Circle

Well, that was a nice round-trip to nowhere. Half the signals were broken on the Northern Line tube, so I had a half-possibility of meeting an agent who was interested in providing placements for my students. I live in hope, so I boarded the train. By the time we got two stops down the line, the train stopped and the driver gave increasingly pessimistic forecasts of us ever getting anywhere. I crossed the platform to get the train back, only to find that the problems had increased, and that driver was telling us exactly the same thing.
So here I am at home with coffee after a long bus journey, wondering if I'll be able to get to the Equality and Diversity meeting this afternoon.
I've been reading Owen Jones's book The Establishment over the past few days and although it's out of date already, it's providing an interesting and depressing underpinning of the demolition of British democracy that has been undertaken in the last 40 years. Everything I think at the moment is coloured by what I'm reading. I've just handed in my notice at one of my jobs and I was thinking what I could do to supplement my income; 'life coach' sprang to mind, and then sprang back out again. Life coaching is social work for privileged people, who are the people in our society who least need this service. Wouldn't it be great to divert all the life coaches (it's sounding like cockroaches now!) to helping people in more need? One obvious one: debriefing General Practitioners who have no support at all to help them to cope with the array of terrible physical and mental problems they come across as part of their daily routine. Or perhaps they could start up Youth Clubs to replace the ones the Tories have destroyed, which has led to (surprise!!!) gang warfare and gun crime on urban streets.
And then the environmental thing: that whole mantra that we as consumers should change our habits to save the world. Actually, it's the multinational corporations that should change their habits- and crucially, their shareholders. Do they really, truly think that they will be able to leave the planet and set up somewhere else?
I am so ranty this morning! This is what a change of plan does to a person: your brain uses its energy to push to the forefront things that have been hidden by other responsibilities. I try not to bore my friends with my anger, but you should hear me and my Offsprogs when we get going!