The inevitable next step?

I've posted several times about the iniquitous policy of fixed penalty notices - where you are effectively presumed guilty unless you can prove your innocence, but this takes it one step further.  Under regulations due to come into effect in 2014, if you are suspected (note the word) of illegal "file-sharing" you will be sent a letter.  You will have the right to challenge the allegation but - wait for it - in order to do so you will have to pay a fee of £20!!  What on earth path is our law on?  We should be ashamed!

Many a true word is spoken in verse.

"For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils".

And maybe Wordsworth knew a thing or two.  Recent research has discovered that a compound derived from daffodils - or a least a South African species of same - may indeed help to beat depression.  So there!

Ha ha

It seems an awfully long time since we had a joke, so here's a rather irreverent one.

A nun is having a bath.  There is a knock at the door.  "Who is it?" she shouts.  "It's the blind man" comes the reply.  The nun thinks about it for a few seconds, then says "OK, you can come in".  The door opens and a man comes in, looks at the nun and says "Nice tits - now which window is it you want me to measure up for a blind?"

Compare and contrast.

Two recent news stories.  The first involves a young woman in full control of her faculties, who has decided to starve herself to death.  A judge held that she should be force-fed in an attempt to keep her alive, although this is contrary to her wishes. The second case is of a young man who is a Jehovah's Witness, also in full control of his faculties, who was suffering from sickle cell anaemia and refused the blood transfusion which could - probably would - have saved his life.  He wanted to live, but the law could not interfere and force him to have the transfusion against his wishes.  Somehow I find it difficult to reconcile these two cases.  A woman who wants to die is forced by the law to live, and a man who wants to live dies because the law is powerless to intervene.  Makes little sense to me.

Testing, testing...

O-levels or GCSEs?  It's a tricky one.  I did O-levels and I can't say that at the time I was in favour.  It seemed to me to be potentially unfair to use a one-off snapshot to judge a child's ability with regard to a specific subject.  So much depended on the day - were you feeling good, or did nerves take over (I had a cousin who never sat an exam in his life, because he always flaked out on entering the exam room) or perhaps you just weren't firing on all cylinders for whatever reason.  I always felt that exams passed people who were good at taking exams, rather than necessarily those who were good at the subject.  So at the time I was very much in favour of any sort of "continuous assessment" approach.  But there's problems with that as well - by its very nature it's a subjective judgment, and much may depend on whether you and the teacher who is assessing you "get on".  And then. teachers change - you may end up being assessed by a teacher who has only had you for part of the time.  So what about the current "modular" approach?  This is not without its critics, because it favours those with strong family ties, where input from parents and relatives can be a big influence on your results.  So what's the answer?  Blowed if I know!

Promised update.

The Law of Unforeseen Consequences has come up with a positive result for once. Martha Payne (see post of June 16th) has had her ban on taking photos of her school dinners lifted, but the publicity generated by the story has resulted in a flood of donations for the charity she is supporting through her blog and which raises money for school meals in the developing world.  From just a few thousand pounds, the total has now reached an amazing £100,000.  I hope Argyll and Bute Council have made a contribution.

You're three and you don't know your times-tables??

Coincidentally, after writing yesterday's post, I became aware of a Government commissioned report which recommends that all childminders and nursery staff should be educated to A-level standard.  Why?  This is clear evidence that Government see childminding and nursery care being as much about education as about care.  Indeed the report uses the phrase "early education and care" over and over again.  I don't know about you, but I would wish than any young child of mine were looked after by a loving, caring minder who will give them a cuddle when they need it and get down on the floor and play with them, and it would be immaterial to me as to when they left school or what qualifications, if any, they got.  Child care is not (or should not be) about intellectual ability.

Oh, no - not more maths and English!

The Government are looking at extending the school day to help parents who are at present having to spend money on childcare outside current school hours.  This isn't a new idea - many years ago there was this concept of "wrap-around" whereby school premises were supposed to be used for before and after-school care.  So what went wrong?  I know somebody who runs an after-school club at a local primary and they maintain that the problem is that because it is held on school premises the LEA (Local Education Authority) claim the right to control how it works, and in particular that, rather than being just volunteer mums and dads supervising kids, it should be qualified teachers working to a loose curriculum - in other words, as far as the children are concerned, it seems like more of what they get all day long.  This (a) makes it expensive - the teachers have to be paid - and (b) not particularly attractive to the children.  Lessons to be learned?

Speak English, for God's sake!!

When did fairy cakes become cupcakes, please??

It's the system, stupid!

Oh Gawd, 'ere we go again.  Ministers getting into a right lather because some comedian - or rather, some comedian's clever lawyers and accountants - have found a way of reducing his income tax liability to around 1%.  "Morally wrong", "moral equivalent of a benefit cheat", "morally repugnant" are just a few of the comments that have been flying around.  I won't rehash what I've said many times in the past, but I liked one person's comment to the effect that he was far more angry at a system that allows people to get away with paying just 1% tax than he was with those who take advantage of it.

Get to the point?

Is anybody else getting fed up with the Leveson Inquiry?  It seems to be taking forever to prove the obvious, which is (a) that newspapers want to sell more newspapers, and to this end are quite prepared to do whatever is necessary - including bending or even breaking the law - to achieve that result, and (b) that politicians are anxious to have the press on their side, and to that end will "cosy up" to them.  Hardly earth-shattering revelations.  So do we need to shackle the press?  I would say definitely, no - a free press is an absolutely essential cornerstone of a democracy.  What we need to look at is what we do when - as is inevitable - the press go too far.  At present we have a Press Complaints Commission which has no real powers to force papers to put matters right, and the only alternative is for the "wronged" party to go to law, which is potentially so horrendously expensive that it is out of reach to any but the super-rich.  In any case, these are both "after the event" remedies.  By the time they are called into aid - if they ever are - the damage has been done.  It may be that Lord Justice Leveson is looking at this problem, but if so, he seems to be going an awfully long way round about it.

Strike hard, strike sure.

The construction of a memorial to Bomber Command in London has re-ignited the arguments about the justification for, or even the legality of our bombing campaign in W W II.  I was only a kid in those days, but I remember my Mum's annual toast-cum-prayer each New Year's Eve - "Please God,  by this time next year, let it be over".  I was fortunate in that my Dad was in a reserved occupation, so he wasn't called up, though he was out most nights on ARP duty - several of my pals weren't so fortunate, and lost fathers or brothers.  I remember when a jettisoned bomb landed near us and blew all our front windows out and my Mum screaming "Oh my God, they've got us!".  So don't talk to me of rights and wrongs - we did what we had to do to survive.  Just shut up and give thanks to all those young men who had one of the most dangerous jobs of any in the armed forces, and who went out night after night knowing that there was a very good chance they would not be coming back.  True bravery is being scared witless and still doing what is required of you, and these were as brave as it comes.  They deserve their memorial.

Out of touch? - or maybe not.

Apparently, judges are to be given lessons in "social awareness" to try and ensure that they are up to speed with modern culture and mores - and to prevent the perceived embarrassment of them asking questions like "who are the Beatles?". Except that my understanding is that such questions are asked not necessarily out of ignorance, but as a way of ensuring that references to "passing fads" which may mean nothing to future generations are properly explained in the court records.  Everybody in court (including the judge) may well understand what is being referred to, but someone studying the case in years to come might well be at a loss unless it is spelled out.

Bang - and the case is gone.

Hilarious story - at least to an outsider - of a hundred armed police surrounding a house in Stoke-on-Trent only to find the "armed" man they had been told was there was in fact holding a spray bottle of Cillit Bang. That would have just been a funny story, but what turned the whole business into a farce was the police's decision then to charge the man with possession of an imitation firearm!  The case even got as far as Crown Court before the prosecution saw sense and decided not to offer any evidence.  No criticism of the police's handling of the original incident - they had to act on the basis of the information they were given - but which idiot decided to charge him with the imitation firearm offence?  Can't help feeling this was a case of the police being embarrassed and being determined to charge him with something to justify the manpower and expence involved.

What really goes on mustn't be seen!

Nought out of ten for Argyll and Bute Council - in fact if I could give them a negative score, I would.  You may have heard of a girl called Martha Payne, who started a blog a couple of months ago where she posted daily photos of her school dinner (for which she pays £2) and giving the food ratings out of ten.  It's been a sensation, with other children from around the world sending photos of their school meals, and celebrity chefs sending her encouraging tweets.  She's also used the blog to raise money for charity.  So you can guess what's happened, can't you?  The Council have decreed that she can't take any more photos.  Not the school mind you, which has been very supportive, but some faceless - words fail me - in the Council, who hasn't even got the balls to come out and defend him or herself.  All we have got is an anodyne statement from the Council saying that "Our school meal provision is fully compliant with nationally agreed nutritional standards."  Yeh, right.
STOP PRESS - The ban has been lifted it seems - or has it?  There is to be a meeting next week.  Watch this space.

Men are from HP - women are from Heinz.

What sauce do you put on your chips?  Red, of course!  And on a bacon or sausage sandwich?  Well, brown obviously.  Or perhaps it depends on your age, sex, and where you live.  Ask Jeeves carried out a survey which revealed that men are more likely to go for brown than women, older people more likely to go for brown than the young, and preference for brown is greatest in the north-west and least in the south-east.  Overall though, red wins out by just under two to one.  Amazingly, it seems there are some people who put red sauce on a fried egg - yukkk!

Eat your greens.

Story of a school in London where children staying school dinners were told that they couldn't leave to go to the playground until they had finished everything on their plate.  Howls of outrage from some parents it seems.  Can see both sides of the argument, but it's a fact that there's too much of a tendency these days for kids to be fussy about what they will eat at "proper" meals, but then to go on and fill up on sweets and crisps.  Think the school have a point, although perhaps they need to be a little more flexible.

Warum? Pourquoi? ¿Por qué?

The Education Secretary intends to make it compulsory for schools to teach a foreign language to children from the age of 7.  I have to declare an interest - I have always been fascinated by foreign languages and studied Latin, Greek, French and German at school.  But even so, I have to ask - why?  The fact is that there's a very good chance that any foreigner you come across will speak English better than you can speak their language.  I wonder whether there is some sort of guilt trip going on here - are we embarrassed that English (or at least the American version) has become the world's lingua franca?  Do we feel we ought to make the effort - however unnecessary - to be able to stumble through a few phrases in the language of whatever country we happen to be in?  Can't help feeling that those children - like I was - who are interested in learning another language will need no coercion, while for the others, the time could be better spent on other subjects. 

Oooh, Matron!!

One interesting (if somewhat salacious) point to come out of the current discussion concerning the possibility of same-sex marriages, is the question of non-consummation.  This has always been a ground for the annulment of a "traditional" marriage, but the question has been raised (and if same-sex marriages ever become accepted in law, sooner or later it will crop up) - what constitutes the consummation of a same-sex marriage?  Plenty of scope for the imagination to run riot, but it is a serious question which will probably have to be addressed at some point.

Police above the law?

Shrewsbury (pronounced as in "Taming of the Shrew" please, not "sh-rose-bury") is a nice historic town here in the Midlands.  One of its inhabitants was out one day taking photographs of some of the attractive buildings.  One of these buildings now happens to be a bank.  A couple of policemen (well, one of them was one of these new-fangled Police Community Support Officers) approached him and - presumably on the basis that they considered taking photographs of a bank somehow suspicious - decided to search him, pushed him to the ground, handcuffed him and took him to a police station where he was held for about seven hours.  The police have now accepted that he did nothing wrong, have offered him a written apology, compensation and agreed to expunge all records of his arrest.  You may well feel that that was the least they could do, but what makes this story worthy of comment?  The fact that it is reported that no action - repeat no action - is being taken against the two officers involved!  What sort of a message does that send out?

Me too, me too!

So now the London bus drivers have jumped on the gravy train.  They are threatening to strike if they are not paid a bonus for doing their job over the Olympic period.  This on the basis that "other transport workers have been paid a premium for working during the event".  I despair, I really do.

Speak proper!

Did you know that there is a Queen's English Society?  No, me neither.  It's been around for 40 years, it seems, and its purpose is to champion the correct use of the language.  Well "is" will soon be "was" because it has finally given up the ghost and admitted defeat in the face of creeping Americanisms and text speak.  Of course it was always doomed to failure because, as has been mentioned many times before, language doesn't stand still and any attempt to put it in a straightjacket of "proper usage"  is bound to fail in the long run.  So farewell, Queen's English Society - nice try but no cigar.

Where??

Whose clever idea was it to have the Olympic torch doing its thing in Northern Ireland (and a quick visit to the South) over the Jubilee weekend?  There was the potential there for a clash of interest but it was neatly side-stepped.  Nice one!!

Auntie showing her age?

As an addendum to yesterday's post I have to say how disappointed I was with the BBC's coverage of the Royal Flotilla on Sunday.  If there's one word which you normally associate with the BBC when it comes to big events like this it is "professionalism", but the phrase which kept popping into my mind as I watched the three-hour or so programme was - how amateurish.  Whether there is any connection with cuts to funding, or decentralisation to Salford I don't know, but how I longed for someone like Richard Dimbleby or Raymond Baxter to bring some sense of order and decorum to the proceedings.

Number one - no question.

Well, we may be in a double dip recession, the economic situation may be dire, unemployment may be too high and austerity the name of the game, but one thing this last weekend has shown is that, when it comes to putting on a show, nobody does pageantry quite like us.

I have a cunning plan....

Nice to see that "Blackadder" came top in a poll to find the 10 best British TV series of all time.  Plenty of opportunity for comment and controversy (No Dad's Army, no Last of the Summer Wine, no Porridge....???)  but I won't argue with the choice of No. 1.

Miracle drug - yes or no??

Aspirin - are you as confused as I am?  About ten or more years ago, we were told that half and aspirin tablet a day would help protect against heart attacks and strokes.  Then four or five years ago, the advice changed, and was that, unless you had actually had a heart attack - in which case aspirin would indeed reduce the risk of a repeat - the disadvantages of taking it (potential stomach bleeding) outweighed the advantages.  Now the latest research is that it can help protect against cancer. For heaven's sake - do I take it or not??!!

Not so flexible friend.

Visa are one of the sponsors of the Olympics, so guess what?  You will not be able to pay for goods or services inside any of the Olympic sites with any other sort of card, and you will not be able to withdraw cash from ATMs inside venues except with a Visa card.  The selfishness of these sponsors is getting more extreme by the day. I've got a Visa card and feel very inclined to cut it up in protest - except that that would simply be a case of cutting off my nose to spite my face.

It's a strange world.

It's an age-old question - does art imitate life, or life imitate art?  Do films and TV shows, for example, show violence, because that's what happens in real life, and they are simply reflecting it, or do people watch violent films and TV shows, and then go out and indulge in violence as a result?  The question has arisen again somewhat obliquely in relation to a new report that found that most young people - girls especially - are dissatisfied with their body or appearance, and (according to the report) the blame for this lies with the media - particularly teenage magazines - which insist on publishing images of "perfect" women, which girls then try to mimic and potentially damage their health as a result.  But look at it the other way - these magazines only thrive because they are giving their readership what they want.  If they are printing pictures of "size zero" models, then that is because that's what sells their magazines - in other words it's what their readers want to see.  So we have the somewhat bizarre and circuituitous situation whereby readers are apparently being disturbed and depressed by seeing images which they themselves have voted for by paying to see them.

Happy to eat my words,

Well I made a big mistake about Tata (see post dated 28/3/2008).  They have turned JLR (Jaguar, Land Rover) round and thanks to their investment, it is now a local success story making big profits.  I have never been more glad to be wrong.