• I never really got the Commies – they seemed to want to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator with, what were once, very good intentions. The milder form, Socialism, seems to be mostly about spite. Capitalism seems to be the obvious way that humans work together and it pretty much delivers what most people seem to want.

    When the Berlin Wall came down twenty years ago, the cry went up, “Capitalism has won!” And indeed, it seemed as if it had. Only militant Islam has risen against it since. Capitalism has run amok, given free rein ever since, and we are now facing the consequences.

    But I think that this recession is just a warning sign. Capitalism works on the basis of the free-flow of capital. Capital is what pays our pensions. Once, the banks were there to facilitate Capitalism, to help cash move more freely, and to lend and invest in projects that will make a profit, provide work and put food onto the workers tables. Capitalism relies on a free market to work smoothly.

    But the basic flaw of capitalism is human nature. There have never been free markets and there never will be. The person in charge of the market is always going to skew it in favour of his pals for the sake of a quick bung.

    Since Big Bang, when the markets went electronic, the profit has been in playing the casino, not in owning it. The casino players, (traders) have the technology to know the numbers before the market (the casino owner) can read the cards. You set your computer up to do battle with another computer to see who can trade the fastest. Today, milli-microseconds give the advantage. Trades are done so quickly that as you, a mere mortal, place an order, computers analyse your order, buy stock low and sell it to you high before you have even received acknowledgment of your order. You never get the chance to buy at a fair market price. Penny by penny, they leach your profits away.

    When you see bankers getting fantasy bonuses, way beyond any real measure of compensation, you have to ask yourself, “where is all that money coming from?” The answer is simple, from your pension fund! Bank bonuses are slowly leaching out the money from pension funds that are supposed to pay the pensions in the future.

    Whereever there is a pot of gold (and that is how a trader sees a pension fund) someone will be planning to steal it. Once, those funds were put into solid company shares. The companies were expected to grow and provide profits. Shares are now meaningless. They are divorced from what they represent – they are traded within the blink of an eye, with no care about what that company or it’s workers mean. Now, a public company has one duty, to make as high a quarterly return as possible. No thought for the future. No thought for sustainability, employment or solid, long-term growth.

    Capitalism is eating itself from the inside. When it reaches the outside it will reveal itself as the hollow shell it has become. What can take its place? Don’t ask me – I’m just predicting the cataclysm to come, but be prepared for the new dark ages – your Porsche wont help you then!

  • I’ve been showing children (and adults) how to draw my characters for some time now. Some times I wonder why, because it seems so obvious to me how to draw them and everyone does such lovely drawings, I often think we could have spent the time doing some thing else.

    I’ve often been puzzled by comments made by teachers which are generally something like, “It’s amazing, these children are following the instructions.” I smile politely and feel confused. Isn’t that how it is done?

    Well last week it all became clear at Whitchurch Primary school, where I’m working with the year five group at the moment. I’ve mentioned them before. They are unusual in that they only have four girls in the class. Their teacher, Mrs Stevens, said that my drawing instructions worked because I gave the instructions one at a time and waited until everyone was ready before I gave the next.

    She says that often she will give a group of instructions like: “Put your water bottle back in the crate at the back of the class, get your book and sit down at your desk.”

    She says she often ends up with a few boys sitting at their desks with their water bottles! It seems that boys who don’t multi-task need need simple one-step instructions to get it right. It is so obvious you would never think about it. And that is why all the children and adults when I do drawing lessons draw what I show them, pretty much without fail – even the most chaotic scrawls are decipherable.

    I do remember being very frustrated at art college, that our lecturers would not teach us how to draw. “We do’t want to interfere with your natural style,” they would say. Long ago, art education was all about instruction. The fact is that not everyone is going to be an artist nor wants to be. But the skill of drawing is invaluable. If drawing is not taught because teachers don’t want to spoil natural talent, then no drawing gets done.

    Most students become despondent and give up, whereas, with some formal training, they may not become great artists, but they may discover another language with which they can express ideas they may find difficult to express in words.

    Drawing should not be seen as something strange the arty types do in the art room. It is amazing that we all can read the language of drawing fluently, almost from birth without any formal instruction – in fact the language of words itself is expressed by drawing marks on paper – and yet so few of us feel capable of picking up a pencil and joining in the conversation.

    What is going on here? I think, as ever in the field of formal education, there is a mismatch between the talents of the left and right brains. The product of right brain work cannot be tick-boxed and yet, the sequencing work of the left-brain, which is what we teach in schools, is meaningless without the original input of the right brain.

    For while I became a bit Right-brainist as right brained people do not get a good deal from school. But I’ve now come to realise that left-brained people do not get a good deal either. Skills for both sides of the brain should be taught and, more importantly, skills that marry up the two sides. An all round education should strengthen both sides of the brain.

    Drawing before writing works for me. My sketchbooks are half and half, words and pictures, the ideas grow as words and pictures. The two feed off each other. I’m sure this approach would help many who find going straight to the words difficult.

    I’ve already learned what I think is an really important lesson for me after only one session at the school. What more have I to learn? Exciting! And I’m suppose to be the one that’s imparting information.

    I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about the project we are working on and realise I need to break it down into easy manageable bits with simple step-by-step instruction. It’ll be interesting to see If I can do it and if it works. Watch this space.

  • There is a terrible misconnection with what goes on in the X Factor studio and what we see on the telly.

    Tonight there were one or two really indifferent performances, not helped by the usual atrocious sound mixing. Frequently the the singers were drowned by the taped backing vocals.

    I think the sound is being mixed on the floor as if it is a live show. They should pout the mixing desk up in the gallery. They do keep going on about it being a competition to find a recording artist but they don’t let us hear the voices – they are drowned in the mix flooded with reverb and hard to appreciate.

    Also – they aim to get one big note just before the end, which means the songs are pitched way to low at the beginning. Most of them sound out of tune as the struggle to hit the low notes at the start of the songs. Enough – they are making me drivel!