Zero Marks Question

Michael Gove's stint as education minister of the Tory coalition government was interesting in its over-arching reform fever. He systematically culled giant portions of the secondary and primary curricula in order to focus on particular, more academic subjects - languages, arts and humanities, natural sciences and mathematics - to what some describe as to the detriment of the ignored practical subjects and sports. One of the more glaring reforms is of the grading system, which will shortly be replaced from an A*-U format to the newer 0-9 system, interestingly introducing an entirely new grade category. Where this new category will fall is most curious: will it be a new maximum grade of 9, requiring even greater knowledge of subject and application of skills? Will it be in the middle, where the average will squeeze both the maximum and minimum grades in their respective directions? Will it even be evenly distributed throughout all of the grades? Surely not!

I feel perhaps that the most interesting possibility is that the new grade classification be Zero (0), introduced on the bottom of the grade ladder. That would mean that a grade of 1-9 would correspond roughly to the A*-U grading system, but with a grade 1 being equivalent to a former grade U.

(The grade U is commonly referred to as 'Ungradable' in that the score was so low (below 20% for example) that it barely represents comprehension of the tested material, or that something has occurred to make grading of the paper unfeasible).

What are we left with? To put it simply, we have an empty grade category at the bottom. Something that scores so low that it does not bear thinking about. How could it be used? The pertinent question is this: how will the paradigm shift from an alphabetic to numerate grading system affect the interpretation of the already used numerate marking system? As the two consist of numbers, it naturally follows that a nine mark answer that achieves nine marks will be graded as a 9. A series of three three mark questions, answered for three marks, will achieve an overall grade 9 for achieving nine marks total. It just makes sense. Papers graded out of 90 marks will be formed of 10 questions or sets, formed of all the possible permutations of question parts as to add up to 9 marks exactly. A subject can be broken down into many chunks of teaching that fit well into the roughly nine months schooling period of the year, helping teachers better organise the order of information and practical work they put in.

So what happens in the hypothetical scenario that a zero mark question is asked? We know what happens when zero marks is achieved in the rated system of nine marks - a grade 0 has to be given as 0/9 was proffered up in the answer. If you envision a test as something asking for an answer, getting zero marks is the equivalent of returning a "I do not know the answer to the question." That, in certain subjects like mathematics, can be a fairly common occurrence due to the nature of black-and-white numbers. An answer of 2+2=5 seems to merit a zero marks answer, but let's look at that one again. If a person gave the educated guess of 2+2=5, we know that, although they clearly have extraordinarily poor number sense by even primary standards, the answer of 5 is a positive addition to the objective 2. The candidate giving this wrong answer has obviously learned more than the candidate who answered 2+2 = 0, even though this candidate may have just gotten + and - mixed up but knew that, proportionally, 2-2=0. Further still, both show at least some greater knowledge than someone who didn't answer but left the question blank. Essentially, we are asking: how will the grading system make distinctions and dispensations in the vaguer territories of knowledge measurement or skills acquisition? It throws the grading system into the same league as another vague numerate measurement: standardised aptitude test scores and intelligence quotients.

The point I want to raise is in my own subject of religious studies or theology, as well as many of the humanities like history and geography. In fact, I believe it raises a point for all of the literate subjects that were graded in the former system. What if we want to ask zero marks questions? There are some fundamental testing materials in the humanities and fringe literate subjects, for example recitation of an event in Mark's Gospel or the name of a location of a key character's birth. In history, it could be the year of an election or a catastrophe, a question worth exactly one mark. Answering a series of nine interlinked questions like that could qualify as a grade 9 set of questions. Answering a nine mark question on Hitler's rise to power by mentioning nine key events, or three three mark-weighted key events would equally equate to a grade 9 essay. We can clearly define in nines what defines grade 9 knowledge of a subject, by highlighting how each subject matter studied is a mark on the road to a 9.

But what if I want to ask a question that was worth zero marks? What if I wanted the wrong answer? What if my major aim was to catch out the faux knowledgeable, the concrete studied minds of the geeks and the try-hards? What if I want to ask "Allah is the god of Christianity" Do you agree with this statement? Give reasons for your answer.(0)" What completely useless answers I would get, as their young minds scrambled to decode this stupid and inane question. And yet, within their attempts to reason their way out of this question, they will inevitably give great answers to read or will leave the space blank. Who gets the zero marks for that answer then? Is it the person who wrote "I don't understand the question because Allah isn't the god of Christianity" going to get more marks than the person who wrote "Yes Allah is the God of Christianity"? How about this: a person answers "In some ways yes, Allah is the same God YHWH as Christianity, or rather Judaeo-Christianity, of which Islam and Judaism are a part in a family of religions descended from the amalgamation of Syrio-Palestinian, Mesopotamian and Canaanite pantheons"? Sure, give the smart-ass zero marks for his answer, but he still achieves a grade 0 for the ungradable question!

The only seemingly viable way to make a zero mark question seem a fair achievement is if a grade 0 answer produces an answer in total opposition, that is the totally opposite answer to the question asked. Perhaps someone who answers "I do not agree that Allah is not a different God of not Christianity, maybe" is achieving the only reasonable opposite answer to what the question is asking, which is inexorably nothing. It is, at least, the production of something that is nothing in answer to a needed nothing. That, surely, denotes a grade 0 knowledge of nothing, which in a subject like theology or philosophy or many more, is indeed something. The perceptive linguistic understanding that "this is not a question" is, in literature or language subjects, a key cognitive skill. It is somewhat like the story of the philosophy student who, sitting his final 8 page essay paper, read the deliberate question "Why?" and wrote the answer "Why not?" achieving full marks on the paper. In the instance of numerate standardised grading systems, it seems that this sort of answer would achieve a grade 0, for giving a zero marks answer. QED Mr. Gove.

UK Church leaders ask "Will the 'Weekend' survive atheism? You better believe it won't!"

A curious thought came to mind the other day; Sunday is the Christian Sabbath Day, the seventh day of the week and the day upon which YHWH is believed to have rested. He took the day for himself, and later commanded that his faithful (the Israelites) keep the Sabbath day holy. The Jewish Shabbat and the Christian Sabbath have the same biblical sources, but with the New Testament and the missionary period of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the dating changes somewhat. We must also remember that the Jewish calendar year is different from the Jewish festive calendar, as the first is the predominantly Gregorian calendar and the latter is the lunar calendar. Lunar years are typically shorter than the solar Gregorian calendar, as a month in lunar terms is 28 days while the median Gregorian calendar month is 30 days duration. But in essence, both Sabbath days are ‘8 days after the last day of Sabbath.” This limits the Christian to a working week of Monday through Saturday.

In the United Kingdom, a modern Christian (although increasingly atheistic or agnostic) commonwealth, the nominal ‘Weekend’ consists of (at most) Friday evening through to Monday morning, although with various groups working intermittently throughout those days. Of particular note, though, is that Sunday is predominantly a day off, where only consumption – rather than exertion – is practiced. Rest and relaxation are characteristic of a Sunday, and the attitude is captured through turns-of-phrase such as “Sunday dinner”, “Sunday Drivers”, or “Sunday papers.” The whole idea of Sunday is rooted in personal ease of activity, of leisure, and contemplation. Typically, the antithetical “Weekday Worker” may find they sleep through an entire Sunday before returning to work the next day. The right to a week’s end was enshrined in the Labour movement of unions in the post modern period. The modern weekend is typically an amalgam of the Jewish and Christian days of Sabbath observance, and is one of the pinnacle doctrines of worker’s rights in Europe. The main gist of the teaching was popularised during the late period of the Industrial Revolution, particularly after the promulgation of the Catholic Social Teaching Rerum Novarum or On the Conditions of the Working Class. You can say that it is from a Christian root, and with wholly religious intentions, that the secular Weekend exists, and we all get a break. The labour movement sealed the right, even in the wake of atheism and secularisation that the workweek would definitely end for two days, the working class having always been the most religiously adherent and numerous. Owners of businesses, politicians, civil servants and financial workers would also take the holidays at the end of the workweek, many carrying out their philanthropic activities then. The working and lower middle classes would tend more toward leisure, exercise and sport, and were afforded more mobility than before with trains and mass transport nuances of the time. Characteristic Enlightment period education, refinement and activities, such as reading, theatreship, riding and music, as well as socialising among the community in clubs, public houses or promenades, would be taken in on the weekends. Much of this tradition has stayed with us to this day, as well as the honorific of Mass attendance.

So I began to ask myself; what would happen if a growing, atheistic society became a strong, and decidedly neo-libertarian, majority, to the point of having a significant sway on social trends? Indeed, if said group were to dismantle the government entirely, to reduce all wages to the rock bottom, to preserve mass possession of capital and property, and to have an exclusively, eradicable progressive agenda, what is to stop them taking away the weekend? Or rather, what still justifies having a weekend in their terms? Naturally, I thought of convenience. It is convenient for this form of society to maintain a status quo and not overly disrupt the massive serf population their small oligarchy would be governing. However, the issue would clearly be in their agenda.

Namely, the weekend is a legalistic, but now inherently cultural, institution, ensuring that emancipated citizens are free from work obligation for at least two days of the week (in a given role). Regardless of how they are compelled, or whether they wish to forego this right of their own volition, the right remains a constant, immutable and inalienable certainty. It is the only insurance that, upon entering a contract of waged slavery, any agent is entitled to, and must be provided with, a break from work to have a social, work-free existence. But, don’t neo-libertarians hate the law? Why, the law is just the long and convoluted arm of government! It wants to tell me what to eat, what to do, when to go to bed, and when I’ve passed Go! And can collect £200. The law stinks, to the libertarian. He believes the entire remit of the state is:

“…to adequately protect all citizens in all instances of spontaneous combustion, someone trying to steal my car, and a lack of education.”

Therefore, to dictate when he is freely allowed not to work, and have the guarantee of emancipation from slavery, is to piss in his face and call him a child. He will throw a tantrum extraordinaire across the mall floor that is political discourse. He will throw his Silver spoon from his Phil & Teds, and scream the government back under the rock it crawled from. And since the government is most likely his father, uncle or grandfather, he will want to avoid a scene and just give in to darling baby Gove.

What you see then, is that it will only take the libertarian rule of the government to raise the question of justifying the weekend.

“It’s a whole two day’s productivity lost! That’s two days I could be paying someone rock-bottom wages and making a fortune on the labour return! I could keep the phones open, cold-calling grannies about to tuck in to a Yorkshire pudding, or someone on their day off settling in to a marathon of soap operas! I could continue polluting the world with CO2 for a whole day longer, all at the divestment of parents from their children! Imagine, friends, what a glorious world it would be without Sunday!”

“By God, chaps; he’s right…”

<Oh wait, no God in the atheistic libertarian future…>

“By Jobs, we’re losing a fortune on this weekend palaver!”

“I don’t work all week anyway, and I’m sick of seeing these slackers running around my Nature on their weekends anyway! If anything, I’m giving myself something by taking their weekend away-“

“…And right you should! Why, you’ve been not working strenuously for the last thirty-six years, with no breaks whatsoever! And what about all that not university that you were doing too! Gosh I remember how you much didn’t pay for all of that! You deserve a bloody weekend!

“Exactly, I say ‘aye’ on the matter, and be done with it.”

The ayes have it.

BREAKING NEWS: Boy has 'special relationship' with Geography. MPs furious, say "...can't believe this is happenning." Read more...

(edited: apologies for the sarcastic headline).

So I went to a Catholic Grammar school for my secondary education, and studied a huge range of subjects to a surprisingly rigorous standard. My favourite subjects, as evinced by my A level choices, were English Literature, Religious studies and Geography, in no particular order. In a recent Guardian article regarding climate change teaching in the Geography curriculum, the contents of the articles and the positions held in the comments sections below were very disturbing. The self-proclaimed scientists and political commentators providing the below-the-line content of the article seem to have some extremely skewed views and malformed understandings and notions across several disciplines. I thought, rather than post up on the Guardian website itself and;

a) be labelled a "troll" and disparaged by equally trollish posters or;

b) have my comments moderated due to the perceived proliferation of troll logic,

I would instead post my views here, and leave them open for any commentary from those same skeptics and disparagers of the UK education system.

Point 1: Belief is faith, and proclaiming belief presupposes religious or uneducated positions in debate

This is not only a case for CiF commenters, but throughout the internet. It is something I feel has promulgated widely since the advent of the internet as a means of information dissemination. The reason for it is because several global and international education systems have different cultural and historical hermenetical perspectives on how to treat educated information and data. The core syllabus of one country may differ greatly from another, even if some of the subject matter correlates. A personal example I can give is that of English Language studies in the UK. At my school, no subject was more disparaged and denigrated than that of 'English Language.' Instead, we were encouraged to take the subject in a de jure fashion, but simply use the class time to learn our English Literature course material more substantively - an excellent choice by my thoroughly enlightened English teacher. In the mainland UK, however (as opposed to my own Northern Ireland), the subject is considered an employment and developmental staple measure, used to demonstrate that an individual is capable of work if they can pass an examination in their native language. To that, I retort that my Irish speaking friend at school failed every single Irish GCSE examination, or was outperformed by me, someone who to this day does not have the confidence to speak the language with fluency or eloquence...

In the context of debates regarding the relevance or content of certain secondary (KS 3, GCSE and GCE) subjects, views are particularly altered by the modern focus on scientific method as the zenith of educational activity, the core requirement of physical and natural sciences with mathematics, and a particular hatred or skepticism regarding the rigourousness of the arts and humanities in schools. I can't speak for useless schools, which we cannot be in denial of, but my education was free on the condition that I passed my Eleven Plus exams, and so I was guaranteed a high quality, affordable education. My teachers were not motivated primarily by money and income, but also by a vocational attitude towards teaching across the board. It is by coming from such a standard that I can quote my teachers with confidence, and hold their teachings as truths and methodically sound.

So I come to my main point about belief. It was in Religious studies, the only thing remotely close to Philosophy taught at my school, that I came across the nature of belief as a component of the notion of faith. To quote my teacher, Mrs. McGraine;

Catholic and Christian faith is defined by two aspects. The first is belief and the second is trust. In order to relate this to you best, I will demonstrate it thusly. <Pointing to a student in the classroom> I can believe that student A can go to the principal's office if I tell him to. I believe that his physical legs are capable of carrying him there by burning energy through his muscles to produce walking momentum in the direction of the room, presupposing that he (as I further believe) is capable of understanding my instruction in a given shared language and is aware of the directions and position of the destined room. However, in order to have faith that he would do as I believe, I have to trust that, were I to request him to go to the principal's office, he would actually do so of his own volition and without any guidance or observation by me personally. I trust that he won't actually run off, or say that he has gone when he hasn't, because I equally trust that he is aware of the consequences and ramifications if he doesn't. Now go to the offfice, student A!

I would later learn at university that this goes further in the notion that there are numenological and phenomenological understandings of the world. That a law exists and/or can be observed, measured and tested against is a numenon, or a given, objective fact. Mathematical logic and scientific methods of hypothesis, examination and evaluation can be applied to a numenon. They can be conveyed, and they can form a belief. The nature of trust is entirely separate from a numenon, and is phenomenological in nature. It takes into account the experience of a numenon, of an objective nature being observed, and are drawn from habitual or  mnemonic means. It is a learned or nurtured pattern of behaviour in reaction to an observance or phenomenon. But the two together are the constituents of Christian faith:

Belief + Trust = Faith

Simple formula, if you are missing either aspect, you are not going to have the result. That was taught to me at a young age objectively, by a subject with faith, and I have grown up myself without any trust in the Christian beliefs. Ergo, I have no faith. QED.

My problem is with people who comment in response to statements "I believe..." with a reactive "Your beliefs mean nothing in the face of evidence and science." What a totally ridiculous position to have in the face of the prior, secondary school level notion of belief, of numenological knowledge, of scientia. I honestly have to question what exactly most scientists learn in their laboratories and university lecture halls but beliefs that they then test and experiment upon for more rigour, more stringent evidence, or for contrasts and conflicting positions. All of that is, of course, aside from the lack of imagination and free thinking exhibited by modern, rote scientists. In an enlightened, 21st Century debate, I believe that the agent who dictates to another that their beliefs have no place in an argument in the face of science is indeed not enough a rational scientist to have stated such a claim in the first place. I say this for their sake, and for the sake of collective macro-intelligence, in forming strong knowledge and understanding from commentary on articles online.

Point 2: The responsibility for climate change awareness is on the part of science, not on the study of Geography (the so-called "Boring science")

In what is perhaps the most preposterous position ever held in a rational argument for climate change education pre-14 years old, Guardian readers and the scientific community believe that the remit for spreading awareness and objective study of climate science is in GCSE Science classes, cuckolding Geography as "a minority subject with little relevance."

I studied Geography for 14 years in school, from tree types and naturally formed systems in primary school, to the Carbon/Nitrogen/Water cycles, Plate tectonics (which I know more about to this day from my secondary school than any university educated general scientist has ever been able to demonstrate to me), ordinance survey mapping, coordinates and triangulation (something taught in mathematics but never practically demonstrated), sampling techniques (which I got to learn with outdoors and indoor data collection, sample selection and graphing), diagrammatic reasoning (never really taught in any other subject relevantly except perhaps Physics, and even then with a lot of imagination and formula on top) and of course, human analyses such as urban planning, migration and population data gathering and scrutiny (population pyramids anyone?).

What is more, many of the methods taught in Geography classes help with sifting through data that forms articles such as the one in question. As an example, most education departments show school subject uptake in the form of percentage distribution and total population; data types most easily and readily shown in a population pyramid. We can delineate subject popularity, grade inflation, and future gaps in employment markets against other data from, say, the private sector. If you are telling me that governments are better advised in their planning and policies by individuals who have never used population pyramids as a data representation, such as through their Geography classes, than someone who hasn't (and mostly likely has a PhD in Modern History, damn Tories...), then I call your entire contribution to the debate on education planning into question.

Moreover, with the dearth of uptake of PE classes and a physical outdoors education to provide a strong, well rounded individual, how can one make the assertion that dropping Geography from core curricula is right when it is primarily an outdoor, practical subject? Fluvial, coastal and mountain safety are all well taught in these classes, as well as good nature conservation and stewardship practices and responsibilities in young minds! If you want to stop littering among your children, the best way is to get them out in the woods or into a river doing some studies and seeing the Coca Cola cans and fast food detritus that pock mark our natural landscapes.

Finally, diagrammatic reasoning is, to this day, the best thing I ever took away from my Geography studies. To this day, I am still the only member of my family, friends and colleagues who can plot a subduction diagram of volcanic mountain ranges, of fold mountains, of oceanic shelfs, of earthquake zones. I am the only one able to diagram a river meander into an oxbow lake, or describe a spit-to-bar coastal formation (something I recently showed a complete stranger while flying from Scotland to Ireland on an aeroplane). I am the only one who visits cities and tries to find the CBDs and Twilight districts for visitors centres, attractions and restaurants. I am the only one who can not only name all of the countries of the world (and most of their capitals - still working on that!) but can also draw an atlas of the world with reasonable accuracy and scale. I can therefore demonstrate cartographic, coordinate and process/systems skills and reasoning to a high degree because I did Geography!

But far and away from the points I've made, it is the fact that I look back fondly on Geography, and genuinely looked forward to classes (even if they were from my rather dour and occasionally lacrimose teacher) especially outdoors or ordinance survey lessons. Anything involving cartography, mapping, location, data handling or gathering, and a great dose of fresh air. It certainly got me out of my library ruts (English Literature) or philosophic migraines (Religious studies), and I'm pretty sure I must have kept at least four stationary companies in the black. I would never deny any child the amazing experiences I had, and the valuable knowledge I have, from being a Geography student, and I beg that the new generation of scientists, policy makers and online commentators on the subject keep this in mind when they think up new ways to pump meaningless mathematical formulae and Shelley quotes into the minds of our youth. In terms of climate change education, no subject is better placed to teach our children an appreciation of the natural environment, the possible consequences of mass migration and coastal flooding/erosion, and to be mindful of how the small things in our lives produce huge effects in the natural world.


What I learned in Geography class:

- How to read a map.
- How to make a map.
- How to define a sample.
- How to experiment on a sample.
- How to graph and diagram my measurements.
- How plate tectonics created the world around me.
- How the major cycles/systems in nature work, and my influence on them (also partially in Biology and Chemistry).
- The sheer importance of water.
- How all of human civilisation is coordinated and measurable in various ways, and how to plan for future changes, growths or declines.
- How to measure those changes, growths of declines.
- How to make volcanoes, mountains, earthquakes, deserts, air phenomena and even soil exciting and relevant.
- My first lessons in peak oil, population growth (Malthusian Catastrophe), sustainable agriculture, Air/Ground layers, spheres and biomes, and (my absolute favourite subject from school) Plate Tectonics!!!

What I learned from Triple Award Science Chemistry

- A lot about elements, moles and atomic numbers/masses.
- A bit about transfers and phenomena in chemical reactions.
- Absolutely tons (!) about Iron. I mean, this is totally, massively a part of GCSE Chemistry yet I've never worked in an Iron/Steel producing industry.

What I learned in Biology

- Need a whole article, but there was so much across so many disciplines and of such importance that to give way to any of it for climate/environmental science is a bit dangerous or negligent.
- **Very important** Nitrogen cycles as part of algal bloom!!

What I learned in Physics

- A lot about inside wires, electronics, waves, motion, matter, masses, forces, and other stuff that is useful but that you'd need to be in a lab or work environment to get any relevance from, most times.

For the Geography student, the world is your laboratory, a field or river or beach or town centre is your experiment, a blowing wind is your subject matter, a mountain is a research opportunity, a fish pool or lake or reservoir is an unexpected and insightful case study, the world itself is your oyster, and the whole history and distribution of every man, woman and child across it is your raison d'etre.   

Day 2 without Facebook: Feeling pretty good!

So I've been 2 days without Facebook and I'm not totally sure, but I think I'm starting to get withdrawal symptoms. I guess that, in all, it goes to show the addictive nature of the website; how the social interaction, minus the physical exertion or stress, and the sheer ease of technological access to other people, really does create its own stresses and exertions. Having eliminated the need or desire to let others know what I'm doing, or indeed having the need or desire to know what others are doing, I feel both lightened and burdened at once. I don't mind having lost access to all my photographs and YouTube links stored on my profile, or the applications that I signed into using their universal log-in service. I don't even really mind having to sign up for new services such as, say, Disqus for newspaper commentary.

And yet, I do feel a strange longing for the quasi-society I had built around me. I appreciated not having to introduce people to my likes and dislikes, having to discuss or argue for points of view or opinions held. I liked knowing what was going on with my friends thousands of miles away: my friends at university, people in my class, past workers who I kept some contact with, and even just old friends from my youth that had moved on to greener pastures. I do miss the excitement of adding a strange 'suggested friend' from the side panel, never knowing if I'd known them in real life or not. I miss receiving the news straight to my News Feed, from all the online and offline publications I followed religiously. I do miss the frequently micro- and macro-blogging from companies, corporations and trending fashions that I'd taken to. I miss the occasional advertisements and sales, the vouchers and discounts and promotions. I really miss the updates of major life events in family and friends' lives, like weddings or funerals or births, that I now lose out on because of my chosen exile, my dissociation with online society...

So I turned to this blog, something I've never really given my full attention before. I've posted on it a few times, mostly story ideas and characterisations I've attempted to publicise, such as about my business or the letters I've never sent. So what should I do now with my new freedom, and the impetus to rediscover physical, emotional society? Can I survive a day that isn't socially facilitated by technology? By the internet? Well I've made it two days, and in those two days I've been outside more, my sleeping pattern is radically altered, and although I do feel the quiet hum in the back of my head to look up what's going on with people, the hum is dull and growing silent...

Here's to a new life, I guess...

P.S. It is pretty great that I haven't seen one advert for a gay cruise since I quit!!

When it comes to happiness, the numbers just don’t add up

SINCE graduating from university (with a 2:1), I’ve been under immense pressure to get a job. It’s a condition many of my peers and fellow alumni are suffering at the minute – fierce competition for limited places in the shrinking economy of a failed state. A state failed by our parents, employers, bankers, politicians and civil servants. In fact, the only people (in most cases) to not fail this generation are, as you may guess from the high rebound rate of graduates into university, our teachers and lecturers (at least, in my country).

But then, Northern Ireland is different. If you tried really hard in your Eleven Plus (like I did), and went to a grammar school, or even further; if you valued going to university, creativity, and learning more than anything in your childhood: more than fitness, more than money, more than television or make-up or sex or whatever trash today’s children and teenagers are interested in. If you put it first and foremost on your dreams list, then the country rewarded you (a little bit) with student finance and encouragement, regardless of background, creed or bank balance. Not with graduate jobs, not with a generous salary with bonus incentives, just with an affordable education and maybe even some incentives to study further. In other words, they incentivised you to be - in what could easily have (and increasingly appears to have) been exclusively my case - happy. (I say this because the biggest gripe I hear from graduates is “I can’t get a job making over £50,000 with zero years work experience and a permanent, 25 hour contract”).

Pity the public aren’t the same, not forgetting the banking houses, and especially Tories, and any sadistic bastard who voted for them. No, they all envision just one citizen: the Anyslave. The Anyslave is isolated and devoid of ambitions or intentions, of opinions and uninformed decisions.  He is, if you will, the human stripped of all society, culture, norms, virtues, aspirations. He is stripped of where he’d come from, what his potential outcomes were, and what his options are. He is not expected to be his genetic self, the roadmap of possibility laid out in his parents’ most survivable traits, and the strengths of his own convictions. No, he is designed for just one thing: consumption.

As a new reality is constructed around him, this agent is taught and will perceive those around him as detractors or benefactors. They do good or bad to him, as there is no neutrality or disengagement. This is engrained in him by an anti-culture of nosiness and trough-feed, watered down pop knowledge (á la Prof. Brian Cox et al.), deterring him from natural curiosity and instilling the belief that everyone has a stake, and therefore an interest, in him. Keep that in mind for later.

Now, this agent is also treated in two spheres. Imagine, if you will, a Venn diagram. A basic, useless Venn diagram (much like those the Anyslave’s benefactors and detractors love to use to describe otherwise easily understood evidence in a garish way). And within the circles (aptly labelled ‘The Good Stuff; and ‘The Bad’), we find behaviours, characteristics, stereotypes, mannerisms, quirks, colloquialisms, thoughts and feelings (as exhibited, because even his masters aren’t psychic). They are simplified, categorised, stratified and organised against the ideals of the reality constructed around the Anyslave. The primary agent in collating this data is the compulsory education system he enters aged just four years old. Ideals include ‘working in a dull office to earn numbers on an ATM screen,’ ‘garnering self-confidence from having a higher number than any other given Anyslave,’ and ‘smiling at those who shout at you if they provide numbers to incentivise it.’ On the flip side, vices in the Bad Stuff circle may be ‘thinking,’ ‘talking back to those who shout at you, and damn the numbers,’ or ‘having unsaleable or ‘Innumerate’ hobbies that may interest, entice or distract you from the humdrum activities in your dull office.’ By judging an agent’s behaviours against the Anyslave pie chart, masters can then decide whether to incentivise the agent. They will act kindly and enthusiastically towards the well behaved, and will act angrily or with confusion, derision or some unholy combination of the two (with dismissive passive-aggression thrown in for good measure) when the agent is, for instance, creative or (God forbid) rebellious.

And so, onward goes the humdrum existence of the poor, material agent. He buys boring things, made for him and his increasingly boring peers. He goes off to school, to play sports, to neither under- or over-achieve, merely to exist, as existence is now an achievement in and of itself. He drifts along like tumbleweed, occasionally hating whatever en vogue group of defectors the media and popular entertainment choose to deride that week. He aims for musculature, reproduction and comfort. He sleeps regularly, is active only in sunlight, and has opinions on football. He bleaches his teeth white and his skin brown. He cuts, colours and styles his hair, because someone might approve if he does or disapprove if he doesn’t. Never, indeed, because he wants to, because he isn’t allowed wants or desires, and only seeks what he is brainwashed into seeking. Over time, as he is better practised in the informal, passive art of Anyslavery, he will wear suits to interviews for innocuous jobs, will drive a car, attend a gym, eat in restaurants, pass opinions, and eventually reproduce a new Anyslave, assuming he is not so degenerate as to be unable to reproduce. For in that case, he is doomed to permanent Anyslavery. If he is lucky enough to reproduce, he will break his indenture and be the benefactor or detractor of an entirely new generation of Anyslaves.    

The Anyslave is a junkie, hooked on positive and negative reinforcement, modern psychology and unabated capitalism. He seeks to please everyone, and his masters have an insatiable appetite for pleasure. His masters enjoyed an untainted countryside, free education, healthcare, an enormous market for jobs, a national identity, community membership, regular (and bankable) periods of pleasant weather, a balance of work, creativity and exercise, and such freedom that they could leave school at fifteen unable to spell much more than their names, and still retire with sizeable pensions (which keep on rising), excellent health, and property. The Anyslave will have none of these things, a 50% chance of getting cancer, a fuel, food, financial and health crisis, but will still be expected to raise a family, keep a (most likely lazy) housewife and care for his elderly masters, and the entire country. He is at once a utilitarian character, an agent acting on his own and for his own interests, free to engage with the society around him at will, and concurrently a slave to all around him, unable to act for himself or on his innate interests, particularly past a certain age.

But the worst of the Anyslave’s lot is that, while forced to act exclusively on his saleable traits, no matter how incredibly boring or stupid they are, he will always be fed a steady stream of entertainment that exhibits individuals acting for themselves, in heterogeneous ways. He will see a broken down homeless man become a local politician and, from his lofty position, make the lives of other homeless people in the community the focus of local politics. Or he will see a battered housewife leave her husband and follow her dream of becoming a solicitor in a city corporation, freeing her children from their father’s largesse received at the expense of their physical safety. What the Anyslave doesn’t realise is that he is only witness to the selling of another used and abused agent’s - the writers - saleable trait, by the enormous enterprises of their collective masters. And in his own life, he will be told to forget his dreams, stick to what he knows, or shut up. Regardless of any desire to, say, be a baker: of any love for baked goods, fascination with the craft, the physical and mental benefits of baking (especially the creativity involved), and the sheer saleability of the activity, he will be told to stick to what he knows. He will be some generic, homogenous bollocks like a ‘Fitness Instructor’ or ‘Financial Services Consultant’ because he can count or is a failed athlete irrespectively. He may even be a ‘Refuse Organisation Practitioner’ or work in ‘Scholastic Appetite Management Provision.’ His dreams are for naught, as his dreams can’t be sold by his peers.

If he obeys, he will live out his days in complete idiotic bliss. Otherwise, he will eventually discover his lot; then his only purposes are to be miserable, to work in a bank or some bullshit for everyone’s benefit but his own, and to die aged 45 from a stress induced heart attack, just like the good little slaves around him. 

The letters I've never sent - 1

Dear Ms. Rowling,

I wanted to start by thanking you for what was truly a great contribution to my childhood! Your novels kept me reading at a time when books were losing much of their lustre and appeal; when video games and television were starting to creep in a bit more. I feel as though I know Harry and Dumbledore and Hagrid, and all the denizens of Potterearth, just as I feel I know the other characters from the great literature I’ve had the privilege to read.

My own interests in school were limited to three things: Geography, English literature, and Religious studies. I love books, and want to write my own. Geography is really just a favourite past-time for me, remembering all of the brilliant facts and processes of the world we live on, as well as more about our societies and countries. Religious studies, theology, or philosophy I suppose, is a point of major inquiry for me – something that I find mentally intensive and challenging, because it just absorbs so much from all things around it. It feels like mind-boggling thinking, deep historical and methodical reading, and leaves many puzzles to the imagination and daily experience of life. I feel that, given the added literary and imaginative pleasure of your books during my youth, I am able to pursue these interests to a full extent, and so want to write myself (when more fully ready and experienced, I only do little poems and random short stories presently).

I find the way you write must be as creatively, materially intensive as what I’d like to write myself. Crafting a universe in the imagination is such a joy, but is alas polluted terribly by growing older. We get better at expressing the things we imagine on paper, but due to the experience of life, lose more of the descriptive clarity of pure imagination, and begin to bring in the clutter of the real world. We suddenly feel the need to set up a political system or banking sector or belligerent eastern nations, meticulously explained to fit around the fictitious universe we’ve come up with, to fit the needs of the societies they serve. It’s pretty cool for adults, but terribly dull for children. I feel as though, if I were young and reading my own stuff for the first time, I’d get bored or hate it… Authors like yourself seem to really hit the mark when you subtly get on with it and don’t make a big deal of it. You use a figure, say, that relates to every school child in the UK as ‘the authority’ or trustworthy figure, such as a school headmaster. Indeed, you can make an anti-hero from a school chemistry teacher (of sorts) to be ‘that one that hates me in school.’ It makes sense, I guess, if I pretend I’m a child again. Dumbledore and Snape were, in a sense, fantastically written characters, for which I tip my cap to you. So I make the first request of this letter: do you have any advice for an aspiring author, like me, on how to find great characters, and write them equally well?

Continuing from my last point, your world-craft technique completely enveloped me as a child, and still does. I am possessed of a rare gift, as a young but fully grown man: a lot of childhood disbelief. I know quite a lot through my education and lively youth, have travelled a little and met a lot of people, yet still I am mind-blown on at least a daily basis. My reactions and emotions, particularly amazement or humour, are downright juvenile, and most things tickle me pink. I love seeing couples kissing, I can’t stop myself from standing amazed at a clear night sky, I wish everything was a soft warm material like a whole world of blankets, and I can’t forgive a person who doesn’t love Monet (even if it’s just a framed poster in a middle class living room). I’ve found that I love pure things, but have such a wide tolerance and contentment that I can find purity in most things. So, where I find a very pure, untainted thing, I really feel a need to protect or nurture it. I genuinely cared for Harry et al. and their plight. I felt a lot of pity for the ever misunderstood Snape (even though I despised his means). And yet, in my adulthood, I’ve come to notice something about my fond memories of growing up a Potter fan. Predominantly, that I enjoyed it the very most when it was merely a book I overheard someone talking about in class, a book that my mum brought home because she’d heard the kids talking about it at school. And the both of us retreating to our rooms to read it, and then meeting up after to talk about it in the kitchen. Sharing one of the most captivating story we’d heard up until then (or at least, could read at that stage). You introduced me to my very most favourite and over-used word, ‘surreptitiously.’ Your characters introduced morality and virtue into my life more than the Bible, which I mostly laugh through. I say laugh through in the context that I find the prose and storylines in it extremely captivating, and am a student of ancient literature. I don’t take others’ beliefs to be a joke, but sadly have yet to be convinced of Christianity or any religions I’ve met (maybe Zoroastrianism, as it has a cool premise). Any way, I’m digressing and wasting the precious time I have with a hero of mine’s attention!

The question I’d like to ask regarding the previous paragraph is this. My fondest memory of Harry Potter was not through any of the media around it, other than the books. The toys, films, t-shirts, the cult of personality around the actors, and millions in profits (and certainly not the comfortable, private lifestyle you and your family so rightly deserve, press-free), and other such things. The words on paper were the magic, but I have a hard time convincing anyone who has seen the movies of that… It’s a shot in the foot, in my view, though I really don’t begrudge you any success or comfort from it. In fact, I strongly advocate that you live a regular life and enjoy your achievement, that you might then get the inspiration to write even more, and new books too! I just ask that, if I aim to avoid much of the clutter to my writing enterprise, what is the best way to avoid it but still be a great writer?

So, now I say once again, thank you very much for your kind and brilliant books, Ms. Rowling. Thank you for keeping the desire to read and write alive in me, right to this day! Thank you to all the brilliant authors like you, and throughout history, who give us this great exercise in wonderment and joy, and in whose spirit you work. Free from the disdain of beauty from the natural sciences, and the tedium of mathematical explanation. Free from the clutter of politics, hatred and discrimination of everyday life. Free from the ‘realism’ of video games and television and biographies. Free from the economics of art, for the sake of the arts themselves. That is what I want to thank you for – for another exquisite record of the0 imagination, for all time and to the betterment of humanity in memoriam.

Your humble fan,

Swimming in Metaphorical Bitches

So business is going swell, I haven't taken over the world yet but I have taken over a bar once or twice. I've mastered a new art of finance. I keep a steady income but keep my business and personal expenses separate. The money I use to live comes in steadily, but can be quite minimal. The business money comes in variably, but I'm only starting up. The money I live off, though getting smaller, becomes much more stable and free when kept separate from the business money. Because business costs are almost met at a customer sales level, and the money is maintained in a separate online account, the business costs can be managed on an entirely different level from my own day-to-day needs. By making high profit sales based on minimal cost to myself, I have enough to purchase more from my business account (in this case Paypal). But it is limited to the internet. Ergo, if I want to buy something, it is likely going to be a splurge or treat. In so doing, I limit the amount of day to day purchasing I make from my personal funds. It means that, bar fluctuations, I am quite fiscally solvent. With prudence, one or the other monetary account will gradually acrue more over time, and eventually a larger step can be taken in the business.

Likewise, larger steps can be taken in life too, such as my eventual conquest of the business world, and be swimming in the metaphorically bitches (I kid).

How long til the BackwaterTyrant takes over his quiet hamlet? The people shiver in their collective boots at the prospect. If you'd like to know the fate of the townspeople, email bananahammock12@googlemail.com for the scintillating details....