Organic Practical - A Memory From Way Way Back

A long time ago, I dropped out of an Organic Chemistry degree.

I was in the first year. Barely a few months in. There was a practical. Thursday afternoon, practical. We had the job of making an organic compound. It was a solid, granular, crystalline product. We were given two weeks to synthesise it from phenetole and other compounds.

Not only were we to synthesise it - we had to purify the stuff and weigh it, check its purity after repeated extractions and crystallisations.

So after a week and a half, I had all of this stuff together in a conical flask, ready to begin the process of making the crystalline solid, when the KLUTZ at the bench next to me knocked my conical flask into the sink.

I just stood there, watching as one and a half weeks’ work drained away down the sink, and the stricken face of the student. I remember slowly, methodically, collecting each glass piece as the teacher watched, horrified. For safety’s sake, each glass piece went into a sharps bin that the teacher supplied me. I silently cleaned up the mess on the bench, packed all my gear away, checked that the student on the other side of me was all right - she was numb with shock - wrote something my my lab book, handed in my lab book, and just left the lab with the whole lab full of first year students staring at me.

About the only thing I said was “Are you all right?” to the innocent student to my right. Each lab experiment I made began with "Experiment began,” date, time by the laboratory clock over the door, “Session ended,” same date/time notation , and “Experiment continued,” same date/time notation. I noted the apparatus used, noted the clearing away of the apparatus at the end of each session, even the room temp during each session. I used to be meticulous like that.

That day’s note in the lab book read “Experiment could not be completed due to mishap,” followed by “Experiment ended,” date, time. Signed.

I never went back to that lab, or to that course, again.

Eventually, in 1995, I wound up doing a Computer Studies course and I got a BSc (Hons) 2:1. But I recently found myself wondering about that lab incident, and how it just utterly, totally, changed my life.

I got my first taste of what it was like being an adult - that you could put your heart and soul into a project, and get nothing, NOTHING, to show for it as a result.

It took me a long time after that to find my feet, to find my purpose - and I have been following my purpose since. But thanks to that KLUTZ next to me, whose name I cannot even remember now, I have reminded myself always to pursue only those goals where I would have, at the end, something to show for it, even if the only thing was one person smiling.

And I have always remembered that lesson that if you are faced with a situation where something you have been working so hard on turns out to be a waste of your time, you can still quietly wash your hands of it, turn and walk away, taking your dignity with you. If nothing else, you can at least leave with that.

Ed Miliband's Apology

So Ed Miliband has sent out an email to everybody he's let down.

Here's what he wrote.

This is not the email I wanted to be writing to you today. I am profoundly sorry for the defeat we suffered, and more grateful than I can express for the support that you have shown me, and our party, throughout this campaign.

I take full responsibility for the result of the election, and that’s why it’s absolutely right that I step down as Labour’s leader today.

It has been the utmost privilege to serve this party as your leader, and to spend the last four-and-a-half years fighting for the millions of British families who need and deserve the fairness, compassion and opportunity that only a Labour government can provide.

Yet while defeats are hard, we are a party that will never stop fighting for the working people of this country. Britain needs a strong Labour Party and it is the responsibility of each of us to continue the fight. The stakes are too high to wait for others to lead.

It isn’t simply leaders who achieve change, it is people that make change happen. I will never give up on that idea, I will never give up on our cause and I will never give up on our fight.

Thank you again for everything, and please, keep on fighting too. The course of progress and social justice is never simple or straightforward, and change happens because people like us don’t give up.

Yours,
Ed

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And here is my reply to the erstwhile Labour leader:-

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That has to include unemployed and disabled people, and grassroots groups such as Bring Back British Rail and others such as ORG, People's Assembly and many others.

Labour have ignored these people and thought they would be able to go their own way with their austerity - lite message.

You just learned the hard way that you were wrong.

Apology accepted. But now give a thought to the millions who are going to end up suffering all across the UK, all because they have no choice but to live under the tories' brutal, cruel cuts and ideological dehumanisation of unemployed people, poor people and disabled people.

Hate crimes are going to go up, violence and deprivation will increase - this country is going to burn, because of Labour policy failure.

If you have a hope at all, reach out and embrace the SNP, Plaid and the Greens. Your numbers will have to count from now on. Even talk to the Lib Dems - maybe their new leader won't be a Cameron crony like Clegg, and they have got a lot of rebuilding to do.

As does Labour.

You really should not have sat by and tacitly approved the tories' dehumanisation of the non-working poor people of Britain. Theirs would have been the swing vote - but they all voted for ukip because they sang a better tune than Ed Balls' tory-lite, austerity-lite dirge. True, ukip were lying through their teeth - but they found a better home amid liars than among men who promised suffering and meant it.

So really, while I accept your apology, I can never really forgive - because millions of deaths are now going to happen across the UK, through cuts, cuts and more tory cuts. You had a chance to deliver us from them, and you failed - not because you were the same as them, but because nobody liked your message.

Oh, and siding with Westminster against Scotland in the referendum? You shot yourselves in the head there. That, nobody will forgive Labour for.
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