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Anorak News | Bully Beef

Bully Beef

by | 13th, April 2004

‘YOU’RE feeling sleepy… You’re feeling sleepy… You’re now in a deep sleep…

Maggie prepares to knuckle Denis on his bald head

You’re back at school, you’ve just finished Mr Glossop’s double maths class and you’re enjoying a well-earned half pint of milk in the playground.

And then…across the yard you see her, all blonde hair and attitude, surrounded by henchmen and sycophants as she muscles her way past the other pupils and comes towards you.

She snatches the milk out of your hand and downs it in one gulp to the cheers of her toadies, pins you up against the wall and empties the lunch money from your pocket.

It’s a painful memory, we know, but it is important that you remember because it turns out that you weren’t the only victim of this nefarious bully.

In fact, according to the Telegraph, even at the age of 78, she continues to torment a new generation of school children…and their teachers.

Or so says Pat Lerew, a teacher for 30 years and president of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union Of Women Teachers.

She says Lady Thatcher (for that is the miscreant’s name) is responsible for instilling a lack of respect for authority in many of today’s parents.

‘There are children who answer back all the time and won’t take instructions,’ she complains to the paper.

‘You ask them to be quiet and someone starts talking and you ask them to stop and they say they didn’t speak, and then they do it again and you ask them to be quiet and they say they didn’t do anything and five minutes of the lesson have been lost.

‘If you discipline a child for bad behaviour or not doing their homework, many parents come in and take the child’s side and say they have done nothing wrong.’

If this is all Thatcher’s fault, then so is another symptom in the breakdown of society – growing informality.

Obviously in Anorak Towers, we still address each other as Mr Barrett and Miss Loos, but we’re sad to report the same degree of politeness does not exist outside these four damp walls.

‘It is generally accepted,’ says Mrs Lerew, ‘that children call adults by their first names and speak to their parents and other adults in a way that would not have been tolerated when I was growing up.’

If only we had shouted ‘Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatcher, Out, Out, Out’ instead of ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out’, how different things might be.’



Posted: 13th, April 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink