form college as a centre for excellence.  Then, as it was nearing completion, they lost it to an independent existence.  So not only was this a new sector, it was also a new establishment still only partially completed when I started in December 1992.

Satnam was joint number two behind the Principal, Sid Hughes, who I am sure that I will write about another time.  He came from a local authority background and was responsible for everything that was not teaching.  People consistently underestimated him.  He was very soft spoken and often looked dishevelled.  He tended to turn up to work late and then stay late, he shuffled around and was always looking for someone to share a crafty cigarette with.

But he was brilliant.  NewVIc negotiated amazing contracts with the Local Authority, the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) and The London Docklands Development Corporation.  It left the College in an incredibly strong position that endured for nearly 20 years after he left.

He was really fair as a manager.  In my third year I made an amazing mistake on the budget.  I decided the best thing to do was own up rather than try and fudge it away.  I screwed up my courage and went next door.  At the time he was not my direct boss, but my line manager was off on long-term sickness, so I had less experience with Satnam than I would have later.  I owned up to the mistake and the implications.  He smiled and told me to redo the budget and we would submit it to the FEFC and the Governors.  Also, to be more careful.  And that was it, no bollocking, no histrionics, he just said he was glad I had not tried to hide it.  That is something I always emphasise to the people who work for me.  If something goes wrong do not try to hide it, we will sort it out.  Just do not make the same mistake twice.  This is just one example of how he could manage people and get the best out of his staff, one of the most important things for a senior manager.

In 1999 Satnam left to become Principal of the Working Men’s College in North London.  He turned it around financially and educationally.  He retired in 2014 and is a Labour councillor in Camden.  He looks pretty sharply dressed these days.

If he reads this I hope he realises that a lot of people know he is a top guy and a wonderful human being.  He definitely had a massive impact on me.

NewVIc was a huge success.  Originally the idea was no more than 750 students would require post 16 education.  Within a few years over 2,000 students were at the College and we got 3 consecutive outstanding grades from Ofsted.  A few years after I left (and to be fair a lot of other people left) it slipped to a 3.

Little did I know that, after he left in 1999, I was in for a very different experience of a manager.  I spent five years regretting Satnam’s departure.

Turn Around.

PS This was my elder daughter, Chantelle’s, favourite track when she was six months old.  She smiled and waved her hands around when it was on.

When you hid your pain and smiled in the rain

I think this will be the only song featuring Ian Gillan on vocals that will be on this list.  People who know me and my taste for heavy metal and rock music may be surprised and assume that for some reason there will be no Deep Purple track on the list (Gillan fronted Deep Purple for several years).  Deep Purple were rock gods who went through multiple line-ups, though the Gillan era line-up is generally considered the best.  My favourite Deep Purple track isn’t sung by Gillan, though there most of their best songs are.

Deep Purple was/is (depending on the day of the week they may be back together or arguing again) a giant of early heavy metal.  Rainbow and Whitesnake were formed by former members.  Ian Gillan had a solo career and in no way an ego issue by naming the band after himself.  I am sure it was the marketing people pointing out that no one else in the group had any name recognition (though Janick Gers would go on to join Iron Maiden 8 years later) and if they wanted to sell records they better work those assets (how much happier would these people have been if David Bowie hadn’t insisted on Tin Machine as a name and called the group Bowie?).

The sound of Ian Gillan’s solo career had moved on from the almost orchestral heavy metal sound of the early 70s.  Punk rock had arrived and 12 minute epics were out.  It was called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) and featured groups like Saxon, Iron Maiden, Motorhead (the daddies of the movement), Angelwitch and Girlschool (the rarity of an all female heavy metal band).  This was on the ascendency just when I started taking a big interest in music.

In fact 1981 had a hell of a lot of metal in the charts, sadly not something that continued.  Motorhead made the Top 10 several times.  The sight of Lemmy on Top of the Pops amongst the rather more fey looking New Romantics was pretty jarring.  Radio 1 did not like Heavy Metal much, even if it was in the charts.  In those days different shows on Radio 1 very much had a target audience.  The Breakfast Show was to start the day (though under Mike Reid did at least have some interesting musical themes, though Mike Read has turned out to be a twat in later life).  Simon Bates was aimed at housewives.  There was a lunch show and an afternoon show, that were a bit more musically focused (until Steve Wright arrived with American Zoo Radio ideas, making that slot more a comedy session.  Which would be fine except there was no other contemporary music station to listen to).  Finally, there were the evening trio of Peter Powell, Kid Jenson and John Peel – increasingly playing new and independent music.  The only place for metal fans was Tommy Vance, who had the John Peel slot on Fridays.  Tommy was our champion, the only one who seemed to appreciate our music.  Sadly, he passed away in 2005 at the age of just 65.  I hope he knew how much he meant to all the metal fans in the country.

Metal and rock still do not really get a fair crack of the whip.  There seems, even now, a big divide between music more popular in cities and in the more rural areas.  In Essex rock bands are still found playing pubs and are far more popular than amongst urban youth.  Maybe it is because it is such good music to drive on the open road with – you don’t get many open roads in London.  In fact, the metal of 1981 seems pretty mild compared to what came later.

This is Gillan, from his best solo album Double Trouble (his second album of 1981, and a double no less – pretty high work rate), Restless.

Born in the UK

Obviously I did not hear this when it came out.  I heard it first at university.  I was surprised that the Equals were a group of different ethnicities.  Even in the 80s that was not common.

I was born in 1966 in Newmarket Hospital.

In those days the mother stayed in hospital for day afterwards.  My Dad spent most of that time in the Mount pub.  He was only 22……  My Mum was 20.

(The Mount, no longer a pub).

My first four years were spent living in Luton, but my grandparents lived in, or near, Newmarket for the rest of their lives.  I loved staying with them in their house – Mike and I were of course spoiled rotten.  Our grandmother was an amazing cook and would feed us until were no longer hungry (which is a hell of a long time with two growing boys).  They indulged my desire to search every newsagent within 10 miles for American comics.  They took us to the British Legion on Saturday nights to drink coke and eat crisps.  You don’t realise it, but life is never better than being a kid with indulgent grandparents.

(Molly and John Wood with me at the front circa 1973).

(2 Linton Close from Google streetview).

Little did we know that the just round the corner in Field Terrace Road lived a couple where the husband would murder the wife not long after my grandparents moved.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/wifes-body-is-found-10-years-after-her-murder-1591452.html

Eleanor Rigby was number 1 when I was born, but another Beatles track is on my list further up.  My brother Mike gets Those Were the Days by Mary Hopkins.  My sister Alison Church gets Honky Tonk Woman and my sister Frances Etherington gets Long Haired Lover From Liverpool.  I think I win😊

This is Baby Come Back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q3ALvb16EE

Follow the Leaders

Killing Joke never made it big, but I can bet Nirvana listened to them a lot.  They had some amazing tracks like (Let’s Go to the) Fire Dances and their most famous, Love Like Blood.

I was a conformist.  I obey rules and would probably have been a totally conformist cog in society without the influence of my mates from Brightlingsea.  The biggest revelation for me was on holiday with them, but it started in the sixth form.  I’ve already said how we humiliated our physics teacher at Christmas but that was not the end of our bad behaviour.

For a long time there was an understanding with the teachers that they did not mind us going out at lunchtime, as long as we did not go to their favourite pub, the one nearest the school.  We followed that rule until our last day.  At one point the acting Headteacher, Mr Betts, tried to crack down on this.  He actually shut the gates at lunchtime so we could not get out.

My friend John H had passed his driving test (he could drive from years earlier and took his test pretty much as soon as he was 17, no theory test in those days) and had come to school with the dormobile.  We crammed about 15 of us in it and as Mr Betts walked towards the gates drove out laughing and waving at him.  He gave up shutting the gates after that.  Pubs in Brightlingsea were amazingly relaxed about underage drinking in those days, some were particularly keen on it.

Sometimes we got our just desserts, but not from teachers.  “Yosser” Hughes and I went for one lesson to visit a sick classmate.  When I got back to school I found that my crisps had been ground to powder.  Not just crushed, the bag was unbroken, and someone had patiently ground them down.

Probably the worst thing we did was hiding Barry Jaycock’s car.  He had a Fiat 126.  While he was in a lesson 16 of us picked it up and put it behind the bike sheds.  I’m not sure how he ever got it out as the space was so tight, we had to sidle across at right angles to line it up and get it in the space.

The absolute worst thing that happened was to a guy called Finn, who was in the lower sixth when we were in the upper sixth – which we only watched and did not help with (though we did not stop).  He was their kicking boy and they persuaded him to put on some kind of flying harness and then they suspended from the ceiling.  Then they left him there and went to lessons.

I’m not proud of this, but we all walked out too, went to a lesson and went home.  Someone must have said something as he was not there the next day.  I had no ambition to put myself back in the bulling front line.

Thanks to John for the corrections.

Bullying is wrong and at least these days it is not tolerated in schools.

We were living in The Eighties.

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