Top of the class

Can I be the only one perturbed by the story running in the UK media today that revealed (yes it was obvious PR stunt) that teachers expect children called Callum, Kyle, Chelsea or Chardonnay to be naughty and Alexanders, Alices and Sophies to be good? It has been a long time since I saw something so riddled with class prejudices. Those living outside of the UK may not at first glance appreciate that the "naughty" names are all associated with working class families while the "good" children have nice middle class names. No wonder we find failing schools in poor neighbourhoods - it would seem children are being written off on the first day of school with just a glance at the register. The wonderfully named Faye Mingo who commissioned the research says "It's only natural for teachers to make judgements . . . but I'm sure there are happy to be proved wrong. After all, there is always an exception to every rule." Well I am sure that is a great comfort to all the Daniels and Jessicas who start school this week. Our children deserve better whether they are named Jack, Charlie or Elizabeth.

Griffin on QT

So the BBC is considering inviting Nick Griffin on to Question Time - cue much handwringing and angsting about whether it is appropriate to give the leader of the ugly BNP a platform. Well, I say bring it on. As I have said before, the "not giving them the oxygen of publicity" strategy has never worked. Right thinking people should be prepared to tackle BNP lies everywhere and anywhere. I personally can't wait to see what contribution the unpleasant Mr Griffin makes to thoughtful political debate. However polished he starts out, he will soon reveal his and his party's true colours. The veneer of respectability is very thin and he willl soon start ranting about the need to keep England English, railing against the BBC for including black characters in Robin Hood or other such nonsense. He can't help himself, the hate just pours out of him. My only plea to the QT production team is that it ensures that the other panellists won't be cowed in the presence of a racist, are prepared to have the debate and aren't handwringers themselves. May I suggest a few potential candidates? Archbishop John Sentamu, Stephen Fry, Val Amos, William Hague, Gary Younge, Tony Benn, Malorie Blackman. As for me, I would love to be in the audience, watching his thinking being taken apart piece by piece.

New year, new beginnings

January take your place behind September - for me this is the start of the new year. Years spent in formal education and then working in politics provoke a Pavlovian response in my to the days after the August Bank Holiday. I want to make resolutions, get my uniform ready, buy a new satchel (these days its a handbag). This year is no exception. Indeed this year the feeling is more acute for my company (Grayling) has in the last few days merged with two sister companies (Trimedia and Mmd). So we start the new year as a new company - a much bigger company, many more people in many more places. It is very exciting and, if I am honest, a bit daunting. New colleagues to meet, new opportunities seize. I feel as I did when I moved from junior (Dollis) to secondary (Copthall) school . Excited and looking forward to the challenge ahead but ever so slightly anxious about the change. The good thing this time is that we are all new girls and boys starting big school at the same time, all hoping to impress the teachers, make new friends and come out of it having had a good experience and with a string of A*s to our names.



Happy New Year!

Où est La Place Jane Austen?

Just back from France (Provence, wine, the air heady with the scent of lavender and thyme - very Jean de Florette) where I was once again struck by the French penchant for naming streets after individuals. In most French towns you will find places, cours, boulevards, rues and avenues named after Jean Jaures, Victor Hugo and Balzac. And in spite of their reputation, the French warmly embrace foreigners with Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Churchill all finding their way into French A to Zs. This desire to commemorate the lives and work of great politicians, poets and polyglots has even led to the renaming of metro stations hence stops in memory of Simon Bolivar, Raymond Queneau and Pierre & Marie Curie. The French are not alone in this, in South Africa there has been a huge amount of renaming in honour of the heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle (although if I were Albertina Sisulu I might be a tad annoyed that my contribution to the freedom of my nation was marked by the naming a highway after me). In Britain on the other hand we tend to shy away from this kind of adulation. Yes there may be a few Churchill Avenues and Mandela Places scattered about the country but in general we don't like naming things after people (except monarchs) and certainly would avoid renaming somewhere after someone however great. We don't go in for hero worship. So sadly we won't be seeing Oxford Street renamed Darwin Street (although anyone familiar with that thoroughfare knows it is an excellent spot to witness the survival of the fittest first hand), Jane Austen will not be immortalised as a square nor Charles Dickens as a train station - but check out Simon Patterson's the Great Bear to see how the tube map might look if we were prepared to be a bit more imaginative in how we acknowledge the accomplishments of the great and the good.

Milk, no sugar please

I am in Sweden staying with friends - house with the forest on one side and a lake on the other, lots of talking and eating around a big wooden table. If it wasn't for the X-box in the corner I could be in a Carl Larsson painting. Lovely. Well it is now. Days one and two were completely clouded by the absence of tea. I mean real tea, not peppermint, chamomile, green or Earl Grey but proper builder's tea, known in better circles English Breakfast blend. It was pretty horrific. Those of you who know me well have witnessed the rapid descent into grumpiness that is prompted by my not having regular doses of tannin pumped into me. I am an addict I make no bones about it. You would think therefore that I would lap up the Earl Grey purchased for me by my thoughtful coffee-drinking friends. But I can't. Its too fragrant. Its just not a proper cuppa. And yet it is ubiquitous. At cafes and restaurants here the response to an order for tea is to bring a cup of hot water and an Earl Grey teabag on the side (I know, as in America and France, the general populous in Sweden remains oblivious to the correct method of making a brew). And waiters and hosts alike are perplexed by my lack of enthusiasm for the delicate blend. They have fallen for the Earl Grey spin that it is the blend of choice amongst the great British tea-drinking public! As if. On day two, with anxiety levels rising I ventured to a supermarket where I purchased an horrifically-priced-even-for-Sweden packet of breakfast teabags. I shall not be taking any risks next week when I go to the south of France with an ample supply of the good stuff in my bag.

Respecting the dead

And so Harry Patch was lied to rest almost 100 years after so many of his comrades. The last Tommy, he survived a terrible war and spent much of his life after his days in the trenches speaking out for peace, calling for disputes to be resolved through reconciliation. It is important that we remember him and the sacrifices made by the Lost Generation and by the men and women who have died in subsequent conflicts across the world. But I don't believe I can be the only person who was disturbed by the number of people who turned out to watch his funeral. I have real doubts that the people who crowded outside Wells Cathedral did so out of respect or in remembrance of fallen heroes. I have a terrible suspicion that they, or at least many of them, were funeral tourists. It is a phenomenon which I have been observing for some time. The first obvious incidence was the funeral of Princess Diana, but more recently we saw it at the death of Jade Goody. And in the last few weeks, this mawkish behaviour has been infecting the streets of Wootten Bassett where the simple gesture of respect to service personnel killed abroad made by locals has been tarnished by tourists who come to gawp at the corteges. I know I shouldn't be surprised, I am disturbed by it and wish, like so many things, it would stop. Let's respect the dead, not send picture messages from outside funeral.

What do we want . . .

I am in rant mode. I have been since the weekend and have had to wait until I calmed down a bit. So what or rather who has got my gander up? Arise Mr Phil Woolas, Immigration Minister, who has effectively declared that demonstrating is anti-social behaviour, and any applicant for British citizenship who has the temerity to protest should have points docked from their points-based application. As someone who has spent a large part of her life on marches, pickets and handing out leaflets and who came to this country as an asylum seeker I am, to say the least, upset. I definitely wouldn't have passed the Woolas test - I protested against apartheid and BNP and for peace. Under his criteria I am an undesirable. But he is wrong. The right to demonstrate peacefully, to express your views, to protest it is a mark of a free and democratic society. We commend the people of Iran and Zimbabwe for demonstrating against stolen elections. We hold up as an example of bravery and vision the March on Washington at which Dr Martin Luther King Jr delivered his "I have a dream speech". The lone protestor standing before a tank in Tiananmen Square is one of the defining images of our time. Democracies should encourage active citizenship - the freedom to express a view, to communicate an opinion is one important way we can be active and engaged members of society.