"Even if I got rid of all my problems, I'd just go out and get new ones..."

Left wing, right wing. Anyone remember the Cold War?
8:16 p.m. on 2003-10-24

I suppose I should explain something about the criminology night classes I have been attending for three weeks.

Well, not explain. Rant.

I have never been to a night class before. Neither has my friend Hayley. But hey, we figured, since we weren't studying anymore and we both had an interest in criminology, it might be fun!

How wrong we were.

This is aimed at pre-GCSE level - which means 14 year olds can understand. 14 year old chimps, I'm not sure. I think they blanked out the "chimp" bit. We are provided with our lesson plan and list of aims, which we then achieve by completing the homework every week. Our lesson is then given - in the form of handouts, which are read to us by our teacher.

Occasionally we will get into a debate. Well, more a discussion. Well... I'm not sure if it can even be called that. It does involve a man called Malcolm who believes all gay people are sick. I want to shove my fist down his throat and pull out his internal organs. And I'm not the only one.

We will talk about recent cases, of which the details are so sketchy that only Hayley, myself, and a very nice woman with a psychology degree whose name I can't remember, know the full facts. Our teacher will outline what she believes to be the key points of an issue in a most superficial manner, without recognising the key flaws.

Oh yes, our teacher. A dithery woman, she has "nerves." I didn't think anyone outside of an Agatha Christie novel had "nerves." But she does. She dithers her way through the first half hour, pulling crumpled tissues and biros out of her handbag in wild abandon as she searches for a stapler, apparantly "essential" since she forgot to connect our two handouts and we might lose one.

We are chimps, after all.

She seems to know much less about the subject than we do. This week the highlight was when she said the US Constitution gave every American citizen the right to have a gun (not quite what it says, I think you'll find), and that the UK didn't belong to any Bill of Rights. When I mentioned the Universal Declaration of Human Rights she first suggested this was an American thing, and then admitted she hadn't heard of it.

*sigh*

It's taking us three weeks to define the difference between a criminal case, and a civil one. After one week, Malcolm announced he "thought" he had finally grasped the difference. "A criminal case is where there is intent, and a civil case is where there isn't. Is that right?"

It was after that that Hayley and I started playing West Wing-themed Hangman.

I realise that if we were learning Mandarin or Accountancy, the course would probably have to start at this level. But I always thought that knowing the difference between political left and right, or between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, was fairly obvious.

Apparantly I was wrong. And it's depressing to think that those most vehement Daily Mail readers, such as Malcolm, ready to slag off asylum seekers, homosexuals, single mothers and the homeless in a single breath, have no actual clue as to how the British legal system and government work.

On top of this, I am currently temping in an office while an ugly, arrogant bald man snarks at me and his mother does the vacuuming whilst sat down. My mother spends every waking moment telling me to "get down those agencies" to find a job, despite the fact that she herself has never been to an agency and anyone who has used one has nothing but bad words for them. In the end, I decided to treat the former problem with some retail therapy (two Tori Amos albums and the Shrek DVD) and the latter problem by simply not listening.

It's a policy that has served my little sister well for the past 19 years so it's about time I gave it a go.

Apologies for being so grouchy. Will eat some Oreos and cheer up while watching "Dead Like Me."

Listening to: "Places" - Ours

Quote: "I see the morning paper, I crumble it to bits 'cause it's bad again. How long will it take us to find out that this is it?"

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