Valentine's Day television.

Valentine's Day 2010 on the television (quoting Radio Times) -

10:15pm - 11:15pm
ITV
"Tony Blair was interviewed by Fern Britton, erstwhile giggling matron of This Morning, and that turned out to be explosive. So perhaps we can expect similar fireworks here as Prime Minister Gordon Brown gives his first big election-on-the-way interview to chortling Piers Morgan, a man more noted for asking pneumatic celebs about their boob jobs. What will they talk about, considering Brown has never had breast implants? The Chilcot Inquiry? What he thinks about Katie and Peter's marriage split? It's quite a coup for Morgan, someone who has never knowingly picked up a name without dropping it. (His diaries are packed with gleeful details of his cosy relationship with the Blairs: 22 lunches, six dinners, six interviews, 24 one-to-ones over tea and biscuits.) He says, "I have known Gordon Brown for 15 years... I have been trying to secure a Life Stories interview with [him] since the series was first devised, because he is an absolutely perfect subject for the show."

Radio Times reviewer - Alison Graham 

There have been so many 'leaks' about the content of this programme that many people won't bother because they think they've already seen, and read about, the 'juicy bits'.

It's doubtful that this programme, and indeed others in the same series, will have been unrehearsed. The questions will have been carefully chosen, the responses carefully worded for maximum impact on both the studio audience and television viewers - with the cameras helping out too, to prove and demonstrate empathy.

All television interviews are designed to do something - that 'something' will have been decided in advance, so if this is indeed an "election-on-the-way interview" then everybody involved will have been tasked with showing the interviewee in the best possible light - both visually and emotionally.

They will, no doubt, have been asked to help portray Mr Brown as a nice man, the message might  be, "Vote for me because I'm a nice person who has had tough times, and I'm much nicer than any of the others".

Then there will be the advertising breaks, perhaps these too will be 'on task', in the same way as teachers are advised to intersperse their "talk" with practical activities or diversions that reinforce "the message" of a particular lesson. Perhaps some of those government-sponsored , taxpayer-funded, global warming 'adverts', or something about drinking too much, or even something by a children's charity would help a bit.

All that effort, and all that planning, to make a programme that will be aired on the evening of St. Valentine's Day, when those not engaged in typical 'Valentine' activity might prefer something more to do with relationships - Jeremy Kyle for instance.

Ooh, now there's a thought!

....

Smoking 16+

From a comment over at Liberal Vision

Kids don’t and have never bought cigs from vending machines. Too expensive. They get their older mates or sympathetic adults to buy for them. Not illegal so whats the problem?
It’s also not illegal for the kids to smoke them. So instead of telling them what to, plain and simple guidance may be a better option. Education! remember that? It’s the way to let children grow into adults so they can make up their own minds. If they then choose to ignore the righteous then so be it.

So the 'law' got checked, and "marley" is absolutely right.

According to Wikipedia (there are references within the original article)

It is illegal to sell tobacco to anyone under the age of 18 in England and Wales or in Scotland (increased from 16 on 1 October 2007). Police constables and park keepers in uniform have a duty to confiscate tobacco or cigarettes from persons aged under 16 who are found smoking in a public place.

It is not illegal for cigarettes or related items to be bought or smoked by people 16 or over, it is only illegal to sell cigarettes to people under 18. This means it is perfectly legal to smoke cigarettes or use tobacco products from the age of 16, it is only illegal to sell them to people under the age of 18. It is not illegal for someone over 18 to buy cigarettes for someone over 16, only illegal to buy them for someone under 16.

Shops seem to be able to refuse to sell anything if they don't want to - but  when did that happen, because it used to be that if the law said you were old enough to buy something and a shop was selling it then they didn't have the right to refuse.

When did that law change? - Don't know the answer to that one.

....

From other bloggers.

Read this at RedRag and you'll learn more about the man who wants us to believe he can be unhappy.

Watch this at Subrosa and then think about government's immigration policies.

Iain Dale mentions the cancellation of an election.

Patently explains AV.

Dick Puddlecote explains why ordering people to break habits won't work

Leg-Iron demonstrates confusion in the healthist lobby.

....

National Minimum Wage

Wot he said - Raedwald

....

LOTR prequel - "Born of Hope"

Stolen from "Oh what NOW!"

It took ages to work properly, but was worth it.

Enjoy!

....

We don't like rules.

Courtesy of BBC

A school in Suffolk is to ban girls from wearing skirts in a crackdown on uniform infringements.

St Albans Catholic High School in Ipswich said it would enforce the ban from September after pupils broke dress code rules.

So, although the parents might have let their daughters be a bit careless with the existing rule, they of course agreed that it was a good idea for girls to wear trousers. Trousers mean there will be no problems with excessive thigh exposure which could attract horrible paedophiles. Trousers will keep the girls' legs warmer in winter ... and so on. Good idea, don't you think, after all, some schools expect all their children/pupils/students to wear trousers because they're meant to be safer for girls than skirts. And anyhow, there are rules, as the school says :-

"Our prospectus lays down a rule that skirts must be from knee to mid-calf length, not tight and no slits are allowed."

But no, the parents didn't like the idea of their daughters obeying rules, they followed the best practices of modern Britain and :-

Parents and pupils have set up a Facebook petition opposing the ban.

Parent Claire Calver goes one step further, she's realised there's no real difference between staff and children/pupils/students because, she says :-

"I'm disgusted. I hope the female teachers won't be wearing skirts either."

Actually Claire, unless you're a school governor, it's no business of yours what the teachers wear to school, nothing whatsoever - it's your job, as a responsible parent, to help the school turn out a fresh crop of adults who are going to be of some use to the country. With an attitude like yours the rest of us might as well stop trying.

But, to be honest, it looks as if the school needs to rethink a thing or two, too :-

School manager Alison Turner

What on earth is a "School Manager", and since when did head teachers need to hide behind "managers"?

According to AskOxford 'manager' is

• noun 1 a person who manages an organization, group of staff, or sports team. 2 a person in charge of the business affairs of a sports player, actor, or performer.

Ordinary folk see a manager as somebody fairly ordinary, somebody they could be if they were in the right place at the right time -  such as an ex-footballer who becomes a football team manager (and can  mess up the team's chances); a supermarket manager who used to work the tills (and can be unreasonable by telling customers not to wear their pyjamas);  a coffee shop manager (who shows teenagers how to make expensive cups of coffee)  or even the manager of the local takeaway (who, errm, makes and sells takeaways).  Ordinary folk have heard that managers of whopping great NHS hospitals earn more than surgeons, and put patients into cupboards, and we've been told to view Bank Manager with disdain because they're responsible for the country's financial woes.

How then are parents, any parents, supposed to react to a school manager? Is this a person who should automatically generate respect? If so, why - because who, these days, can presume to be respected because of their job?

On top of all that there's the very careful newspeak the educational establishment has been forced to use - because nobody is allowed to fail, nobody is allowed to be seen to slip through the academic net, every child is a winner but if they should do badly in their GCSEs there's a brilliant excuse - as Leg-Iron points out, there's been some research which decided that 'everyone is born with the same level of intelligence and it's only their subsequent life that determines their IQ' - so anybody who fails their exams can say the rich family-up-the-road / MPs / Bankers / Lottery-Winner has stolen their brains.

It's wrong to pick on just one school, so take a look at your local school's website and see what it says for both it's "motto" and "Mission Statement" - it'll be on the front page.

The school will probably say "we aim to" and "we strive to" along with "inspire", "caring", "inclusive", "ethos", "enrichment", "celebrating".

What will be missing will be the word "teach".

It's unlikely the school will have "We will", or a "We are going to" or "the students will".

These "Mission Statements" are always couched in very careful language so that if the school messes up it hasn't actually broken a promise to either the kids or their parents. In the end it means that 'these days' nobody really knows what schools are for, they're not allowed to be excellent at anything other than football or drama, and it's open season for tearing up the rules and teacher bashing.

It didn't take long for it to be completely broken, did it?

....

Coming soon, to a hospital near you.

From  here

"..... in the middle of the night I was transferred to a storeroom off the main ward because they hadn't got enough beds. It was like a broom cupboard."

The room was so small that

When she was seen by the consultant, he had to squeeze in with two other doctors and Mrs McKeown's daughter Dr Helena McKeown, a GP who is also chairman of the community care committee at the British Medical Association.

' The consultant didn't seem surprised, it seemed to happen regularly,' said Mrs McKeown

Unfortunately

'I had nurses coming in all the time to pick up the supplies and they were very good, but as I wasn't on the proper ward I missed out on some of the rounds for meals and medication.

Which might go some way to explaining why people are leaving hospital malnourished.

Actually, let's backtrack a bit

Mrs McKeown's daughter Dr Helena McKeown, a GP who is also chairman of the community care committee at the British Medical Association

So she wasn't able to use her job, to 'pull rank', to make sure their own mother was treated on a proper ward - that's a rare thing these days, and means there's not much hope for the rest of us.

'It's extraordinary that patients have to be looked after in a cupboard because the hospital doesn't have enough beds.'

No, it's not really 'extraordinary' that there aren't enough beds - they have to balance the books. They have to pay the rent ...

The £229million Norwich hospital, opened in 2001, pays an annual rent of £40million a year.

Figures show the NHS will pay out £63billion for privately financed hospitals - £52billion more than they are worth.

... and they have to pay wages of all those hospital administrators (from John Ward in Medway)

"In 1948, when the NHS was formed, there were 480,000 beds and 350,000 staff.

By 2002, there were 186,000 beds and 882,000 staff.

As of September 2008, there are 160,000 beds and 1,368,200 staff."

....

Democracy - the 'new' way to do it.

These articles need reading in full.

From this article

Labour is planning to install the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, who was convicted of a public order offence after a football match, in a safe Labour seat.

Ian Lavery, the union’s president who was on the front line of the miners’ strike in 1984-85, is likely to be selected on Monday as the party’s candidate in Wansbeck, Northumberland, which has a solid majority of 10,500. 

and

The Wansbeck seat was expected to run an all-women shortlist to select the Labour candidate, but this was quashed amid allegations of interference from allies of Mr Lavery.

Instead, the all-women shortlist has been imposed on North Tyneside, prompting the resignation of a local official, Eddie Darke, who said that senior party figures appeared keen to ensure Mr Lavery’s selection.

From this article

Yesterday, more than 70 councillors with responsibility for social care wrote to The Times to say that the generous arithmetic in the Government’s Personal Care at Home Bill imposes a cost on local authorities far in excess of Gordon Brown’s public promises. They went on to say that it is wrong for the Government to raise the expectations of vulnerable people that help is at hand when, in fact, the proposals are quite unrealistic.

and

The signatories to the letter were mostly, but not entirely, Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors. However, as the afternoon progressed, those Labour councillors who had put their names to the letter began mysteriously to fall away.

From here

All five Labour authorities that signed a letter to The Times criticising Mr Brown’s free home care idea as flawed and unfunded issued retractions within hours of the Department of Health learning of the existence of the letter. It also emerged that Downing Street knew of the operation to silence the Labour councils.

From here

The way has been opened for Jack Dromey, deputy general secretary of the Unite union, to stand as Labour candidate for the relatively safe seat of Birmingham Erdington in the wake of the unexpected decision of Sîon Simon, the culture minister, to stand down as an MP.

and

Dromey, ..... had previously aimed to stand in Leytonstone, the seat vacated by Harry Cohen, but was meeting hostility from the local party in east London. He ..... was the centre of controversy after it was claimed that he was being parachuted into a seat in 2007. Dromey will hope that in Erdington (Labour majority 9,575) his background in a manufacturing trade union will stand him in good stead when it comes to the selection meeting.

and

A bid to allow local constituency officers to attend shortlisting meetings conducted by Labour's selection panel was rejected .....

also

Sîon Simon announced ... that he wants to be mayor of Birmingham, a post that does not yet exist. On Thursday a special Labour selection panel decided that the seat should be an open contest, with no all-women shortlist.

 And away from politics, from here

Andrea Charman stepped down (that's 'resigned' in old-speak) from Lydd Primary School — which she had steered out of special measures — for “personal reasons”, but it is understood that she was hounded out after an internet campaign that saw threats to her and to the school. 

The campaign took an ugly twist when personal threats to Mrs Charman were posted online and another Facebook page called for her to be banned from teaching altogether. Others wrote on the internet that they wanted the school burned down.

but

the decision to slaughter the lamb had been approved by the children’s pupil school council, with a 13-to-1 majority, and by the board of school governors. 

Nowhere in the article does it suggest the local Police arrested, or even interviewed, any of those who threatened to burn down the school.

....

Jobs lost.

Quoting the Express

More than 3,300 cuts were announced or confirmed, hitting council, retail and manufacturing workers in different parts of the UK.

The most drastic news came from Birmingham City Council, which is planning to shed up to 2,000 jobs over the next financial year as it strives to "do more for less".

Administrators of discount retailer Ethel Austin and sister homeware chain Au Naturale cut 469 jobs and launched a closing-down sale at 129 stores.

German manufacturer Bosch confirmed it was pressing ahead with plans to close a car parts factory in Miskin, near Cardiff, employing 900 people, by the middle of next year.

and

The black day followed announcements of 1,600 job losses on Tuesday, including 400 at Cadbury's Somerdale factory in Somerset

And the reaction

Jack Dromey, deputy general secretary of Unite, said: "Jobs and services in Birmingham are being blitzed by an uncaring Tory council. Services to the community will suffer from savage job cuts in a city already hit by high unemployment."

Unite, that'll be the Union that made sure Cadbury's workers kept their jobs.

Cadbury @ Keynsham

It's a terrible pity .....

Kraft Foods has announced plans to close Keynsham's Somerdale factory by next year.

Kraft's confirmation that it is standing by the previous Cadbury decision to shut the plant, taken in 2007, means that the 400 remaining workers at Somerdale will now lose their jobs.

..... but not really a surprise.
.