A right wing think-tank is advising poor folk stuck in defunct northern towns to head south - apparently it's too late for regeneration, so basically the advise is to turn the lights off as you leave.

Oxford, Cambridge and London (of course) are suggested as the cities best suited to this mass exodus and I can imagine that the denizens of these cities will not be exactly delighted with this news either.

Is this more of the same sort of re-invention of the 80's, that has seen us inundated with fashion and music that harks back to that decade of hell? Our we doing our own 'get on your bike...'? Normo Tebbs for the noughties?

Leaving aside for the moment the dismay that Ox-bridgeians are likely to feel if swarms of folk from Liverpool and Sunderland suddenly land on their doorsteps, emptying the north doesn't strike me as being a policy that has much future (although it will leave plenty of scope for the Peoples Republic of Scotland to expand southwards, possibly taking in Blackpool, their spiritual home in the summer).

The thing is that people quite like living near others that share similar accents, outlooks, favourite foods and football teams. They like to stay close to their families, like to have a sense of being connected, through history, to the place they call home. Many people do move for their jobs, of course (me for example), but most people prefer to get jobs to match their life, not the other way round. As someone who feels rootless and disconnected a lot of the time, I feel a great deal of sympathy for sticking with your home town.

Cam the Sham is (naturally) trying to distance himself from all of this, but frankly, we all know that Tories view the working classes as a moveable asset to be lined up like machine parts as needed, and thrown on the scrap heap when their usefulness is over. So I would advise folk from Bradford, Liverpool and Sunderland to blow a collective raspberry to the gentlemen at Policy Exchange.

The Tories have released figures about bugs in the NHS. And I want to puke.

I worked in various Manchester hospitals while the Tories were last in power - they privatised cleaning (on the basis of the lowest bidder), ravaged budgets (the wards were largely staffed by student nurses), failed to invest in buildings (some hospital wards were still housed in Victorian workhouse buildings) and generally treated the NHS as if they were embarrassed by it.

I worked in a coronary care unit where some of the beds were permanently unoccupied (no budget for staff), with staff who were burnt out and pissed off (too many patients, too few trained nurses).

I am by no means convinced that that today's NHS is perfect - but there are new buildings, plenty of staff and cash for any number of initiatives related to infection etc. Compared to my experiences, it's fucking heaven.

Having the Tories wave their shrouds at us is insulting our intelligence; so even if Gordon Brown stays put, has an affair with a sheep, advises us to give up lamb and takes to drink, I would still rather vote for him and his bunch of lily-livered would-be socialists than Dave Cam the Sham and his bunch of weasels! So there!

Teachers, and now a right wing think tank, are arguing against SATs - and in light of the shambolic administration of the current round of tests, it would seem a no-brainer to say ban them and re-introduce teacher set testing in schools - get rid of those nasty league tables while you're at it (probably bring back grammar schools and workhouses too if you're a Civitas member).

The thing is, SATs are a handy way of finding out whether schools across the country are achieving a good education for the money spent. We know the council spend and we know the results of that spend. Using that information,extra money can then be targeted to where it is needed - none of that post code lottery stuff.

I realise that the point of the league tables was to allow parents to vote with their feet - bad schools would close under pressure from falling rolls and good schools would benefit from having too many kids in their oversubscribed classrooms... that was the point wasn't it? It was a Tory idea after all. Parental choice was pretty popular with the Labour Party too - equally wrongheaded to my mind - much better to stick with catchment areas.

But then if you have catchment areas, poor schools in poor areas tend to get poorer - the parents don't give a rats ass about the kids performance (no vociferous PTA) and prospects for betterment through further education are stunted by lack of visible role models and local successes.

Aha, but if you use the SATs to measure success and failure of education authorities you can improve this state of affairs - measures to improve the performance of the poor schools, funded through central government.

Schools and teachers have been using (or abusing) SATs as a beauty show to attract parents - teachers have been busily coaching their kiddiwinks through the tests (which should of course be a randomised snapshot of performance) and encouraging the kids to evaluate themselves using the results too. Hence the anxiety the children were supposed to be feeling due to the lack of results at term end (in my experience - the children were not especially anxious - but I gather that a local private school in Bolton had worked itself up into torrents of tears over the lack of SATs).

Teachers don't like SATs because it provides a standardised record of their teaching - if they set their own tests and mark them - they can of course (but wouldn't I'm sure) teach what they are good at and mark according to their whims. SATs have become bloody hard work (what with all the coaching and pre-testing) and naturally teachers find it a bit irksome to put in the labour, bless them.

So here's my plan of action

Retain SATS - encourage schools (sternly) to refrain from coaching and pre-testing, and with primary school children, work testing into normal day.

Introduce a proper taxation system which re-distributes wealth fairly through society, use the money to ensure that all schools are good, that all pupils have access to further education and that social mobility is not a myth.

Easy, ain't it?

We have Sky and I watch the odd programme on it - mainly Star Trek if I'm honest. As a result I have become exposed to rather more ads than I used to be, and I seem to see more and more aimed at women and ageing.

Now I know that advertising is about inventing a problem and giving you the solution, and I know that lines and wrinkles don't devalue me as a person but the drip drip drip of these ads has sent me running for the appropriate department in Boots and handing over cash in pursuit of this particular set of elixirs.

I wonder if I am more vulnerable to all of this being a late returner to work - I am re-inventing my career path in my 40's and working alongside people with the rosy, fresh glow of their twenties. I dress appropriately enough (no mutton button for me) but I feel so old at times and the notion that this cream or that lotion can restore my long gone youth is tempting.

Youth is the holy grail and the prize: I have banged on about the notion that 40+ is the dead zone before (especially for women) and there's no need to do it again, but at some point we have all got to assess our attitudes to aging and being old - the easy assumptions about what being old means have got to be challenged. Old doesn't mean tea dances and carpet slippers when you were young in the 60's and your youth was characterised by the Rolling Stones and lots of drugs, old doesn't start in your 40's any more (your granny was old at 45, but then her youth was maimed by hard work, war and a chronically poor diet).

A shallow obsession with skin care and wrinkles isn't addressing our longer life span and better health in our old age, its just ensuring that those who are getting older stay neurotic and vulnerable to the nonsense that skin care companies get rich on. People, in short, like me.

Working from home is a great thing. I tend to be more productive at home - no background chatter, no banter at the metaphorical water cooler. No lunch hours and coffee breaks. But I also manage to get other useful home stuff done - the washing, calling builders, making hair appointments, filing. And I stay in touch with my kids. Well, sort of. During previous unemployed summer holidays I stayed at home and saw them at mealtimes, When I went out to work I didn't see them until teatime, but working from home means I see them at ...mealtimes. There is no risk of them disturbing my work as there is no risk of them leaving their rooms. Sigh.

The only problem associated with home working is what to do if the work dries up. When in an office we messed about and chatted, stuffed some envelopes for the next door sales section, had a chair spinning competition, drank copious amounts of coffee. What do you do at home... I could go and knit in front of the TV but that would just feel wrong. Or read. Or go for walk, but the feeling that you are being paid to work is oddly enough MORE intense when you work from home, than when you're office bound - then you seem to fulfil your obligation simply by turning up.

The other problem is the dog - from about 3.30 he sits by my desk and watches me intently for any signs of food. It's very offputting to be stared at like that!

Summer’s here at last, and the weathers vile, of course
The rain lashes down, blanketing clouds loom over grey hills,
Mid July, mid summer, middle England and perforce
We’ve not seen the sun for weeks, and glumness fills
Our hearts.

Those with the cash take planes to Spain and Greece,
Pack suitcases with bikinis, flip flops and sun cream,
Happy to grab one or two weeks surcease
From the dismal skies - they lie back and dream
of permanent sunshine.

Those condemned to stay on these rotten shores,
Watch the horizon for signs of a break in the clouds,
Window shop barbies and patio heaters, become bores,
About weather forecasting, while the watery mist still shrouds
The sun.

The summer days when they come – bright and clear
Blue and yellow, and surprisingly hot, are welcomed by pale skin
Released from its jeans and cardies; clad in shorts and sheer
Floral blouses, only lightly slicked with factor 5, a thin
Barrier, easily breeched .

Monday morning, offices the length of the land
Are full of pink and shining faces, sore necks and the smell
Of calomine lotion freshly applied, but life’s suddenly grand.
Until the clouds gather yet again, thicken and swell
With rain.

by Punch 21.07.2008

The Guardian made me sick, or at the very least mildly nauseous, with its fawning peice on David (Cam the sham) Cameron this morning. As ever he's comes over as personable, bright, amusing enough and probably eminently electable. Added to this was the news that he is well over 6 foot and a big chum of little Sarkozy (AkA to me as Sarcoma - and almost as nice).

Well, stap me vitals I had better vote for him then! No, hold on a minute, isn't he still the head of the party which gave us Mags Thatcher and the wreck of the nation? I think he is - and despite disappearing up his own arse in his efforts to distance himself from his parties erstwhile politics, I don't detect any qualitative change. Sure he says the right things - but we know that smiles and glib yea saying don't really mean that he will look after the NHS and the Welfare state any better than his predecessors. Surely the voting population aren't that stupid?

Oh, right. Boris Johnson, the Daily Mail/Express, Big Brother, Z-list Stars-on-ice (singing the Sound of Music), the Spice Girls, Margaret's state funeral....

We are so fucked aren't we?

Honestly is there any television programme that is more noxious..... and more insanely watchable.
I feel dirty when the credits roll.

Two thoughts usually occur at the end of the programme-
first, why did they let themselves get to that place...
second, am I there?

I thought I would give my blog a bit of a update and decided to use one of my favourite old fashioned oaths as a headline - to whit, 'flipping heck' thinking that would be a bit 'out there' and 'of the wall' in this age of the 4 letter sweary word. Huh. I should have done a bit more research - 'flipping heck' seems to be a phrase that rather a lot of people in the internet world have latched onto. Nearly 20,000 entries on Google in fact.

I am quite pleased, as I rather like the old-fashioned 'bad language' - now we routinely fuck, shit and cunt, we have lost charming phrases such as 'sodding hell' and 'for crying out loud', not to mention bugger (as something you say when you bang your thumb with a hammer, instead of something to do). When I was little 'bloody hell' was used as an expression of surprise, flaming hell if things were going awry, crikey and golly still got the occasional outing when one was surprised and aunties often substituted 'blooming heck' for their consternation.

'Crap' once had me tearing upstairs, my Dad itching to place a red palm print on my bare leg - I made it to my bedroom just in time and to this day, I don't use the word - it makes my calf sting.

Damn and blast - a much more gentle expression of dismay than any we use this days and much missed.

Maybe the National Trust should be invited to get involved in the saving of great old term - we don't need any more big old houses to look around on quiet Sundays in August, but wouldn't it be a shame if 'for crying out loud' disappeared ...forever.

White worm eating ghost slugs have been found in Wales, which reminded me forcibly of David Davis and his BY-ELECTION VICTORY. I hope I don't have to, ahem, Labour the point....

Apparently Mr.Davis might well find himself a place in Mr. Cameron's would-be government. Which fails to give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

I don't think that anyone should be locked up without charge for more than a night or so for anything - existing police powers for arrest, search and holding seem to me to be more than enough, even if there was a horrendous terrorist attack (perhaps especially). I think Gordon Brown has a huge capacity for foot shooting and in this case is simply being a bit of a nob. But I still don't like recieving lessons on freedom from a Tory.

Did I mention the white worm eating ghost slug? In Wales?