Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Prosperity for all is the aim but it’s going to be a long time before we get to that point as this budget is all about repairing the foundations of the economy that were so badly damaged by the previous Labour administration.

There’s a sensible capping of benefits almost across the board with probably the largest headlines to come from the cap on housing benefit. One suspects that the largest headlines to come will be from some of those in the million pound housing benefit mansions.

What it also cut was a whole raft of seemingly minor benefits which were introduced piecemeal over the course of the previous Labour administration. What all those different benefits largely did was to create a whole bureaucracy to administer them with little benefit for those who probably needed them most who never even knew they existed.

Increasing VAT to 20% after next Christmas is the single measure that paid for much of the changes. Notably this is a simple measure rather than the complex mix of additional tarifs that some recommended in terms of eliminating exemptions to childrens’ clothing or books.

With the announced substantial cuts in government spending there’s going to be something of a forced move from the public to the private sector for many. That’s going to need equally substantial retraining in many instances.

What this is intended to do overall is to get rid of what has become a crippling level of public debt in a remarkably short period of time. That rapid reduction meant a fairly harsh budget but one that should get us back on an even keel within the forseeable future.

Thus far in the fifth series the planting of forward links has been much more heavy-handed than we’d become used to though the era of the Harold Saxon arc which managed to place untold numbers of forward links that were easy to miss at the time but obvious in hindsight. This series has largely been a series of one-off episodes with little overall linkage other than the heavy handed crack to link them together.

Tonight’s episode had so many separate threads in it that it felt more like a 90 minute episode than the normal length one that it actually was. That’s quite a good thing and one or two of the previous episodes in this series have been quite similar. The linkages might have been too heavy-handed for my liking but it was great to have that “quart into a pint pot” feeling more than once during the series.

Tonight we finally saw a number of threads coming together or rather the Amy Pond and River Song threads starting to come together (although he hasn’t met her for the first time yet). We’ve even a fairly complete pantheon of bad guys in an alliance to save the universe which does seem to be asking for trouble in a seriously big way.

Oh well, only 7 days to find out…

Bullying policies are at the sharp end of schooling in that they are there to deal with situations that essentially schools and parents would rather not think about. After all, who wouldn’t like to think of children as being essentially good but maybe needing a little guidance now and again?

With that in mind many of the solutions proposed are based around showing the bully that they’re wrong and talking them back onto the right path. These involve everything from the simple talking to the child through to revealing to them the effect on the feelings of their victim in various ways. Whilst talking does seem the best platform to start with, moving to having the victim reveal their feelings can give a committed bully more ammunition to use against their victim which obviously is less than ideal in the enclosed environment that is a school.

In fact the most effective method of dealing with them appears to be simply telling on the bullies. Thanks to the intimidation that bullies create this needs to go so far as to create a “telling school” whereby everyone feels empowered to tell the teachers about bullying activities. Thus, the victim can rely on someone other than themselves to tell about the bullying they’re subjected to. Downsides are that it could lead to a tell-tale culture if taken to extremes and takes some getting used to.

The other problem that bullying policies can run contrary to some other policies in the school. For instance, what would you do if you saw a child being pounded by another one (ie not a fight)? Most of us would attempt to stop it verbally but that doesn’t always work with a bully so might find themselves needing to pull a bully off a victim but child protection policies often have a “no touching of a child by an adult” clause, so what do you do? That “no touching” clause can sometimes be so strong that if one were to apply it to the letter one would have to allow the bullying to continue until the bully decided to stop. That might sound crazy but is exactly how it’s applied in the school our little guys go to.

You might think that sense would prevail but that “sense” should really be built-in to the policies. After all, if a child were to pull out a knife and start stabbing other kids it seems obvious that you’d intervene to stop them. Doing so is directly contrary to the school policy on child protection though so strictly speaking you’d be required to let the child carry on until they decided to stop. Isn’t that crazy?

The basic problem is that many of these policies are single level with no escalation mechanism built-in. That seems to be largely down to the feeling that policies need to be easy to understand plus parents simply don’t even want to think about the potential of what are essentially junior thugs and how they might need to be dealt with though some process of escalation. In effect, they create policies to deal with their own nice children and don’t allow for those that might not be quite so nice.

What’s really required is an integrated policy with escalation processes built-in that protects victims and potential victims.

All being well, we’re heading off to the maritime festival in Belfast shortly.

It’s one of the original festivals (which include the summer carnival and autumn film festival) that were started before we began to get large numbers of tourists. In fact, the last time we were there was just before the big jump in the number of tourists so it’ll be interesting to see how they cope (not well if last year was anything to go by!).

It’s one of the natural festivals for Belfast in that there’s quite a substantial history of things naval including, of course, the construction of the Titanic. Last time we were at it, the kids wouldn’t go on the baby Titanic that was there as they were sure it would sink! Worth pencilling in is the opening of the major Titanic exhibition in 2012 (the hundredth anniversary of the sailing).

Anyway, must tootle on as we’ve several other things to do today as well as the festival.

We’ve been meaning to take the kids to Streamvale Farm for a while now but in practice the first, and last, time we went was last week on a school trip.

The charge even for the school trip was £4.80 per child ie the full price. To be fair that did include a tour guide although I’m sure that any of us who’ve lived in the country for any period of time would have done at least as well; certainly, for me, she didn’t add any value so it was a full £4.80. That’s unless you count the “mid-morning break” as a discount but even then 10p worth of watery orange and a small biscuit is hardly the level of discount that a school would ordinarily expect for these things.

So what’s included in the tour? We began with a look at a non-working milking parlour with no practical demonstration and merely one photograph of what a cow getting milked looked like. Granted, dawn milkings aren’t conducive to school trips but I’m sure that they could have managed a video at least. It went downhill from there as we walked along the lane to the badger set with it’s very small sign marking the spot. Badgers are nocturnal so nothing to see there though a proper display would have been possible. From there it was on past the duck pond to the field with the deer which the children were allowed to feed through the fence (by far the high point of this part of the visit) before circling round to have that mid-morning break. The next stretch gave the kids a chance to feed some of the chickens and ducks although with no background explanations as to what they ate or whatever ie just a stop for amusement rather than education.

From there we were off past the couple of dogs in a pen to the “petting zoo” (for want of a better description). This should have been the highlight of the trip as there were getting on for a dozen different animals. However, in practice the only interaction with them was the guinea pig hastily handed around the kids (with no consideration for its welfare) and the goat roughly dragged from one child to another for a suck on a bottle. It could have been so much better and it was no surprise that the kids preferred the small playground inside the “zoo” which seemed to be there for no other reason than to create some interest for children.

We finished up the tour with a go at milking a dummy cow (which would have been better placed in the milking parlour) and a chance for a hurried feel of some chicks with the customary lack of consideration for their welfare.

With the tour over, it was time for lunch (not included in the price, of course) and then it was off to sample the playgrounds. The first one for us featured one of those zip slides that made no allowance for safety and I was amazed that one of the kids didn’t end up in hospital. That was the only feature as the other playground items were rather cheap productions (one of which states quite clearly that it is only for home use) and the positioning of the tyre swing far too close to one of the diggers is another accident waiting to happen. Finally, it was off to the second playground where there were loads of little tractors and trailers although the trailers couldn’t be used as none of the attachment pins was to be found and on the whole everything was rather run down.

None of the weekend rides were running which was odd as some of them sound like the kids would have loved them. They’re all at extra charge though, as is everything here.

Overall, very poor value and dangerous to boot.