We have been told by the coalition government that in tackling its key objective of reducing the UK's deficit the whole public sector, bar the National Health Service and international development, but including the Armed Forces, will face a minimum of 25% cuts in staffing and perhaps as high as 40% in the next five years. Before I proceed, if you are interested in where I get my figures from see: http://www.civilservant.org.uk/numbers.pdf and the reports from the Local Government Association (LGA): http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/5826934 and http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/11637001
I noted in a recent posting the size of different sections of the UK public sector. It employs a little over 4.5 million people, only 16% of the UK workforce. The thing is, when you speak about 1.1 million people losing their jobs by the end of 2015, it is difficult to comprehend what that will mean to you. Of course, we could simply put every teacher and every social worker in the UK out of work and that would still only have removed about 490,000 people from the public sector. There are 225,000 administrative civil servants, people working on the kind of grade that you meet if you go into a job centre or your local tax office. In fact the Department of Work and Pensions and HM Revenue & Customs (which handles tax) take up 49.5% of national civil servants between them. Defence has a further 15.8% and 'Justice' has 17.1%. As it is, even if you took out every single administrative civil servant working for all national department (as opposed to local government departments) and added these to all the teachers and social workers, you would still be at only 615,000 and would be looking for another around 500,000 people to lay off. This means you could also remove all of the 217,500 executive grade civil servants, so the people who manage your job centre or benefit office or are the actual tax inspectors and still would need another 280,000 redundancies.
Of course, the government will not expect the full weight of cuts to come from the national civil service, but also from local authority bodies too. There are 34,400 people working in libraries in the UK, many part-time. So you could close every single public library in the UK without making more than a minimal impact on the figure the government is aiming for. Of course, selling off the books, computers, buildings and the land would help a little towards the deficit. Getting rid of all of the 5,800 trading standards officers, all 38,000 housing welfare officers, all 8,000 school crossing patrol staff, all 15,000 nursery school nurses and 9,000 playgroup leaders, all 36,000 people working in refuse collection and recycling, every one of the 11,800 people who work in public theatres, galleries and museums, all of the 66,700 people who work in every public swimming pool and leisure centre, so closing all of these things down, still does not take us to the desired total. Yet, even wiping out all of these jobs will mean no refuse collection, no sports or cultural facilities, no state schools, no social workers, no playgroups that are not in private, profit-making hands. The government says these positions will be taken over by the private sector, so you will have to pay to have your refuse removed and to sign up to a private sports centre if you want to swim. As for social work who is supposed to take this on? The new poor houses? I know back in the 1980s there was talk of 'Victorian values' but purging the public sector of so many jobs will plunge us back into that kind of society.
Of course, rather than take out whole sectors, national departments and the local authorities will carve chunks off individual sections and will hope the remaining staff can continue to deliver as good a service as before. There is a belief that there is so inefficiency in the public sector that the remaining 75% staff will be able to increase their efforts by a third (not a quarter, think about it; 25% is a third of 75%) to lift their output back to just 100% of the current level. As it is, there is a shortage of social workers and we have had extensive recruitment campaigns, now we are scheduled to lose a quarter of those we currently have. Of course, there will be more children dying unprotected by social workers. They are stretched now, it will get worse. Of course, in the government's view this is a worthwhile sacrifice to pay back the loan that kept the wealthy bankers afloat. Another thing, with all these teachers, social workers and librarians being out of work, who is going to process their unemployment claims and benefits with job centres having lost 1 in 4 of their staff?
Big numbers of thousands and millions of people are often difficult to assess, so I will finish off looking at a human-level example. There is a primary school at the end of my road. It is a very popular school, so for the 60 places each year there are at least 90 applicants. It covers the school years from Reception (i.e. Year 0, though given the connotations of that name it is not called that) for children 4+ through Years 1-6 with children leaving aged 11-12. There are two classes, each of 30 pupils, in each year so it has a total of 420 pupils. Each class has at least one teacher and classroom assistant usually to help children with learning difficulties. Some classes have two part-time teachers. There is also the deputy-head and head, the former also does some teaching. There is one caretaker for two sites and about six administrators. So, I estimate about 45 staff for the whole school. Now, remove a quarter of these, say, 11 staff. You could remove most of the 14 classroom assistants. You could take out all the teachers for years 0-4 and one from Year 5. You certainly could close down the Reception year and take children at 5 as was the case when I started, but then how do you reach the government targets for children's achievement. You could combine the classes, but that is not permitted and no school has room to have 60 children in a class. You could only accept 30 children, but then where do the remainder go, given that every other school in the district will be facing similar cuts? We are lucky that this is not a rural area and there is a choice of schools. I suppose the government would argue that you could shave more staff from local authority running of schools, but it seems impossible that that could spare every teacher. Even taking out just 5 staff from a school of this size would disrupt its working; teachers will have to do their own administration as well as teach and prepare and mark.
Of course, these grass roots challenges, as this single example makes clear, are of absolutely no personal interest to government ministers, their children go to fee-paying schools so will be exempt from any cut backs. This means that ordinary children in the UK who coming through the school system in 2011-15 will be in more crowded classrooms with fewer teachers and poorer equipment will be further disadvantaged than they are now. The number of working class people going to university has not risen since 2002 and adult learning has slumped since the mid-2000s. The coalition government's policies seem to be driving yet another step towards Victorian style division in which the rich can afford to benefit from opportunities and the rest of us have to scrabble around for what we and our children can get. This is far more sinister than it is being portrayed in the media. People still talk of the blight for the generation that grew up in the 1980s in Britain and it is clear that such a disadvantage is going to be imposed on the children and others of the 2010s.
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Friday, 9 July 2010
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Timewarp Britain: Summer Fêtes
Given that the term 'fête' comes from French it is interesting how it has become such a British institution. Of course in England it is pronounced as 'fate' as opposed to the French pronunciation 'fett'. In France it sums up something rather like what we term as a carnival, a town-wide event. I know it is dated, but in my mind it will always be encapsulated in the movie 'Jour de Fête' (1949) starring comic actor Jacques Tati. It is available to watch for free in 12 parts on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O75gUQmwdTM&feature=related there are black and white, partially coloured and colour versions.
Anyway, the British fête is something different, usually confined to a single location such as a school or a church; larger events are deemed at least 'parish days' or these days more in favour is the term 'carnival' which often has a procession leading up to it and also tends to have fairground attractions as well as the more low key stalls. The county fairs like the one in Hampshire I comment on last summer, are of a far larger scale. The objective of fêtes is fund raising and this is done in a range of generally traditional ways. In part the lack of change at fêtes is an endearing element of them. Aside from the bouncy castle and the face painting an organiser of a British summer fête of 1949 would not feel out of place at one in 2009.
I was a big fan of fêtes in my youth and worked at many as my parents were active members of the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) of the schools I attended, the bodies behind such events at schools. Fêtes need a reasonable amount of space and sufficient people who can spend a decent amount of money playing on simple games and buying cakes. They are frivolous events and I guess this is why I never saw any occurring in East London where there was a lack of space to host such things and the population lacked the spare cash. Interestingly they did not seem to even occur in Milton Keynes, though it has a great deal more space. Maybe that says something about the nature of the population or the fact that the city is so thinly spread. The natural home for the fête seems to be from large village size up to leafy suburb and they are less common in really rural areas or inner cities.
In the past fortnight I have attended two fêtes, one at a church, one at a school. Though every fête is unique there are many common elements. It is usually 'opened' by a notable, this can be anyone from the local vicar or school head to a celebrity of various degrees of stature. Sometimes you get something slightly different. I attended a fête opened by a real owl and another opened by Queen Elizabeth I (in fact a teacher dressed as her). Maybe with our perception of celebrity changing with so many 'reality' and talent shows, this is becoming a less common element than it once was than in my youth when I attended fêtes opened by people like DJ Ed Stewart and actors Bernard Cribbens and Buster Merryfield
The backbone of the fête is that there will be a number of stalls, some selling items and some with games. The items tend to be of a particular nature such as 'white elephant' or 'bric-a-brac' (wonderful English phrases in themselves), i.e. second hand ornaments. There may be some second hand clothes, but these tend to be reserved for jumble sales, which are usually held in the Autumn and Winter rather than the Summer. There will be a stall selling homemade and often bought cakes as well. One noticeable thing over my youth is that the people running these stalls now all wear plastic gloves and all the ingredients are listed on each homemade cake so that the event does not get sued from someone with a nut allergy. They often sell cupcakes (also known in the UK as 'fairy' cakes) and classic home-made recipes such as chocolate-cornflake or chocolate rice-crispy cakes. There is usually a lot of heavy fruit cakes, some sponges and sometimes some nice banana or coconut cake, always a good bet as they tend to be lighter.
In addition to the cake stand for cakes to take home, there will be 'refreshments', usually tea and cake with orange cordial for the children, sometimes crisps are available as well. This tends to be run from a large tent or the hall of the school or church. Invariably these are served on institutional crockery, if you are lucky, Beryl ware. Summer fêtes are distinguished from their Winter equivalent or jumble sales by having a barbecue, usually of burgers and hotdogs. The vegetarian option has now creapt in here. However, allocating the task of cooking the food still seems to be allocated to any black or Hispanic man who can be found in the neighbourhood, with pale white women serving the customers. There is clearly some racial stereotyping going on. In our district white South Africans tend to be the best barbecuers but the job is given to a black man whose moved from Birmingham. You can read a lot about a neighbourhood from its fêtes. I must say the quality of the burgers has risen over the years, I had delicious homemade ones at the church; onions seem to be less burnt than they used to and the rolls, less doughy. I do not know if my tastes have deteriorated since the 1970s, but quality in fête barbecue food seems to be on the rise, perhaps it is the Jamie Oliver effect.
Other stalls sell things like pot plants, old children's toys and second hand books. What struck me recently was how little prices have risen. I was still paying 10p (€0.12; US$0.16) for a second hand book, the same as I did in 1978, although in today's values 10p then is worth about 50p now. This seems made as costs have risen since then. In that time, cakes seem to have gone from £1 (equivalent to around £5 today) to £4 so seem to have kept up better with inflation than books and toys. The only time I remember someone breaking from this was a woman who took over running the second hand book stall at the local Scout jumble sale to where I lived. I went for many years and each book was meticulously priced, with different prices rather than the blanket price most places charge. This woman charged prices by assessing the wealth of the potential buyer. It was incredible how much resentment this caused and led to people abandoning piles of books. She did not realise that even when at a charitable event, people want to know what they are letting themselves in for (they may be saving their change for a cake or a cup of tea) and to have an arbitrary figure imposed not only lost her sales but meant regulars not coming again. People can tolerate higher prices than 10p, but they need to know what the prices are.
Aside from the stalls selling items, there are the games. These are usually old fashioned and very low key. One universal one is the tombola. Here again prices have not risen much and I got 5 tickets for £1. You open the ticket and see if it matches one of the ones on an item on the able, usually numbers ending in a 5 or a 0, so getting a 1 in 5 chance of the prize. The 7-year old boy from my house won 3 out of 5 at both events, and began assuming he would always win. I took him back so that he would lose more and better understand the odds, but then feared that I had unleashed a gambling monster as he said 'if I just buy a few more tickets, then I'll win again'. Having rarely won anything in years of tombolas, I knew that way leads to poverty. Sometimes there are specific bottle or cuddly toy tombolas, most have a random selection of items. The boy from the two fêtes won a selection that probably sums up the kind of items you get: an old, though unused, radio; a jar of tomato relish; a tin of tuna; a teddy bear; a small candlestick and a large pot of scented moisturiser. Other games include the coconut shy, probably the only time in the year most people get close to an unprocessed cocount, throw wet sponges at someone often a teacher, smash crockery (this is where I saw a Beryl ware plate selling for £2-3 on eBay smashed), roll the 2p across a board - where it lands may result in a prize, spin the wheel, bash the rat, pick a nail, the raffle, racing (battery-powered) pigs (or their equivalent) and so on. Less active are guess the name of the bear/doll, weight of the cake, number of sweets in a jar and so on. There are sometimes innovations, I saw 'pan for gold' in which you had to sift wet sand to find little bits of metal, finding sufficient won you a prize. Back in the 1980s home computers briefly brought computer games to fêtes, usually lovingly typed in some teenager and the one with a high score at the end of the day won a prize, but trying to shade the screen and now we all have computers, meant that innovation died. Getting a remote-controlled car around a course has been a bit more enduring and would be something the fête-goer of 1949 would not recognise, though the one of 1979 would.
So all of this is going on, you are losing money amiably or winning items you will donate to another charity event. The big innovations are the bouncy castle and face painting. I think face painting appeared at fêtes when I was living in London in the 1990s and not attending them any longer. Yet it is now a stalwart element of these events and for the day you see boys with bat or tiger or spiderman faces, girls with butterly faces. I never understood the fascination but it is immense. There are books on doing it and a lot of effort is taken. I think this was best satirised in the second series of 'Phoenix Nights' (2001) which actually with the 'fun day' episode took off a lot about British fêtes. Anyway, until someone stops face-painting on some health and safety grounds it looks like it is here to stay. The same can be said for the bouncy castle. I love the fact kids can literally go mad springing off the walls and floor for 15 minutes. I wish they had been invented in my day. Some usually collides with someone else and there are tears and I am sure soon, some parent will sue a school or a church and then children will only be allowed on them one at a time, harnessed to the side and wearing head protection.
The final element, aside from the uncertain weather which accompanies any Summer event in the UK, are the performances. I rarely pay much attention to these but they are an important part of the fête and must make many parents, teachers and instructors. Generally you get some kind of sports demonstration, something like a local martial arts group. There is usual musical input whether from a local marching band or brass band or from a school orchestra. There are often girls in leotards dancing or twirling batons. At large fêtes there may be dog or motorcycle displays by the police or some local military unit. All of this is pretty unremarkable, but can be enjoyable for children who do not get to see much live entertainment these days. As a teenager interested in history and with a love of fêtes, I used to particularly target those which featured historical reconstruction elements. There are huge numbers of historical reconstruction groups. In the 1970s the English Civil War was the popular focus, but these days there is a range from Roman and early Medieval through to Napoleonic. These events seem to be decreasing in number, again possibly due to health and safety concerns with all that black powder going off. I did see a group who did 18th century dance at one church fête three years ago, all in appopriate costume, the musicians too.
Sometimes there is an odd anomaly that is thrown into the mix which makes a fête different. I attended one near the Fulda Gap in what was then West Germany at which the future Chancellor, Helmut Kohl (born 1930), attended, with an amazingly low level of security. He sat at a table behind ours in the restaurant cutting up his elderly mother's fish. That was not a British fête, but I was just reminded of it. It had many of the same elements, though much more cultural clothing worn by the audience. The one that struck me the other day was at the church fête which the vicar's brother (both must be 1.95m and broad with it) performed songs in Spanish with a group consisting of a teenager on a keyboard and a late middle aged woman on percussion. Twice he sung a song about Che Guevara helping pull off the Cuban Revolution, which seemed pretty anomalous in an English churchyard. It was as if a Graham Greene novel had come to life. He lattely moved to 'La Bamba' and other more anondyne material, but it was a delightfully quirky element to the proceedings.
Though Summer fêtes have evolved, it is a slow process and if you ever enjoyed such events before, then you will not be disappointed by the ones today. Take along a child to an event which is about human activity rather than what they can do electronically and they may actually find they enjoy it. For primary school children there is a lot of practice at handling money (the 7-year old with me always overpays 'because I get more change back' is his theory) and the stallholders are more patient than the average shopkeeper. I know Britain is embedded in its past which blinds it to much of contemporary life, but in my view the fête manages to connect past and present, and it is raising money for a charitable cause. May they long prosper and not be choked off with excessive health and safety concerns.
Anyway, the British fête is something different, usually confined to a single location such as a school or a church; larger events are deemed at least 'parish days' or these days more in favour is the term 'carnival' which often has a procession leading up to it and also tends to have fairground attractions as well as the more low key stalls. The county fairs like the one in Hampshire I comment on last summer, are of a far larger scale. The objective of fêtes is fund raising and this is done in a range of generally traditional ways. In part the lack of change at fêtes is an endearing element of them. Aside from the bouncy castle and the face painting an organiser of a British summer fête of 1949 would not feel out of place at one in 2009.
I was a big fan of fêtes in my youth and worked at many as my parents were active members of the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) of the schools I attended, the bodies behind such events at schools. Fêtes need a reasonable amount of space and sufficient people who can spend a decent amount of money playing on simple games and buying cakes. They are frivolous events and I guess this is why I never saw any occurring in East London where there was a lack of space to host such things and the population lacked the spare cash. Interestingly they did not seem to even occur in Milton Keynes, though it has a great deal more space. Maybe that says something about the nature of the population or the fact that the city is so thinly spread. The natural home for the fête seems to be from large village size up to leafy suburb and they are less common in really rural areas or inner cities.
In the past fortnight I have attended two fêtes, one at a church, one at a school. Though every fête is unique there are many common elements. It is usually 'opened' by a notable, this can be anyone from the local vicar or school head to a celebrity of various degrees of stature. Sometimes you get something slightly different. I attended a fête opened by a real owl and another opened by Queen Elizabeth I (in fact a teacher dressed as her). Maybe with our perception of celebrity changing with so many 'reality' and talent shows, this is becoming a less common element than it once was than in my youth when I attended fêtes opened by people like DJ Ed Stewart and actors Bernard Cribbens and Buster Merryfield
The backbone of the fête is that there will be a number of stalls, some selling items and some with games. The items tend to be of a particular nature such as 'white elephant' or 'bric-a-brac' (wonderful English phrases in themselves), i.e. second hand ornaments. There may be some second hand clothes, but these tend to be reserved for jumble sales, which are usually held in the Autumn and Winter rather than the Summer. There will be a stall selling homemade and often bought cakes as well. One noticeable thing over my youth is that the people running these stalls now all wear plastic gloves and all the ingredients are listed on each homemade cake so that the event does not get sued from someone with a nut allergy. They often sell cupcakes (also known in the UK as 'fairy' cakes) and classic home-made recipes such as chocolate-cornflake or chocolate rice-crispy cakes. There is usually a lot of heavy fruit cakes, some sponges and sometimes some nice banana or coconut cake, always a good bet as they tend to be lighter.
In addition to the cake stand for cakes to take home, there will be 'refreshments', usually tea and cake with orange cordial for the children, sometimes crisps are available as well. This tends to be run from a large tent or the hall of the school or church. Invariably these are served on institutional crockery, if you are lucky, Beryl ware. Summer fêtes are distinguished from their Winter equivalent or jumble sales by having a barbecue, usually of burgers and hotdogs. The vegetarian option has now creapt in here. However, allocating the task of cooking the food still seems to be allocated to any black or Hispanic man who can be found in the neighbourhood, with pale white women serving the customers. There is clearly some racial stereotyping going on. In our district white South Africans tend to be the best barbecuers but the job is given to a black man whose moved from Birmingham. You can read a lot about a neighbourhood from its fêtes. I must say the quality of the burgers has risen over the years, I had delicious homemade ones at the church; onions seem to be less burnt than they used to and the rolls, less doughy. I do not know if my tastes have deteriorated since the 1970s, but quality in fête barbecue food seems to be on the rise, perhaps it is the Jamie Oliver effect.
Other stalls sell things like pot plants, old children's toys and second hand books. What struck me recently was how little prices have risen. I was still paying 10p (€0.12; US$0.16) for a second hand book, the same as I did in 1978, although in today's values 10p then is worth about 50p now. This seems made as costs have risen since then. In that time, cakes seem to have gone from £1 (equivalent to around £5 today) to £4 so seem to have kept up better with inflation than books and toys. The only time I remember someone breaking from this was a woman who took over running the second hand book stall at the local Scout jumble sale to where I lived. I went for many years and each book was meticulously priced, with different prices rather than the blanket price most places charge. This woman charged prices by assessing the wealth of the potential buyer. It was incredible how much resentment this caused and led to people abandoning piles of books. She did not realise that even when at a charitable event, people want to know what they are letting themselves in for (they may be saving their change for a cake or a cup of tea) and to have an arbitrary figure imposed not only lost her sales but meant regulars not coming again. People can tolerate higher prices than 10p, but they need to know what the prices are.
Aside from the stalls selling items, there are the games. These are usually old fashioned and very low key. One universal one is the tombola. Here again prices have not risen much and I got 5 tickets for £1. You open the ticket and see if it matches one of the ones on an item on the able, usually numbers ending in a 5 or a 0, so getting a 1 in 5 chance of the prize. The 7-year old boy from my house won 3 out of 5 at both events, and began assuming he would always win. I took him back so that he would lose more and better understand the odds, but then feared that I had unleashed a gambling monster as he said 'if I just buy a few more tickets, then I'll win again'. Having rarely won anything in years of tombolas, I knew that way leads to poverty. Sometimes there are specific bottle or cuddly toy tombolas, most have a random selection of items. The boy from the two fêtes won a selection that probably sums up the kind of items you get: an old, though unused, radio; a jar of tomato relish; a tin of tuna; a teddy bear; a small candlestick and a large pot of scented moisturiser. Other games include the coconut shy, probably the only time in the year most people get close to an unprocessed cocount, throw wet sponges at someone often a teacher, smash crockery (this is where I saw a Beryl ware plate selling for £2-3 on eBay smashed), roll the 2p across a board - where it lands may result in a prize, spin the wheel, bash the rat, pick a nail, the raffle, racing (battery-powered) pigs (or their equivalent) and so on. Less active are guess the name of the bear/doll, weight of the cake, number of sweets in a jar and so on. There are sometimes innovations, I saw 'pan for gold' in which you had to sift wet sand to find little bits of metal, finding sufficient won you a prize. Back in the 1980s home computers briefly brought computer games to fêtes, usually lovingly typed in some teenager and the one with a high score at the end of the day won a prize, but trying to shade the screen and now we all have computers, meant that innovation died. Getting a remote-controlled car around a course has been a bit more enduring and would be something the fête-goer of 1949 would not recognise, though the one of 1979 would.
So all of this is going on, you are losing money amiably or winning items you will donate to another charity event. The big innovations are the bouncy castle and face painting. I think face painting appeared at fêtes when I was living in London in the 1990s and not attending them any longer. Yet it is now a stalwart element of these events and for the day you see boys with bat or tiger or spiderman faces, girls with butterly faces. I never understood the fascination but it is immense. There are books on doing it and a lot of effort is taken. I think this was best satirised in the second series of 'Phoenix Nights' (2001) which actually with the 'fun day' episode took off a lot about British fêtes. Anyway, until someone stops face-painting on some health and safety grounds it looks like it is here to stay. The same can be said for the bouncy castle. I love the fact kids can literally go mad springing off the walls and floor for 15 minutes. I wish they had been invented in my day. Some usually collides with someone else and there are tears and I am sure soon, some parent will sue a school or a church and then children will only be allowed on them one at a time, harnessed to the side and wearing head protection.
The final element, aside from the uncertain weather which accompanies any Summer event in the UK, are the performances. I rarely pay much attention to these but they are an important part of the fête and must make many parents, teachers and instructors. Generally you get some kind of sports demonstration, something like a local martial arts group. There is usual musical input whether from a local marching band or brass band or from a school orchestra. There are often girls in leotards dancing or twirling batons. At large fêtes there may be dog or motorcycle displays by the police or some local military unit. All of this is pretty unremarkable, but can be enjoyable for children who do not get to see much live entertainment these days. As a teenager interested in history and with a love of fêtes, I used to particularly target those which featured historical reconstruction elements. There are huge numbers of historical reconstruction groups. In the 1970s the English Civil War was the popular focus, but these days there is a range from Roman and early Medieval through to Napoleonic. These events seem to be decreasing in number, again possibly due to health and safety concerns with all that black powder going off. I did see a group who did 18th century dance at one church fête three years ago, all in appopriate costume, the musicians too.
Sometimes there is an odd anomaly that is thrown into the mix which makes a fête different. I attended one near the Fulda Gap in what was then West Germany at which the future Chancellor, Helmut Kohl (born 1930), attended, with an amazingly low level of security. He sat at a table behind ours in the restaurant cutting up his elderly mother's fish. That was not a British fête, but I was just reminded of it. It had many of the same elements, though much more cultural clothing worn by the audience. The one that struck me the other day was at the church fête which the vicar's brother (both must be 1.95m and broad with it) performed songs in Spanish with a group consisting of a teenager on a keyboard and a late middle aged woman on percussion. Twice he sung a song about Che Guevara helping pull off the Cuban Revolution, which seemed pretty anomalous in an English churchyard. It was as if a Graham Greene novel had come to life. He lattely moved to 'La Bamba' and other more anondyne material, but it was a delightfully quirky element to the proceedings.
Though Summer fêtes have evolved, it is a slow process and if you ever enjoyed such events before, then you will not be disappointed by the ones today. Take along a child to an event which is about human activity rather than what they can do electronically and they may actually find they enjoy it. For primary school children there is a lot of practice at handling money (the 7-year old with me always overpays 'because I get more change back' is his theory) and the stallholders are more patient than the average shopkeeper. I know Britain is embedded in its past which blinds it to much of contemporary life, but in my view the fête manages to connect past and present, and it is raising money for a charitable cause. May they long prosper and not be choked off with excessive health and safety concerns.
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