和妈一向低血压，最近尤其低，所以早上起床常眼前发黑，上周也在办公室小晕了一下，吓得和爸火速回英，不顾一路风尘，直接买回上好牛排，外套一脱卷起袖子下厨煎，然后端到和妈面前，一脸严肃说你再不吃红肉这时都要吃了，为了melody为了你自己。
牛排的味道当然远非鲜嫩可口，看在是他亲手所制，和妈干脆利落干下两块牛排，和爸这才恢复他平日的嬉皮笑脸，问，我小女儿还好吗？翻跟头没？ 你要告诉她今天的饭是她爹做得，因为她能听到你的声音了。
冷夏的夜，空气里是南英格兰honeysuckle的香气，和妈拈起一朵笑道，明天夏天我们可以用金银花给妹妹洗澡，和爸也笑明年夏天我们一家骑车去海边，躺在沙滩上静听风吟，但首先这个冬天，我要与和和一起痛快溜冰。
也因为这，每天清晨妈妈都会送上一杯热柠檬水与一碗水果，让自己吃了后再慢慢起床，避免眩晕；而妈妈也是在35岁时孕育了自己，作为她的老巴子女儿，和妈得到了很多很多额外的关爱。
这个夏天虽然很有些画地为牢，但迎接一个新生命的喜悦与憧憬也能让人更明白为什么要惜福。

看了下面这张图，应该讲，意料之中情理之外，也感概为什么第一代移民们基本只能做技术活或者与技术相关的行业，要承认这个社会的玻璃天花板，不是在变薄而是更厚实。
所以要认真想一个问题： 扎根进入一个社会的过程比表象中的‘融入’要艰难得多,从这一点说，孩子们需要深入某一种社会与文化，在一种主导文化的前提下文化多元可以怡情，却很难互换。

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8160052.stm

Top professions such as medicine and law are increasingly being closed off to all but the most affluent families, a report into social mobility has said.

Former minister Alan Milburn has chaired a study for the prime minister on widening access to high-status jobs.

He says young people in England should have access to much better careers advice to boost their ambitions.

Mr Milburn told the BBC: "We have raised the glass ceiling but I don't think we have broken through it yet."

He said the professions had a "closed shop mentality" and "have become more and not less exclusive over time".

"It's not that Britain doesn't have talent, to coin a phrase - Britain has lots of talent," he added.

"What we have got to do is open up these opportunities so they are available for everybody."

But speaking to BBC News, Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts said Mr Milburn was presenting an "Edwardian" view of the class system.

"If you only brought back selection into state schools and you had grammar schools again and you had a decent education system, people would be able to power though this," Mr Letts added.

"We have a country in which a former circus manager's son, John Major, became prime minister - don't talk about glass ceilings."

But Mr Milburn rejected the suggestion that grammar schools should be re-introduced, saying that they might have worked when there were 250,000 university students but would not be relevant when there were 2.5 million.

The wide-ranging study by an independent panel of experts, Fair Access to the Professions, calls for more equal opportunities in education and employment.

It wants to raise the aspirations of more young people to have the expectations of professional families, giving them confidence when making decisions about university and jobs.

'Forgotten middle class'

The report warns that people entering careers such as medicine, law and journalism are increasingly likely to be from more affluent families.

Currently 75% of judges and 45% of senior civil servants are privately educated.

The report does not only focus on the poorest part of the population - but suggests that many middle-income families are also missing out in an increasingly polarised jobs market.

Mr Milburn warned of the "forgotten middle class" which could not compete with the advantages of the most privileged families, but which also did not benefit from the support targeted at the poorest.

The report also criticises informal recruitment systems, such as internships and work placement, as becoming a back-door for better-off, better-connected youngsters.

ITV executive chairman Michael Grade, a member of the panel, said the current internship system, based on "who you know", was "grossly unfair".

Another member of the panel, Major General David McDowall, said there needed to be more support for other ways of helping young people to develop ambition, through voluntary activities such as scouting or the Duke of Edinburgh awards.

The report recommendations include:

• University students should be recruited from a wider range of social backgrounds, with no-fee degrees for students living at home
• Higher education to be more widely available in further education education colleges
• Universities to become more involved in schools, such as by having representatives on boards of governors.
• Professions and universities to publish more details on the social background of their intake
• Better careers advice raising pupils' aspirations
• More extra-curricular activity for state school pupils, such as cadet forces
• Help for parents to move their children out of under-performing schools

The report says much more needs to be done on university admissions - with fears that the university system can reinforce disadvantage rather than reduce it.

The efforts to widen participation had so far not been cost effective, Mr Milburn suggested. 

There were also calls for an "acceleration" of school reform, such as increasing the number of academies and support for parents wanting to take their children out of failing schools - which Mr Milburn described as a "ghetto" of disadvantage.

The prime minister's official spokesman said Gordon Brown welcomed the report, which would get "a fair wind" in Whitehall, while Business Minister Pat McFadden said it provided "a welcome and rigorous examination of where we have done well and where we have fallen short".

He added: "We share the aim of the report's authors - to enhance the life chances of every young person regardless of their background or income."

David Willetts, Shadow Universities and Skills Secretary, welcomed the proposals on careers advice and school reform.

"We also welcome his suggestions on broadening access to university. The report would have been even better if it had tackled the need for strong families and better training opportunities," said Mr Willetts.

Lib Dem schools spokesman David Laws said finding the resources to tackle social mobility in the coming years would be a "challenge".

"Labour's tragedy is that on many measures Britain is less equal today than it was when Tony Blair was elected in 1997," Mr Laws said.

"Alan Milburn's report includes some useful proposals to improve social mobility - but the most important measures must involve early intervention and improved educational opportunities."

The British Medical Association (BMA) said it welcomed some of the report's recommendations, but said the government had restricted Mr Milburn's remit too tightly.

Tim Crocker-Buqueof the BMA said just 4% of medical students came from the bottom two socio-economic groups, adding: "Fee exemptions for students living at home will not solve this problem as most medical students do not live within travelling distance of the 32 medical schools in the UK."

Collette Marshall, Save the Children UK director, said the government "needs to close the educational attainment gap far earlier" if it wants to widen access.

照片是五月底的，学校深喑生财之道，一张集体照要收70镑，这两张照片要先看样本-预订-交钱-寄到，100镑划掉，和爸又禁止和妈用扫描仪，等到他扫出来都七月下旬了。 问和和那天拍照是怎样的情形，她报告，有个怪叔叔蹲了一天，觉得他很有趣。 学期结束时，和妈才得以第一次进学校的游泳池，看和和在水中畅游，不骄傲是假的，小朋友也很搞笑，一起脱衣穿衣，性别暂时不存在，一个个肉乎乎的，都是小精灵。 运动会上，小朋友比赛，父母也被学校捉弄，要男女混合跑步，怎么跑呢？爸爸妈妈们要按前后顺序手从档部穿过牵在一起，和妈庆幸自己大肚子不用去邯郸学步而且丑态频出。

刚开始时，都比较乐观，据说得过68年hong kong flu的人应该问题不大，而且流感年年有，也总有生命丧失，比如和爸最印象深刻，从前做见习医生时的第一位病人就因流感去世，这也是他签过的第一份死亡证明。
几周前在机场，和和与人卖弄几句西班牙语，和妈也加入聊了几分钟，很快得知他们一家从墨西哥来，心里愣了一下，耳语和爸，和爸不以为然道现在哪里都有swine flu,放宽心。
英国，伯明翰与伦敦是重灾区，GP朋友上周还安慰，我们小城到目前还没有患者，最近的城里也只有两个。
这周，患者出现，如同新闻里那句恶心的话，别急，流感很快会抵达你的街区！
朋友孩子才1岁，高烧39.3，GP赶紧发Tamiflu,也不管有无对儿童的临床测试，同是医生的父亲苦笑接药，当然不给儿子吃。
同样，即使下月开始提供疫苗，5岁以下的孩子与孕妇怎么个说法？ 打还是不打？这是个问题，和爸自然说NO.
昨晚NHS终于出了正式告示，请孕妇与5岁以下的小儿童少去人多的地方，而且避免不必要的旅行。
之前和妈就砍掉了几个出行的计划，现在更是憋在家里，和爸充当采购员，大姑子还特别嘱咐不要买超市里露天的面包沙拉。
Finger Crossed!

P.S., 今天卫报上讲到私立学校的‘unfair advantage/the hidden benefits of a private-school education/',和妈心有戚戚，和和reception8个人的小班，简直是被老师们包围着，也可以理解和和对荷兰公立学校的不感冒，英国几家公立学校能有自己的室内游泳池网球场剧场与巨大的运动场,甚至专门的厨师班子？英国这个社会奇怪得鼓励两头生孩子，要么super-rich,要不依赖政府福利，中间的同志们就苦苦挣扎吧。

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jul/19/alan-milburn-uk-unequal-society

• Alan Milburn
• The Observer, Sunday 19 July 2009

The UK's professions are world-leaders. Our doctors, lawyers, teachers and armed services, among others, make an enormous contribution to our society. They are also central to Britain's economic future.

After the second world war, a huge growth in professional employment was the engine that got Britain moving socially. By opening their doors to people from a rich variety of backgrounds, the professions created unheard-of opportunities for millions of men and women.

In the decades since then, social mobility has slowed. But that long-running decline may have bottomed out. And with up to 7 million more people needed in the professions by 2020, a second great wave of social mobility is possible in the near future. But it won't just happen. It has to be made. I grew up on a council estate and was lucky enough to end up in the cabinet. I am part of the most socially mobile generation our country has ever seen.

The postwar Labour government's towering achievements - full employment, universal education and a new welfare state - helped millions of people, me included, to realise the new opportunities brought by social and economic change. Likewise, today we need to look beyond the confines of the global economic recession and prepare our country for the opportunities that lie ahead. This and future governments should make the creation of a fair, open and mobile society their number one social priority.

This week I will publish the report of the panel I have been chairing on how professional careers can be open to people of talent regardless of background. In recent years, the professions have made great efforts to expand the pool from which they recruit and government has made much progress in tackling poverty.

The glass ceiling has been raised as a result. But it has not been broken. The gender pay gap has narrowed, but the top professional jobs still go to men, not women. And the professions seem to have become more socially exclusive, not less. Three in four judges and one in two senior civil servants are still privately educated. The evidence my panel has been given indicates that today's doctors and lawyers grew up in families with incomes two-thirds higher than the average family.

There is a chasm between where we are and where we need to be if Britain is to realise the social benefits of a huge potential growth in professional employment. This is more than an issue for those at the very bottom of society. It is an issue for the majority, not the minority.

It matters to what President Clinton famously called the "forgotten middle class". If that growth in social exclusivity is not checked, it will be more and more middle-class kids, not just working-class ones, who miss out.

You can see that in the way getting an internship - nowadays an essential rung on the professional career ladder - depends on who you know, not what you know. Or in the way access to extra-curricular activities, vital to developing the soft skills that employers value, depends on the sort of school children attend. Private schools prioritise such activity. By and large, state schools do not. That disadvantages the state-educated child in the labour market and needs to change.

Too many able children from average middle-income families lose out in the race for professional jobs. It has long been recognised that the UK is an unequal society in which class background too often determines life chances. So it is welcome that, in the past decade, the government has focused on tackling disadvantage.

But we need a new recognition: that a closed-shop mentality means too many people from middle-income as well as low-income families find doors shut to their talents. And we need a new focus: unleashing aspiration, not just beating poverty.

The panel's report will make more than 80 recommendations on how the professions, the government and others can unleash the pent-up aspiration that exists in young people. There is no single lever or organisation that can prise open the professions. It is as much about family networks as it is careers advice, individual aspirations as school standards, university admission procedures as well as career development opportunities.

We know not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer - and not everyone will want to be - but those with ability and aptitude need a fair crack of the whip to realise their aspirations. We will suggest how that could happen. And in more disadvantaged communities we need to go further by entering new territory for public policy and finding new ways of raising the aspirations of those youngsters and families who simply do not believe they will ever progress.

It is not that many young people do not have aspirations. It is that they are blocked. It is not that they do not have talent. To coin a phrase, Britain's got talent - lots of it. It is not ability that is unevenly distributed in our society. It is opportunity. In this sense, the professions simply reflect a wider problem: a governing assumption in too many of our institutions that progress can be achieved on the basis of a limited pool of talent having access to a limited set of opportunities. Such elitism is unjust socially. And it can no longer work economically.

Our success in a globally competitive economy relies on using all of our country's talent, not just some of it. The old notion of a single track, single chance in life has to give way to a new one where opportunities are more widely available to people regardless of their backgrounds.

That means banishing any vestiges of a closed-shop mentality - either in the professions or in our society - once and for all.

这一周填了很多张表，从产假表到爷爷奶奶的荷兰居留证表，从和和的入学表到和爸的保险表，和和睡后，便是夫妻二人埋头干活的时间，英语的归和妈，和爸搞荷兰语的，热了几天温度又降了，夜微凉，灯光下的和爸吃力写着狗爬的字母，不忘抱怨这些机构为什么不与人与己方便用PDF版，敲敲就完事了；填完表是不够的，还需要各种辅助材料，于是，一袋一袋分门别类。
和爸履新那天也是和妈产假正式开始的那一天，有时不能不感概机缘凑巧，美美大概不会想到她让父母的时间表这么一致。
带薪产假有52周，和妈坚决从孕28周开始休起，当然，肯定黄鹤一去不返了，昨天主管还略带遗憾说，天大地大都比不上Melody大，看来你一天都不想多留；和妈承认，自己是投机的，选择公立机构不外乎就是喜欢弹性工作时间和大方的产假与补贴。
回忆起五年前有和和时，心情是何等简单，她像一个超级礼物让我们忘记这个世界还有其他完全沉湎在喜悦之中，看欧洲杯看环法看澳网看温网看奥运会，和爸还借蜜月之名去了一次澳洲，而美美则仿佛要测试父母的生活能力，能不能把工作搬家学校新生命都一一安排妥当？
下周奶奶开始她的英国环岛游，下下周和爸开始整理打包，和和小小儿童不知愁继续在学校的holiday club里傻乐，争取不让她目睹搬家前的那种狼狈与凑合，作为父母，我们有责任让她快乐多一点长一点。
美美的动静很明显，这种动静带来的满足与幸福是无法用语言表达的，每一次感受她的move,和爸总还是满脸惊喜，惊喜生命的从无到有，大概对于一名母亲来说，最欣慰的莫过于坚信他是好父亲，父亲节时，和和选了一张卡，上面写着：爸爸，你没有乔治克鲁尼帅，爸爸，你没有亨利会踢球，爸爸，你没有老艾尔顿有钱--但，你是我最爱的爹！ 这个爹陪她做蛋糕陪她看地图陪她种植物陪她观星识云，而且时时不忘解释简单科学道理，比如他们父女站在传送带上，和妈走路，和爸会问：为什么我们原地不动也可以与妈妈一样的速度？

搬家前的千头万绪超过预计，本来准备当甩手掌柜，任和爸处理，可惜他一双大手只会弄音响接线，对于房子家俱则两眼发直，双手一摊央求和妈帮助。
于是周末连续回荷兰，往往周六上午还在小城海边喝茶，晚上则在海牙带婆婆找好餐馆吃饭，上周去了一家离婆婆公公从前办公室很近的意大利餐馆，和爸间歇性路盲，居然是老太太指挥儿子顺利到达，她对国际法庭一带的熟悉令和妈刮目相看，报出的街名居然与GPS一字不差，从这一点说，她的脑子还很好使。
这家意大利餐馆有点私家菜的意思，进店冷冷清清，和妈有点疑惑，再往后走，才发现食客们都在花园里，相当的隐蔽；没有菜单，肥硕大厨就一屁股坐下抱着小黑板，当晚头盘就三种，主菜也只有三种，他意大利语荷兰语英语咕噜了半天，和妈选了羊肉，和爸老太太点了鱼，头盘都选了虾和猕猴桃沙拉，应该讲，羊肉与鲜桃烤相当美味可口，羊肉够嫩桃子够脆甜，可以在家试验。
带和和参观学校，直接的感概是哪怕硬件再好的荷兰公立学校都无法与老牌的英国私立学校比较，虽然小班虽然也要交‘赞助费’虽然孩子们也是英语流利，和和显然对新学校兴趣寥寥，她现在是最难搞的，假如提到搬家荷兰，她立即会红了眼睛，满脸不解为什么要离开她心爱的学校与小朋友，每每至此，和妈和爸叹息孩子这种天真的敏感，真抱歉我们必须为她做决定。
当然，小村是全荷兰排名第四的生活质量最高的居住地，是zuid-holland，南荷兰省第一的居住地，前三都在nord-holland，也就是离和爸婉拒的另外一份工作的附近；小村的好处和妈是承认的，自然环境优美，水源极好，沙滩绵延，公立学校一流，房价坚挺而且国际化，和妈不愁没有讲英语的妇女儿童组织。
昨夜月圆，雨后的夜空清澈，凌晨的海边公路只有风的声音，对于我们这样的成年人，离愁只是淡淡，因为没有非此即彼，但和妈会想念south downs的漫步与somerset house的露天电影，还有原野深处小村里宁静的下午茶。