the way back - nervous breakdown and all that

England is a strange place in many respects. We love to complain in this country and yet we very rarely take direct action when it comes to bigger things. We groan, we grumble, but we rarely act. I grew up in France. I am not saying the place is perfect. There are many institutional problems there. However, people will take to the streets far more readily than across the Channel, especially when it comes to workers’ rights. Why? I am sure there are myriad reasons. Maybe having more of an insular mentality has made us more prone to accepting the whims of the ruling classes. Maybe our own brand of liberalism has meant that people trust the ‘money’ over morality. Could it be that it partly due to the influence of living under a monarchy, however risible it may be? Added to this lack of action, many people in this in a country allow morals to be pushed to the side in favour of rugged capitalism, ultra-individualism: a philosophy of might is right - basically neo-Thatcherism. ‘Woke’ i...

Ah, that good old period between Christmas and the New Year: no real structure per se, and plenty of time on one’s hands to sit around looking at this and that on the hard drive, especially if feeling a bit ill. I have been idly looking at few documents that I was sent after I made SARs to my previous school. I have come up with a number of rather interesting mails from the chair of governors (CoG). They share a complete failure to address legitimate whistleblowing complaints: 1)      a letter sent confidentially (anonymised below) by a member of staff about toxic culture there at the time, following the ordeal in November 2019 which led to my breakdown; 2)      the CoG’s reaction to my having tried to blow the whistle in July 2020.   As GDPR seemed to be the main priority for the CoG, rather than staff well-being and safety, I will paraphrase and elaborate on the content of the e-mails instead of including them verbatim.    ...