After a great interview this morning I have now got a job working with Learning Disabled people in this case folk who are autistic. There is some training to be done, courses to be completed online which I can do with my voice recognition and I got the job as the man said "because of your values". God bless the interviewers and I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I found out because I was convinced I was not going to get a job ever. But, I am pretty good at forgetting about the flak and getting on target and that is what I did with a lot of goodwill to the other candidate, who I thought was excellent I might add, who also got a job. Ubu "you be you" are quite an enlightened company and I thought I would just be working as a relief worker but I am doing 20 hours for a little while, while the men get used to me and then I will be full-time. God bless all of my friends and family who inspire me so much to keep my act together and move forward.

From this point on I am giving up music and concentrating on working with the Learning Disabled which is where I started out on my life's path to becoming a better human being in 1982 at York in Juniper Communities. It was Joe James who told me about Juniper Communities way back then and I went there and it sort of changed my life. Thanks Joe and I love you man.

Miles did his driving test today and passed first time. Total respect to the lad because when he first started driving it took him over 20 hours to learn how to use the clutch. I have said many times the only talent I have is persistence but what I love about the lad is that when he finds things he cannot do, he has no talent for, he just keeps going at it until he gets it. Well done Miles!

After a fairly good week I woke up this morning hellbent on doing some harmonica tootling because I am getting out and about trying to impress  folk and get a band or duo to go out and work. Then again, I just could not be bothered and the delights of reading about the US Civil War were far better. I can take or leave music these days.

Miles decided to stay in to do his mathematics this afternoon, Fiona was still down with her sinusitis bug so Clifford and I trucked  off to the Durham woods for a ramble. There was a lot of snow on the ground having fallen last night but it was already melting, slippy and wet. As soon as we cut off the road I saw a Jay and a flock of Red Wings which was really good because I have established where the Jay  is   and I will see it many times now. Maybe I will see little Jays in a few weeks time! The woods were bright but mellow under the winter sun with many types of clouds including I think  Cirrocumulus , very high altitude cumulus clouds.  Nice.

We can't call biscuit break, biscuit break anymore because we are now having muffins so we now call it muffin break which sounds a real laugh. In Durham Cathedral Cloisters we munched our way through our muffins watching  a lot of people go by enjoying the mediaeval building. There was a choir of females warbling in the main part of the cathedral with an orchestra as well. Sounded pretty good!

When we got back home Miles was full of himself having done a load of mathematics and Fiona was feeling better so we had a crash and a cuddle listening to The Essential Leonard Cohen which is really beautiful. Our new bed is fairly comfortable but a bit weird because I feel as if I am floating above the ground. Due to the downstairs bedroom having a concrete floor I reckon that the two of us sleeping in the bed every night creating a lot of warmth, interfacing with the concrete floor and the carpet on top of it was creating condensation. I had Fiona laughing her head off yesterday because I said what essentially was happening was a cloud was forming in the bed, because a dew  point had been reached, and then all the water molecules started sticking together and it effectively rained which is why we got the condensation. This got nowhere and she just laughed but I thought my mattress theory of cloud formation and precipitation deserved some consideration. No chance: she has heard my wafflings   before. Clifford laughed as well when he heard this and it is hard to be taken seriously by my family sometimes. I do try!

A very beautiful mellow day, with a wadge  of mellowness between my ears and a general feeling of love for humanity, family and friends. Life is good but I want either a day job or to go out and blow the world down with my harmonica!

Not usually my thing , no rocks , birds, clouds or hills to gawp at ,just people talking about their feelings : yuuuuuuuk. But I am disabled and it ain't about me so with my ears attentive and my head firmly in the popcorn bucket when they are starkers ,I think screen nudity is unneccesary, I may go and see this . Could get distracted by going to the RSPB Saltholme Bird Reserve instead, there is some courting going on there as well because of last weeks warm spell and because its on the way, but , people talking about the birds and bees may win out. After all one of my favourite sayings in life is : " If in doubt, think about the popcorn" and Helen Hunt is one of my favourite actresses. As Good As It Gets was perfect.

Let's talk about sex

www.bbc.co.uk

Ben Lewin's film The Sessions takes the taboo out of disabled sex as it explores the real-life story of journalist and poet Mark O'Brien.

 I had a walk round the Durham City woods this morning and the ground was rock hard with frost and light snow. On the River Wear I saw a huge Heron, then further up a Goosander, 200 m from there in the woods I heard a drumming sound above me and there was a Greater Spotted Woodpecker, walked another 500 m, extremely excited, saw what I thought was a Waxwing, then knew it wasn't a Fieldfare or Redwing so it had to be a Jay and I have not seen one of those for nearly 40 years! Feeling very pleased with myself I went another 500 m saw a low brown movement 50 m away: Roe Deer, two of them at first, then they crossed the bank to go up the hill away from me, and there was the sound of crisps crunching as their feet shuffled through the frosted crispy leaves and then I saw three a male had joined them so it was two females and one male. Total magic. Nothing much happened for the next mile and then I saw another Goosander just down from the Wier past Prebend bridge. This one was 20 m away from me and not bothered at all that I was there completely out in the open I could clearly see its teeth in its sawbill and the little hook at the end. Magic. To round it off on the 2 mile walk back I saw 2 Little Grebes and noticed that the North West Wind was really warm:  snow is coming!

There has been mega world social and economic disorganisation since the beginning of industrialisation. The political, party political and transnational efforts to solve it succeed in part but leave everybody on the planet knowing that more needs to be done. That more, is for everybody on the planet to believe that everybody else is as valuable to them as they are to themselves. In other words the problem is spiritual at  root and various economic and social solutions  will work but only if the well-being of everybody is brought forward as part of those solutions. That is why I believe in world unity as an understanding of mind at first and then the solutions will flow through institutions and laws to better mankind. Got to get away from dog eat dog state of mind at the individual, local, regional, national and international level then everybody will progress. It is happening!

"Love thy neighbour as thyself" is the way forward.

"Neigh , this can't be happening" I thought when I first heard it. Still, it will ride a coach and horses through the idea that in the mane the food we eat is  what it says on the packet. The food companies are jockeying for position to say they are doing everything right, and they are on track with that,  not a racetrack though, because they have to cooperate. If I was in the saddle of one of those meat manufacturers, I would take a whip to those who have got it wrong and get out of the starting gates to correct the problem. It seems they are at a gallop to reassure us, but some people will be thrown by the idea of eating horsemeat whereas others will jump fences as they always do and head for the winning post of sinking their teeth into another burger hoping that it is just a straw in the wind. It is odds-on and a good bet that the horsing around with our burgers will end with a fast finish!  Someone will be put out to grass I hope.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21038521

God bless America. They fight for the ferret over there! For those of us who have marriages blighted by Female Ferret Phobia , aka Fionas' Syndrome , and mine severely is , only sore point really , after all every Yorkshireman has the right in marriage to own a ferret right , there must be some Magna Carter thingy about that, or is this where the Normans went wrong, who knows , but any way, what our world dominating Atlantic cousins are doing is brilliant. Yet another bit of support and therapy for my Fine but Ferret Forbidding Wife to nudge her on the path of allowing her husband to attain Ferrethood and for her to rise to achieve Ferretgnosis : the understanding and appreciation of the blessings to mankind of Males Owing Ferrets. Once this is achieved our marriage will be complete and I can get a shed and engage in Ferret communication and play my harmonica to it because its a well known fact that Ferrets love Jazz ! The lack of a ferret in my life is holding me back musically as well!

Appeal to Obama over ferret ban

www.bbc.co.uk

California debates whether to maintain a ban on ferrets, amid fears

A pretty good week. I got an application done for working with Learning Disabled people in Darlington and I have a good chance of getting this job because they wanted to know as much as possible about me in writing on the application form.

I clipped off a couple of pounds of weight which is good because that represents 7000 cal that I have not eaten this week, 3 1/2 thousand calories to each pound. It may not be just not eating food of course I have been quite active walking as well. The trip to Saltholme on Teeside to the RSPB bird sanctuary was absolutely brilliant all clear sky, blue, mellow, not least because there were few birds around due to the huge amount of rainfall over the past weeks which have left all of the mudflats covered so there were very few waders. We only saw one a Redshank feeding away on the bit of mudflat that was still uncovered. The Long Eared Owls are back having travelled across from Scandinavia for warmer climes and several birdwatchers were eagerly making their way to the top end of the site about a mile away from the Nature Centre. Nice atmosphere.

Clifford is nicely preparing for his A-level exams next week and is very confident getting in the high 80s and low 90s for his mathematics mocks and I am reading his coursework for his History and it looks pretty good. Miles is just beavering away as usual and we have reduced the amount of times he goes to the skate park because it is now time to start preparing for the next stage in his life which will either be training for work as a teacher or doing his Masters/Ph.D. in order to be a university teacher/ researcher. What is also good about this is that he is going to the skateboarder only session at RKcade in Redcar which is pretty wild and he is enjoying that.

Standard Saturday today, Durham Woods, a huge tree had fallen, which a couple of people told me had fallen only two hours earlier right across the path, glad we weren't there at that time and so we took it easy as we went underneath it just in case it slipped as we were walking under it. It is pivoted on the hillside and on the riverbank at the moment but as soon as the river floods again of course the whole thing will slip and block the path completely. It is never boring but to the two Little Grebes we saw minding their own business and I think getting quite interested in each other because of the warm weather making them think about breeding they could not give a hoot what was going on! On the subject of which when taking Miles on his car driving training yesterday we went straight through the centre of Darlington, his test is next week, and as we went down St Cuthberts Way a very busy road there is the River Skerne on the left and a busy car park across from it and right in the middle of the river were a couple of Goosander's which totally amazed me because they are a very wild bird and don't normally like being around people. Nature is always surprising.

The walk today was bright and bubbly and Fiona is getting fitter and we sat in the Durham marketplace just watching people go by on biscuit break which was mellow and stimulating at the same time. We tend to do the same walks again and again which is a good way to notice the changes which is why I like to do that. We were going to go into Swaledale today but Fiona has had a mild bit of sinusitis and is not quite up to that. I was pretty keen on going somewhere to see Waxwings but not today. We will do that walk next week.

A great week, a beautiful day and the meatballs are cooking, The Lord of the Rings movie is waiting and I love my family and friends so much. I cannot wait to go to the Butterknowle Open Mic night this Monday. Anybody out there beam some good thoughts my way, or pray, that I get one of these jobs. It is not so much the money, I am not desperate for that, but I would like to get out and I think I have something to contribute to having fun and increasing the life chances of Learning Disabled people who I may work with.

Well, I don't think it is a matter of fairly distributing anything. The prime problem in the UK and elsewhere at the moment is raising income levels of the poorest so can purchase the necessities for a good life. Naturally, the tremendous gap between the rich and the poor and by rich I mean the middling bunch as well , like you and me, would be substantially narrowed.I think the word  "market"  gets bad press and even in the Soviet Union they had limited markets where people could buy and sell things. It is the essence of freedom, based on property, in the former Soviet Union case personal private property and democracy depends on it as well.

Competition, rivalry is simply another part of the overall concept of cooperation. The Olympics are all about competition but everybody agrees to the rules and if they don't there is a world body in this case the Olympic organisation to enforce those rules if anybody breaks them or disagrees with them.Competition and cooperation are what the Olympics are essentially about. Countries compete and to a certain extent there is nothing wrong with wanting your own country to win and do better, a sound patriotism in other words, I certainly have that  but it has to be based on international cooperation and obeying the rules of a world system not trying to belittle or even beggar those countries around you. Laws, rules and even world institutions already exist Ian it is just a matter of extending them to embrace the whole planet so that the possibilities and potentialities of it can be liberated for all to benefit not just the privileged Western few.Or the privileged Eastern few!

Underproduction in Africa is a massive problem and I believe they will not require any world system eventually to become like China, they will do it themselves, but after that an overarching world cooperative system would be necessary to keep this massive increase in world prosperity in place. As I said features of the future system are  already in place! Trading blocs already exist across the planet it is only a matter of time before there is a world government of those trading blocs.

I don't think the word capitalism describes anything real that occurs in the real world. Once we call free-market economies just that free-market economies the whole baggage of Marx's description of those economies as capitalist just falls apart. The reason being is that free-market economies can have various levels of state control in what free markets can provide which is virtually everything. For example the Nordic economies are completely different to the American one. Trying to use the word capitalism for free market economies gets even stranger when you consider that some of the best free-market economies in the world at the moment from an investment point of view are based on Communist systems where there is a high level of state control ,limited democracy but free markets over those areas of the economy those countries decide to develop.

Starvation in all Western economies has been pretty much overcome. Exploitation? It's a state of mind and when you look at small businesses in the UK for example, yes the owners are making more money than those who work for them but they also are risking a lot more and houses are often put on the line. Exploitation arguments are completely nonsense because it is not about taking off the rich, which has been the great flagship of the left since the beginning of the world, but raising up the standard economically and socially of those who are less better off which is what they have done in Nordic countries and who are not so preoccupied with stifling entrepreneurship and taxing the rich out of existence.

Poverty is a tricky one because there isn't actually a standard for it and all the measures of relative poverty are quite different. To some the fact that there are rich people and people who have nowhere near that amount of money automatically puts the less well-off into the poverty box. Again I do not agree with that because it is about raising up the standards of living for the less well-off no matter how rich people are. Chasing rich people to get more money out of them is a red herring, for people of left-wing persuasion very red, and what should be happening is encouraging an even bigger entrepreneurial class but one which is prepared to pay for and develop every citizen in society from the most talented to the most handicapped.I have a personal stake in the handicap bit because there are several jobs at the moment that I cannot do which I could if I did not have a handicap.

Private wealth going hand-in-hand with public squalor? Sure it does but a lot of people have short memories about how many Communist countries had public wealth going hand-in-hand with public squalor. It just seems way too convenient to try to right all the wrongs in terms of assuming that private wealth and public wealth are antagonistic. A much better way, a spiritual way, is for the poor, the middling bunch and the well-off to share a view that all human beings should have a good life no matter how rich or poor and implement legal as well as institutional means to ensure that. We will always have poor people, we will always have inequality because nobody is equal. I am as thick as two short planks but I blow a mean harmonica. Mr Fletcher is as bright as a button but could not blow the blues if someone held a gun to his head. Horses for courses but we have to look after all the horses to an acceptable minimum and place no limit whatsoever on the maximum potential human beings intellectually or economically can achieve. Bill Gates after all is very rich but like it or lump it he is giving it all away! I think that proves my point. If one can do it it is only a matter time before they all do.

The main problem in the world today economically and socially is the lack of global coordination in those two areas so every citizen of the world gets working, gets what they need and contributes to the whole. Until we human beings establish a World Government to coordinate those things which need coordinating at a world level these problems of market dislocations overproduction and under production will just keep going on. Something to slightly worry about is that there is still a profound belief that the nationstate on its own can do it all. In a world which is now contracted essentially to a neighbourhood that is not possible so we do indeed have to: Love Thy Neighbour and provide the institutional arrangements at the global level so that can occur.

A very mellow Saturday. We have decided to buy a new car and have been wittering away about that and what a great decision it is and will save us a lot of money and this provided the backdrop to a steady walk around the Durham Woods under a many clouded, moody and changing sky.

The ground had dried out considerably as it quickly does so walking boots were not necessary for a change. Fiona is getting a lot fitter, legging it along with us and chatting away at the same time. Thank goodness for that and walking always comes through eventually in terms of health and fitness.

There were not many people around as we went past the Durham Arboretum a sort of Wood Museum and it will be nice when all the students come back because they do liven up the place up a bit. Biscuit break was very lively in Durham Cathedral Cloisters as there were groups of children aged around 3 to about 8 running around the cloisters having a wail of a time. Good for them. After our munching and crunching we breezed around the Cathedral and it was quiet, spiritual and solidly lapping on the shores of its great and very long history. Nice!

Because I had forgot to get a birthday card for Fiona I slunk off to the card shop and got her a wonderful card which I know she will like. I need to improve as a husband sometimes when it comes to all this card business. When we got back home we had a nice crash out and cuddle listening to Leonard Cohen Live in London and I am now preparing up the venison meatballs, fresh pasta, tomato sauce and garlic bread to feed the hungry hordes. Miles stayed at home today to crack on with his mathematics which he is really getting into and he is working weekends to train himself up for when he will be doing that in his possible career as a maths researcher. He will see and so will we. And on that positive but ambiguous note the next stage of the Saunders-Priem's Saturday afternoon proceeds : eating loads of food!

This one angers me because all sorts of political parties make claims about access to Internet for children from low-income families in schools, libraries and community centres when these kids really need a free Internet connection and mid-range laptop in the home so they can have some sort of life like an awful lot of better off kids.If the idea is to extend what middle-class kids have more or less to those children from families of low-income ,money just has to be directly given to those families.if

I find it quite interesting really that disabled people and low-income people pretty much get treated in the same way: substandard. Why in this country we have a problem with maximising the health, happiness , intellectual and social development of all of us Brits are not just most, I do not know.What heights of well-being and mental satisfaction are we better off people missing out on because the problem of poverty just does not get addressed by any political party for the majority of better off citizens.

Poorest pupils lack home internet

www.bbc.co.uk

More than a third of the poorest children do not have the internet at home and a similar number do not have a computer, official figures suggest.

A homeschool register for homeschooled children is completely unworkable it is a harebrained idea, impossible to monitor and nobody knows what an appropriate education is for a child. Well, the courts do, because it was defined back in the 60s as that which prepares the child to live and work in the community they belong to. This is just one of the innumerable hurdles any   ridiculous attempts by education officials to effectively stop educational diversity will have to jump. Not only that, because the education officials are  so blind to the nature of children learning, all learning takes place in state schools according to them, they don't understand how well homeschooled children do and why. One of the most enlightened aspects of the English education system is home education, introduced by a Tory in the Butler Education Act 1944. God bless him because if Miles was forced to go to school it would have held him back years.He not would be the fulfillled and happy lad he is today.

I must say this because it actually happened and is good evidence of how stupid Local Education Authorities can be . Darlington Borough Council sent out an inspector to assess Miles work. I invited her, one of several invitations to see his work. The trouble is when she got to my house with an educational social worker she actually refused to look at the A4  files of work that he had done over the past few weeks. I believe she refused to do this  because she wasn't very good at the mathematics, science or geography that Miles was pretty good at and had done loads of it so she was in no position whatsoever to assess anything! I pushed the open file underneath this inspector's fingers and she completely refused  to even look at what was there under her nose : the evidence of a young person's education. The educational social worker did not know where to put himself he was so embarrassed at this display of complete ignorance by a highly paid education official.

 So, I sent two of the A4  files and sealed them with tape to the local Education Authority of Darlington Borough Council. And you know what, they were in possession of the evidence of my eldest lads education and they still refused  to look at it. They had the files for over a month and they were returned to me still sealed. I used to bait them by telling them to take me to court if they think anything is wrong which they refused to do because they knew they would lose. It was pathetic, but Darlington Borough Council gave up in the end because I quite legally and properly engaged them in a discussion all in writing and it cost them a fortune, an employee got sacked for behaving inappropriately in an e-mail and the Director of Education wrote me a letter out of total frustration saying that my lack of willingness to comply with their stupid assessment procedures was costing the Council a fortune to which I simply answered "If you think my son is not receiving an education take me to court" something I had said innumerable times. I enjoyed running rings around them!

 The funny thing is that had we gone to court the only thing the court wants to see is the work that the child has done which is precisely what I offered the Council. I complied with the law. Because of some vandalising of our property which we could not prove came from a Council officer even though one got sacked and had a motive to do this, Durham Police, who investigated our allegation of Council wrongdoing were actually the only people who saw the work that Miles did and strangely enough they were interested in it and thought it was pretty good. In other words, the test that the courts apply which is that if a education satisfies a "reasonable person" that it is an education indeed it is an education. The police thought this and I intended to use one of them as a witness if the Council tried to take us to court. If the public knew how much money local councils waste on harassing home educators there would be an outcry. And they get absolutely nowhere!

Good for the home educators of Wales because standing up for what is your legal right is very important in a society which claims to be just. No Education Authority can arbitrarily go beyond its powers as so many of them try to do. That is not only wrong it is unjust and illegal.

The man mentioned in the article Mike Fortune-Wood is a really good bloke and helped me immensely, with his copious posts and writings about home education, with understanding all the legal procedures and how to take Darlington Borough Counsel to the cleaners and run rings around them so I could further and protect my children fully within the law. Let me be clear about  this I was obeying the law Darlington Borough Council  was breaking it .

Strangely enough I had a phone call about a year after Miles had finished being home educated from a man who had heard that I was a home educator,wanting advice  and I can only say that what this man was doing as home education was completely wrong, nothing abusive nothing like that, he just did not know what he was doing, and it was obvious to me that the child was being used in some sort of battle with the authority about education. So, the child who really  needed intervention from Darlington Borough Council Education Department was not getting it at all. The job that the Local Education Authority was supposed to do they could not even do that! Very strange.

PS. Home educating Miles in Richmond in North Yorkshire when we lived there was totally enlightened . I invited the Education Authority to see the lads work , he was 5 at the time and they sent a great official called Alan Critchlow who quickly looked at Miles work and thought it was great and way beyond what he would be doing in an infant class . He stayed 15 minutes , I wanted him to stay longer because he was a good bloke , but he had to shoo. He would drop in from time to time , I said come any time , and he never  really looked at Miles work again although he saw him  writing away sometimes.  Darlington Borough Council Education and Legal Department and the Education Officials in Wales  : learn from North Yorkshire because it will save you a lot of time and public money !