A General Reflection

-
As I sit here ready to leave work at 4.47pm on this sunny Thursday afternoon, with all classes done for the week but a lot of grading to do, a few thoughts are going through my head that I want to write on my blog.

I was speaking with a student earlier who was telling me that he has a friend in the UK, and I was asked questions that essentially amounted to "Is this true...or not...? etc"

I spent the next ten minutes explaining what are a lot of the current "negatives" in the UK, and I couldn't disagree when the student challenged me concerning social issues - namely:

Is it true that young girls are getting pregnant all the time?
Is it true that technologically we are falling behind?
Is it true that a lot of people are not working, and there are those who live directly off the government?

I found myself having to agree, but to clarify the points in more detail. I also reiterated strongly that despite clear issues that we currently face as a country, including drugs, the benefits culture, political correctness, teenage pregnancies and the effects of the economic crisis, (amongst others) that we do still have some wonderful things. Let's not forget that should we work hard and find a life purpose, that quality of life in general is good; that education standards despite political correctness is excellent, and who can doubt the beauty of the British countryside? There are still things to look towards!

I left the conversation and told my student to ask his friend "What does it mean to be English?" and "What are English traits as supposed to British ones?" I think these questions in the short-term future will present problems that currently exist but are underestimated.

All in all, upon coming back to the office I couldn't help but feel an overall sadness. What is going on in the UK? Am I just an eternal pessismist? I miss my family and my country, but there is little to feel patriotic for, whilst we face this collective political, economic and social mess. What kind of a future do we have as a society? Such great questions have no clear answer; however what is crystal clear is the feeling of sadness I have, as I contemplate certain realities that we cannot deny.
-

Councils won’t cut back if they can make savings elsewhere……

The title says it all.  The link is here to read the offending article….let’s just provide readers with the part that made me burst out laughing…..

“However John Denham, the local Government secretary, refused to a put a figure on local authority spending cuts, admitting only that "things are going to be tighter" for councils.

In a bad tempered exchange on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Denham refused seven times to quantify the amount councils may have to cut spending.

He insisted that cuts in front line services would not be necessary if councils made efficiency savings elsewhere.”

The Government won’t say to what extent the cuts will be….claims that things are going to be tighter, and the real good part is that if cuts can be avoided by making savings elsewhere…..WHY WEREN’T CUTS MADE DURING THE GOOD TIMES?  There were obviously opportunities to save money before, and there is a strong implication that wastage has been at the heart of local Government……and for how long?

A pity state of affairs – an inefficient local Government that is about to get a whole lot worse.  Can’t protect cuts from the economic realities that this Government has largely created.

Back to writing….

In these last 20 minutes before I go to an extra class scheduled at 10am, I finally decided to get back into blogging. Regular readers will be pleased to know that I’m going to commence writing, for there remains a lot of economic/political and other issues and interests to blog about.

I’m using Windows Live Writer, which means that I no longer need to go into Blogger directly…..I always found it a chore to have to log in, and I like the idea of trying this method, as I used to do with ScribeFire, the Firefox-extra that allows you to blog from any webpage.

I’m hoping that by integrating my blog writing with other day-to-day activities that it’ll become easier to keep a written record of events. All I need to do now is find an easier method of saving posts rather than manually putting them into a word document. If anybody has any suggestions let me know.

Classes are going well at school, where I am redesigning and giving an introductory class to economics and politics. Although many of the themes remain the same to the previous incarnation of this class, the source materials have been completely overhauled, and I’m very glad to be using a book published in 2010! I am also making use of several excellent resources; one which I have found particularly useful is http://www.economics-network.co.uk – credit be to those who deserve it.

That’s all for now!