Well

I never had a chance to get back and report on my daughters exams results, so here they are now.

A art, B RE, C English language, literature Sciences, D History, ICT, French, E Maths.

I think she's a bit like me, arty but I don't understand how she can do so well in science and not maths. I suppose it doesn't matter too much as she's got what she needed for the school to let her do A level Art, Photography, Sociology and Philosophy and Ethics in 6th form. Considering her middle school struggled to get her to read and write she's done extremely well. It really pisses me off when the media go on about how exams are dumbed down. the level of work and analysis that went into the work she has done was far deeper and expansive than anything I did at school.

Its the same with work, to the media everyone on benefits is a scrounger, I suppose it harks back to the Elizabethan concept of the undeserving poor- after all, disaster or terminal disease never strikes the deserving. I've met some very distressed sick people whose life has fallen apart because of the lack of a social security net. For example, the lady with life threatening bowel cancer, sacked from work because the employer doesn't want to pay sick pay (perfectly legal to sack someone in this circumstance), repeatedly asked to attend work focused interviews by the DWP, has to wait weeks to get help with her mortgage from the state, it a race between the money coming in and the bank taking repossession. Meanwhile, the credit card chases her with phone calls five to ten times a day, and the council sends the bailiffs in because there is a bit of a shortfall in her council tax payments. Its a good job she doesn't have to pay for her prescriptions now, cause she hasn't got the money for food- most people wouldn't know how to manage on £64.30 a week to cover the bills and food.

Yes there are some people who lie to get benefits, but they are far fewer than those who have no choice but to rely on the mercy of the state.

I'm glad I'm still on holiday