Various Pets Alive and Dead

Various Pets Alive and Dead
Marina Lewycka
ISBN: 9781905490912

This book by the author of "Two Caravans" tells two parallel stories
about a 1970's hippy commune and the adventures of two of its children
in the 21st century. A lot of the humour comes from ridiculing some of
the more ultra-left views current in the 1970s and then contrasting
the morality of the parents with the immoral world in which Serge -
one of the children - has become embroiled.

I don't intend to ruin the plot but the banking world is summarised
for Serge thus:

"Imagine gambling in a casino. Everything you win, you keep. And every
time you lose, a kind-hearted donkey called Joe Public comes along
with a sack of gold and pays off your debts .... He just has to keep
the government onside by keeping them running scared."

Drawn into this world because of the easy money, Serge develops a
whole new meaning for the term "fictitious capital." The parts of the
financial plot which seem most bizarre, like making money out of a
downturn, are the parts which are most accurate.

In the hippy commune, the attempts to explain the role of marriage -
or the "pastry arky of the domestos fear" - to young children are a
salutary warning about fitting your language to your audience.

Marina Lewycka does not spare anybody, left or right, from her comic
ridicule. This is a thoroughly good read.







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Tis

Tis
Frank McCourt
ISBN 0684865742

Every teacher has a book inside them. In some cases it is as well if it just stays there. In Frank McCourt’s case I can only say I am glad it came out into the open.

In prose a bit like a stream of consciousness, he writes about his life in Limerick and the problems of moving back to New York and trying to make headway against poverty and prejudice. So far so depressing but he manages to make it come alive and make it highly readable.

And then in the second half of the book is his life as a teacher. His description of his first lesson with a sassy New York class is a delightful and frightening evocation of the problems everyone encounters as an NQT. I can recommend it to anyone who has ever come into a classroom and found the pupils know how to handle the situation much better than they do!

He is very open about his feelings even when these are discreditable, especially when these are discreditable. He does not give himself the benefit of the doubt or cloud his emotions. When he wants to be extremely rude to his mother or father he gives his exact feelings but concedes that he didn’t actually say any of these hurtful things.

He compares being Irish and being expected to be interested in “irishness” with being black and expected to be interested in specifically “black issues.” He adds that at least he could (if he wanted) have changed his accent but not the colour of his skin.

(Grammatical note – my use of the word “they”is wrong as any English teacher will readily assert. However the Oxford English Dictionary (no less) acknowledges, perhaps reluctantly, that “they” can be used as a substitute for “he or she” where the latter would be clumsy.)

Every teacher will find something to like in this book




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Sexual Harrassment on the subway

An astonishing 81 percent of American women say they have been sexually harassed. And a surprising amount of this harassment is taking place on the tube, called the subway in the US.

The BBC video about this is here

Jeremy Corbyn has been subjected to a torrent of abuse from Tory Party "sock puppets" on the Internet for suggesting a policy of zero tolerance of sexual harassment. It tells you which side the Tories are on over this issue.

Labour policy will encourage the victims to speak out and get action. Sexual harassment in the workplace is repeatedly trivialised but it is just another form of management bullying and should be treated as such.

Two lives

Vikram Seth ISBN 0-316-72774-1


“Don’t take the black man” were the first words Henny Caro first said about Shanti Seth when he was proposed as a lodger in her family home – hardly a promising start to a relationship which was to last the rest of their lives.

Shanti and Henny Seth were not famous, at least prior to the publication of this book. Their lives spanned a fair proportion of the twentieth century and they were dominated and changed forever by the rise of Nazism and the second world war.

Shanti, born in 1908 and brought up in India, was sent to study dentistry in Berlin in the 1930s although he did not speak a word of German. It was there that he met Henny who came from a patriotic “intensely German” family. In addition to her initial hostility, she was also engaged to someone else.

She was able to get out of Germany and went to reside in London where they became close friends. He lost his arm at the battle of Monte Cassino but went on to pursue a successful career despite his disability. It was only after the war that she learned that her mother and sister died in Auschwitz. The book traces her search for the truth about their fate.

This close intimate portrayal of their lives by their nephew is a powerful work of art and will not leave any reader unmoved.

Interestingly as well as dealing in detail with the plight of the Jewish families in Berlin during the war it also deals with the less well-documented suffering of Germans in the post war period.

It also deals with the effect on Henny’s group of close friends in Berlin, Jewish and non Jewish, one of whom became an apologist for the Nazis. The personal is political in this novel but there is nothing but the most superficial of political analysis on the part of the writer; the reader has to provide that.

In addition to spanning the century, the narrative spans the globe, from India, Germany, Israel and Palestine to Britain where they lived most of their lives.

Reflecting on the story which he has been telling, the author concludes, “Behind every door in every ordinary street, in every hut in every ordinary village on this middling planet of a trivial star, such riches are to be found.”

Read it.

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Unison fights bullying of police staff

There is now a Unison report on the sexual harrassment of police staff.

UNISON is the main union for police staff with 33,700 members across all forces, apart from
the Metropolitan Police and the Police Service in Northern Ireland. They do not represent police officers.

The figures are astounding and thank God Unison are taking up this issue. Without a union these workers would have nobody to turn to.Codes of ethics are very nice but only a strong trade union can make sure anything is done about them.

One can't help wondering, if this is how the police act towards their own staff, how do they treat the general public?

 

The Girl who kicked the Hornet's nest

The Girl who kicked the Hornet's nest
Steig Larsson
ISBN 978-1-84916-274-6

The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson is a fascinating series of books which deserves an audience beyond the devotees of crime fiction.

The girl of the title is Lisbeth Salander. She is a victim of horrifying childhood abuse at the hands of a respectable psychiatrist. She develops skills as a computer hacker which she uses to wage a campaign against men who torture women.

The 21st century slave trade – in which girls from the former USSR are duped into working as prostitutes in Sweden and subjected to rape and torture often by respected members of society – is one of the less-documented stories of the collapse of communism loudly trumpeted by the apologists of capitalism as “the end of history.” .

The books themselves develop as exciting detective dramas with a background in fact. They talk openly about the corruption at the very highest levels in Swedish society. The author was himself a campaigning journalist who exposed the dirty work of Swedish and international capitalism.

So it is hardly surprising that Salander's co-worker is the charismatic journalist Mikael Blomkvist. He is also portrayed as being irresistible to women. You might think this is a little wish fulfilment by Mr Larssen, I, of course, couldn't possibly comment.

The links between big business, the security services and neo-nazis are explicit in the books but all under the guise of fiction of course. Stieg Larsson himself met an untimely and unexpected death. Truth really can be stranger than
fiction!

The first two books “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl who played with fire” have been turned into excellent films and I for one look forward to the film
version of this one.


Journalism (noun)
telling a story the people in power do not want to be told. Anything else is just advertising.

Matter by Iain M Banks

Iain M Banks' Sci Fi novels novels are a romp through the ideas of Science Fiction – always interesting and always surprising. In that he resembles E E Doc Smith for the sheer exuberance of his writing. Fortunately he does not have Smith’s obsession with projectile weapons.

Banks’ novels often centre on a socialist society – known as “The Culture”. It is a society of abundance in which there is no poverty or war. "Matter" concerns how The Culture relates to the rest of the galaxy where war and poverty have not been abolished.


The Culture is a society where artificial intelligence has reached its highest expression and is regarded as equivalent to human beings – or vastly superior depending on your viewpoint! The wit and wisdom of the AIs and their relationship with the human members of the culture is part of the novel’s attraction.


The Shell Worlds are a theme of this novel. They are artificially created worlds which host a variety of life forms. One character from a shell world joins The Culture and then returns home to the relatively primitive society into which she was born when her father is assassinated. However in her absence she has become a member of the part of the Culture called “Special Circumstances” – an organisation of humans with enhanced powers. Special Circumstances alternately upholds and violates The Culture’s principle of non-interference with other life forms at every turn.

Instead of going back to grieve for her father she ends up with a mission to save the world. This is a book for science fiction fans and socialists. Iain M Banks is always good value for money.

Xavier is a bookworm

I don't mean he reads a lot of books, although he does
I mean that he plays the free online game “Bookworm”
It improves your vocabulary and spelling.
It is free but will continually try to sell you a “better” version
So it also builds your resistance to advertising!

Bookwords has a lot of unusual words which are accepted by Bookworm
So it is quite useful for Bookworm, Lexicon, Bananas, Scrabble and other word games
Even more usefully it also has definitions
And yet more usefully you can add your own words to it if you get addicted to Bookworm

Ah did I mention Bookworm is addictive?
Well there are worse things to be addicted to

When you go to download Bookwords then Dropbox will invite you to join Dropbox. You do not need to do so, you can just download the file. 

Others

Others
James Herbert
ISBN: 0333761170

Whenever a mother has a child she hopes the baby is going to be OK, not the kind of person who will suffer a lifetime of pain and abuse and ostracism. Most babies, apart from an unfortunate tendency to look like Winston Churchill, are like that. Some have disabilities which attract sympathy. Then there are the “others” of the title.

James Herbert is a top horror writer and resides in Sussex (this novel is set mainly in a realistic and recognisable Brighton). I read horror stories when I was a young teenager because a good horror story (and that is what James Herbert writes) take the reader to a world where they can escape the ordinary. This book however locates the extraordinary firmly in the ordinary.

I won’t put in too many spoilers here but it is a fairly standard narrative. Why do evil doctors have this strange need to tell heroes all their plans before they make improbably inefficient attempts to kill them?

However the main theme of the novel is the way society treats “others” and of course Brighton is teeming with “others” of various kinds. It is not a book for the queasy and the kind of horrific description at which James Herbert excels is there in abundance. It is highly readable for people who like this genre.

I repeat the warning. To read it is easy but it is not for the queasy.

The book was first published in 1999 and is available in a large print edition. Avoid reading the blurb on the back of the book by the way because it gives rather more spoilers than I do

.

Space Dog Alfred Worksheets

These worksheets are also available on the TES website.

Space Dog Alfred 1

Space Dog Alfred 2

Space Dog Alfred 3

Space Dog Alfred 4

Space Dog Alfred 4 Answers

Space Dog Alfred  5 

You do not need to join Dropbox to download. The link takes you to Dropbox and you can just click on DOWNLOAD

Worksheets for Methold House class computer class

Control Codes

Word Basics

Ask Google  

Digital Safety

Websites 

Using the Internet 1 

Using the Internet 2 

Using the Internet 3

Using the Internet 4

Using the Internet 5

Using the Internet 6 

Using the Internet - Pick and Choose 





You will be invited to join Dropbox if you click on the link. You do not have to do so. You can just click on DOWNLOAD to download the worksheet. 

A useful website for the course is 
https://www.learnmyway.com/

It does ask too many questions but I always advise students not to use your real name or give a real email address and to refuse to answer impertinent questions!

Project Fear

Bog-standard Blairites like Alistair Campbell are on the BBC seemingly every day advocating a second referendum on the EU. If they succeeded in getting a second referendum and the vote went in favour of the EU, this would be construed as a victory for the EU policies of austerity and privatisation.

For Blairites, this is preferable to a general election because they are too busy fighting the Labour Party's current leadership to be bothered fighting against the Tories. An election would place before the voters a clear choice between the EU policy of austerity and privatisation and a Labour alternative. That is a choice the Blairites do not want presented.

In the event of a second referendum, they can rely on the BBC to present their own "dodgy dossier" of "facts" on Brexit. You will all be starving, there will be troops on the streets to quell social unrest and keep essential supplies moving. If that is the BBC "fact check" on Radio Four then I wonder what their fiction department is like. Project Fear with knobs on!

Their stock-in-trade is lies.

The fight to bring down this ramshackle government is one which will have to take place without the help or hindrance of bog-standard Blairites. They are good for nothing.

Frank Field

Frank Field  has long abandoned any socialist principles and become a bog-standard Blairite. His nadir must be the fact that the Daily Mail supports him. Any Socialist would just die of shame!
Field notoriously voted for the Iraq war and became an accomplice of mass-murdering war criminal Tony Blair. Tom Belger's ill-informed and pathetic attempt to paint him as a radical on the basis of his campaigns during the last century do not alter the facts.

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Forget you had a daughter

There is a clear implication in many of the books written about European or American prisoners in jails abroad that it is all very well for the "natives" to have to put up with disgusting conditions but it is just not cricket to expect us to.


For example, anyone who has read Midnight Express will have felt sympathetic to the protagonist but still felt, 1) he was a drug smuggler carrying an improbable amount of dope for his own use and 2) he seemed to have a contempt for the people and the country where he was imprisoned.

"Forget you had a daughter" by Sandra Gregory is the story of a drug smuggler who wound up in prison in Thailand and how she coped with the experience. She wound up in the infamous Lard Yao prison, jokingly referred to as the "Bangkok Hilton". If anyone begins this book thinking it is another "Midnight Express" they are soon disabused.


Sandra Gregory, who wrote the book with Michael Tierney, steers clear of that. The early chapters express her love for Thailand and the story ends with her regret that she can never go back there. She makes no bones about her guilt and/or stupidity. Moreover, she earned the disapprobation of some white prisoners because of her friendships with Thai prisoners and she has harsh words to say about the treatment of prisoners in British jails where she spent the last years of her sentence.

It doesn't sensationalise the sexual tension in a women's prison but doesn't skirt round it either.

The corruption in the prison was remarkable, prisoners could get most things on the black market but woe betide them if they couldn't pay their debts: "On one occasion a Nigerian woman had her bottom lip bitten off and fed to a cat, for not keeping up the repayments." I have to warn you that that is mild compared to some of the things reported in this book. It is not for those who are too fastidious.

Sandra Gregory is not obsessed with herself, throughout the book she observes and tells the stories of other prisoners. This is no sob story. Although it contains graphic descriptions of the conditions in prison it is written with some humour and is a very readable narrative.




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BBC hate campaign

The BBC still hasn't produced a single anti-semitic remark from Jeremy Corbyn. Neither have any of his detractors among the bog-standard Blairites. This is passing strange. 

However, the website evolvepolitics has drawn attention to the fact that the right-wing media just branded a Jewish Holocaust SURVIVOR as antisemitic to smear Jeremy Corbyn.

The article is here

The allegation amounts to guilt by association. People who have attended a meeting which Jeremy Corbyn chaired have said things he disagrees with. Isn't that the whole point of holding meetings? Views are exchanged and people don't necessarily agree. How on earth is there to be peace in the middle east if people who disagree won't hold talks?

Letter in the Guardian re freedom of speech

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/31/palestinians-in-the-uk-speak-out-for-the-right-to-freedom-of-speech

The fundamental right to free expression, guaranteed by article 10 of the Human Rights Act, is first and foremost the right to “receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority”. We write to provide news of our existence, in the face of current attempts to negate it.

As British Palestinians, some citizens, others still stateless refugees, we remain bound by our common history, when previous generations of Palestinians were violently denied the right to self-determination by the British colonial power ruling Palestine from 1918. Deprived of our sovereign rights to our land, we were dispossessed of it by force in the establishment of the state of Israel, which the British colonial occupation oversaw through 1947 to 1948. There exist vast bodies of publicly available records, scholarly evidence and official testimonies to affirm these facts.

The reality of the Palestinian people’s ongoing dispossession belongs to the public space: Palestinian people have the right to impart information about these present and past injustices, as every British citizen has the right to hear this information, along with the ideas and arguments that emerge directly from it.

Accordingly, any use by public bodies of the IHRA examples on antisemitism that either inhibits discussion relating to our dispossession by ethnic cleansing, when Israel was established, or attempts to silence public discussions on current or past practices of settler colonialism, apartheid, racism and discrimination, and the ongoing violent military occupation, directly contravenes core rights. First, the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, who remain protected by international laws and conventions; and second, the rights of all those British citizens who stand by our side, in the solidarity of a common humanity.

We call on public bodies to actively protect and to promote accurate information about current and past events in the life of the Palestinian people, as part of Britain’s ongoing, and outstanding, colonial debt.
Omar Al-Qattan Chairman of the board of trustees, AM Qattan Foundation,Atallah Said Chairman, British Palestinian Policy Council, Professor Kamel Hawwash University of Birmingham, Professor Karma Nabulsi Univerity of Oxford, Nadia Hijab Author and human rights advocate, Dr Aimee ShalanCharity chief executive, Ben Jamal Director, Palestine Solidarity Campaign,Mazen Masri Managing director, Edgo, philanthropist, Sawsan AsfariPhilanthropist, founder educational charities, Zaher Birawi Chairman,Europal Forum, Salma Karmi-Ayyoub Barrister, Professor Suleiman SharkhUniversity of Southhampton, Professor Izzat Darwazeh UCL, Dr Adam HaniehReader in development, Soas, Dr Dina Matar Soas, Abu Helal Editor-in-chief, journalist, Dr Nimer Sultany Senior lecturer in public law, Soas, Dr Ghada Karmi Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Akram Salhab Refugee and migrant organiser, Karl Sabbagh Author and publisher

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