Friday, February 20, 2015
PABaroness Jenkin caused controversy for her comment that poor people do not know how to cook
However, let us look at the baroness’s statement rather than get bogged down in arguments about political correctness.
It is almost certainly true that plenty of people in an age of fast food and ready meals, whether poor or not, do not know how to cook.
It is also true that cookery is taught in almost every senior school and that unless one is a persistent truant one can hardly escape it.
My own observation is that some of the less well-off, particularly but not exclusively those who live on large inner city council estates, lack not the knowledge but the motivation.
The sheer demoralisation of their existence is simply not understood by those who live focused, busy lives.
All around them are graffiti, neglect, litter, discarded needles and street lights which don’t work. A broken window will stay broken for weeks. Their routine centres around the needs of children and often without the support of a husband or partner.
They cannot afford any entertainment beyond that offered by television. Their education was sufficiently basic for them to derive no joy from books or learning.
Every day there is some new imposition on already strained finances: school trips, broken washing machines, lost shoes and every day there is nothing but the prospect of the same tomorrow.
No, they do not feel like rustling up Delia’s latest casserole. rather, they feel like most of us do when we have flu: that everything is too much effort.
I am aware that the reaction to this article will be that they made their lives what they are, that all these people could have risen above their circumstances and carved out something different.
Yes, but that also requires motivation and aspiration which are unknown in some families and foreign concepts in some schools.
ALPA PRESSSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs Pantomime at the Richmond Theatre in London
The sheer demoralisation of their existence is simply not understood by those who live focused, busy lives
’Tis again the season of panto and everywhere i go with my “audience with” evenings i find myself performing against the backdrop of some magical palace or enchanted wood.
it makes me a bit nostalgic for the two pantomimes i did with Craig Revel Horwood.
But having joined the cast of Aladdin in Lytham st Annes for their opening show celebrations, i am reminded of the reality of life for the jobbing actors as opposed to the Jerry Halls of this world: weeks away from home, two shows a day, no guaranteed next job.
Yet they stay consistently cheerful and upbeat, making us all laugh and delighting children.
Good luck to them all in this season and beyond.
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The Lost honour Of Christopher Jefferies, last week’s programme on ITV, was everything I had expected.
He was the academic wrongly suspected of murdering Joanna Yeates who was then reviled and libelled by press and media.
That much we knew but what this excellent drama illustrated was also the extent to which some of his acquaintances and other ordinary citizens turned his world upside down as they fled from him.
We saw him sacked by an examinations board, shunned by the lady from whom he had bought his daily loaf for years and unable to go out without the prospect of abuse. The school where he had taught for 35 years distanced itself.
I am proud to record that in this column in January 2011, before he was cleared, I deplored the treatment he was receiving and wrote that “vagueness and a professorial tendency to qualify and requalify every statement do not add up to murder”.
How right I was but how right also was the tiny handful of his friends who did not desert him.
The programme contained a lesson for all of us. Innocent until proved guilty is a maxim which applies not just to the press but also to every employer, every shopkeeper and every passing acquaintance.
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A couple who have been together for nine years and are both in work had their first child snatched by social workers and put up for adoption.
Unfortunately the mother was attacked by a third party while pregnant and social services insisted they find somewhere else to live for the child’s safety.
As they struggled to find alternative accommodation the council placed them in a series of refuges and bed and breakfasts and then had the gall to take away the child because the couple had a “chaotic” lifestyle.
Mercifully a judge has now prevented the adoption and blasted Thurrock council.
Perhaps officials should make a collective New Year’s Resolution to do as they would be done by as they watch their children enjoying christmas.
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I switched on sky this weekend to discover that many of the programmes I had recorded had suddenly disappeared altogether. Some had been there for two years. Others were recent. Now they have gone, both viewed and unviewed.
So much for new technology! If I had recorded those programmes on a video I would still have them now and for as long as I wanted. All that glisters is not gold and all that is new is certainly not progress.
Next time I want to keep something I’ll go back to the old technology.
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The royal visit to the US was a triumph but while William was photographed with the President of the United States, back home his younger brother was photographed being propped up as he left a nightclub.
Prince harry is a fine and brave young man as his Arctic expedition with amputees demonstrates but it is time he grew up off duty.
This week we have also seen the latest endearing photograph of Prince George. Maybe harry should be asking himself what sort of an example uncle should be setting.
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James Rowley chased a bank robber and held on to him until the police arrived. Now the same bank has refused him a loan because seven years ago he earned a black mark on his credit record.
Mr Rowley went elsewhere and has since repaid the loan in full.
The bank’s staff were a bit embarrassed but the computer had said no and the computer ruled supreme. So now we are a nation enslaved not just to the rule book but to computers too.
The bank is reported to have refused to comment. If that state of affairs continues then its customers can conclude that they bank with automatons rather than human beings.
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Kara Scott
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