Habs Don't Do Muck Up Days

No really, we don't. Or at least, we're not supposed to. Every year we are told that "we leave well" and that "we don't do muck up days over here. They may do them at the girls' school and do them well, but not here". It is certainly the case that Habs Girls do muck-up days and, it seems, get it right in terms of tone. Anyway, Habs Boys don't. Instead we have last days filled with assemblies, breakfast and form time. Well, of course, that is the idea. It usually doesn't pan out exactly as the staff, or some members of staff, would like because plans get made; intentions discussed and ideas put into practice.

Now, being somewhat committed to the idea of avoiding any potential trouble I didn't partake in either of our grand schemes for plotting the downfall of Habs as a school and starting the revolution but, naturally, many did. The great minds from Habs thought deep into the night of how to cause the most havoc and establish an event that would go down in history as something that shook the world and came up with, wait for it...

...No really, wait for it...

...Wearing school uniform on the Monday and shorts on the Tuesday (with final day being the Wednesday). It was with a mix of worrying about quite how much damage to the school's reputation this would cause and also just knowing that it would all end badly that I decided not to do either. We'll ignore the fact that I wouldn't fit into my school uniform from two years ago now, anyway. The school uniform, as far as I could tell was largely not noticed or ignored or taken in good spirits as well it should have been. However, it was the shorts that was made our muck-up day cross the line from Anarchist to Revolutionary and to the detriment of society as a whole. Just how many people suffered trauma from seeing generic older student's hairy legs we will never quite know.

Picture the scene. A slightly gloomy Elstree. The sky cloudy and grey and daylight descends over Habs. School is starting. Birds singing. The sound of Ben Peacock on duty echoing into the distance. And out of nowhere, thugs in shorts suddenly start raping and pillaging. Reports of trees on fire, bombs being set off and landscape beginning to look somewhat like an Iraqi Market emerge. Journalists and world leaders are alerted to..Oh wait, sorry that didn't happen. U6 students were arriving in school alongside everyone else in shorts to get ready for a final day of lessons. But the reaction it got, you'd have thought someone had murdered a coach driver and suffocated a small child. On a serious note, I didn't wear shorts because I knew that a reaction would occur, however right or wrong any reaction, I think most people acknowledged that but took the risk anyway, with their defence being "it is perfectly harmless". And I think most people would accept that wearing shorts is, indeed, as harmless as things can get for a muck-up day considering some schools, with very decent reputations, end up with cows on their front steps; emergency services being called or something else actually relatively serious like that.

I expected, at most, a chuckle and a "No, really, put some trousers on." Maybe a small comment on why breaking the school dress code is not allowed on any day, last day or first day and perhaps, even, (maybe to a prefect who committed the offence) something about younger boys looking up to us. Not, of course, that I envisage a sharp increase in Yr7 boys turning up to school in blazer, shirt, tie and swimming trunks in the coming days. What I got was, arguably, the largest overreaction to a single event you could imagine. Yeah we, or some of us, broke the school dress-code and yes "rules are rules" on all days of the school year, but in the grand scheme of things and out of all the options to "f*ck shit up" that we could have taken, other than perhaps wearing white socks for the day, this was the most harmless.

Instead of what would have been the reasonable thing to do (either let it go or quietly tell us to change), we faced members of staff who seemed to be personally offended by our decision to wear shorts; being sent to the most senior of staff; being sent home to change; students being called disgraceful and generally the reaction one would expect if we had brought large amounts of illegal substances onto the campus. It was almost as if certain members of staff had a terrible experience with shorts when they were younger, perhaps getting caught on a the zip or being forced to wear pink hot pants by their parents. Of course I made the point that we should have expected this sort of reaction - being reasonable is a quality that is lacked in so many people not just members of the teaching staff. That, of course, doesn't justify the reaction.

Apart from anything else, it is incredibly stupid to react so OTT to something so harmless. Because, of course, we understand that we can't just burn down buildings or start torching trees for muck-up day and that our school careers are not over. Consider the decision to not wear suits on Monday and Tuesday so that we would be in suits for a school leaver photos. Not a decision taken by those with a desire to overthrow the senior management and bring the school into disrepute. What started as a simple "let's wear shorts, it'll be hilarious" was turned into "HOW DARE THEY WEAR SHORTS AND POTENTIALLY CAUSE MASS UPHEAVAL IN THE SCHOOL" by a huge overreaction. No matter how infantile wearing shorts was, no matter how against the rules it is, it did not warrant the reaction it got.

No, instead, the reaction only serves to fuel the fire. I wouldn't describe the Habs Boys U6th as a potent revolting force but when any teenager is faced with what he perceives to be an injustice, it can only result in the desire to up the anti so to speak. All it has and will do, is encourage further worse behaviour which, clearly, was not the aim of any punishment but was such an obvious result you wonder how those entrusted to educate supposedly some of the brightest minds in the country, could not see that. Now, instead of attempting to have a little bit of fun in what is, let's face it, our last couple of days at a school which has been so great for so many of us, many people will have a desire to go further than wear shorts and actually cause some form of damage.

Maybe we should have realised that in a school where going home at 3.00 instead of 3.20 is forbidden, that wearing shorts wouldn't have gone down too well. Of course, I don't think we were unreasonable to assume that the worse that would happen was that we would be told to change and, in fact, I don't think many assumed they would get away with wearing shorts all day. What we got was a reaction blown out of all proportions with names taken and very angry members of staff for, let's face it, wearing shorts. Ludicrous.

*Disclaimer: For legal purposes the entirety of this blog post is, of course, fictional and not in any way linked to Habs Boys, Girls or any affiliates. The author does not condone, agree with or support any muck-up day activity at any school. If you have been affected by any of the content in this post, especially if you suffer from a short-wearing-related illness please contact your local GP*

Keep the Faith

It is very easy to be secular, to believe that G_D simply cannot exist, to argue that it is impossible that G_D does exist and to criticise those who happen to believe, however strongly, that G_D or a higher power of some sort exists. I'm not here to argue that G_D exists or anything like that. I don't think that is the point of having faith or believing that G_D does exist and, indeed, I don't think anyone will ever be able to prove that G_D does exist. The point, however, is that there should not be a need to argue for or against the existence of G_D. I do not reject evolution, I do not reject science but, crucially, I do not reject the idea that G_D exists, rather I would say that I have faith that G_D does exist. I am not asserting the existence of G_D - I do not know if G_D exists but that does not matter because I have faith that G_D exists.

I can't stand it when people question why I have faith, what it is I have faith in or call having faith (or a belief in G_D) irrational or something like that. I don't think I can explain the answers to either of the first two questions but I do not think I need to. Perhaps the attempt to explain something infinite (the universe) with something finite (the powers of mind) leaves a gap I chose to fill with faith, namely faith in G_D. Regardless, faith is incredibly personal, it is something for me to fall back on, to look to and live by. Something I can't stand just as much as being blasting faith for whatever reason is people trying to force faith (or religion) upon other people. It is something that should be left to individuals to discover (or not). That is why I do not see the point in arguing for or against G_D. Ignore the fact you could never convince the other side nor prove it either way (even if people argue they have removed reasonable doubt). It comes down to a personal decision of how to attempt to understand what seems unexplainable. If appealing to G_D only creates more questions than it does answers and doesn't do it for you, that is your decision to make. 

It is the last question or comment that really frustrates me, the comment: "Faith in G_D is irrational" or, "A belief in G_D is an irrational belief." I am obviously of the opinion that it is not irrational at all, in fact perfectly rational - an attempt to explain things for yourself and to help you understand things cannot be called irrational. The human desire to understand what it is that goes on around you can be overwhelming and any attempt, on a personal level, to explain those things can only be rational. To hold a belief in G_D for no other reason than because your mum told you G_D exists may be irrational, but to consider how best to explain the universe and your existence etc and to arrive at G_D as your best, personal, explanation is wholly rational. Indeed it helps me live my life, to recover from hardships and fuels my unrelenting positivity that things can only get better. I'm unsure how faith in G_D can be irrational, on a personal level, if it helps you carry on and gives you reason to hope for the future. Rather that seems perfectly and completely rational to me. 

Up until now, I'd not mentioned religion in this post at all. I am not a religious man but a man of faith. There is certainly a difference here, with a religious man going above and beyond having faith in G_D, something I do not really do. I would describe myself as culturally Jewish but certainly not religiously Jewish. When I say I have a faith in G_D, it is not, necessarily, in a Jewish G_D or necessarily in any religious concept of what a G_D is. Perhaps this article can help to explain the concept of having faith but not necessarily (or fully) buying into religion. Again, I do not really know or understand what kind of G_D I have faith in, only certain that I have faith. I do not believe the metaphysics or ontology of G_D need not come into consideration when I say that I have faith in G_D, it is not really that important. It is the having faith in G_D that matters for me, not what G_D is.   

I'm writing this in response to something I saw on Facebook (and I've been thinking of doing so for a while), not to force anyone to believe in G_D, not to argue that I am right but merely to defend my having faith in G_D. There is nothing wrong with not having faith in G_D but equally there is nothing wrong with having faith in G_D. I think having a faith in G_D (or not) should be immune to critique and not require you to justify it to anyone. I would never try and convince people that they should have faith, fully respectful of the personal nature of the belief. I only ask that you grant me the same. 

Typos. Who cares?

Some people, clearly! A day doesn't go past where someone doesn't correct one of my typos, smugly pointing out my flaws in the English language. Sometimes they're just being helpful and, indeed, it is necessary but a lot of the time it is completely unneeded and plain annoying. Certain occasions where spelling does matter and correcting a typo is obviously important - on a blog, for example, where the whole point of engaging with that website is to read something. It would help if it was typed correctly - which is why I always apologise for typos in my blog and correct any that are pointed out to me (and I do try and proof read, but I am hopeless at it!).

Maybe I should lighten up and ignore it, but I really don't think that is the issue. It is much easier to look past a typo, ignore the mistake and type out a reply. Maybe it shows a lack of conversational skills, or a desire to be "humorous" but correcting a typo is not the way forward in a conversation online! Assuming you knew what I meant, is there a problem?

"BUT YOU NEED TO LEARN!" I hear you cry as I accidentally type form instead of from or too instead of to. And sometimes you'd be correct. It took me 7 goes to spell "accidentally" there, convinced as I am that it is 'accidently' or 'accidentely' but that isn't a typo. That is me not being able to spell and I am the first to admit in a message when I can't spell a word. And there is a difference between typing "I just come form home" and typing "I love you're mum" because the latter does imply misunderstanding that can be corrected. And even then, you can type "you're" when you mean 'your' just because your brain is working faster than your fingers as you type and don't realise you typed 'you're' by mistake.

A typo is a genuine mistake, usually derived from typing to fast or not quite being able to touch type properly. I could not care less if I accidentally typed "get's" when it is "gets" and I know I did not cause you major offence. You understood what I meant. Life goes on. Conversation wasn't halted. Stop correcting me. Rant over.

Revision will start soon....honest

There is nothing worse than getting to a holiday after 5/6 weeks of school to realise that you are going to have to do revision and it is not a holiday at all. Or at least you should do revision and you will do your best to put it off but more importantly justify putting it off. As you get older, it seems, you get better at justifying putting off revision (or indeed work) despite it being more important - similar in a way to justifying eating chocolate because it comes from a plant and therefore is essentially a vegetable. All sorts of excuses come out and the older you are, the better you are at convincing yourself of the soundness of those reasons. For example, I shall proceed to put this into an argument and claim that I am therefore doing philosophy revision:

1. I need to do x amount of revision
2. I can and will do  x amount of revision later
3. Therefore I need not to do revision until later. 

If the two premises are true this argument is such that I can convince myself that the conclusion follows and is true and now it would seem that I can put off revision until later. In fact, this argument is paradoxical, because while I've just concluded that I need not do revision until later I have, in the process of formulating it, also managed to convince myself that this counts as philosophy revision. As you get older you get better at not only procrastination, but also convincing yourself that procrastination can count as revision. It's a funny old world. 

You also get better at convincing yourself you need a break after slaving away for approximately 10 minutes, possibly underlining three words that were already underlined and telling yourself it would be good if you knew what they meant but you will figure it out later. At this point I usually go for a banana all the while mentally going over what you have just "revised", again convincing yourself that, despite being on a break, you are actually still revising and, as a result, deserve a longer break. This can get so bad as to watch TV and start finding subliminal messages in the Disney Channel's programming that further convinces you that you are still revising - last year, for example, I was watching Wizards of Waverly Place (as you do), and managed to spend the entire programme asking myself if they were determined to make the decisions they were or if it is was fate or free will. Definitely solid philosophy revision there. Yet again, your second break wasn't really a break at all and you need another break.

Having gone off for the "another break" that you now need after two unproductive breaks, you often end up on social networking sites. The undoing of many, vain attempts to deactivate facebook "for exams" often fail with this being nothing more than simply logging out, Facebook can claim the revision of many teenagers. Twitter is no better and between them, they must see numerous posts about "should be revising but on here" or something along those lines, often complaints about how easily distracted people are and funny things they found whilst procrastinating (like this blog? Nah...). With these sites comes the most deadly and convincing type of justification for not doing revision. Again I shall do some philosophy:

1. X is online
2. X is a hard worker and likely to get top grades
3. Therefore, if X is online and not working, I can be online and not working 

Whilst possibly the most flawed reasoning in the world, this can be the most convincing and for as long as X remains online (let's say s/he left his computer on), you feel you can remain online - after all, is s/he isn't revising, you obviously don't need to be. 

Finally, you decide that for you to "revise" a subject, you have to have known it in the first place. No point trying to learn something that the teacher hasn't taught you so you do one of two things:

1. You email your teacher safe in the knowledge that s/he won't reply because it is not term time and thus convince yourself that you are not able to revise that topic until you go back to school and ask him/her about it. Or rather, that you would have revised it if you could and therefore count the time you would have spent revising it but didn't, as time you actually spent revising.

2. Convince yourself if you needed to know it, the teacher would have taught it and therefore not only do you not need to know or learn it but also you can cut down revision time in the knowledge you have less to revise. 

Having procrastinated but actually revised, taken a break but actually done revision and managed to cut your revision time down despite not revising it is probably time to end the hard day's revision and find a way of adding in revision you've only technically not done to the next day, to convince yourself you will eventually do it, only for the process to start all over again. And with that, I am already 3 minutes late for maths revision but then, I do 3 essay subjects so writing this blog counts as writing practice, so really, I've already started revision...

April Fools'

This article is not an April Fool. Apart from it being difficult to make an actually funny and/or believable one, I am sure I'd be the one to cross the line and go too far. No, this is an article on April Fools' themselves. A basic Google search will yield the necessary history and I have helpfully linked the Wikipedia article on April Fools' Day if you do wish to read more about them. I do enjoy April Fools' Day. Once I remember to sit back and ignore everything that comes up on twitter and Facebook, I quite enjoy watching people get fooled. Even if it is infuriating when you realise that the once in a lifetime offer turns out to be a harmless April Fools' - the City Tickets offer on twitter being the offending April Fool that got me this year.

It is, of course, imperative to remember one thing:

Stuff still happens! Just because it is April Fools' day does not mean that things don't happen - don't just ignore everything. I'm convinced controversial stuff like the legislation to monitor internet use which I am assured is true, although I still want to have my doubts, is deliberately posted on April Fools' so people ignore it until it is too late and BAM, internet use is monitored, being poor is made illegal and all forms of tax are abolished. Just approach with caution!

I feel odd posting an article with advice. Strangely patronising, no? Ah well.

What can you say?

The BBC recently wrote an interesting article asking what you can and can't say on twitter. You need not read the article, but merely be a rational human being to understand that there are certain things you simply cannot say or do on twitter. The most obvious, of course, being racism, although the BBC talk about some others which all fall under a criminal jurisdiction. Funnily enough, just as I write this, I got told something I tweeted was offensive. The tweet was "Trust a girls school to invite in a renowned philosopher to talk about philosophy of religion". That's obviously sexist, but let's be honest, it is a harmless joke - lighten up?! Or am I too liberal...perhaps. Either way, I certainly would not live in a world where I couldn't tweet something as harmless as that. (Oh update on this, just as I finished writing this post, the final reply was "next time you make an offensive joke, at least try and be funny". Ouch....Of course I will try.)

That aside, a recent tweet got me thinking. The tweeter will remain nameless, or "untagged" to use twitter language, but it was a tweet by a twitter account named after a football team and whose bio states it is dedicated to that club. The tweet was "BDSIsrael". Perhaps my bias viewpoint against this campaign doesn't help my judgement, but I would argue that twitter accounts have a certain duty to their followers to stick to tweeting about the stuff relevant to their name. I followed that account not for a political commentary but a commentary on the football club and, as they describe it as such, they have a duty to provide that. I wish to read football updates, not political updates - the whole reason for my follow goes out the window if they start providing something else.

Of course you may respond saying "twitter, you can tweet whatever from whatever account" - surely the account name shouldn't pose restrictions? But that is exactly where I would disagree with you. Because it is incredibly easy to set up a twitter account not specified to football or sport and tweet about whatever the hell you like. You'd get annoyed if the BBC News Twitter Service suddenly started tweeting about what his dog was having for lunch - you signed up to read news tweets, not personal ones! You should certainly avoid such controversial and highly charged issues on an account that is specifically for a certain football clubs views and thus people are following purely on the pretence that they will receive said views.

Opinion should be valued at all times. Of course it should but there is a time and a place. Political opinion does not belong on a football twitter account followed for football opinion. It is as simple as that.

The Budget

I thought I'd make a late night comment on the budget which has just come out today. Whilst every detail remains unknown to me, there is enough for me to make a comment on:


1. The reduction of the 50p tax rate to 45p.


This is probably the most contested part of the budget, not that any of it was left unexamined by Labour, and for good reason. There is sound argument on both sides here - tax people more and they'll work harder to find ways of legally/illegally avoiding tax/ move out of the country entirely and take their profits elsewhere. However, how can you justify reducing taxes on the richest at a time when the poorest are paying so heavily for the mistakes of the former government? Surely tax breaks for rich people isn't going to help us get out of this recession and plug the gap in government spending and tax revenue.


I lean towards the former argument - I do believe in incentivising high earners to earn more money and thus pay more tax. Forcing them to pay more in tax only incetivises the opposite. However, does that really apply in this case? Osbourne, although he is always going to say this, claims that the higher tax rate isn't bringing in any extra revenue which is fair enough, but does lowering 5p actually mean that people are going to suddenly stop avoiding this higher rate of tax? The only reason to lower the tax rate is if it will actually bring in more revenue (through the reasoning above) and there is no way that a 5p decrease in the tax rate will do this. Osbourne has bottled a big decision here - he could have abolished this rate of tax entirely and brought it back down to 40%, a huge move, that may have had a positive effect on revenues but decided for a pathetic middle ground that does nothing except attempt to appease the Conservatives' rich allies whilst monumentally piss off everyone who hate bankers. Which is everyone.There is weight, in my opinion, to the argument for lower taxes (if not at a time of austerity necessarily) but this is going to make no difference and smacks of protecting bankers for no reason.


I thought it best to add in a bit in response to the comment below regarding the 0.105% increase in the bank levy designed to stop bankers from gaining benefit from the reduction in tax. First of all, as I asked below, does 0.105% actually offset a 5% reduction? That is equivalent to giving 5p and taking back 0.105p in the pound - for anyone who couldn't do the maths, I cannot see how that really harms the bankers. However, more crucially, would you not agree that it is pointless to lower a tax and then raise another tax to ensure people don't benefit excessively from the new lower tax - 1. That seems to defeat the purpose of lowering the tax initially and 2. It seems to be admitting that bankers will/would have benefited from this lower tax as a (tiny) measure has been put in place to stop this. What a stupid move! 


It is about time, whilst we are on the tax point, that the government did more to prevent rich earners avoiding tax legally (or indeed illegally as the case my be). Here lies the real issue - big companies can afford to spend big money on avoiding tax and will continue to do so even with lower rates; why not deal with this problem effectively?


2. The child benefit caps.


This seems completely the right move in my opinion. You may be able to argue over the lower end figure for removing the benefit, but does someone earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year really need child benefit? More importantly, does it, in this situation, even benefit the child? Surely that should be the cut off point - where the child benefit is of no benefit to the child, where it makes no difference the standard of living of the child why should to be given to the parents? That's quite a simple argument, but I'm open to reasons why it's wrong.


3. The Pasty Tax


It has, since the writing of this blog, been brought to my attention that the "correction of VAT loopholes" that the BBC write about in their article, to be found on the BBC website, is actually, effectively, a pasty tax. I've tried to detach myself from emotional involvement on this and while one can consider the large negative impact this will have on the Cornish economy especially, it is the principle of this that irks me too. Needless to say there are economic arguments for and against the move, and I do lean towards the against side, but taxing something so British seems anti-British. Was it not the Conservatives who opposed the proposed Cider Tax that Gordon Brown proposed and dropped? 

The good in question

There are some other, more minor, changes:


4. Corporation tax has gone down - probably just about a good move, should help businesses and incentivise investment which can only be a good thing. We await the empirical evidence I suppose


5. New Stamp Duty rate for homes over 2million - can't see a problem here really. Seems the right move


6. Tobacco Duty Rises - As a non-smoker and a complete anti-smoker I can't see any problem here either. If you wish to kill yourself then at least give money to the government doing it!


7. Fuel Duty rise - will, due to price in-elasticity of demand of fuel, probably raise revenue. There is a strong argument for fuel already being to expensive and this may inhibit ease of travel and thus growth.


8. Increase in personal tax allowances to £9,205 - again this seems a good move, or at least a move that doesn't simply favour the rich and could boost consumption amongst those most likely to spend their income - the poorest, who will now be better off. 


Overall, I remain unconvinced. Sure this budget does some good things - the child benefit removal and increase in personal allowance but you cannot help but feel that the biggest change made; the change that headlines the BBC website and will be most focused on, has been horribly fudged up. I can't understand why he has made this move now - it will almost certainly not bring in extra revenue and can only serve to annoy those opposed to rich people getting richer at a time of need for most. It is at least a political mistake and time will probably show it to be an economic one too.