Foreign Perspectives

No matter how much I see Wendy put it on, I still haven’t a clue what all the various items in her “paint box” are actually there for.

I think the single most confusing one is probably the eye-liner which seems a particularly weird thing to me. Not far behind are the various creams which range from day and night creams through to dark circle eye cream. At least the dark circle cream has the advantage that I know what it does: quite what night cream is for is beyond me.

That’s, of course, just a selection too and I’m quite sure that there’s a mountain of stuff that also remains beyond my understanding.

Not so long ago, you used to be just click on the “register now” button to sign up for any course with the Open University.

That led to some people doing crazy things like registering for level 3 courses when they’d no background in the subject and where the courses in question explicitly stated that you needed to have quite a lot of background. You might think that all such people would fail but they didn’t as a number of them had acquired the relevant background in an unofficial way.

However, now the pre-requisites are being enforced in a growing range of subjects. First to complain were the mathematicians who found that they were required to have specific modules as a pre-requisite to do later ones. Quite a number of those actually did have the knowledge required but they’d acquired it outside the OU and sometimes in a way that wasn’t documented. No complaints, yet, from the languages people where you definitely need to have a level 1 level of knowledge before doing level 2 but perhaps they’re not enforcing the pre-requisites there yet as it’s quite common in languages to acquire fluency in an undocumented way.

It’s coming up in the last of the residentials too. In the case of psychology, the original timetable of DSE212 of February to October meant that DXR222, the associated residential, fell in the middle of that. Now though that you can complete DSE212 in the October to June slot it’s possible to do that before doing DXR222 yet they enforce a registeration of DSE212 first, even though you could drop out of it after registration. Net effect for me was a worrying couple of days waiting whilst they processed the DSE212 registration before I could register for the residential when in the past I could have registered for both at the same time.

Oh well. At least my remaining modules don’t seem to have officially listed pre-requisites. Or, perhaps, I should say “not yet”.

I suspect that for most people it’s very much a gradual process of change for their homes. Not only is this easier going financially but it avoids really serious disruption.

But where do you start? We’re in a house that missed out on something like 20 years worth of updates and maintenance so it’s in need of pretty much a complete upgrade. What we’re trying to do is to go through it in the most sensible way we can manage. That basically means starting at the top and working down on the basis that dust and whatnot will fall down so working on the top floor first should reduce the mess.

Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to do things in the logical sequence. Thus we find ourselves needing to replace the heating system now rather than in the summer when it wouldn’t be as inconvenient. We also found ourselves forced into replacing the kitchen roof when ideally that would have waited until next year when we might be extending the room beside it and thus needing another roof.

It’s easier with soft furnishings of course which can be upgraded anytime without affecting any of the other things going on. What we can’t really do is replace the carpet until the building work is done as it would be sure to be full of dirt if we did.

So, gradual with little flurries of activity is our approach.

There’s only a couple of weeks to go before James starts in his new school so we’re running around getting the last few things gathered together.

As he’s left the primary school behind, it means a whole new set of things for the uniform for a start. We bought most of that back in June but thought that it would be prudent to leave things like the trousers and shoes until closer to the start of the new school year. We met one of the parents last week who’d not done that and who is now running around exchanging everything for larger sizes.

Whilst we’ve the uniform pretty much sorted out now, there are some awkward things still to get. He’s very skinny so it’s quite difficult to get trousers that are long enough (he’s quite tall) but narrow enough at the waist at the same time. For the first time, he’ll be wearing a shirt and tie so we need to find out his neck size and also to teach him how to tie the tie.

In terms of stationery, it seems that we don’t need to get anything at this point as they’re provided with a stationery pack on the first day that provides everything that they need.

Also to be read over are the booklets that the school provided on the welcome night back in June. Well, we’ve read them, but that was a couple of months ago so I think it’s best that we read over them again in case we’ve missed anything vital.

What we’ve not worked out yet is how we’ll get the two little guys to their schools once the both of them start. It should be fine for the first week, but we’ve not sorted out a long term means of getting them in two different directions at much the same time.

The social security system has been, up to now, fairly standard UK-wide. It wasn’t that the system was exactly the same as historically there have been different sets of laws in the mainland and in Northern Ireland. However, the laws were arranged so that the amounts paid in the various benefits were the same even when there were different computer systems making those payments.

The operational aspects of that changed about 20 years ago when the computer systems were amalgamated so that, for example, the computer system which calculates and pays your retirement pension in Belfast is exactly the same one that calculates and pays it in Birmingham. Prior to that there was a system in Northern Ireland which paid the pensions in Northern Ireland and a different system on the mainland. However, the amount calculated to be paid was the same thus the changeover was seamless.

Historically, changes in social security payments in England were always reflected in corresponding changes in payments made in Northern Ireland. This time around though the policitians in Northern Ireland haven’t, yet, reached agreement to make the necessary changes which in turn means that Northern Ireland has been subject to penalty payments corresponding, roughly, to the amount that would have been saved if they’d made those changes. Those penalty charges are starting to mount up and we’re now starting to see the start of the effects of such penalties being imposed.

First off, it’s worth noting that the budget for the social security department is usually the highest of all the departments so penalties imposed on it that need to be spread amongst the other departments hit the other departments quite hard. Secondly, the Northern Ireland executive have resolved that neither education nor health will have cuts imposed which leaves fewer departments to shoulder the cost and that cost will be quite substantial.

This week, we’ve already seen the announcement that DRD won’t have enough cash to repair all the street lights and that DOJ will be suffering a similar major cut. They are only the first to make their announcements and similar cuts will be happening in public services over the coming year if agreement on welfare reform doesn’t happen. Of course, without agreement, it’s not just this year but every year to come that will have cuts. They’ll be increasing in scale too: it wouldn’t just be “tens of thousands” of street lights that would go out this year, but rather that a similar additional number would go out each and every year thereafter.

What’s also a looming problem is that the ability to pay the benefits affected will gradually dwindle as time goes on. Despite what some of the politicians think, the computers currently making the payments will be switched off in due course or rather the ability to support them will be. In fact, the ability to support them is already diminishing as the support teams are being transferred to other duties. For a change there really is a firm end date for them to work to and unmissable deadlines are approaching very quickly indeed. Even basic training for those in the benefits offices takes time and, without agreement, that won’t be done. Changing over to the new system is something that will take time to do and the time available to do that changeover is running out.

How’s it going to look if some key deadline passes and it isn’t possible to changeover in time? How are they planning on explaining to the thousands of recipients of the affected benefits that it’s no longer possible to pay them?