Growing Pains in Action

How interesting, with the Moon conjunct Mars in Leo, Jupiter in Cancer and Saturn in Scorpio that today’s headlines are about Britain’s hungry school children. The poor little mites are coming to school hungry and are resorting to stealing sandwiches from the canteen to feed their starving families later. The teachers are even feeding them biscuits to stave off hunger pains!!

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/19/breadline-britain-hungry-schoolchildren-breakfast

This term I had a bit (an understatement) of a to-do with my school over designer school bags. I mean if Adidas or Nike want our school to promote their products, I think they should:

a)            Pay us for doing so or,

b)            Give us some of their products for free

But neither of these things has happened.

Anyhoooo, after a standoff that I eventually lost (*snork snork*), our pupils are once again parading around with £40-50 Nike or Adidas bags.

Really Alex, I hear you ask, don’t you have something better to do than to deprive our future generation of their much loved and needed toys?

Well no. I reckon nearly £400,000 (that would be the total sum forked out for school bags for each pupil in a school of 1,000 children) of someone’s hard earned money ends up paying for some CEO’s weekend in Monte Carlo. My idea was that our pupils utilise our local market so parents can buy decent bags at a fraction of the price and the profits from said bags go into the pockets of our local business men and women rather than into the coffers of an international corporation. That way the hungry men and women of Walthamstow benefit by having a bit more jingle in their pockets so the whole community can benefit. That way some child not on free school meals does not have the opportunity to flash his/her affluence in the face of our many, many pupils who are on free school meals. You know, exercise a little equality.

But oh no, that’s not how capitalism works.

It has to be that the large multinational corporations exploit child slaves in third world countries and we in the first world are so brain washed that we can’t even think about telling our parents to put two fingers up these corporations and buy local. After all, school children NEED their bags with logos!!

As my Australian friend said: “Are you serious? A family can’t afford to make a sandwich for their child’s lunch but can afford to buy an Adidas bag or two?”

I know poverty exists in a first world country but for crying out loud, let’s get our priorities straight! Get parents to feed their children first and then worry about the damn bags!! And don’t even get me started on mobile phones!!

I would really welcome some much needed dialogue on how we can support parents in making a decision between a necessity and a luxury. Such is the lesson of Saturn in Scorpio and Jupiter in Cancer. . .spare a thought for the adolescents who are experiencing their first Jupiter returns or Saturn oppositions and have a big lesson to learn.