2013-06-18T02:59:42-04:00 Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=caroline-argyropulopalmer Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3305314 2013-05-20T06:22:11-04:00 2013-05-21T07:58:01-04:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/
The grey vote is often assigned wholesale to the Tories - the old, we are told, are inherently conservative, natural backers of austerity, unwilling to take any cuts to their own benefits to help the young. They must be promised winter fuel and be saved from the 'granny tax' to ensure their backing - which, as 76% of over 65s voted in the last election, far out stripping the youth vote, is indispensable.

Yet this determined pair reminded me that this may not be the case. There are older people willing to trudge through central London on a far from glorious May day to fight for public services. And why not - they do very well from them. The 2008 NHS Next Stage Review Final Report found that over 75-year-olds use a disproportionate amount of NHS resources and almost half of the total sum of benefit payments in 2011-12 went on state pensions, the largest single chunk. Is it so shocking to believe that they might want others, their children, their grandchildren, to have the same support they have had?

It is often presumed that we get more conservative as we get older - the trope of grumpy old men and women complaining about the depravity of youth culture and the loss of respect for hard work. But research by American sociologist and gerontologist Nick Dangelis in 2007 found that people become more tolerant as they age. And as 90-year-old second world war veteran Harry Leslie Smith so eloquently stated in The Guardian earlier this month, it is reasonable to feel this is not what Britain fought for. WW2 ushered in an era of spending and welfare, and the EU: that's what victory meant.

Politicians and their parties too often patronise the old, homogenising them and resorting to dropping in 'traditional' buzz words or policies to secure this demographic. Labour needs to remember that you can gain grey votes with promises to help close the wealth gap, and the Tories need to not assume that all OAPs are chomping at the bit to run off to UKIP.

Because Saturday gave my hope some of them aren't.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2733749 2013-02-21T11:19:44-05:00 2013-04-23T05:12:01-04:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/ David Cameron refused to apologise to for the Amritsar Massacre.

The Massacre, also known as the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, is an uncontested fact of this country's empire. On April 13 1919, a protest against British imperial rule was held in Amritsar, north India, a city which Cameron's recent visit to the country included. British forces blocked the exits trapping the unarmed people, including women and children, inside a walled courtyard and opened fire. The British estimated nearly four hundred people were killed - the Indian National Congress put the dead at closer to 1000.

Cameron paid his respects at the site of the Massacre, and said it was a "deeply shameful event in British history" that we must never forget. He was the first serving British PM to visit the site, but Churchill condemned the event at the time, and the Queen has also expressed her regrets, so Cameron's words are hardly a new step. A formal apology would have been, but Cameron refused to, rejecting the value of officially saying sorry for historical events.

But what does Cameron mean by history? Perhaps he meant we can only apologise for incidents where some of those directly affected are still alive; making Amritsar different to Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday, both of which Cameron has officially said sorry for. But in 2007 Tony Blair formally apologised for Britain's involvement in the slave trade - like Amritsar though relatives of those involved are still alive, it is beyond anyone's memory. Formal state apologies are not a personal matter - regardless of what Cameron himself feels, in an official apology he is speaking for Britain, and there is precedent that the state apologises for events even in the more distant past.

And those apologies are important because sometimes saying sorry is all that can be done. And having the humility to do so gives some measure of justice and recognition, however small, to those who were affected and their families. This is child's play - we would give no court to a four-year-old asking what difference it makes if they apologise for hitting a classmate. It's just part of doing the right thing.

There are also political ramifications. Cameron said he wants a "special relationship" with India - but is that really possible if the countries are not on an even footing? The British state formally accepting responsibility for an atrocity of its colonial rule of India would move the countries further towards a relationship of equality rather than one still defined by a history of master and subject.

There was an apology given by a prime minister this week, however. Enda Kenny, Ireland's taoiseach, apologised profusely on Tuesday for the Magdalene Laundries. The Irish state was directly involved in these abusive workhouses for so called "fallen" women, and the last closed only in 1996, so there are living survivors. That does perhaps make an apology more necessary - but it also makes it more costly.

In an emotional 17-minute speech to the Irish parliament, Kenny promised to establish a fund to help the women who spent time in the Laundries, both those sent by the state and those who were not, and also those held in similar institutions. He promised to build a memorial with separate funds.

Kenny also brutally condemned the Ireland that allowed this to happen - and this was an indictment of an Ireland many remember, that many have lived through and have been a part of. For Cameron to formally recognise an ill of Empire would be to admonish a Britain which is long gone; it would require little reflection of ourselves, there is unlikely to be significant financial ramifications.

When the only real cost of an apology is a little pride, is it really acceptable for it to get stuck in the throat?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2616274 2013-02-05T19:00:00-05:00 2013-04-07T05:12:01-04:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/ is considering sending his eldest son to private school.

An article in the Times at the weekend, by fellow comprehensive graduate Janice Turner, bemoans the way her state school failed to push her. She laments the dominance of the privately educated at the top, but is paying for her children's education, reluctantly, for their own good. And this is the slight about state school I find particularly offensive. The seemingly accepted assumption that your local comp is a place to which your parents only send you - if they can afford to do otherwise - to assuage their liberal consciences. And that their children suffer because of this, and all good parents will go private if they can.

I am well aware that the corridors of power, and Oxbridge, are stuffed to the hilt with the privately educated. I will not deny that I had more obstacles to overcome than counterparts who paid for their education. But going to private school is no guarantee of success. If you send your child to private school you can't breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that your child will inherit the earth instead of collecting bins.

I know people who went to private school who came out with no better grades than me, and aren't in perilously lofty careers. They're not necessarily doing better than those of us who slogged it out in the cess-pits-of-educational-horror-where-ambition-goes-to-die. Private school might be a leg up, it might help the some to soar, there might be tiny classes and beautiful libraries. But you can still fail. You can still be bullied. You can still not get into Oxbridge. Just because, as Turner notes, Jeremy Hunt's youthful prediction that he was destined for Westminster proved true, a lot don't get close.

An expensive education can't paper over a lack of intelligence. Prep time is no substitute for parental interest and input. You might get into a better university with a public school's name on your CV, although thankfully as the myopic rant of the headmaster of Wellington College indicates it's not as much of a cake walk as it once was, but you won't get a first without hard work and self motivation.

Turner refutes the common adage that what state school children lack in success they make up for in greater breadth of social life, on the grounds that more intelligent children are set, and so are cloistered in their higher GCSE paper clique. But that wasn't the case at my school - we were set in most subjects by year nine, but regardless you didn't shun people with a different maths teacher. My school didn't have Eton's expansive playing fields, but I did extracurricular activities outside school through which I met a range of people and was pushed out of my comfort zone far more than I would have been if I spent seven years with the same people within the same walls.

This is certainly an advantage of state school, as a piece in the Independent challenging Clegg's choice highlights, but that article also suggests that you might pay for your greater social flexibility with a few GCSE grades. This riles me too. You can drop grades at any, even a private, school. I didn't do worse because I went to state school but have more diverse friends as a bonus. My schooling wasn't good just because of, or primarily due to, the by-products. I got eight A*s and 3 As at GCSE, I hold grade 8 on two instruments. It was also just good.

My parents could have sent me to private school. There are plenty where I grew up. But they didn't because they felt though I might miss some helping hands, I would be better educated at a local comp. They chose that school carefully, and perhaps we were lucky in the area we lived, but it was nevertheless just a normal state school. Hand wringing and a fear of what people would think didn't come into it. It was just the best choice. Private school might be the right choice for those who can afford it for some kids in some areas. But it is not always. And it doesn't guarantee anything.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2533746 2013-01-23T10:29:50-05:00 2013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/
But the Olympic spirit got to us all. When the young, unknown athletes lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony it felt like we had nailed what the Games are about. Legacy was more than just a PR buzz word, we really meant it.

Fired up we suddenly believed, believed it was worth it, that we could do it, that we were going to produce a new generation of British champions. Cynicism fell away. It wasn't all about money.

And yet. Now. The Olympic Stadium, the centre piece, where Mo Farah won his two golds and vogue-d it up with Usain. Where history was made, where the Paralympics reached new heights of acceptance and respect. Is going to host pop concerts.

Now I like music, I actually, truthfully, like music more than sport. But we already have the O2 -we saved the disaster of the Millennium Dome by the skin of our teeth by turning it into a music venue, why create competition a few miles down the road? And Wembley stages gigs perfectly well. London, Britain, doesn't need another big concert venue. It does need a world class, world sized athletics arena.

The 80,000 capacity Olympic Stadium aside, the largest athletics venue in the UK is the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield which holds 25,000. London's flagship ground, Crystal Palace, holds 22,000 tops.

In the Evening Standard London's Mayor Boris Johnson describes the relocation of Hard Rock Calling and the Wireless Festival from Hyde Park (due to complaints from residents) to the Olympic Park as "a ringing endorsement of our legacy plans."

But I really thought legacy was about building sport in the UK, and about sustainably reinvigorating the East End. So why are we seemingly only concerned with getting the biggest contract to use the Park, pushing athletics to the sidelines for gigs?

Because yes, athletics will still be held there, it's being downgraded not erased. And maybe we don't need an athletics stadium that large. But we should be looking at how to get the most sporting use out of it possible, making sport the priority, encouraging a long-term community and buzz around the Park. Not patting ourselves on the back for scoring Olympic sized crowds for nothing more than a few, blurred and confused concerts.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2426028 2013-01-08T04:57:22-05:00 2013-03-09T05:12:01-05:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/
Posturing over a referendum on Britain's EU membership is the political order of the day, and accusations of Euro-human-rights-madness-keeping-murderers-and-rapists-on-our-streets abound: euro-scepticism is having a moment. MEP bashing up, Europhilia down.

But on trend or not, I just can't get on board. I love the EU. Always have.

Maybe it's because as a small child with a funny sounding surname - once roundly dismissed by a primary school supply teacher as "unpronounceable" despite the fact she hadn't, actually, even tried - I made sense of myself in terms of continent as well as country. I am proudly British born and raised, if only partially bred, but I still like feeling that the countries I can't see just over the sea are sort of mine too, where I come from too, that they shape my world too. One big happy family.

And the EU is the tie which binds. Next year is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, the Great War, the war to end all wars, except a mere 21 years later troops were again facing off on Europe's beaches, landing grounds, fields and streets. Founded to make 'never again' stick, the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for successfully intertwining the interests of its members so closely that fighting between them is a thing of the past. But this isn't ancient history; the last British person to remember both wars, 110-year-old Reg Dean, only died yesterday.

And it's not just a fuzzy, hug-in-a-mug ideal. The EU meant I could move to Ireland to work last year - setting up shop writing from a friend's kitchen in Dublin mere weeks after really, properly, deciding I was going. An American friend spent four years at Uni there, only to be told despite his real, proper, tech job he couldn't stay.

It meant that visiting Paris in 2010, as an under 26-year-old from another EU state, I could see the Mona Lisa, Quasimodo's bell and Monet's waterlillies for free.

And the much lampooned EU law, that last level of checks removed from the temptations of domestic political expediency, makes me feel we have some semblance of a shot at doing something about climate change. It makes me feel I couldn't be totally screwed by my employer if/when I decide to have kids.

I wish we would approach our relationship with the EU as a marriage that needed work but that we were nevertheless committed to. The love of our life. Instead of having a midlife crisis and threatening to jack it all in to go off by ourselves, our coked up, bloated ego pulling shapes in a personalised number plated Porche. Let's renew our vows. UK <3 EU 4eva.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1344327 2012-03-14T09:00:00-04:00 2012-05-14T05:12:01-04:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/
The flow of tweets is testament to the fact that sexual assault is incredibly common. It is not something that happens to "other people." But victims are still stigmatised, we still don't engage with it, it is still too hard to report.

I really believe talking and tweeting can help to change that. Among the #ididnotreport tweets, I was pointed to a blog post Dawn Foster wrote last week about the general acceptance of common place street harassment and the collection of tweets people had sent her about it.

When I read Dawn's description of "fizzing anger" after being harassed, of walking on, trying to get passed the incident but feeling sick all day, I recognised it. And I remembered how much it can do to be reminded that you were not "weird" or "over the top" to feel like that. It makes it easier to talk. And that might make it easier to report.

The particular incident I was reminded of happened a few months ago as I walked to work. It wasn't the most "serious" assault, it's not the first sexual assault I have experienced, it's not the first time I haven't reported it. But it is the only one I have ever tried to put into words. I wrote about it the same day. Older, more determined that it was wrong and that I shouldn't feel ashamed or stupid I wanted to publically shout and stamp. But until I read other people's stories I didn't feel able to post it.
________________________________________________________________________

Yesterday, as I walked to work, a man came up behind me. I didn't hear him coming, I didn't see him coming, as I, like everyone else on the South Bank, battled wind and rain with my hood up.

He whispered something in my ear as he placed him hand on my bum. I don't remember what he said, but I shouted. I asked him what the fuck he was doing, and why he thought he could do that to someone. But I heard my words as if they were spoken by someone else, as I watched him walk up the flight of stairs up to London Bridge. Calmly, not dawdling but at no real pace. He didn't look back. No one else looked round. I was left wondering if I was actually whispering. If I should have kept yelling, gone after him, struck out.

As I walked across the bridge I could see him on the other side, watched his red baseball jacket moving further away. Did he think it was funny? Was it meant as a compliment? Or was it just meant to make me feel the way it did - threatened, vulnerable, inadequate. Wondering if my skirt was too tight, checking in the mirror at work when I was alone. A passing game, power trip, kick for him that left me still feeling shit when I got home.

It is not a sexual assault on the magnitude of so many others. It does not compare to those experiences, to the stories that have emerged recently from the protests in Egypt. But it's still not right. It's still not ok. Without becoming a ghastly patriot, I expect better in the UK, in London. Maybe I should be thicker skinned, shrug or laugh it off, but why should I when he was in the wrong? When someone touching me in that manner without consent is, however minor, a sexual assault. Shrugging it off won't stop people behaving like that. But what else is there to do? An act so trivial, who do you tell, what it the cost for him? I was the only one could who respond so I'm left feeling stupid for not having done more. I worry he will have done something to someone else, something worse.

You might think I'm hysterical, over the top, a prude. But I didn't want to have my ass grabbed by a stranger. It concerns me that I feel I need to apologise for that. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1260146 2012-02-08T19:00:00-05:00 2012-04-09T05:12:01-04:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/ been removed from the site.

Of all the debates the social networking company has stumbled into, this is one of the more unexpected. Facebook say that photos in which the baby isn't "actively" feeding break their rules on nudity.

While I have sympathy with the need to monitor what is put on the site, the fact that the company also emphasises that most pictures which are taken down have been reported by other users shows that this is part of a wider, ongoing squeamishness about breastfeeding.

Despite the fact that it has been illegal in the UK to ask a woman to leave a public place because she is breast feeding since 2010, its appropriateness is still discussed. Worse, people still actively make women feel uncomfortable about it. Less than a year ago a mother was asked to leave a pub on Hampstead High Street in London because she was breastfeeding her seven-month-old baby and it was putting other customers off their food.

A male friend once told me that breastfeeding in public was "the equivalent of putting porn on the bottom shelf of a newsagent." That puts the debate in the same category as the one over whether pop videos are over sexualised and about what can be shown before the watershed, a moralistic stance that suggests children will be corrupted by seeing a baby breastfeeding or that adults will be offended.

Facebook's action also puts photographs of breastfeeding in the same category as pornographic pictures. But breastfeeding is not a sexy thing to do. I have also never seen a woman try to sexualise it. No one (at least in my experience) is expressing milk, baby engaged while blatantly flashing both their boobs, shaking them around, licking their lips and making eye contact with every man in the room. They are discreetly feeding their child. And while they may have lovely additional uses, that is the purpose of breasts. It should hardly raise an eyebrow. Nor should it be compared with lining up porn next to Grazia and Disney Princess magazine.

Perhaps the problem is not that breastfeeding is misconstrued as sexy, but that people know it is not. But our perceptions of women's bodies are so skewed that we don't understand breasts in a non sexual context. The same male friend told me that it made him uncomfortable, that he didn't know where to look when women breastfed. Maybe the Facebook users who reported the photographs which sparked the protests felt the same. But here an old cliché provides useful advice. Why don't you just look at their face? ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1082052 2011-11-08T12:24:10-05:00 2012-01-08T05:12:01-05:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/
I know you're both having a bad day, what with people talking about how you badmouthed a fellow world leader when you thought your microphones were off and all, but I wanted to tell you that last week, on a train, I spoke to my boyfriend about someone I know. And I wasn't very nice.

This was not an isolated incident; in fact there are uncountable variations of time, place, and listener which could be inserted into that sentence. And I know I'm not the only one, because I listen to people slagging off their friends, colleagues, lovers, brothers and mothers every time I take public transport. I'm just letting you know you're not alone.

Luckily for me, on last week's train, the person I was speaking about wasn't there. But they have been. And so I know how you feel. It's always the same - the moment when your listener's eyes widen and you carry on with renewed vigour, convinced it is a sign of endorsement, only to realise they were warning you the person you're talking about is now standing next to you. Or that what you've said was just broadcast to lots of journalists.

Then you change the subject clumsily, talking too fast, voice slightly too high, while your face, chest and stomach move into panic mode, cringing, tingling and yelling "awful, awful, awful" over and over. (You will behave similarly next time you see Binyamin.)

And all the time you'll be trying to justify yourself. Not to them. You're still waffling about how pointless the new McDonalds advert, which just reminds us that they're everywhere, is, as if everyone didn't already know. Haha. But your brain is telling you they didn't hear, you weren't talking that loudly, they don't read newspapers. Or that what you said wasn't that bad. And they probably needed to know.

Then you'll leave, quickly. Or pretend it never happened. Or continue to refuse to comment. Wise moves.

But does it matter if people hear what you say about them? Probably not. The person you spoke about usually gets over it or you don't care that they don't, whether you and they control countries' budgets and bombs or are mainly concerned with keeping clear of urban foxes.

Whether you think countries get on because it's mutually beneficial or you think how leaders relate to each other matters, these jibes change nothing. The former clearly isn't altered by them, and Netanyahu must have cottoned on to the fact that you, B.O, find him annoying - Israel/Palestine is a major headache, especially the year before an election.

N.S, your comment is similarly unsurprising; France's recent pro-Palestine vote at Unesco means Israel can't really be in the dark about your general feelings. And to put things in perspective Netanyahu probably cares more about that than about you thinking he's a liar, and you did that publically on purpose.

I hope you feel better.

Caroline

P.S Gordon (Brown. You've met) did something similar once and that all died down pretty quickly.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1069579 2011-11-01T13:17:25-04:00 2012-01-01T05:12:01-05:00

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-argyropulopalmer/
So far, so per my "type", according to a new IFS study - an August baby, three times more likely to perform below average than if I had been born on my due date, September 3.

My headmaster's concerns were not without cause. At the time my writing oscillated between being as small as I could possibly make it, having sharpened my pencil to a ferocious point to write in what was basically a series of dots, and failing to fit more than three gargantuan words on a line.

But the report's findings didn't play out long term. After my, admittedly, slow start, I found my footing among my older classmates. I was in the top set for every subject by secondary school, and, despite being 20% less likely to, went to a Russell Group university where I got a First.

The most adverse effects my age had were that it was hard to get people together on my birthday because it was the summer holidays, and that I was still 17 when I got my A-level grades, meaning the celebrations were tinged with trying to get away with using a friend's ID without raising too many questions.

Perhaps I represent an exception, not a tendency, and I recognise the unfairness the report highlights of being seen as behind my classmates when in reality I had just had less practice. I probably did need more support. But had I started school later, or at a slower speed than those who were my academic peers for the next 13 years, I would always have felt on the back foot. It would have altered my friendship group. And it wouldn't have changed the fact that some children will always be younger, and a lot younger in some cases, than other people in their class.

Children who struggle need help - but that help needs to be subtle and not determined by when you were born; it's not just August babies who find school difficult sometimes, and it's not all August babies.

I also think part of the reason why my inauspicious birth never affected me was because it never occurred to me that it would. My mum always told me she was thrilled I was born early. She said I was too clever to be in the year below, and that she would have fought to have me put up a year if I had been born in September. She didn't hold me back because I was a summer baby - she bolstered my confidence so that I didn't suffer from the insecurity the report warns August babies are prone to.

Had my parents had told me that I was struggling aged six, I would have been mortified, insecure, and disheartened, never mind that it wasn't my fault, just the luck of the birthday draw. As it was I was told about the meeting with my headmaster when I started university, after the gap year I took, thrilled that I could have that year but still be the same age as other freshers. I was able to laugh it off, and feel pleased I'd proved him wrong. The report says children born in August feel less like they "control their own destiny" - perhaps had I known my destiny was so heavily weighted on the side of failure, I would have felt like that too. And perhaps I would look more like the August baby the report paints.]]>