The Waiting Time
| Title | The Waiting Time |
| Place | Europe including the United Kingdom |
| Publication date | 1998 |
| Pages | Large format 389 |
| Price | £9.99 |
| Author | Gerald Seymour |
| Publisher | Bantam Press |
| Edition |
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| Special features (maps, etc.) |
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| ISBN | 0593042492 |
The Waiting Time, by Gerald Seymour, is about the past, yet it is set in today. It is about a murder during the time of the ‘cold war’, when East and West were jockeying for position and power. It happens before the ‘wall’ comes down and reunification of West and West Germany, but we follow the four main characters of Dieter Krause, Tracy Burns, Albert Perkins, and Josh Mantle through their trials and tribulations as one is chasing to prevent the truth coming out, and one is searching for evidence of the truth, and one is looking for redemption, and one is being puppet master.
This is not a whodunit as we already know who got killed, and where, and when, and by whom! It is an exploration of stamina and willpower to continue with all the odds appearing to be against you, and that includes governmental agencies.
As with most stories, yu develop a sympathy for some of the characters, what is unusual in this story, is that you have sympathy for both the hunter and the prey. The hunter is trying to protect his past and his future, whilst the prey is trying to let go of the past and to pay homage. The two ancillary characters have their own motives and it is interesting to see how they play out against each other.
I would recommend reading ‘The Waiting Time, by Gerald Seymour. It is not an easy read, but it is one which engages and which is definitely worth persevering with.
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Over the last 40+ years that I have been involved in the LGBTQ community, I have been privileged to witness the acceptance of gay people into the general community – young and old, we now have more freedoms; however this has only come about through the continued pressure from individuals, groups through lobbying and through legal cases. We have in most parts of the UK an acceptance and understanding that being ‘gay’ is normal, that it does not require “treatment” to correct an illness! Again I said in most parts, there are however still some groups and individuals who wish us to disappear or receive corrective treatment – in most companies LGBTQ rights are now accepted; but we cannot sit back on our backsides; if we do not keep monitoring and interacting with government (both local and national) then the rights that we have fought so hard to achieve will be taken away again.
BRI
It is interesting to read this article, as it reflects the things that I have been writing and talking about over the last 20 years – of course I have been writing about Big Brother and the loss of civil liberties in part, and this is now encompassed in the world wide web and how government is using it to monitor and control what we do, see and hear. I make no bones about the fact that I distrust government in its attitude and continued use of phrases about we need CCTV to control terrorism, for your protection etc. That we don’t need personal encryption, as if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, and we won’t maintain personal data longer ‘that is necessary’. There ares lots of more glib phrases, but they all come down to government control, and you losing your civil liberties 
After nearly 170 years we are close to loosing that infrastructure for self education. The article below from Emily Prado, and in particular here paragraph just prior to the quote, ..Yet the recent election cycle and studies revealing Americans’ inability to sort clickbait from facts demonstrate how far from the truth this sentiment really is – ‘that libraries are not necessary’.
In America we have seen Donald Trump’s election win, and in the UK we have seen Brexit win out. Whilst we don’t know what the courts will say in terms of the Prime Minister’s rights, it is clear that the referendum has been taken and won and that the New Year will bring many changes, and that the far right seems to have gained ascendancy in terms of leaving Europe and also in terms of how we are supposed to ‘handle’ immigrants and other minorities.
In the ‘i’ published on the 13 December 2016, Richard Vaughan wrote an article ‘Super-selective schools ‘would transform state education’. The article was reporting on Lord O’Shaughnessy’s call for the introduction of a network of highly selective comprehensive schools to cater for the most ‘cognitively able’children.
division and privilege. Because of this in 1965, the government ordered local education authorities to start phasing out grammar schools and secondary moderns to be replaced with a comprehensive system.
My take on this and other reports is that selection into special schools doesn’t need to occur. What we need is more resources into all of our schools, not the dilution of what we currently have. Teachers, as I have written about before, need resources (these are not just the things like buildings that are a fit for purpose, equipment that is up to date, books etc; but also more time to plan and to support children at all levels). I cannot and do not see that introducing a new ‘grammar stream system’ in ‘special schools’ who will of course get all the new resources, will help the rest of the children not attending those schools!