The English - their driving and their manners

Seriously lacking in both departments, if you sassenach don't mind me saying so. Recently back from a trip to sunny Engerland - driving, I was - so I read this post from Scribbles with amusement:

"You are travelling about 80 mph, he's travelling 90 mph, you are surrounded by other vehicles doing the same sort of speeds, and he thinks it's a great idea to cut you up.

He continues speeding. At 90 miles an hour he obviously can't stay in the middle lane, so when he slams up behind the next car in the same lane, he has to swing out into the fast lane again.

Why? Why do that? If you are intent on going twenty miles an hour and more above the speed limit, why not just stick in the fast lane?"

Hmmm - I found the drive south pretty goddam frustrating too, I'll tell you. My reasons, though, are slightly different from Scribbles here. Why not stick to the fast lane? Um, because apparently in England it is the convention for people in the fast lane to not drive very fast at all. What the fuck is that all about - this business of making the 'fast lane' something of a misnomer? Stay in the 'fast lane' and you'll get stuck behind some asshole doing not 90 but like 60 or 70! Now why are you doing this, pray tell? Maybe it's because like Scribbles you think the outside lane really is a 'fast lane'. It fucking isn't supposed to be - it's an overtaking lane. I don't have time to explain the highway code to y'all but let me reduce it to this: in this lane if I'm going faster than you - which is my default position - gonnae get the fuck out of my way? Because this is what you're supposed to do, in case you were unaware. Which you obviously are. But why?

Here's Scribbles again:

"The worst ones, on a less busy motorway, will also swing into the slow lane if there is space. You watch them making their way up the motorway, dramatically weaving in and out of cars at speed when the fast lane is mostly free."

Fast lane 'mostly free'? Eh, no - I think you'll find you've taken too many drugs. You were, in fact, driving in a country like Germany or Belgium or something but you were too stoned to notice. Because in England, in my experience, the 'fast lane' is the busiest goddam lane on the motorway - clogged as it is with people doing an average speed of 57 mph.

Noticeable as soon as you get south of the border, in my experience. As, by the way, was the distinct lack of manners. In driving, for example. Let someone in in front of you. Do they give you a wave? Do they fuck. Or at least not as often as in Scotland.

This lack of civility is not confined to the goddam roads, let me tell you. I know you'll find this more difficult to believe but people in Glasgow are way more polite than they are in Engerland - and it seems the further south you go, the more pig-ignorant people get. Take Morrisons - please, someone... No, take Morrisons in High Wycome. Same shitty supermarket with the same bullshit two for the price of one deals. But the staff? Nae chat - nothing. My six year old noticed it, goddamit! "Why does no-one talk here?", he asked. I swear this is true. As for the patrons! Banging their goddam trolleys into you without so much as an excuse me. And some asshole drove through the pedestrian crossing when I was walking across it with my six year old son.

"Ho you, ya fucking prick!", I said in elegant fashion - "Don't you know what a pedestrian crossing is?"

I was unable to ascertain if the gentleman in question was in fact ignorant of the purpose of these stripes painted across the goddam road were for because he drove off rather hurriedly. Perhaps it was because I tried to kick his car that put him off debating this issue.

Thing is, I'm not in the least an aggressive and intimidating person - people who know me will bear witness. Well, certainly not by Glasgow standards. And this got me to thinking. You know all this stuff we've been hearing about the 'broken society' - increase in violence, decline in civility and all that? Well, I have a theory. Unsupported, of course, by any quantitative data - but that doesn't stop journalists so why should I bother? Anyway, there's the thing: while it is notoriously difficult to measure, by most estimates crime has actually fallen in the UK. And what is surely impossible to measure is civility - but like most people I'm inclined to think this too has suffered from something of a decline in recent years.

So rather than thinking the two are related in the conventional Daily Heil narrative, I was wondering if the relationship might be inversely correlated? People are ruder these days because they are less likely to get their heads kicked in as a result of their ill-manners. Perhaps people are more polite in Glasgow because if they displayed the level of rudeness that I saw on display in High Wycome, they'd be inviting a slap, believe you me.

It isn't just in Engerland. I was in Edinburgh recently. People eye-ball you on the street in a way they would never do in Glasgow. It's noticeable. I found myself thinking, "What the fuck are you looking at?" Because it's rude. Thing is, I was born in Edinburgh. If I were a full-on Weegie tanked-up on Buckfast, I'd probably find myself saying this.

So maybe the decline in manners are a product of a less violent society? Can't say I can provide much in the way of evidence for this but it's intrinsically difficult to do so - and I think there's something in this. All mafia movies and dramas are about living in societies ordered by a strict code of manners. And the very point about these manners, codes of respect, is that they are a way of pre-empting violent confrontation. I may be wrong - probably am - but let me give you some free advice: if you're visiting Glasgow from the South of England, I suggest for your own safety that you mind your manners.

Uniforms and symbols (again)

Hmmm - if I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. Hardly the same thing but if I'd known people take what I write on this blog seriously enough to be considered worth responding to, I would have made a better argument than this one about the whole bangles, uniforms, courts thingy.

Norm takes issue with what I wrote here. Now I find myself in the position of having to seriously defend a school management that have little sympathy for. Nevertheless, I basically hold my position for the following reasons:

1) Norm finds himself 'proud' of the decision a British court has made in this case. On one level, I suppose if you agreed with the decision of the court one might feel pride. But my response is different: the fact that a matter like this has to go to court in the first place is, I think, a pretty dismal state of affairs. You may choose to believe that this kind of legalism - indicative everywhere of a breakdown of trust - is entirely the fault of the school but I'm afraid that while I often run out of patience with the more strident voices of the 'new secularism', I retain a certain residual hostility to the number of exceptions that are made in our education system to people's religious sensibilities - which brings me to the second point:

2) This is a trivial case - the school in question was, as I've already conceded, being 'anally-retentive'. However, to isolate this example is to illustrate an ignorance of the vast swathes of exceptions that are made on the grounds of religion in our schools today. You don't want your child to be taught evolution? I have to tell you from experience that the pupils of the religious have been allowed exemption from biology lessons on these grounds. Music? If you think it is earthly, sensual, demonic, I can say with the authority of experience that if you insist on your child's exemption from these classes on these grounds, it will be granted by today's pusillanimous education establishment. Sex education classes? Ha ha - forget it. I could go on but it would feed into the next point:

3) Hitherto I was feeling all reasonable and serene - but at this point of Norm's it has evaporated completely:

"The only thing Shuggy has that might pass for a reason against this is as feeble as it is old:

[B]etter a school run by anally-retentive assholes than one where no-one's running it, where the fucking kids are setting the agenda...

It's the threat of anarchy. Shuggy doesn't explain why, if two exceptions can be permitted without such a worrying descent, three exceptions can't be. Why does an orderly school uniform regime - and that's assuming uniforms are vital, which is itself open to question - break down not at watches or ear studs or both, but just at the point of a bangle or bangle-equivalent?"

Norm thinks I'm making an argument based on the threat of anarchy. Allow me to demur. Hear this: I am making my argument from the experience of anarchy. And if perhaps a little more imagination could be applied to the idea of what anarchy at the chalk-face in the east end of Glasgow looks like, maybe Norm would show a little less haste - and dare I say a little more humility - before he dismissed my arguments as 'feeble' and 'old'.

Update: I missed two letters to the Gruaniad that Norm links - presumably because he thinks they are worth reading. I'm unsure why. Are they being ironic? Frankly, I'm past caring. But let me give you a sample anyway:

"So if her bangle can be worn, so also ought those stating, for example, "Chelsea are Great" or "Elvis Lives"."

Or T-shirts with slogans like 'Fuck the Pope' or 'No Surrender to the IRA' on them? On what grounds should they be excluded? It is, after all, part of their identity, man. And I think they have a reasonable claim to suggest this is a religious identity. So spare me this bullshit - please!

Update #2: GoergeS has pitched in. Here's a segment:

"Supporting the ban Shuggy is chiefly concerned about who is running the place, the kids or the school? Being a teacher, he would, naturally, prefer it to be the school, and having been a schoolteacher myself I have some sympathy.

Which is more than Norm does, but then Norm hasn't had to be dealing with uppity kids in tough schools. He has never felt the pain."

I'm being selective, of course - so read the whole thing. But permit me to enjoy the truth in the selection I've made here because the truth is what this is.

Schools uniforms, religious symbols and annoying teennagers

The school I went to didn't, at that time, have much in the way of a school uniform. More really just a dress code - and that was pretty elastic. Still, I do recall being told under no uncertain terms that wearing a T-shirt with the legalise cannabis campaign logo on it was unacceptable.

Perhaps today I could have got away with it by insisting I was a Rastafarian or something and that such garb was required by my religion. But then I would have had to go to court - and this would have been a real drag, which brings me to the case of Sarika Watkins-Singh:

"Yesterday, a high court judge ruled that the exclusion of 14-year-old Sarika Watkins-Singh from Aberdare girls' school in south Wales because she continued to wear the bracelet - a symbol of her Sikh religion - was unlawful."

I'm a bit agnostic about the whole uniform thing myself but I think schools should be allowed to insist on one if they want - not least because such policies tend be be strongly supported by the parents.

And schools need to have some kind of dress-code. I appreciate there's some who don't agree. But these tend to be either teenagers themselves or the sort of bloggers who, despite being over thirty, are still teenagers at heart. The sort of people who sincerely thought, for example, that the Shabina Begum case was about the 'right of women to control their appearance'. Bah! These form part of the myriad commentators who have had teenagers described to them. Let's keep it fucking real, ok? For every one that wants to wear a movable tent to school, there's a thousand - on a conservative estimate - that would like to turn up looking like hookers. They shouldn't be allowed to; neither should the boys be allowed to look like extras from a 50 cent video.

And make no mistake, this is what this case is about. I have to say I found the Shabina Begum case amusing - what with all the wailing about 'integration' and shit from the usual quarters. Hmph! Articulate and stroppy teenager insists on wearing whatever the fuck she likes to express her 'identity' - except her identity just so happens to be about being immersed into a group. Fairly typical British teenager behaviour, as far as I could see.

As is the case with this bullshit bangle case. The response from HP Sauce was entirely predictable - and the comments thread depressingly so. Nevertheless, in his dissent from this, I couldn't find anything to agree with in what Norm had to say. Don't get me wrong - from what I've read of the school in question, it sounds like it's run by a load of anally-retentive assholes who have way too much time on their hands. I tell you this: some of the places I've taught...if this is all these people have got to worry about - well, it's pretty easy to identify those who have an easy life in this gig.

But, but - better a school run by anally-retentive assholes than one where no-one's running it, where the fucking kids are setting the agenda, where the goddam management have effectively surrendered and have instead reduced themselves to ingratiating themselves to the pupils. This is why the court should have found in favour of the school.

Norm argues that secularism does not proscribe wearing religious symbols in public spaces. I agree - but this isn't - to my mind, anyway - about secularism but whether schools can set their own uniform policies or not.

He is, however, also unimpressed with the argument about uniform:

"The school, it would seem, was willing to allow exceptions of practicality (a watch for telling the time) and - what? - fashion (ear studs). So, not everything on the pupils is quite uniform. By what reason, then, can it be said that an object important to a person on account of her identity speaks to a less important consideration than these two? You will struggle to get an answer to that question."

Disagree - and methinks Norm is taking the whole 'uniform' think a little too literally here. There is, as far as I understand, no specific requirement in Sikhism to wear this particular bangle so the young lady's 'identity' is intact. And I think it's fairly easy to draw a distinction between this and these two examples. Watches? Goddammit all! If consistency is the problem here, let us insist that every pupil wears one. This would stop the little toads turning up late after lunch claiming they 'didn't know what time it was'. And earring studs are not just a matter of fashion. If you have pierced ears but don't wear them then the holes will close over. So for a school to insist on no earrings at all would amount to them proscribing pupils' fashion sense when they are out of school - and that really would be intolerable.

I'm a pagan and as such I insist it is integral to my identity to teach my classes wearing nothing but my birthday suit. Would any court in the land vindicate my beliefs? I sincerely hope not. And neither should they have done so in this case. Let's not be silly about this. Teenagers like to insist that it is their 'right' to do whatever the fuck they want. It's entirely understandable - it's a stage of development driven by hormones, acne, shit like that. But a mature society tells them they can't and gets them to do more press-ups instead. It's the present lack of commonsense to recognise this, still less to impose this, that goes some way towards explaining why we're in the state we're in.

Some other people's stuff

Here's a couple that made me laugh:

Despite the 'howls of anguish' at the SNP victory in Glasgow East (he means me), this gentleman thinks that it is more likely that 'Britain will become potentially more tiresome than Belgium':

"It's more that there are so many potential problems ahead that, regardless of the rights or wrongs of Scottish independence, what worries me is that we're now looking at decades of Quebec-style tedium: narrowly defeated plebiscites on independence, followed by acts of nationalistic pettiness which stoke up the mutual ill-feeling to the extent that another vote needs to be held which is narrowly etc etc.

Not only is the natural human propensity for vindictive and mean-spirited behaviour, especially when nationalist sentiment (the best way, bar religion, of channeling all that is mean and base in humanity) is involved, coming to the fore; consider how much worse the combined efforts of lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians will make things."

I strongly recommend reading the rest - 'sfunny. Probably right too.

Also: I'm not very familiar with the Blairite John Rentoul. I stopped reading the paper copy of the Indy when it turned itself into an anti-war comic and the online version was behind a subscription wall for ages. However, on reading him recently - and I dare say I'm being unfair - he does strike me as something of an asshole. This is what he had to say about Miliband as a potential leader:

"They have to ask themselves the Peter Mandelson question, asked when Brown was being compared unfavourably with another younger Everyman in 1994: "Who will play best at the box office?" This time the choice is between Brown and David Miliband. The young pretender is growing in stature all the time and refreshingly normal. He must be the first Foreign Secretary to throw an American football (a gift from Stanford University on a recent visit with Condoleezza Rice) around his vast office."

To which Laban responds:

"I've noted the increasing triviality and shallowness of contemporary politics... Now apparently chucking a ball around the office is a good sign of premiership potential."

Meanwhile, Chris Dillow questions whether who leads Labour matters that much. In terms of their immediate electoral prospects, he's probably right but in general I disagree that leadership is unimportant. Blair wouldn't be having these problems on quite the same scale; say what you like about him - at least he could make decisions. I also doubt the Tories would be doing so well had IDS stayed in the job; the SNP wouldn't be doing so well without Salmond; and Scottish Labour could have done without the car crash that was Wendy Alexander's leadership.

Betting on Obama?

My default position is to prefer the Democrats to win any election rather than the Republicans. I tend not to get too worked up about it when it comes to the presidency though. There are a number of reasons for this but one that is overlooked to a degree I find inexplicable is that the powers of the US president are circumscribed by Congress to an extent that is, I think, without parallel in any other democracy.

In other words, instead of hearing the cliche that the American president is the most powerful person in the world, I think it would reflect reality better if more people said that Congress, in relation to the executive, is the most powerful legislature in the world.

This is one of a number of reasons why I have misgivings about Obama. He has for me the dual advantage of being neither a Republican nor Hillary Clinton - but whatever other problems might occur should he become president, I'd bet on this one: surely disillusion will follow hard on the heels of the euphoria we'll see should he win the presidential election? This is a function of his limited powers, which will be exacerbated in his case with the fervour of expectations now surrounding him.

Obama is undoubtedly charismatic - but one of the features, and dangers, of charisma in politics is that the carrier of charisma becomes a repository for people's best expectations almost regardless of what they are or what they do. When you have someone with charisma, people take them as representing almost anything they want - regardless of the reality. This is why, for example, Princess Diana could be for the monarchist the incarnation of a royal fairy-tale whilst simultaneously being an anti-establishment figure to those of a republican disposition - rather than what she was: a publicity-seeking, imploding bag of poisonous self-pity.

As for Obama, what we know - rather than what people want to believe - gives me cause for concern. For one, he strikes me as being woefully inexperienced. He is also rather conservative - having had a record, as far as one can tell, of being somewhat accommodating, flexible, in his stance on a variety of issues if this serves to further his career. There is, as far as I'm aware, no example of him being prepared to court unpopularity over an issue over which he feels strongly. Also, while I won't pretend to know what is best in this present situation, like a number of people while I welcome his expressions of commitment to Afghanistan, I treat with great scepticism the idea that the American involvement there is something that can be divorced from its role in Iraq.

However - and it was this thought that prompted this post - the more short-term concern has to do with his electoral strategy, and this is related to the whole issue of his charismatic style mentioned above. Maybe it's pure prejudice, evoked by the sight of Germans getting excited at a public rally and waving flags - even if the flags in question happen to carry the Stars and Stripes - but I can't help getting the feeling that the tone and manner of his European tour wasn't very wise. It might play well on the pages of the European press but in America?

It's the feeling he's peaked too soon and the assumption that the election is as good as won isn't going to go down well with a significant section of the American electorate. People don't like this and this thought floated through my mind: is this like Neil Kinnock's triumphal entrance at party conference prior to the 1992 election, only on a much larger scale? I have no idea but it occurred to me again when I read Paulie's short post on the subject:

"Am I the only one that thinks that McCain at 5/2 today is a very good price?"

No, you're not. I'm not going to have a punt for two reasons:

a) I never gamble. Nothing virtuous about this. Deep down I'm a shallow human being with an addictive personality and an adolescent's impulse towards immediate gratification. Fortunately, gambling is one vice I simply don't understand.

b) Even if I did, in this case I trust reason would prevail anyway. Having ignored my own advice - that in politics it is folly to attempt to predict the future - the memory of failing to predict the SNP win in Glasgow East is likely to be a strong deterrent for quite some time.

But no, Paulie is not alone. I'll eschew any temptation to predict the future this time but we are justified, I think, in remembering what we know from the past: people, voters, do not like being taken for granted - and I think this might prove to be a problem for Senator Obama's campaign. (Predicting again while pretending not to - I can resist anything but temptation.) He is still just a Senator, right? The thing is, he seems to be surrounded by a whole bunch of people who seem to have forgotten this already. Don't think the American electorate have though.

Update: Hmmm - seems the Kinnock comparison occurred to someone else too.



Remember this, anyone? How fucking embarrassing was that? I remember being profoundly embarrassed - and that was before Major won the goddam election...