Back Benchwarmer

Our School Policy Promotes Bad Behaviour

2008-01-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

Christmas is now well and truly out of the way. All that's left are the fading memories, a bin still full of used wrapping paper, and the odd bit of tinsel stuck in the pile of the carpet (only because the Dyson vacuum cleaner does lose suction now and again... but I'm digressing already).

This time out I wanted a good old whinge about the policy of our schools towards truancy and bullying. A policy that fosters more bad behaviour, truancy and bullying than it solves. Here's the scenario that my daughter experienced a few weeks ago at her comprehensive school.

The school signalled, clear and loud, their intention to encourage the worst behaved kids (those that bully other kids to cover up their own insecurities or skip school because learning isn't important to their own future) to attend school and behave themselves by offering Christmas treats, mostly selection boxes, but there were other small gifts too.

Now my daughter received her school report last week (it's time for the final run-in to GCSE exams, and reports have their interim grades and where they're targetted, which is important for study planning) and this showed the grand total of 0 unauthorised absences and 0 unauthorised days late. Her record as a pupil is actually exemplary, despite problems between my former wife (her mother) and myself during this past school year causing some upset.

As a 'thank-you' from the school for behaving well she was rewarded with bugger all.

The school bullies who had made life unpleasant for the other kids, and those that had made study easier for the others by not being present only had to attend and behave themselves for the middle two weeks in December to earn their reward, be it a selection box, iPod, Playstation 3 or XBox 360, Ferrari 354, Euro-fighter, Space Shuttle, or whatever exaggerated gift I can think of. Mostly it was selection boxes, from what I gather.

My daughter, the first time I've seen her pissed-off like that for a long while, told me that the schools policy is clear - it pays to bunk off school and beat up on other kids. That way you get rewarded for stopping that behaviour mid-December. My daughter, who has behaved all year, and indeed tried extra hard to catch up on her poorer subjects, was rewarded with nothing.

This school policy is, quite frankly, utter bol***ks.

42 - The Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything?

2007-12-06T09:08:00.000-08:00

Or is this just the British Government going down the horrible rat-hole of a policy of Internment again?

Jaqui Smith is currently the British Home Secretary, and she wants to make it possible for the police to jail terror suspects for up to 42 days. Deja Vu, anyone?

This policy was rolled out in the early 1970's in response to problems of Northern Ireland. It was the catalyst for the worst campaign of terrorist bombing ever seen in the British Isles.

It's pretty clear that the policy didn't work; it was intended to be used for just a short spell to take certain leaders out of their terrorist organisations, and to allow things to cool down. But it stayed in place for something like five years.

Now, having made that mistake under the Ted Heath regime, the current Conservative* government headed by Gordon Brown wants to test that mistake for accuracy by making it all over again.

This time around, though, the policy will be different. Different to the tune of currently 28 days, with a view to extend it to 42. When you think about it, 42 Days is actually quite a long time to be holding someone if you're not going to give them a trial. Which could happen. How long do the police force in the UK really need to carry out their investigations? They could just lock you up for a month and a half and not have to justify it to anyone.

The current 28 days is surely is ridiculously long; it's about 14 times too much. And if you think that there may be cases that need longer than two days - well give the option for the police to appeal to a high court judge, but don't give them the right to lock any one of us up without reason for a stupidly long time.

I think giving the police two days to actually come up with some evidence isn't too much of a burden; it'd certainly focus their minds on the job of investigating which is a different role to driving round the countryside emptying the coins from the speed cameras.

*Conservative by policy, i.e. privatising things and cutting taxes to the point where we've got the highest tax burden we've ever seen. Thanks Tony. Thanks Gordon. I bet you never thought Dennis Skinner would be considered a Tory, eh?

Darling, I Slipped a Disk...

2007-11-23T04:18:00.000-08:00

...in the post, and it didn't turn up.

So, has the government has finally admitted that it doesn't know it's arse from its elbow? Stern questions have been asked. The Prime Minister even had to answer questions about this at Prime Minister's Question's in the House of Commons. Blimey, it's all go in Her Majesty's Government.

For those who don't follow politics (or have children) in the UK, here's a quick summary of what's happened. The Inland Revenue (or HMRC as it's now titled) copied the entire Child Benefit database onto CD-ROM and popped it in the post to the Audit Office. And it went missing en-route. OK, the disks were password protected, but that doesn't change the enormity of what happened.

So, what lessons can be learned? There are a couple that spring quickly to mind. Firstly, if a DVD-R disk had been used, it'd all have fitted on one disk; nobody uses CD's any more, it's just so 2002. Although hindsight shows this would have made matters worse because we'd now all be looking for a single disk rather than a pack of them.

Secondly, zipping up a database with a password algorithm isn't really that smart. It's much safer to use PGP and a properly long encryption key. OK, it might take an hour or three to run the algorithm over all the data before it's sent, but this at least gives the junior Civil Servant bod a chance to go for a cuppa and a fag. (Note to Americans, this means 'A Cup of Tea and a Cigarette').

So what's happened in reality? I think it's time to throw around a few conspiracy theories:

HMRC (or, to give them the full title: Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs - and they do have some odd customs) is feeling the burden of budget cuts. This is normal in Civil Service circles; we've all seen Yes Prime Minister during the 1980's and we know how Government Civil Servants manipulate the system to protect jobs. This could easily be a deliberate attempt to highlight the effect of cutbacks on the department. Some junior Civil Servant is entrusted with writing this stuff to disk, he does so, then pops the disk in a drawer and pretends they've been posted. When they don't arrive at the other end, they can blame the lot on cutbacks and not having enough staff. A great coup for the department (and I'd rule this out as wildly ridiculous if it weren't for report that multiple copies of this data were sent and they all went missing, which, I'm afraid, actually makes this conspiracy theory look rather plausible. All the copies will be in the desk drawer of a junior Civil Servant somewhere).

Maybe the person sending the CD's has be 'got' by the Royal Mail, who wanted to make the delivery company TNT look like chumps. It could be they're smarting because they're not delivering Government packages, and have tried to undermine their competition with a dirty tricks campaign. I'd only believe this, though, if the head of the Royal Mail had recently been recruited from British Airways...

I doubt very much that the disks will appear again for a while. You never know, they may be discovered by a small dog, and returned to Audit Office in time for the Child Benefit Review next April.

What would be really good in relation to this crisis would be for the government's description of the events to match those of the Civil Service department that have handed them this almighty cock-up. Come on, Mr Brown, was this done by a Junior Civil Servant (as you say) or by a Senior Civil Servant (which is what HMRC has said)?

So could everyone just quickly check behind your sofa, to see if the disks have fallen down there. And if you're in the Polish government, and you find these disks, could you just run a quick compare with your own child benefits arrangements database to find those individuals that are claiming Child Benefit in both our countries, and defrauding the system. Thanks.

Rubbish Charge Plans Revisited

2007-11-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Having had the chance to think about this for a few days, I've decided that, on balance, for me personally, a direct charge from the council to empty my bin would be a good thing for me and my family. Here's the reasons why:

I could pay the council to empty my bin when it was full, not a week after the local vermin had scattered the tastiest bits of the overflow of rubbish over a wide area. They could come round every three or four days to do this.
I'd be directly responsible for the rubbish I created; provided I could afford it, I can create as much rubbish as I like.
I will not have to muck about with all that nasty recycling nonsense. I can go back to having one single green wheelie bin, and the council can blummen well empty it when it's full, and I'll pay them to do so.
There'll be no need to put glass or recyclable plastic, card, or tin cans separate, I can lump them all together, and they can all go to land-fill, and I'll have a clear conscience because I will have paid for it with my own money.

Wow - this is a great idea by the government - one that will do absolutely bugger all for recycling; in fact, it's probably the best way to discourage recycling I can think of. When is it coming in?

Oh, and on the Bin front, and having spoken to the City Council after my last blog entry, apparently I was authorised for a new bin getting on for a year ago. I've just not had it delivered yet. Well, it's a bit early still...

Rubbish Charge Plans are Rubbish

2007-10-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

So it's nearly here. The opportunity for local councils and authorities to extort more money out of its customers - the people who live in its districts. The government is about to allow councils to charge its punters for the privilege of having its bins emptied, albeit on a trial first of all.

What does this mean for us, the people?

It means we're going to get stung. Instead of dealing with the recycling problem, the government are going to force us to pay again for something we already pay for. This is both ridiculous, and utterly unfair. Clearly the people that generate the most waste are the ones that'll have to pay the most money. So that's a group of people who include parents with young children, those with large families, the elderly who's council tax is already disproportionate to their income and who may be too frail to turn over a compost heap. These people will be nailed.

Lets take a little example from the recent past here in Nottingham. Our household has an income slightly higher than the regional average, we're in a slightly larger house, but there are four kids and two adults (well, there were, now two of those kids are over 18, so they're adults too). So we generate slightly more rubbish than an average family. Now I wouldn't mind paying a little extra council tax for this privilege, after all I live in a slightly larger house with slightly more people living in it than the regional average.

Hang on a minute. I ALREADY DO.

OK, so my bin gets emptied every other week nowadays. On a Thursday. There's actually a collection every week, but one is for the 'other' bin, containing recyclables and the next for normal household waste. Often I rely on the kids to put the bin out, but occasionally it gets missed. Sometimes the Council's refuse department drive right by it (I think they 'refuse' to take it...) None of this happens very often, but it does happen. Now if they miss my bin, I have to phone Nottingham City Council on the Friday for a re-collection, otherwise they wont come out again. So if I happen to be hurrying on Friday morning, I may not notice that the bin hasn't been emptied, and when I'm home Friday evening, it's too late - the council just tell me that I'll have to wait another fortnight for my bin to be emptied... It doesn't look like they actually care about foxes and cats opening up the pile of black bin bags piled on the pavement and dragging their contents down the street. They really can't possibly care about the cleanness of the streets or the health of the inhabitants. I suppose there is a chance that they might care, they just don't behave as though they do.

You see with there being six of us, we fill the normal once-a-fortnight bin in about ten or eleven days. And yes, I have a compost bin in the back garden. And we recycle absolutely all we can 'cos if we don't the bin is full even earlier. Our response to this situation was a request to the council for a new bin, alongside the one we have. We have six living in our house, so (according to the council's rules) we're entitled to it. Well I've only asked them three times, and the result is that we've now got two brown recycling bins. Whoopee.

That situation is, quite frankly, not good enough. Yes, it would seem that Nottingham City Council really don't give a shit about the health and welfare of it's residents. There are plenty of older residents that live on our street; I cant do anything about the rubbish dragged down the street by foxes and other vermin. How is it supposed to help them? How is it supposed to keep the place clean for kids to play in?

And now, the government are going to allow them to charge me extra for the same utterly crap level of service. I expect no different, because this is Nottingham City Council. I'd wager that they're about on a par with similar sized councils up and down the country. Personally, I think it would be nice to pay directly to get a full bin emptied when it was actually full. I could have my bin emptied more often then, when I needed it not when the council thought my rubbish had been scattered over a large enough area. But we all know this wont happen. They'll just be able to charge us extra for coming round once a fortnight to empty the bin and leave the black bags piled next to it on the pavement. Or even just drive by without even stopping. Like the currently do.

The government has a choice - they can do something radical, like raise a levy against companies and suppliers that use an inordinate amount of plastic and non-recyclable packaging and use it to fully promote recycling so it's done properly (we don't actually mind doing stuff like that, you know...) or they can just nail householders for an extra fee, which will result in no improvement in service, and provide no help or incentive to properly set recycling targets. Which is it to be, Mr Brown?

Filibuster Heaven!

2007-10-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

MP's in the United Kingdom get to take 18 weeks holiday a year. That's more than a teacher. But being a member of parliament also brings additional benefits - like the opportunity to increase the number of holidays you get just by voting it through.

Or even just for having Easter fall on the wrong weekend.

Yes, thanks to some quirk with next years calendar (and not because its a leap year) the MP's in Westminster will get a glorious extra four days holiday. Harriet Harman, the government's 'holiday organiser' seems to think that our politicians don't get enough time to rest, and hence need extra time away from their desks.

So that's an increase in real terms of 4.6% over the number of holidays of the year before. Someone should tell them that the taking of holidays should only occur when it is prudent to do so.

I don't think this is even a cheap way to cut public spending - I bet the heating in the Palace of Westminster isn't turned off for those four days, and we can expect hardly any difference in expenses claims by MPs despite being away more.

I suppose the politicians will be telling is that this isn't really a holiday, it's time they'll be spending in their constituencies doing local work. Yeah. Try telling my boss that I should have four extra days out of the office next year to do work for someone else rather than him. 18 weeks out of Westminster is an awful long time to be doing constituency work - particularly when MPs have been elected to represent us in Parliament. Does the process of government only equate to a part time job?

It's time for a radical shake up of working hours in Westminster. Proper office hours, with proper structured holidays at times that look much more like those we see in industry. There is no reason for a stupidly long summer break, if this (and other holidays) were shortened, then Westminster could be used for government more of the time. They'd certainly get more done.

Liberalism gone mad...

2007-10-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

It's a big day for the Liberals. As a result of the leader being too old and past it (or at least, that's the truth if you believe the popular tabloids) he's resigned. This is a big shame for politics; Ming was certainly a character leading his party - more interesting and far less grey than many of his colleagues or political front-bench opponents.

So what is happening at the Liberal Party? They've not had a good leader since Gladstone, it would seem. They're not electable, their place in British politics has been squeezed by moves to the centre from both Labour and Tory ranks, and their vote has suffered. On Radio 5 today it there was some lively discussion about the reasons why Ming felt this a good time to stand down; bad results in the recent local elections, and ongoing struggle in opinion polls seems to have been the prime causes. With Gordon Browns insistance that we don't now need a general election (since the Conservative popularity has picked up significantly) for ages, hacks looking for a good story have focussed, as always, on the real meat of the political process, the age of the Liberal leader rather than his policies. The irony is that Ming is a former athelete, and even today is far fitter physically than these journalists, most of whom are many years his junior. Surely it cant be right, then, to allow agism to determine fitness for political office rather than ability.

But then we have the slow realisation that journalists have been attacking Ming over his age because, by and large, his policies have been pretty sound, and even more than that - the Liberal party has for years been coming up with policies that have been slowly adopted by the big boys of political field. The Liberal chairman, Simon Grey-Bloke-In-Grey-Suit, speaking on Simon Mayo's radio programme was espousing the position of his party over green issues and European issues which have now been accepted into mainstream politics as the way forward.

Liberal Party anonymity is higher now than ever. The two leading candidates for the post are utterly anonymous to all but the Liberal parlimentary party and the party's root and grass activists. Mind you, I cant say I'd heard of any of the last lot of candidates for the Tory leadership either at this stage. I really hope they can bring back that Kennedy guy - you know, the fat bloke in the yellow tie. He was always an entertaining politician, and would certainly brighten up a typically boring house of commons debate. I liked him.

The biggest irony, however, is not that the candidates are so grey; it is that they will never occupy any position of political power in the modern political climate. We're set solidly in two party politics in Britain, this makes the position of the third political party pretty much an irrelevance.

General Election?

2007-10-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should start here by saying a few words of introduction. Firstly I'm a UK citizen, and a registered voter. Secondly I'm not affiliated to any political party. I grew up watching Margaret Thatcher's Conservative party rule the UK, having experienced power cuts, strikes, and all kinds of union problems as a very small boy. I watched Labour leader after Labour leader get a spanking in the elections, before they decided to abandon their traditional views and embrace Thatcherism in all its glory. I studied 19th Century British and European History at school, and have a basic understanding of economic theory, I am a 'pretty ordinary bloke'. I make only one caveat: I am a child of Thatcher's Britain. This may colour my views... On to my musings.

It looks like the UK is heading for a new General Election at a time when it really isn't needed. As an ordinary man-in-the-street I've listened to both sides through the quagmire of Party Conference and tried to slip a fag paper between the two political parties (apparently there are other parties, but I cant say I've noticed). Both the big parties have had their big guns blazin'. (This has been pretty unenlightening, but now at least I know what David Cameron looks like. I never had that problem with Brown - he was always the bloke in Blair's shadow).

So I was thinking; similar politics, similar smarmy appearance, similar-looking stages... similar, similar, similar. What we really need is a manifesto for the real people. Something that tells those guys what we, the ordinary folk, would really like to see. I think it'd be nice to write this myself; at least then I'd be happy with it.

So here goes:

1. The UK people pay too much tax.

As a percentage of our income the tax burden on the people of our nation is higher now than it has ever been. Far too high. I think we pay around about twice as much tax as we really need to. I don't mind paying tax, if the money is used wisely, or redistributed to those that need help. I'm happy with that. We're now in a global economy; we need to compete on all fronts. Lets compete by having a fair taxation system that actually helps people build wealth rather than hinders it.

As a UK citizen we will each fall into one of three categories for tax (this is a generalisation to make the point, it really is more complicated than this).

The first category is those below the poverty line, people who do not pay tax anyway because you don't earn enough (one of the few good things about the tax system).

The second category is those who are fantastically wealthy, and can afford really good accountants who can help them avoid any tax liability whatsoever.

The third group is everyone else. It is this middle section of the people get to pay all the tax.

Changing tax rates is not a way to control poverty; how can it be when the really needy are not earning enough to pay tax. Changing tax rates is not a way to control extremes of wealth either, because the very wealthy don't pay tax either (but their accountants do - you'd think they know better) and they'd go live in a tax haven if the tax burden became too high, and they're a really small proportion of the population anyway. All changing the tax rates does is hurt or help those in the middle.

The problem is not an unfair tax system, the tax threshold is generous enough that it helps those on poorer incomes, and a higher rate band is only unfair on the face of it (remember that those earning enough to pay higher rate tax only do so because they've not got the right accountant yet). The problem is that taxation is a slow system and money is wasted hand over fist. We have too much government for it to be cost-effective, and this burden is hitting everyone in the pocket. Thirty years ago we had half the size of government that we have today, and its all very costly. Time to rethink how government works and reduce the tax bill to something reasonable.

2. Law and order is too complicated, we really need to simplify it.

We have more police around than ever before. We also have more crime than ever before, and our prisons have more people in them than ever before. Which of these came first?

I don't actually mind having too many police - provided they catch the little scumbags that just ran past my house and left a big scratch mark down the side of my boring ordinary saloon car, give them a good ticking off, and pass the repair bill to their parents. The trouble is we have so many complicated laws that the really important and basic stuff is being missed. Too many people being arrested and jailed for not paying parking tickets or their council tax, and not enough real criminals being arrested and taken out of our neighbourhoods and rehabilitatated. The police force have a difficult enough job already, yet that those in power have made it much more difficult by turning crime detection and solution into a heavy paper-pushing exercise. Common-sense policing would be much more useful.

We also have a justice system that is really too long winded. It can take months for even the simplest cases to get before a court. One of the best deterrents to crime would be a system of swift justice. Crimes from detection and proof to conviction in just a few days would be much more effective as a deterrent than having the process take months and months. Many cases cant be heard that quickly because the evidence can take a while to assemble, but those that can should.

3. Schools.

Schools need proper funding; they need proper computers for the kids to learn on, and they need more good teachers. In twenty or thirty years time the kids in our schools today will be running our industries (if we have any left) our major organisations and our government. I think I'd prefer it if they'd been well educated before they do that. We will not be able to compete as a nation unless we teach our kids as well as we possibly can.

We should also make it possible for every child to be able to walk to and from school. Kids these days get woeful levels of exercise already, having schools close enough for them to do this should be a priority. Of course in some extremely rural areas, this may be impossible to do, but it should be a goal. We should look at ways to discourage school runs inside the boundaries of towns and cities.

Some kids are disruptive - they get a stern talking to, then they get expelled for five minutes until the appeal board lets them back in to be disruptive again. These kids need special treatment (and I don't mean taking on 'outward bound' courses to have fun and be rewarded for being complete prats) we need to have effective ways to allow the majority of kids that are trying to learn stuff to do just that; and ways to actually help those that are disruptive to get the same educational chance.

4. Europe.

Lets face it, the European Union is broken. Some suggest that we'd be far better off out of it. I'm afraid I disagree. Little old Britain would be ostracised politically and economically. It's not so long since the 1970's when Britain became the sick man of Europe, and we could easily go back down that road. We need the EU much more than the EU needs us, we need to be part of the trade region, and we need to influence the direction of Europe which we can do while we're a part of it.

The biggest argument I have for staying in the EU is because it needs fixing. We would have no way to change it from outside; and we should be campaigning continually for changes to the way the EU operates. Britain is a net contributor to the EU - more, I believe, than anyone else. We should have far more influence as a result, but we don't have. We should be using such power as we have to negotiate real change. Germany and France are the other backbones of the EU, and so we should be working with them both to improve the processes that make the EU so unpopular here in the UK. the current Downing Street incumbents (and the two previous ones) don't seem to be able to do that.

Another big Europe issue that needs addressing is the arrival of our own 'free trade' zone. We subscribe to the EU, this gives us the privilege of setting our taxation system to be roughly in line with everyone else's in Europe. This is a big argument for leaving; but why should it be? Why can we not change the policy of the EU over sales taxes - to set up a proper free trade zone across Europe would foster wealth for everyone. The only way for a free trade Europe to be truly free trade would be to remove all sales tax, especially the totally unfair VAT. (This would also simplify the taxation system and make the whole thing much cheaper to run, which is another debate but also applies here.)

5. Fuel duties.

I've never understood the fuel duty levied by the government. It's a horribly unfair tax. Its a back-door to VAT on food (the fuel duty hits all food deliverers - they drive their food to the shops, after all) Everyone who owns a car is hit by this - the government make ecological arguments about raising the tax, but it really isn't about any environmental argument, it's about raising money by stealth. With fuel duty so high the fuel costs in the UK are one of the highest in Europe and we all pay the price in everything we buy. And it's not like the government is using the duty to adjust demand for fuel, demand for petrol is inelastic with respect to its price; changing the price has little impact on demand - it just makes it more expensive to buy food and more expensive to go to work. It's a government stealth tax. That said, I'm not in favour of abolishing it altogether. Duty and high price do encourage people to try and get smaller cars with more efficient engines, but again the impact is minimal.

It really is time to look long and hard at these unfair taxes - if the government really want to discourage people from using their cars then a proper public transport system that can replace car drives to and from work for more people is a much better plan - it could reduce the journeys that people have to make rather than the journeys they take for pleasure. Personally, I drive to work and back because there is no alternative (I'd love to be driven to work - I could use the journey time for something productive then, such as reading more books) but it's impossible to do regularly because public transport is so unreliable and ghastly to use. I go to work every week day. I'd not consider taking public transport to go collect some piece of furniture I'd just booked and reserved on-line, however. But I do that kind of journey every six months, so it's clear how public transport could be improved to reduce the frequency at which I use my car.