Fear and loathing in the staff room.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to learn the names of all the teachers in the staff room. I have a big chart with photos of them and I’ve made crib cards also. It’s difficult to do this subtly and some of the teachers have cottoned on. But their reaction has generally been pretty good. I think they sometimes assume that ALTs won’t bother to learn their names so are pleasantly surprised that I’m making the effort. One of the reasons that it’s difficult is that names are always written in kanji rather than kana. So I actually had to ask another teacher to write them out for me, which was a little embarrassing.

So whilst things in Japan have been slowly getting better in the last few days, I’ve been a bit disturbed at some of the political events in London. I’m a long-time Ken Livingstone supporter, but have been disappointed at the recent scandal over his tax arrangements. I’m undecided on whether what he did was morally suspect (probably not) but it does seem incredibly stupid for someone with their sights on public office to have been so careless. Meanwhile, he is facing a horrendously biased press campaign in the London Evening Standard which used to be a decent newspaper but is still highly influential. I hate the way that it is the only daily paper in London but is so obviously unfair to one of the main candidates whom about half its readership supports. It was incredibly negative towards Ken four years ago and subsequently ran an advertising campaign where it pledged to change its ways. It’s not keeping to that pledge. I also hate the (very effective) negative campaigning that Lynton Crosby has brought to the Boris campaign. Most of all, I hate the feeling that all the forces of conservatism are joining ranks to bring down a perfectly good candidate. I suspect they will be successful in stopping him, too.

This has reminded me that I need to hurry up and arrange a proxy vote for myself. It will be strange to be outside the UK when the election takes place. But given the likely result, it may be for the best.

Once again, the above picture of Wayne Coyne has nothing to do with the content of this blog entry. He's not a candidate in the London Mayoral Election.