A "canteen Christian"?

 Someone I do not know muttered this to me as we passed the stand which sometimes appears outside the local shopping centre. There are generally two people standing there with it and there is "literature" about "free Bible study classes" and "the Coming" and more. 

The person who spoke to me moved on rapidly. He may have been embarrassed at actually having said anything at all. That he had said anything was interesting but not that unusual. People I do know find those standing there everything from an annoyance to sad. I know of nobody who actually supports them or has engaged them in more than the briefest of conversation. What conversation there is may be polite but it is usually an irritated, "Not interested" or "I go to church" from the older passers by to, "Don't believe any of that" from younger people.

I pedal past and say nothing. For some reason they have never approached me or attempted to speak to me. I suspect they may think I am a very slow learner. It is a mistake which has been made more than once in my life...or perhaps I really am a slow learner. 

Yesterday I just pedalled around the corner, parked in my usual spot, had a short conversation with the dog shivering in the cold and went inside. I did what I needed to do and, as I was doing it, I thought about the two people standing outside in the cold. They were determined I suppose. I cannot imagine people were queuing up to talk to them or that they were bringing people in to their brand of Christianity. They must get some I suppose or they would not do what they do. 

But the term "canteen Christian" stayed with me. I have often heard the term "rice Christian" - someone who attends church and believes (or believes they believe) in order to eat, or perhaps do not believe at all but attendance means food and companionship.  What then is a "canteen Christian"? 

I thought about canteens and the more modern "food courts", the places where you can go in and pick and choose what you want to eat. Is that what the passerby meant? I am not sure it is. I suspect it was more "they believe they can hand you a meal on a plate and tell you this is all you need in order to survive". 

I also suspect they are saying "We are not giving you a choice. We are telling you this is what you need to eat. You do not need anything else."

I am not sure belief in anything works that way.  

 

 

"The road is too narrow for

it to have a cycle path," Middle Cat commented when I told her I had been asked to fill out the "survey" by the local council.

The local council is looking at extending the "cycle paths" in the local area. This means the roads where cyclists have dedicated lanes of use at least for part of the day.

The street I now live in leads directly to the local primary school. The next street parallel to it does too but it is much less used because people turn naturally at the roundabout and come down this street. Before and after school this street is very busy. I try to avoid being out at that time. 

Yes, I could try and stay on the footpath. It is legal to do that. The problem is that the footpath is not in good repair. There is growth along it which makes it almost impossible to get past if you are a tricycle rider, wheelchair user or pram pusher. 

The road is narrow. There are often cars parked on either side and that can mean cars having to stop and give way to an oncoming car. 

Some weeks ago the new occupant in the next unit had her boyfriend move in with her. He wanted to use my car parking space. I was not using it so why should he not be able to use it? 

I said "No." I was not being unduly difficult. I had allowed the policeman who was there at the beginning to use it occasionally. The next resident asked a couple of times when her father had knee surgery and needed to stay overnight. Apart from that it is used by people who come to see me. Middle Cat used it yesterday when she brought in some milk for me. (It was pouring rain and she had used her car to get them milk and bread as well.) My friend W... parks there when she visits. She will be 90 in August and uses a walker. It has been used by someone bringing someone else who uses a walker. Workmen use it occasionally and I have accepted that as necessary.

This time however the boyfriend wanted to park his work van permanently in my space. (His girlfriend has her own car.)  It did not seem right to me. He is not supposed to be living there anyway.

So, he parks on the street of course. He parks along with some cars that are there all day. Their owners have gone off to work at the shopping centre and parked as close as they can without breaking the two hour limit. It all adds to the problems. 

I would like a cycle path along the street. I know some parents of primary school children who would like it too. I also know it is not a practical solution. 

Before I finish filling the form out I think I need to speak to my friend J... He is still doing battle with the council over the "solution" they put in place with the railway crossing. The solution he offered was both simple and cheap. They went with something incredibly complex and very expensive. I am sure he can come up with a similar solution for this street...and that they might well ignore that too. Why are they asking for feedback?   

Whatever happened to "eccentricity"?

I am sure you know the sort of thing I mean. The adult who insists on only wearing a tie and socks in matching colours or only one shade of lipstick, the child who insists on counting the number of peas on the plate before eating them, the person who gets anxious if someone else sits in "their" seat on the bus and the person who checks all the locks twice - are they all "autistic"? 

There is an article in this morning's paper saying autism in this country is diagnosed at three times the global average...and that this is not necessarily a good thing. I have to agree. I would also agree that the National Disability Insurance Scheme and, once diagnosed, readily available money has been part of the problem.

Let me be quite clear about all this. Severe and profound autism is disabling. It can be severely and profoundly disabling. People with the condition need help. Their families and carers need help handling them. Some cannot dress themselves. They will only eat certain foods in a certain order and only if they are in certain positions on the plate. They will never hold a conversation with anyone.

At the other end of the scale the boy I went to school with who insisted on writing with only a pencil was not autistic. He admitted to me much later in life that he was afraid of making mistakes. You could rub a pencil mark out. You could not rub out pen marks. 

It is quite likely he would now be regarded as "autistic". There would be efforts to "encourage" him to use a pen, to do things differently. He might have ended up feeling less comfortable. In the year I knew him his teacher simply recognised an unhappy, uncertain little boy whose work with a pencil was slightly above average. He liked things to be precise. He ended up working as a draftsman but he never married and never learned to drive. He lived alone in a house where nothing was out of place and he kept his geometric garden immaculate. At his funeral his neighbours spoke of his eccentricity but also of his generosity with garden produce, the way he would mow the lawn for the elderly woman across the street and more. His immediate neighbour actually said to me, "I suppose that's what they call autistic now but really he was just what my dad would called a bit eccentric."

I know other people who are a "bit eccentric". I do not see them as "autistic". If we must label people then I will reserve it for the boy who looks perfectly normal but does not speak and will not use the lift. He will not eat some foods and only eats some foods on some occasions. He can also build complex Lego kits - the type they use for university students.  

I know "autism" is not a single issue. It is a complex range of issues and there are degrees of complexity within those issues. I just do not like the idea that some of the quirky little things which make us different and interesting and add to our interactions with each other are being labelled this way. 

Do we want everyone to be the same?  

Penelope Keith added a phrase to

our family's repertoire of insider jokes. She does not say it herself but her expression as it is said tells us so much. As the snobby Margot in "The Good Life" she is trying to clean up after her neighbour Barbara (Felicity Kendal). She has put down newspapers and brought out the vacuum cleaner in an effort to keep things immaculate and Barbara says, "You missed a bit."  Now, if anyone leaves something behind when clearing up we are likely to say "You missed a bit." We understand the joke but it has to be explained to other people. It is just one of those little oddities that occur in our family that have come from the outside.

Her death has left me wondering how many other families have been influenced by her superb acting.  Anyone can say the lines but saying them with meaning and that all important ability to do it at precisely the right moment is rare.  She was exactly right for that "snobbishness" but apparently not in the least bit snobbish herself. Her marriage to a policeman lasted, something of a rarity in the world of acting. That surely says a great deal about her as a person.

I have never had any desire to be on stage. The thought of having to so thoroughly immerse myself in being someone else is one I actually find genuinely frightening. I hope I could still learn the lines but I very much doubt I could say them. How do they do it? It is something I would like to have asked her, would like to ask someone like Dame Judi Dench, would like to have asked Dame Maggie Smith.  To my mind they are and were people who could really act. It is a rare gift, but one which would have to be worked at all the time. I am absolutely certain it would not be easy. 

I suspect I would have liked Dame Penelope if I had ever met her. It leaves just Dame Judi Dench, another apparently gracious lady, of the four "great dames". It has been a great privilege to "know" them. 

 

 

Please do not tax education

or the books which help to do it.

There is apparently a robust discussion going on in Upover at present. Their government introduced VAT or "value added tax" into their fee paying schools. The discussion revolves around whether they were right to do this, whether it has brought in any money, what the effect is on the overall school system and more. Those who oppose any form of "private" education - oddly known as "public" by some - think this has been desirable. Others do not.

We have the same sort of discussion here. It comes on every time there is any tax payer money spent on the fee paying system. There are people who strongly oppose spending any money on the "private" school system, so much so there have been serious attempts to ban it altogether.

I went to both public and fee paying schools. My parents worked in the public system and it was natural that this was where I and my siblings should go. Then, in my last year, it was no longer possible to do that. The school I was attending, the one the Senior Cat was principal of, could no longer cater for me. It could no longer cater for anyone who wanted to complete their secondary education. This was just the way things worked in rural areas. Students who wanted to go on had to move on. 

There was a choice of course. You could head to the nearest school which taught what you needed or you could go further afield to the capital city. Going to the nearest school might be two or more hours away so your parents might find someone willing to take in a "weekly" boarder, often a relative. The school would almost certainly still have a limited range of subjects and facilities simply because it would be a "country" school.  Or you could head off to the capital city. Boarding with a family might still be an option but it was much more difficult to find. Boarding school was the answer for many families. It still is.  We could do away with all this I suppose and have state run boarding houses for students from outlying areas like they do in Shetland but is that really the answer? 

The real issue however is should those who are already being taxed pay additional tax because of the choice they make to educate their young?  Most people would see that as wrong. I see it as wrong. I see it as wrong because I do not believe you should tax education. It is education which leads to employment which leads to paying taxes and a better standard of living for everyone. Education provides the services we need. 

I know not everyone will agree. There will still be people who say adding VAT to school fees is the right thing to do. 

Will they also argue that adding VAT to books is the right thing to do? Is it right to tax people who want to read? That is what happens here. There is our equivalent of VAT, the GST (goods and services tax), on books. It is something which should never have happened. Those who do not buy books do not see this as a problem of course. They do not see it as taxing knowledge. They simply shrug and say, "If you want to read..." 

I do not see reading in the same way as I see going to a football match. If I buy a book for myself then I potentially have that book for as long as I need it. The football match is over in a few hours and most of it, if not all, is forgotten a few months later. Information inside a book, or just the story itself, can remain with you forever. 

Education, including all means of accessing it, should surely not be subject to additional forms of tax? No doubt the topic will be back under robust debate when the next budget is being handed down.  

  

No, parents must be responsible

and be held responsible. You are not going to get children under sixteen off social media by trying to make "big tech" responsible. It will not work...or rather, it might work but not in the way the government intends.

I am fed up with the "ban". It is not working. You only have to walk through the shopping centre after school is out or watch the gang waiting to catch the train. You only need to be anywhere under sixteens are gathered and more than one of them will have a phone out and they will be looking at video clips and more. Of course they will. They have the technology in their hands.

The answer to banning under sixteens from social media is complex of course, even answering the question of whether they should be banned is not a simple "yes" or "no". The problem is that the government brought in legislation which has a secondary purpose. This is not about getting under sixteens off social media. It is about controlling social media. 

If they had simply wanted to prevent under sixteens from using social media then most use could have been wiped out instantly by making it illegal for an under sixteen to have a phone. That would have been the most radical solution. Parents would not have accepted that. They would have cited all sorts of "safety" reasons. 

There is an obvious answer then isn't there? Under sixteens can only have phones with a limited number of functions. They "need" phones that can make and receive calls, make and receive text messages. What else do they need for "safety"? Nothing. Such phones exist. They are not expensive. They are far cheaper than the phones which can access social media. They work on much cheaper plans. 

There could be a government scheme for all of this. You want your child to have a phone? We will allow your child to have one from this range. It will not be able to do more than we allow. Here kids, you can choose from bright yellow, lime green, hot pink, punk purple. We will be able to see if you are using something else. If we catch you using anything else then your parents will be held to account. 

It is not the role of "big tech" to deal with this. So, why is the government doing it? The answer to that is almost certainly a desire to try and control the use of social media or, at very least, the desire to be able to monitor everything which is said and done there. When the ban on social media doesn't work they are hoping for two things. The first is that the "big tech" owners will bring in measures that drastically reduce our ability to access information. A great deal of the information out there is inaccurate but so is the information passed on to us from "official" sources. The latter however is what the government of the day wants us to know, even if it is not true.  The second is that, when the information flow has been reduced and directed in ways the government finds more acceptable they will be able to still further control the growth of AI and the forms of information which are available. 

Social media may be a "scourge" but trying to control it now is something which might be working in North Korea and might work for short periods of time in places like Iran. Is that what we want? 

Delivering a parcel should not be

difficult but it seems it is.  The group of units in which I now live have letter boxes of course but these are some distance away out by the footpath. They are not secure. We are not permitted to put any sort of lock on the box which belongs to us. 

As most people get very little paper mail this is probably of no great concern. The local "postie" tells me it never takes her long to deal with the mail for all twelve units. 

I get most of my mail, such as it is, delivered to a post office box at the local post office. It makes sense. I can access it any time. It is the "street" address we had to have when we set up the micro aid group forty something years ago. It is secure.

The problem is not with letters it is with parcels. There are some places which will not deliver to a post office box. They use "courier" services rather than post mail. That can be a problem. A parcel went missing some weeks back. I have not received compensation for that even though the courier service was well aware they were at fault.  This parcel, again something to be shared out to a craft group, was "unable to be delivered to a safe location". It is still "on board" for delivery. 

In this instance I can only assume that the person doing the deliveries is not a regular post office person. It will be one of the many people who deliver parcels outside regular hours. They have other jobs. The parcel delivery job is extra, a job to be done at nights or weekends. It might be they could not find their way down the path in the dark. Yes, the parcel might get there in the end...when they can find time. 

Someone in another unit did have a parcel delivered yesterday. The parcel delivery person was going to leave it with me. He asked if I was L... and I shook my head and pointed to the unit in question. I was talking to someone in Venezuela at the time and it was difficult enough or I might have asked if he had the parcel being delivered to me.

Getting parcels in the post is not the huge excitement it was when I was a mere kitten. Parcels were rare. They came right to the front door, delivered by someone wearing a post office uniform and a cap. Now, unless a signature is required, they get dumped wherever the delivery person decides is convenient. 

The parcel should have been here three or four days ago. I am now wondering if it will take another three or four weeks to be returned to the post office which might let me know it is available. If they do then the "it cannot go to a post office" message will make even less sense than it does now.