"We got a meeting with some guys from outta town..."

My inbox has been relatively free, recently, of missives from 'Kevin and Mary' of the NEU, although Kevin has been indulging in a certain amount of triumphalism elsewhere, hailing the decision to postpone opening schools as a "win for science and for every member" (which is odd, given that this member, at least, considers the continued disruption of education to be an unmitigated disaster).

Now, however, I have been invited to join a Zoom call - sorry, a 'very important Zoom call'; I forgot the customary NEU hyperbole. The Union has arranged an 'exclusive BLM solidarity webinar' to discuss, among other things, 'systemic racism and COVID-19' - an impressively prescient (or suspiciously well-informed) anticipation of the findings of the PHE study which have just appeared in the press.

Having filled in the registration form and answered the vital question 'How do you self-identify in terms of ethnic origin?'*, one may sit at the virtual feet of some notable speakers: Kevin and Mary must surely be beside themselves with oleaginous smugness at having secured the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr (accompanied by - of all people - Diane Abbott MP.)

What intrigues me, however, is the appearance part-way down the list of an unnamed 'Chicago Teaching Union representative' - is it me, or does this phrase have a slightly sinister ring, given the history of US labour unions? And why Chicago, of all places? After all, it's hardly as if things are going particularly well there at the moment...

It seems an odd use of Union funds - I understand that Ms Abbott, for one, does not come cheap, even in digital form. Our glorious leaders clearly see a window of opportunity (or possibly a handy political bandwagon) but I find it difficult to understand how the Reverend Jackson or the mysterious 'Chicago Representative', however inspiring as orators, will be able to speak with any authority on education in the United Kingdom.


*Surely a triumph of ideology over DNA: do you think I could get away with 'Vulcan' - or possibly 'None of your business'?

Sowing the seeds

From a previous post:

Many years ago, I was working in a school in an ethnically diverse area with significant discipline problems and poor exam results (some of the reasons for that are discussed here). Homework frequently presented a problem - I had one pupil who did his at a table in the corner of a takeaway restaurant - and a certain flexibility was often required.

Sometimes, though, it was necessary to complete an assignment in order to understand the next lesson. In one such case, I told a boy to come back to the classroom at lunchtime, when I would be at my desk marking and could give him any help he needed. He looked doubtful:

Pupil: Is this a detention, like?
Me: No; it's so you can finish that work before this afternoon's lesson, otherwise you won't understand what we're doing.
Pupil: So I don't need to report it then?
Me: Report it?
Pupil: To Mr H.
Me: (baffled) Who's Mr H?
Pupil: He runs my Saturday school.

This was the first I'd heard of it, so I asked him to explain. The boy told me he had started attending a Saturday school intended to improve the academic achievement of afro-caribbean boys. So far so good - I told him how pleased I was that he was taking his education seriously - but there was more:

'Mr H says that we have to tell him if a white teacher gives us a detention. If there are no white kids in the detention, that's racist. If you tell me off and don't tell any white kids off, that's racist too; Mr H said so.'

I asked for more details; it turned out the boys had been instructed to give Mr H the names of any 'racist' teachers who told them off - a worrying prospect for staff living in the catchment area. The same applied to white teachers who criticised black pupils' behaviour or even asked them to tidy their appearance. 

It was only after I left the school that the full irony of the situation became clear to me; I found out that the Saturday school in question had been started with contributions from a national televised charity appeal. Well-meaning people from all over the country had put their hands in their pockets to enable Mr H to undermine the teacher-pupil relationship.

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That boy must now be in his mid-forties; I wonder what he thinks of the current situation - and, more pertinently, what Mr H is doing now.

'O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts...'

Oh dear! I promised the Spouse I would stop thinking about the Dominic Cummings affair (I was getting very grumpy; I hate seeing anyone bullied, particularly where a young child is involved) yet here I am sitting down to write about it - tangentially, at least.

For anyone who has spent time in teaching, there's something very familiar about the way certain journalists are behaving. While I agree that the broadcast media have a duty to question the actions of those in power, there comes a time when their continued aggressive persistance starts to look more than a little juvenile: "Yes, Laura, I am well aware that Dominic jumped the lunch queue and no, that does not mean everyone else can do it too."

Over the past decades, over and above the demands of the curriculum, there are three things about which I have tried to teach all of my pupils: Occam's Razor, Utilitarianism and the Tragedy of the Commons (with a dash of Socrates thrown in).  The idea is to give them a toolkit with which they can approach and objectively analyse whatever life throws at them.

Having a framework of this kind is particularly beneficial for those pupils who, while capable and intelligent, find themselves permanently cross-threaded in the machinery of life. Frequently - but not exclusively - this is associated with something like high-functioning ASD (Asperger Syndrome), where being less able than most to rely on intuitive or conditioned grasp of societal norms means you frequently end up trying to work everything out from first principles on a logical basis.

Now, it is certainly not my place to speculate about Mr Cummings, but I'd guess from the 'weirdos and misfits' job description (and his reported lack of 'people skills') that he is no stranger to that way of thinking; in fact, his approach all along has been characterised by a willingness - or determination - to take things apart and question everything.

That being so, it was almost inevitable that, faced with a unique and complex combination of circumstances (including potential threats to his home and family), he would go back to basics and attempt to find the most rational solution possible rather than simply obeying the shorthand general advice that he, among others, had promulgated.

It's the tragedy of the commons, of course; one family group changing quarters makes little or no difference but a multitude doing so is a very different matter. Cummings, by reasoning from an individual rather than a collective viewpoint, opened himself up to the spittle-flecked (and somewhat ironic) bellows of 'Hypocrite!' from the crowd besieging his home.

It is possible that his judgement was impaired by the virus - the speed with which he succumbed to the illness on arrival suggests he may have been his usual incisive self - but, whatever the case, it is hardly reasonable to suggest that what he did entitled any Tom, Dick or Harry to pile the kids into the car and head off for a jolly day out at the coast, whatever the pundits may say.

Reason, however, has been taking a holiday, at least as far as a certain sector of journalism is concerned; think of the closely-packed mob shoving microphones and cameras in his face (are we allowed to say 'the pot calling the kettle black' these days?) or the endless attempts to shoe-horn criticism of him into unrelated news stories. Selective reporting - and what looks increasingly like the opportunistic settling of scores - has pushed the story onto the front pages and kept it there.

The end result begins to look more and more like an unrelenting attempt to unseat Mr Cummings (and possibly the Prime Minister) at all costs. Another thing I teach my pupils is always to ask 'cui bono?'; whether it's because of Brexit, the BBC, No. 10's internal affairs or simply party politics, Mr Cummings' problem is that, in his case, the answer is a very long list indeed.

Teaching and the Union Stranglehold

For anyone who has read the recent headlines on reopening schools and wondered why 450,000  supposedly intelligent men and women seem to be unquestioningly endorsing the NEU's machinations, a little background might be helpful.

For many teachers, union membership has nothing to do with collective bargaining, solidarity or marching under the glorious banner of a united brotherhood (or sisterhood). It's much more like having breakdown insurance for the car; you pay up regularly and then forget about it - expensive, but necessary in case anything goes wrong.

In a tight spot, the backing of a union can make a huge difference to the outcome; this, remember, is a profession in which head teachers rule an effective fiefdom where their word, however unreasonable, is law (the press can furnish abundant examples of those promoted beyond their moral and intellectual capabilities) and an unsubstantiated allegation by a malicious or disturbed teenager can lead to crippling legal costs or end a career.

The gross over-simplification that says children never lie about abuse has put a powerful weapon into the hands of dishonest pupils who want to settle a grudge or avoid disciplinary sanctions (it is almost always the strictest teachers who are on the receiving end of false allegations). While every school must have an effective safeguarding and reporting structure in place to protect pupils, there is a very real danger of cynical exploitation for nefarious purposes.

There is also the possibility of an unscrupulous - and possibly delusional - adult in search of a compensation payday or revenge for a perceived slight in the past. To that threat can be added the third-party element, such as a school administrative worker reporting a teacher for giving a stranded 17-year-old pupil a lift home or over-zealous police officers primed to give full credence to the 'victim', however far-fetched or antiquated the claims.

Until recently, union membership was effectively the only form of insurance available to cover specialist legal expenses and expert advice for a teacher facing an allegation of abuse. There's no such thing as the presumption of innocence here (suspension is a frequent first step in dealing with cases) and an accusation could come out of the blue at any time and relate to any period of career history; how do you prove your alibi for a date 30 years in the past?

The last is really the key to union membership; support over historic allegations is only available as long as teachers remain with the same union. Changing allegiance at any point in your career seriously reduces your options if a past pupil suddenly makes an accusation. The unions scramble for newly qualified teachers with massive introductory discounts and incentives, knowing that, once signed up, members are generally cash cows for life (as well as adding weight to the demands of the leaders).

Like many others, I made a conscious choice at the start to join a non-striking union; I disagree profoundly with the idea of putting politics before pupils. Unfortunately, the most suitable option, the  ATL (formerly the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association), was already under threat thanks to the infiltration of activists who did not share the majority ethos; in 1999 it affiliated to the TUC and, with the arrival at the helm of Mary Bousted, the leadership abandoned the moral high ground and began the downward slide - via its first ever strike - towards the eventual merger with the far more militant NUT.

The turnout of ATL members for the merger ballot was 25% (with 73% of those voting 'yes'). A minority of activists carried the day, while the 98,000-odd teachers who did not vote in favour were dragged willy-nilly into the placard-waving world of 'one out, all out!' and the sort of industrial action some of us wouldn't touch with a barge pole, all so that the joint general secretaries could proudly proclaim that they head the 'largest education union in Europe'.

Now my mailbox is bursting with e-mails - chummily designated 'from Kevin and Mary' - instructing me to sign petitions or e-mail my MP endorsing the NEU's stance or, this week, inviting me to join the 'biggest ever online union meeting'. There's more than a touch of self aggrandisement in their endless hyperbole as they set about furthering their political ends; the satisfaction they appear to derive from the resulting power kick is almost indecent to watch.

As one of the 'nearly half a million' the union leaders are so fond of using as their justification, I'd like to point out that I, for one, am not at all happy about it. 

Trainee Parasites

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, 
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. 
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on, 
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on."

As a result of some proxy job-hunting among the trainee positions available to new graduates, I was surprised to see a whole new category has emerged since my own long-distant milkround days.
A significant proportion of the positions available carried the logos of recruitment organisations but, in this case, not acting as middlemen but searching for new blood to join their own ranks.

Of course, these companies must have a certain amount of staff turnover but, to judge by the advertisements, some of them are trawling on an industrial scale for new graduates; in fact, fully 10% of the Guardian's graduate job opportunities last week were for variations on the theme of 'trainee recruitment consultant'.

Further research shows that, of the other jobs available, a large number invited the hopeful job-hunter to apply not to the eventual employer but to a third-party gatekeeper in the form of a consultancy. Even the public sector is not immune - such behemoths as health trusts and education authorities have clearly succumbed to the lure of outsourcing all that tedious CV-reading and interviewing.

Now, pleasant as it would be to assume that our money is being wisely spent, there is something rather worrying about the central London addresses and, on further inspection, palatial offices of some of the firms in question; not only are they merrily enlisting new troops left, right and centre for handsome salaries but they are clearly occupying some choice real estate.

That being so, I can't imagine that their services come cheap. How is it, then, that the cash-strapped NHS and other public bodies can afford to employ them, despite having their own personnel departments?

There is a possible clue in one of the recruitment job descriptions; the successful candidate, it said, would be 'keen to spot marketing opportunities and pursue them to create new business'. Can it be, then, that public sector managers are falling for the blandishments of professional salesmen to the extent that they no longer trust their own judgement or that of their staff when it comes to recruiting anything other than the lowest-ranking employees?

That would certainly fit with the world of 'development courses' and 'strategy days', where a hideously expensive 'consultant' obliges the reluctant workforce to visualise the 'coathanger of innovation' or jump into an imaginary wok and 'act out a being stir-fry' (yes, really!) while the bosses look on, beaming benevolently; there's nothing like a glossy brochure and a bit of jargon to make a senior manager hanker for front-row seats at the Emperor's fashion show.

Naturally some unscrupulous recruitment consultants have spotted this opportunity to bleed the state of its cash and are busy filling a completely unnecessary niche - no wonder the service sector was recently announced to be the fastest-growing and most successful part of the economy.

It's more than a little unsettling to hear that our economy is apparently being kept afloat by those who toil not, neither do they spin, and to be confronted by evidence that they are actively seeking recruits to the ever-increasing flea circus of middlemen, agents and intermediaries who survive by taking their cut from the labour of others or, as manufacturing declines, from the perceived soft target of the already overstretched public sector.

They that go down to the sea in blow-up flamingoes...

What is it about Rhyl and inflatables? Rhyl, as regular readers may remember, was where a mother-and-son duo aboard an inflatable rubber ring were fished out of the Irish Sea by the long-suffering RNLI a few years ago and every summer since has brought more examples of pneumatic foolhardiness.

The latest occurred last week, when lifeboats were called out to look for a child who had 'fallen from an inflatable flamingo' some 400m from the beach. According to witnesses, the deflated bird retrieved from the water during the search (the RNLI web page helpfully includes a picture) was originally part of a flotilla of giant blow-up toys which included a 'white flamingo' (or possibly a swan?), a unicorn and a slice of pizza.

While there is no shortage of parents who, having reproduced, appear to be attempting to remedy the fact by casting themselves and their progeny adrift on inflatable toys in in an offshore breeze - the prevailing winds at Rhyl head more or less straight out to sea - and an outgoing tide (the flamingo call-out came an hour and a half after high water), this motley collection surely qualifies for special mention (or possibly an Arts Council grant).

This story comes only a few weeks after reports that the Rhyl lifeboat crew, called out to a small inflatable dinghy in difficulties in an offshore wind, found something strangely familiar about the situation:

The two people in the vessel were immediately recognised as the same ones the crew had been called to on three previous occasions in the last month. 

Although the boat was equipped with an outboard motor, the engine lacked sufficient power to counteract the forces of wind and tide. One can imagine that it was through gritted teeth that the pair were subsequently 'given some strong advice' about basic seamanship; with that level of incompetence and carelessness out there, it must be only a matter of time before there simply aren't enough lifeboats and helicopters to go round.

Perhaps all this is an inevitable consequence of the ubiquitous health & safety culture pervading our schools and society as a whole. Remove the hazards from day-to-day living and the human race, in Gaia-esque self-regulation, is likely to discover for itself other ways of putting natural selection into practice for the good of the species.

Pick and mix

Today we are raising a brimming tankard in honour of the rambling Irish Grandad, who has performed the sterling public service of putting online the archives of the Raccoon Arms (see sidebar). Grandad, your very good health!

Meanwhile, I've been doing a spot of housekeeping here in the Tavern, and, among the dust and cobwebs, I found an assortment of notes which never made it online.

For a variety of reasons, these draft (or daft) fragments either resisted further development or proved too insubstantial to make a reasonable post. Rather than throw the whole lot out with the rubbish, I thought I'd offer a few of them for your edification and amusement this Bank Holiday weekend so, in no particular order, here we go:

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Every now and then you hear of a demise so bizarre that you can imagine St Peter at the Pearly gates, quill in hand, pausing and looking up from his list in utter amazement: "You did what?"

In keeping with its chosen role as purveyor of exotic and salacious news stories from around the globe, the Telegraph last week brought us the tale of a Michigan woman who was admitted to hospital with a fatal gunshot wound to the eye.

St. Joseph Public Safety Department Director Mark Clapp told the Kalamazoo Gazette 55-year-old Christina Bond was “having trouble adjusting her bra holster and could not get it to fit the way she wanted it to.” 

In an attempt to sort out the problem, she apparently bent forward to have a closer look, whereupon the gun went off; although 55 is probably rather too late in life to qualify for a Darwin Award, this untimely departure surely deserves some kind of honourable mention.

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With apologies to readers of a sensitive disposition:

The Clacton Gazette surpassed itself this week with the tale of a couple observed in flagrante delicto on Martello Beach in broad daylight amid the crowds of promenading holidaymakers.

For reasons known only to himself, one witness decided to film their antics and, presumably, share the result with the local paper, leading to this exquisite quote from the article:

The couple’s identity is unknown. Their faces can’t be seen on the video but the woman is believed to have a bulldog tattoo on her back.
 

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And finally, this one just defied any attempt to make sensible use of it but remains one of my favourite headlines:

Giant gorilla made from 40,000 spoons proves popular at Llangollen Eisteddfod

'Warning! Warning!'

As I write this, there are two gas engineers busy digging a hole in the road outside the Tavern. One of them has just lit a cigarette so, if this post is never completed, you will know why...

Remember Sully Island?

The 400m rocky causeway which connects this tiny outcrop to the coast of south Wales is completely covered by fast-flowing water twice a day. Back in 2014, the RNLI installed warning lights in a bid to reduce the number of visitors cut off by the rising tide.

    (BBC news)

At the time, there was a suggestion that additional measures would be needed - audible warnings, perhaps, or text messages; this does not appear to have happened, although a new warning sign was put up earlier this year to supplement the pleasingly dramatic admonition below.

So, three years on, is the system working?

Thirty people have been rescued near Sully Island so far this year.

Well I'd say that's a resounding 'no' - either that or there are even more potential Darwin Award winners out there than I thought. The RNLI and coastguard clearly have their work cut out - and they're not the only ones:

Gordon Hadfield, who owns the beach at Swanbridge and a cafe, said he and his staff had saved six people from the water in the past four years. Three weeks ago he led a family of eight to safety.

So how do people manage to get themselves marooned or washed off the causeway with such depressing regularity? According to the coastguard service

"The sad fact is, a lot of people come down here and do not know the tide is going to come around them. They don't know it's an island, so there's a lot of education around that."

Now, here I have to hold my hands up and say I have never been there but a quick look at Google clearly shows that, at low tide, the island's crown of vegetation is surrounded on all sides by sea-washed sand and rock; you don't have to be a geographical genius to work out the implications - unless, of course, you have no understanding of the concept of tides.

Sadly for humanity (or fortunately for the gene pool, depending on your outlook), such ignorance appears to be far from uncommon, as a trawl through the pages of this blog will show. In addition - and possibly a significant factor at Sully Island - there are the latter-day Cnuts, who somehow believe themselves (and their hapless families) exempt from the laws of nature and regard a tide-lapped causeway as a challenge.

As we have seen on previous excursions to the Somerset coast, the Bristol Channel claims to have the second strongest tides in the world (though some Canadians and Australians might beg to differ). Add in a 40-minute round trip on a slippery rock causeway and a plentiful supply of tourists - either ignorant or foolhardy - and you have a recipe for disaster.

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Update: from the RNLI website: and still it goes on...

'We were called just after 8:15pm this evening, Sunday 27th August 2017 to attend reports of people in the water off Sully Island. 

When we arrived on scene the people who had been in the water had made it ashore but a further 4 people (3 adults, one child) required lifeboat assistance to return to the mainland.'

Hoist by her own petard

A recent staple on French news programmes recently has been the investigations which have followed this summer's forest fires in Provence and Corsica. No sooner have the flames died down than the forensic crews are out in force, sifting through the ashes for DNA and chemical evidence.

It turns out that a significant proportion of these fires have been started deliberately, usually prompted by casual vandalism or outright pyromania (although Italy, also badly affected, has produced at least one example of enterprising part-time firemen, paid by the hour in emergencies, attempting to supplement their wages with the odd spot of arson).

Surprisingly - at least to those of us accustomed to the mills of British justice grinding very slowly indeed - the courts seem to be running through these cases at impressively high speed; almost before the ground has cooled, the papers are reporting that the culprits have been identified, arrested, tried, sentenced and taken away to begin prison terms of anything up to three years.

Thus it is that, a scant five days after the incident, we read of one particular exception to the general run of offenders:

A 69-year-old woman has been given a suspended sentence of three months with a fine of 3,000 euros for having unintentionally started a fire in Corsica.

It seems that the woman concerned was out walking her dog when it ran off into the undergrowth and would not come back when called. In a somewhat unorthodox attempt to scare the disobedient animal out of hiding, she fired a distress flare ('un pétard de rappel') into the bushes, igniting a fire which destroyed twenty acres of shrubland.

Realising that she had done 'something stupid', she called the fire brigade, apologised profusely to the emergency services and then went down to the police station in Ajaccio to turn herself in (or, as the French has it, 'pour se dénoncer', which sounds much more dramatic).  Four days later, she received her sentence - one wonders how long a similar case would have taken in Britain.

What makes this case particularly interesting is the reaction of a local association; reporting that several landowners have consistently failed in their civic duty to keep the village area free of undergrowth (the usual fire prevention measure on the island), it suggests that the woman was not entirely to blame for the fire - she was, it says, responsible but not necessarily guilty.

Discuss.

Anna Raccoon

Tonight in the Tavern we will be raising a glass or two in memory of the landlady of the Raccoon Arms.

It's seven years since I wrote this (in response to her temporarily closing her blog) but it still applies:

If Dickens had a spiritual descendant among today's bloggers, it was surely Anna Raccoon - tireless researcher, indomitable campaigner, witty satirist and gifted raconteuse. 

The blogosphere will be much poorer for her absence.

https://headrambles.com/2017/08/18/anna-raccoon/

Cracking the whip

While scanning the 'sits. vacant' columns recently, I came across a reference to staff being involved in 'driving customers online'.

Something about the implied coercion rankled and I later tried to find the advert again to investigate further. I didn't succeed but, to my surprise, a quick google of the phrase produced a veritable cornucopia of books, webinars and courses devoted to the subject using exactly that term, along with a collection of self-congratulatory reports (among which was the rather worryingly curtailed boast that:

'We've been a key part of the Sainsbury's Groceries online team for a long time, driving customers online through many traditional channels, including execution...' [sic]) 

Restaurants, retailers, power companies and banks all appear to be utterly unabashed, not to say enthusiastic, at the idea of compelling customers to contact them via the internet. It's not a new phenomenon (see 'The Bank that likes to say "F**k off"') but, judging by the amount of training material out there, it has become a lucrative and widespread business in both private and public sectors.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find this suggestion of 'driving' people into changing their behaviour more than a little repellent and no more so than when it concerns basic services; while customers can choose not to patronise a shop or restaurant which is trying to force them online, the same tactics used by the NHS or local councils are little short of bullying.

In between, there are the banks and utilities, where customers have a nominal choice but cannot easily dispense with the service altogether. It's bad enough for those of us who are computer-literate and can make the change, albeit under protest; customers who cannot comply often end up paying more and finding it hard to access their own accounts.

I'm quite happy to deal over the internet with companies where that was my first port of call but, where I initially chose to contact the organisation in person or over the phone, I expect that to continue where possible and, more importantly, particularly over financial or health matters, I neither expect nor want to be pressurised into putting my personal details online.

I've long thought that the banks and utilities, along with some public services who really ought to know better, are effectively treating us as somewhat recalcitrant livestock, applying the Patrician's principle of extracting money from the populace:

"Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo." ('Jingo': Terry Pratchett)

To talk of 'driving' customers anywhere suggests that they see us that way too.

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To lighten the mood a little, the same trawl through the listings turned up this little gem of unfortunate phrasing:

'Richmond Vale Academy offers an A-certificate in “Fighting with the Poor” in St-Vincent and the Grenadines.'

What I Did On My Holidays

I'm happy to announce that the Tavern is re-opening for business; please come in and find yourself a seat at the bar.

Now, while I set about serving the drinks, I should perhaps offer a word or two in explanation (mitigation?) for the long silence. Blogging fatigue had well and truly set in when I hung the towels over the pumps and locked the door 18 months ago; whenever I spotted a news story ripe for comment, it turned out I had already subjected the regulars to a rant on the subject and I was in danger of recycling the whole repertoire.

To combat the blogging fatigue and a certain amount of overload at work, the Spouse and I have been spending most of our free time doing a bit of this...

(albeit in a rather more mundane vehicle) 

...leading to quite a lot of this.....

...and occasionally this...

...in order to restore a sense of proportion. 

It's certainly an effective way to get away from it all and, of course, we're not the only ones hoping to shake off the day-to-day stress in the mountains; we haven't yet bumped into the Prime Minister or Angela Merkel halfway up an Alp but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

All this got me thinking; I recently noticed a picture of Mrs May in full poles-and-rucksack walking regalia in close proximity to this headline:

We're becoming a nation of couch potatoes: Number of British adults going for a stroll plummets 20% in a decade

I've written elsewhere of the peculiar phenomenon of otherwise sane and well-educated individuals becoming completely irrational at the mere mention of the name 'Margaret Thatcher', much as the playground gangs of my childhood lost all sense of proportion over opposing football teams; no self-respecting Rangers fan, for example, would join the Cubs and have to wear the detested green, while mere possession of a blue pencil-case entitled the owner to a sound kicking from the Celtic faction.

The juxtaposition of the two news stories led to an intriguing proposition; what if the rabid anti-May brigade are starting to conflate the woman and her much-publicised recreational pastime? Never mind the Communist-inspired mass trespass at Kinder Scout ('the embodiment of the working-class struggle for the right to roam') or our grandparents' tradition of a Sunday-afternoon stroll in the park; "We can't go for a walk; that's what Tories do!"

It's a far-fetched idea, perhaps but having seen at first-hand the mindless anti-Tory venom of the eighties, I can well believe there might be some kind of subliminal persuasion at work, aided and abetted by the myriad lures of electronic entertainment or the local shopping mall.