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Now I realise that this is going to be dangerous, and it may alienate the small cluster of people who may read this blog from time to time, but is the coverage of The Great British Bake Off’s move to Channel 4 really justified?

I will hold my hands up, I am a fan. Watch it all the time. For what is a quaint, gentle, and inoffensive programme, it works on every level. Real people, competing at something most of us can relate to, if not aspire to, and a perfect chemistry of presenters and judges.

All very good, and fine, and fun, and in its own little way, groundbreaking. Apart from trans-gender, as far as I am aware, all sections of our diverse society have been included, inclusively. No unnecessary existential crises dragged in, just comfortable – for us – viewing.

So yes, it is a shame that it will no longer be on the BBC, primarily because three of the four leads will not follow, remaining loyal to the BBC – so presumably not on more than £150k salaries, so that chemistry will be gone. And there will be adverts. You know, those things that support every other TV channel is supported by.

But it is just a TV programme. And it will still be there, and maybe a new chemistry will evolve, although to be fair that could be tough. And it is still on terrestrial TV, not somewhere not available to all its fans.

My main gripe with all the fuss is the hypocrisy amongst certain pontificators. The show is owned by a private company. Private companies exist to make money. That is what our glorious capitalist system depends on.

Perhaps, if governments of all hues had not spent so much time and effort in attempts to chain the BBC to fit their particular expectations, then this would have been an in-house production, and therefore safe.

And certainly in its most recent incarnation of BBC straight-jacketing, if it had agreed to the much larger fee demanded there would have been such a bellowing from the grand and the good.

There will always be room for improvement in any large public organisation, and the BBC is no exception. But it is the best we have, and still probably the best in the world. So leave it alone, Tories, Liberals and Labour alike.

And give Channel 4 a break as well. This may not be their brightest moment, but they are the channel that cover the Paralympics, including using physically challenged presenters, signing ad breaks, and extending inclusivity in small but important steps throughout their schedule.

And finally, in the scheme of things, are there not more significant, life changing news items that should receive the amount of coverage that has been endowed on, I will say it again, just a TV programme.

I have a friend who stands on a cliff. It’s a high cliff, steep and sheer, and unforgiving. But she is not standing there preparing to jump. She is standing there in triumph. Not a final triumph, but a step in the road, a huge step towards a better future.

This is a cliff she has climbed from a dark, destructive and evil valley. She carries the scars from her time in the valley, and the scars she acquired when she climbed out. You can look at her and see nothing but a bright, fiercely intelligent, beautiful, empathetic and loving woman. But the scars are there, in the eyes occasionally, in the tears of frustration and anger at the injustice and ignorance and avoidance.

But she is above the valley, and she is secure in her position. There are cliffs behind that still need to be climbed, but she will climb those in sunshine, and in her own time, and under her own terms.

If you look closer you can also see threads, hundreds of them, winding into a rope that is tied securely round her waist. Each thread leads to a family member, a friend, some new, some of long-standing. And each one of them is holding fast, and will not let go.

Some where there as a rope to help with the climb, all are there to secure her place, and help with any future ascents.

I am grateful for every day I have known my friend, and for every day in the future that will include her, because she adds infinitely more than she would ever take, and she is welcome to take whatever and whenever.

I am in awe of the strength of my friend, of what she has emerged from, of the height she has achieved, and the summit she will reach. And through it all has retained her humanity, her spirit, her astonishing life force.

I am happy that she is on top of the cliff, in the sunshine, supported by those who love her.

But I am beyond angry that she had to suffer, and still has to suffer, because of the behaviour of one man, and the lack of understanding, or the intentional avoidance of understanding by so many who should know better.

And also for every other woman who has suffered, and still suffer, at the hands of men, and society’s blind eye.

A light is being shone into every one of those dark valleys, and that light should never go out. It needs to get brighter, and the threads wound into ropes should multiply to help each and every one to climb out.

I have a friend who stands on a cliff. She is amazing. She knows who she is.

This could turn into as long a running series as ‘Game of Thrones’ – with less blood and nudity. Although ‘Lost’ might be more appropriate – never-ending, making less sense the longer it runs.

Having rejoined the Labour Party after many years away, and having recently received my official membership card, due mainly to Jeremy Corbyn’s election as party leader, it is getting more difficult to retain an unequivocal adherence to supporting him through the current leadership battle.

Not because of anything he has said, because every time I hear statements or interviews he reinforces the conviction that my original decision is correct. Certainly not because his opponent is inspiring me with any confidence – at all.

It is all the peripheral noise, loud and whispered, that is causing concern. And what is most annoying is that I am not sure whether it is a justified concern, or one resulting from endless repetitions of innuendo and implied faults, with no grounding in reality and a very clear agenda.

What I know is that he was, originally, the ‘joke’ candidate, thrown in to give ‘width’ to the leadership debate. A move that spectacularly backfired on the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party with a vengeance, because the members of the party, swelled by his presence, liked what they heard, and many saw in person.

And that continues now. Huge crowds greet him wherever he speaks, around the country. He won’t indulge in the playground game of rabble shouting that is the public face of the Houses of Parliament, and he asks the membership for ideas, suggestions, direction. Politely, quietly, in complete sentences and not sound bites and catch phrases.

Admittedly he is not charismatic, but the recent leaders we have had who were described  as such have also left legacies of destruction and illegality that makes dull extremely appealing. However, Jeremy Corbyn is not dull, just different. He isn’t a politician, he is an idealist in politics.

From day one, he had the PLP, at best, not taking him seriously, at worst doing everything they could to bring him down, never mind the democracy of his election. They were brought into the Shadow Cabinet, showed minimal loyalty and then complained loud and long when they were ignored or replaced.

I am sorry, PLP, but the state of the Labour Party at the top is your fault, because the membership doesn’t agree with you.

However, the persistent flow of stories that emerge concerning the attitudes and activities of the organisation that has grown up around Corbyn does give me concern. Someone is instigating personal attacks of all sorts at MPs who do not support Corbyn. Someone, perhaps from distorted paranoia, is dismissing new members who may have been members of, or voted for, different parties in the past.

This is all unnecessary, and merely gives those elements in the PLP who want to maintain the rift the ammunition to do so, harking back to dark days long gone.

So what if a dozen or so Tories want to waste money to vote in an election they will have no effect on whatsoever. More importantly, if people have changed their direction  because of Corbyn, then welcome them with open arms. When Blair was elected leader I stopped voting Labour and voted Green in every election since. Does that mean I am not wanted?

Rational behaviour, respect for the discourse, and political differences, and an intention on both sides to find a way to achieve cooperation is what is needed. Not ridiculous statements from PLP members abusing Corbyn’s abilities, and activists behaving in a way that is totally at odds with what socialism actually means.

After all, there is a far more serious and fundamental battle to be fought, to stop the Tory party from completely undermining any progress that has been made towards equality and fairness.

 

Now that, in itself, is not an entirely surprising statement for me, but what is currently going on in the energy generation saga is hurting what is left of my brain.

Hanging fire for a couple of months to consider the Hinkley Point was an excellent piece of  power generation on behalf of Theresa May. Subsequently approving it – with additional provisos (?) – not so much.

Putting to one side the ongoing discussion regarding nuclear power versus every other option, there seem to be some fundamental points that makes it impossible for this sum to add up.

Firstly, the cost. Reports vary, but there seems to be a clear consensus that the existing planned development is more expensive that any other nuclear option, is unproved as far as the Chinese design is concerned, and has a record of overspending and late delivery as far as EDF are concerned. And that is before attaching the guaranteed payment for the power supplied, at around double what is paid now.

Secondly, with all the fuss and fury surrounding security implications, why is what is intended to be a significant element of the UK’s ongoing power generation being sourced from France and China?

Call me old-fashioned, but surely there are certain things that are too important to the continued functioning of this country to be put into the hands of people with different agendas? And no, before the accusations fly, I haven’t joined UKIP. I am all for open borders, I accept that multi-national corporations are here to stay – till the revolution – and in themselves the French and Chinese are wonderful people from wonderful countries.

But, big but, there are – or should be – limits. We spend our time moving in and out of bi-lateral and multi-lateral relationships with nations across the world, depending on circumstances, world events, lying politicians, and psychopathic factions. More so now than ever before in our history.

So, common sense says that the basic functions of modern life – energy, food, transportation, health, care – should remain within our control.

Governments in recent years have seemed a little to happy to attract external investment at any cost, selling off anything that moves, or makes something that moves, with little or no regard for an ever-changing world, and the fundamental needs of the country.

Are we now so deskilled that there is no-one in this country who knows how to build a power station? Or run a railway franchise? Or an energy provider? Or a steel industry? Oops, let that one slip in by mistake.

I would never propose protectionism as a general principle, as much that is good and or useful comes from operating across borders, the least of which is an incentive to retaining good relationships. But there are some things that are too important to blindly follow political dogma, and energy is one of them.

The sums don’t add up, my confusion remains.

Dear David, or should I call you Dave. How is it going in the world of ex-Prime Ministers?

I guess when you decided to cut and run – sorry – resign with dignity from Parliament, that you felt your legacy might last longer than the blink of an eye.

Not a chance. Although you didn’t quite leave the back door of Number 10 with a knife between the shoulder blades, the screech of brakes, and the crunch of gears to find reverse must have echoed down the back alley.

First, the positives. Gay marriage. A good thing. A very good thing. Well done. After that, not so much.

Arrogance, patronising attitudes, the total inability to answer a straight question, the ability to perform 180 degree turns without getting giddy. Those will be the real legacy.

Oh, and winning two – well one and a half really, as the first was shared – elections on the basis of a lie. You know the one. We can’t trust Labour with finance – look at the financial problems – we have to sort out their mess. The mess was the banks, the de-regulation and previous spending you had supported, and the rescue package that stopped a recession and instigated recovery was under a Labour government.

Since which time you have managed to place the UK at more risk than it has had to consider since WW2. Because you got panicked by an idiot in tweed with a pint and a cigarette. I was going to say fag but that would no doubt take you back to happier days of weird rituals in privileged educational establishments.

So, your real legacy will be Brexit. Maybe not as dramatic as Blair’s legacy of an illegal war, but possibly just as catastrophic.

In the meantime, Theresa is busy erasing your fingerprints from the political arena. Grammar Schools. The BBC. And now you are blamed for the mess in Libya.

History is a hard master. Especially when you try to write it yourself and fail. Badly.

And, in case you were wondering, this is not coming from a place of sympathy. None at all. Just saying.

One day this problem of inappropriate, pressurised and unwanted personal infringement will be a thing of the past.

One day, ‘just banter’ will be an excuse that is never heard. One day no will mean no, being accepted will not be based on having to tolerate unacceptable behaviour.

Unfortunately, that day is a long way off.

Yet again there is information released regarding sexual harassment in all forms in schools. And the problems remain the same. Technology has changed. The route to harrassment has changed, the starting age level has changed. The behaviour, and more particularly the attitude, has remained.

And, as usual, there are two pivotal points that continue to be put forward. The internet, and teachers.

Yes, there is pornography easily accessible on the internet, but that is not the primary cause of this ongoing problem. It doesn’t help, it misrepresents and distorts, but is merely the end result of a pervasive societal attitude.

Yes, teachers do need to be trained in sex education at all ages, starting in primary school, but they cannot be expected to solve the problem. They can demonstrate, propose, explain, but they need to be reinforced outside school.

The problem can be seen every day across a variety of TV channels – The only Way is Essex, Ex on the Beach, Geordie Shore, and so on and so on. The route of ‘banter’ as an excuse can be found in this sort of scripted reality entertainment. If a view of relationships, and the pressure to be accepted, is presented to children in this manner, how can you expect attitudes to be other than a distinct lack of respect for others.

And it bleeds out from there, into a wider acceptance of personal abuse as humour, as entertainment, as ‘I am just being honest’. No. That is bullying.

But, as with pornography, this is not the only area of misguiding. Every time a man – yes it is their fault – sighs, or shrugs, or bemoans a complaint, it reinforces both their prejudice and those that look to them for guidance.

Every adult male has a responsibility to make it clear,  in their attitude, utterances and behaviour, that any form of ‘banter’ that degrades, demeans, abuses, segregates, separates, pressurises, is totally unacceptable.

Of course it is all a matter of degree. Swapping teasing comments among adults who are aware of their content, level of seriousness, and where the limit is before emotional injury occurs is one thing.

But there has to be an awareness that how it appears to children who do not yet make those calculations is very different from what is intended. And an innocent example can produce a devastating result when copied.

We are responsible, and it is time to accept it.

How about we create a story out of nothing.

Hillary Clinton has pneumonia. Okay. That’s tough. Especially as she is in the middle of a campaign. But it is just pneumonia. She is being treated. She will recover. Let’s face it,, apart from the President, she is probably pretty high up the list of those who will receive the best treatment at a moment’s notice.

Although there seems to be an aversion in the political discourse to take more than a perfunctory examination of the situation before ‘end-of-days’ statements are made by over-enthusiastic news outlets, a quick internet search will reveal that, with the possible exception of Obama, every US president had medical issues of varying severity and diversity.

Difficult though it may be to grasp with some of those involved now or in the past, these are human beings, which means they will always be at the mercy of human frailties. What should be more worrying is the moral deficiencies evident in past presidents, and one potential future incumbent.

None of this is to do with illness, and all to do with gender. I am sure, even when they give the name to the disease that manifests as a bright orange idiot, Trump would never be on the receiving end of the ‘health’ mania that has erupted.

Hillary Clinton is a woman. Therefore she is not as strong as a man, even an orange one. Of course the media cannot state that as an acceptable idea, but they are more than happy to do the misogynist’s job for them by pounding out the ‘news’ in mile high letters. That way no-one has to say it. But we all understand, don’t we?

When will we get to a point where politics is taken seriously again? Not dull, not boring, but serious. This is our lives at stake here, more so than with any other presidential race. This is a choice between sanity and lunacy, not who can stomp around the country on a ridiculously extended road-fest with nothing to do with the election and everything to do with media pandering.

So, Hillary has pneumonia. She will recover. If elected she will have the best medical care in the world. But until that happens how about at least the UK media tries to concentrate on a more rational examination of the US election, rather than a temporarily impaired lung function.

Dogma? You want to counter dogma in education?

And how is reinstating selection into education anything other than dogma. If you want to remove the over-influence of the privately educated élite, you do not do it by replacing selection by finance and birth with one based on an exam at 11 years old.

This is not choice. Parents do not choose to send their child to a grammar school, the school selects the child. And at one moment in that child’s life. If a child is not at that point at 11, then they ‘fail’, irrespective of how they develop in the future.

This is not about choice, this is about the dogma of retaining the divisions in society. Of ensuring that the ‘tory’ aspirations are pandered to whilst ignoring the adverse effects this will have on the rest of population.

Why does it have to be on the basis of the creation of a new breed of excellent schools? Why is it not about the creation of all schools being excellent. Division, segregation, alienation will never do that.

There was a moment when, during your acceptance speech outside Number 10, you sounded like someone who was really interested in equality of opportunity. I was surprised, and not entirely convinced, but it made me pause – for a moment.

It didn’t last, because you are using political dogma to rule decisions. Overturning an intention of equality of opportunity within education is political dogma, of the worst sort. And you are using the country’s future as your bludgeon.

You have run the educational system for the last 7 years – a full secondary school life-cycle. You have exponentially expanded the academy / free school option, as well as endless tinkering with everything else. Do we take it that you are admitting that you have failed?

Are you saying that, we have fundamentally failed at moving the education system forward, so we will move it backwards?

In which case what is next for us to look forward to? As your changes to the Welfare State hasn’t produced the outcomes you hoped, can we look forward to the return of Workhouses?

There has been a fair amount of talk recently about the deterioration of political discourse, or, to in simple terms, politicians talking bullshit.

The results are clear to see. Donald Trump as a prospective US president, the UK voting to leave the EU, the rise of UKIP, the Tories still in power.

The question is where did it start, and who is responsible?

Much as I would like to lay it at the door of those low down untrustworthy politicians, I don’t think that is the case. The blame lies with the media, and how it has evolved from a means of providing a chargeable information provision service whilst presenting a debate, to providing a means income expansion whilst maintaining attention.

Newspapers, certainly in the UK, have always been split politically, but at least there was a cross-section of information available, with the opinions being held to account by a broadcast media that at least for a while appeared to have a remit for ‘truth’.

And then came the enormous expansion of commercial television, and the internet. I have no intention of criticising the vast array of programming available, because I have found over the years a large amount of quality entertainment, and informed discussion. I am also not going to criticise the internet. It has opened up vast amounts of information, and connections, for a vast number of people.

However, What both these developments did was to attach a financial imperative to public service broadcasting, and monetize information.

The other side of the ‘information’ explosion was the apparent assumption that, over time, our attention spans have reduced. And, as that was how the world was presented to us, more and more that was how we expected it to be.

Instead of a half hour discussion, with time for exposition and explanation, we were served, and started to demand, instant answers, sound bite information. And it all began to be self-fulfilling. Even on what should be serious arenas for discourse, such as The Today Programme on Radio 4 (3 hours) or Question Time on BBC1 (1 hour), if the answer is not forthcoming in a sentence, then interruptions prevail, from all sides, even the chair.

And it spreads ever wider. Campaigns have turned from proposal to propaganda, where the truth is a poor second to what looks good on a poster, or the side of a bus. And unfortunately some political operators realised sooner the others the direction the media was moving, and adapted accordingly.

Which is how we end up where we are today. With mal-informed decisions being made on the basis of slithers of half-truths and misdirection. And a spreading disillusionment with the political process, and politicians, as a whole.

We laugh at the absurdity of so much that is stated as fact, but the sad truth is that it has created a move divided, divisive and uncaring, dangerous world.

Well that worked well. Make a challenge for fairness to Theresa May, and get totally ignored. Although, to be fair to her, I doubt she read my last posting. Well she is busy. And who reads this anyway.

So, last night she confirms that the push for more grammar schools will continue. But don’t worry, if you don’t want one you won’t be forced to have one. So that’s all right then.

I am sorry, but I do not understand the argument.

Somehow, by establishing a selective school this adds to the choice available for parents, and presumably for their children who will actually attend the school. As far as I can see selective means the school chooses, not the parent. And for children, it creates division, separation, two-tier provision.

If the problem is an under-performing, under-achieving school, however that is defined, isn’t the logical answer to work at improving that school, rather than creating another one that would potentially take only some of those children who were destined for the ‘failing’ school. So, two schools instead of one, a division of support, of finances, and of the community.

Schools are not commodities, and are not disposable. They are vital, essential structures within communities, that should create prospects and potentials for the country as ac whole. Instead, they are being used as a means to separate, divide and alienate those who can from those who will be able to with some help.

Far from progressing towards an ever more socially mobile society, we are in reverse at the moment, and this will do nothing but add more impetus to that division.

This is not choice for parents, this is choice for some parents. And that choice will disadvantage not only those not selected, but also those that are. Social awareness, understanding, connection, is as important an element of education as the core curriculum.

A pretty quick reverse from day one Theresa May. Maybe ‘Brexit means Brexit’ is next.