Equality?

 Positive discrimination is not equality. Preferential treatment of any group or individual is discrimination, which is supposedly illegal. Today you are discriminated against if you are white, especially male, especially married. If you are any other colour, gender, sexuality, you have a far greater chance these days than an ordinary bloke. This is patently wrong.

I have nothing against everyone being given an equal chance. However, jobs should be given on merit. You want the best person for the job, even if they are purple with green horns. Well, actually these days I should say: even if they arewhite, middle-class, married male. If the best man for the job is a woman/gay/Asian/black/wheelchair-bound, that doesn’t matter. But they must not be given the job on the basis of what “sector” they come from.

Some of the ridiculous things that now count as discrimination, next thing you know all coal-mines will need to have wheelchair access and breast-feeding rooms in case cripples and mothers want to work down there.

Sadly there is no equality. Everyone is different. That is a basic fact of life. I am sick of reading about discrimination, I am sick of reading about women getting massive payouts because someone patted their backside at work. Men at work have always had a laddish culture. Women come into the workplace and expect it all to change to accommodate them. Is that equality? Expecting an entire workforce to make huge adjustments for one employee? For heaven’s sake, why don’t they just use their feminine wiles to get a promotion?

Okay, there is a line to be drawn somewhere. Sexual harassment can and does take place. But the vast majority of supposed sexual harassment is not that at all, it is merely poor stupid men carrying on their laddishness and putting a female employee’s nose out of joint by accident, not as a deliberate bullying tactic.

Oh, I despair. I really do. This country seems to be the only one in the world that implements every directive from Brussels, every idea they can get hold of from America, Australia, anywhere. Anything that might involve passing a new law and causing people more and more problems and difficulty in just simply getting on with their everyday life. This whole equality thing is just another area where normal everyday folk end up criminalised and demonised.

We will not revolt, however, because we are British and have stiff upper lips. We accept these things and try to carry on regardless. But the burden of laws and guidelines is becoming heavier and heavier and at some point we will simply collapse under their weight.

For Pity’s Sake!!

I just started writing a new post (again) and my little one sabotaged it (again!!!). The last 2 or 3 times she has simply turned off the pc by the big round button on the front mid-post. This time she grabbed the keyboard while I was answering the phone and deleted my p+6o3.0st.

………

Oh yes, she likes to kneel on the keyboard too, hence the odd spelling and punctuation above. Little toad.

 

Anyway, what was I writing about? Oh, yes, how boring I am, having not had anything I felt worth saying for the past 2 weeks. Also, I have been damned busy. My son has been causing all sorts of interesting problems, mostly involving serious tantrums at school. I am now driving him to and from school every day, despite the fact he has a free bus pass and that it costs me a fortune in diesel. 20 miles a day I drive for him and is he grateful? Of course not, he hates school! Well, he’s grateful when I pick him up, actually. Pathetically grateful, in fact. He hates school so much! Actually, it showed the depth of his hatred of the bus the other week when he refused to get on it to come home. The fact he threw a complete wobbler and had to be manhandled onto the bus by his teacher and then refused to sit down, screaming at the top of his voice (in front of a bus-load of his peers) really proved to me how very much he dislikes the bus, because he normally can’t wait to get away from school.

We did try to find out what the problem was and address the issues. Too hot? A handheld fan to keep him cool. Too noisy? Earplugs. But the earplugs kept popping out and the fan batteries ran out really quickly – yes, we replaced them a couple of time. In the end it was just easier (and cheaper) to accept the inevitable and drive him in. This autism business comes out in a variety of ways, mostly to do with noisy, chaotic and unpredictable things. Okay, the car could break down, but at least his trusted mother would be there to deal with it all and keep him calm.

Then there have been a couple of times when he has been late. These cause a repeat of the tantrum, usually held in front of a  classroom full of children, and last time in front of the entire playground. It culminated in me walking off while a teaching assistant restrained him. It was horrible. Most kids his age (9) would not behave like that with everyone watching. My son does not have those boundaries. He is more like a 4 or 5 year old child in certain respects, and this business of tantrumming at school is one of them. Yet the teachers say he is fine once he gets in and settles down. This is not what he feels. He describes school as torture. He would rather break both of his legs than go to school. Yet ask him what is wrong with it and he can’t really answer. “Everything” is not a proper answer. He can’t really verbalise exactly what it is about school that he hates so much. Maybe it is everything, but not individually. Perhaps it’s everything all rolled up together, coming at him relentlessly through the day in a way he has no control over. Maybe if it was all seperated out and ordered and stuck to a rigid timetable and was quiet and controlled at all the right times and someone was able to explain properly just exactly why it is that he has to go to school (“Because you just do,” is also not a proper answer but it’s all I’ve got!), maybe then it would be bearable.

But that isn’t going to happen.

If he is having this much trouble at junior school (especially on Tuesdays when he has 3 different teachers through the course of the day), I shudder to think what effect secondary school is going to have on him. I guess we will just have to cross that bridge when we come to it, no point looking for trouble, etc….but I think it is probably as well to be prepared for the future, because this is what will happen if we don’t start putting things in place in the near future. I don’t want my son to go through an emotional meltdown.

Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, call it what you will. It is a nightmare to live with. He wishes he was just normal, and so do I, for his sake, at times. I would miss my dear little boy if it were to happen, though. He is a love. But his path through life will not be an easy one and I cry for him sometimes, because all I can do is try to help him learn how life works, I can’t live it for him, and I can’t take away the pain when it jumps up and bites him. I know all parents go through this. I have this with my other children too, but not to nearly the same extent. ASD children do not “get” the world, and probably will live their entire lives not getting it. They can learn to do the things we all automatically do to make the world go around, but they will never, ever understand why they have to.

Topical Debates

People obviously like to look at controversial stuff. I know that some of my own feelings about things are somewhat old-fashioned and therefore automatically controversial. I write about other things and no-one looks, lol. Of course, when it is something topical that does tend to mean that lots of people are looking for information about it.

I am not feeling very strongly irate about anything right now, though. I am far too tired for that. It’s ridiculous really, but the sunshine makes everything hurt. My legs hurt, my arms hurt, muscles, joints, the lot. I am utterly exhausted. I wake up as stiff as a board, not feeling refreshed at all by the sleep I’ve had. My youngest slept through the night for about a week (she’s woken up the last 2 nights though) and I actually feel worse when I have had an unbroken night! Which is ridiculous, really.

I think I had better go and talk to a doctor about this, but sadly I feel it won’t really be taken that seriously. As a 30-something mother of 4 suffering from post-natal depression I feel fairly sure that all this tiredness will be put down to me being a 30-something mother of 4 with pnd, lol. In other words, slightly neurotic and a bit of a hypochondriac.

Maybe I am just a hypochondriac. But yesterday I went to help out with the jumble sale at the school. I did a bit of help with sorting and wound up running the linen stall. Not very onerous to be honest, although it was quite hot and I didn’t have a chair. But after an hour I was dead on my feet, and the relief when my friend came and took over from me and sent me home (“you look awful, go away”) was immense. This is patently ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that the 80-year-old who ran it last year was on the bric-a-brac with some other ancients mainly because it was in the shade. And she had helped sorting out, and stayed all afternoon. I was totally knackered.

Four days later, I have since come down with a cold, but still feel that the level of exhaustion I felt was a bit ott. Life is pretty stressful at the minute what with one thing and another, perhaps that all it is. I’m running on empty and simply have no reserves for anything extra. Like sunshine. Perhaps I won’t go to the  doctor after all. Maybe I’ll go in a couple of weeks when I’m over the cold but still knackered and aching, which will be the case. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with me at all. Or maybe I have gladular fever or something. Everyone else in my family has had it. Why not me too? Not that I’d want it. Not if this is what it feels like. No fun at all.

Whinge, moan, groan. Time to cheer up methinks. I can’t be doing with this.

Another month already

It’s June already, and I can hardly believe it. Everything has been quite upside-down since last September but the end is in sight. #1 has only 3 more weeks of college and I will be released from the tedious and exhausting business of driving her there. It’s only twice a week but the place is over 10 miles away and I have to do it twice each day which is 80 miles a week. Bloody expensive now too.

It will make life a bit, well, not easier but simpler. My son hates the bus but I can’t get him to school the days I take #1 to college. I will be able to take him in from the end of this month which will make him a bit happier. Not much, since he hates school anyway, but a bit.

Thankfully #3 is still joyously happy in her school and will stay there for at least another year.

At least one of them is settled. Of course I will have all of this shenanigans again in a few years’ time when #4 comes due for schooling, but I happy to leave that bridge well alone until I need to cross it.

Of course, the advent of June brings us that little bit closer to the other event of the year, the birth of my first grandchild. It is only 10 weeks now until the baby is due and frantic activity is taking place at my mother’s house to prepare the place for the arrival of her granddaughter and great grandson. #1 still hasn’t quite decided when she is going to move in, but I think when we have organised the place a bit better she will have a clearer idea. At the minute I think a part of her does not want to pile the pressure on to her grandparents by setting them a deadline. Of course, this is ignoring the fact that there is ultimately a deadline anyway, lol, but that’s youngsters for you!

The other part of her doesn’t really want to leave home, of course. Well that is for 2 reasons, one being she just doesn’t want to leave home yet and the other being that she feels guilty about disrupting her grandparents lives and putting them out etc. We have told her until we’re blue in the face that this is not an issue, but what can you do? Anyway, she is planning to help them with the housework and take turns to cook meals, so I am quite sure that they will not be put out at all. They think a lot of her and genuinely enjoy her company, which she reciprocates. The only concern is whether my father can truly cope with having a baby in the house.

He is disabled and also running (well, hobbling) around a lot after his own father (85) who was quite ill last November and has never really fully got over it. So my father is pretty exhausted, really. He doesn’t really cope that well with having the grandchildren over, at least most of the time, needing really to have plenty of warning in order to mentally prepare. Of course, the fact that he has had several months to get used to the idea this time around, plus it was his own idea in the first place, will probably help. And also when you have someone living with you it can be quite a different thing from having them visit. It can be more pressured, of course, but there is a good possibility that it will be easier to deal with for him because it is something that is there all the time, so a sort of background noise, if you like, rather than a sudden thing.

It’s a bit like the trains. Their house is next to a railway track, and of course they are well used to the trains, to the extent that they simply don’t notice them any more. Even the night freight trains, which are really loud. In fact they are more likely to notice (even to the extent of waking up at night) if for some reason there are no trains at all. I know when I moved away from home I was waking up at the times the trains weren’t going past for several months.

It’s wrong to compare a baby to a train, I suppose, but I think it gets the point across. Anyway, the bottom line is that hopefully all will be well, and if it doesn’t work out then we will have to all squeeze up at our end and have her and the baby back here. Which would be interesting! So let’s hope it all works out, eh? Anyway, it should be only a temporary thing, a year to 18 months at most with any luck, whatever happens and where ever she ends up in the short term.

For now, it is business as usual (which is busy and draining in every way). I still have my moments of worrying about the future, but I am doing better at noticing today, too.