Ranty, ranty, ranty. It was going to be Louise birthday related, now it's simply a down the pub, look at the privilege in action thing...

So, I just wrote a lengthy diatribe on something. Moany. Ranty. Moany. Ranty. As is my want. I cultivate the idea of the curmudgeon, the whole Warren Ellis thing without the talent (or the health problems. Get well soon Warren). And then realised I couldn't post it without Louise working out what her birthday present is. Because despite the paucity of posting over the last god knows how many years, Louise still uses this to look through the family history from time to time. And seeing as this is one of those **SPECIAL** birthdays, I'm not giving anything away.

So... instead, you'll have to cope with me ranting over things that happen down the pub. Because why not?

One of the strangest things that's happened to me over the last couple of years is that I actually have a local. In fact, I practically have two. One's a writing pub, the other's a Gin palace of a pub. The Gin Palace is only open a few nights a week but it's a lovely place to try a new gin or three. They have 20-30 on at any time, but the writing place is great, I sit and relax and write, and drink coffee early in the evening and G&T (Monkey 47) later in the evening. Hell, I even have a regular seat. Ridiculous I know.

It's all down to quitting the fags (three years plus now. May 2012. And yes, I still miss it every day). One of the biggest problems was the lack of a quick and effective mind hoovering of a break that nipping outside in the garden gave me. So instead I find it easier to concentrate when I'm somewhere else, writing in public means I have to concentrate harder on the writing and less on the surroundings. It works for me anyway.

The ONLY problem with the pub? Absolutely nothing to do with the pub itself and everything to do with the clientèle. There's a certain type of customer, and I'd be stereotyping to say they have children at the local private school, but well, they do.

Take the other day for example. It's sports day for the private junior school/prep school/mini indoctrination and privilege building centre (call it what you want). In walks a couple of families, kids about 5/6, hyper as hell. As for the parents, well... mums who spend their time at the salon and boutique getting everything exactly right because heaven forbid they'd be a social outcast due to an ill-chosen bag or the wrong shade of spray tan. And dads who genuinely think it's ok to wear blue/beige suits, shirts open way too low and deck shoes sans socks. Sure, the fashion mags say sockless with suit works, but not if you're a 30-40 something middle ager but a touch of the unsightly paunch.

Anyway. The party goes outside. Eventually. Not before the kids run around and practically bounce off everything in sight; chairs, tables, the bar, themselves, their parents, doors, walls, the waiting staff. But outside obviously isn't enough. Time to have a fun race through the pub, in the fire exit and out the front, screaming loudly as they go. Over. And over. And over. And over. And over. Parents of little Tarquin x 2 doing absolutely sod all except get another round of belinis. Which is when both kids climb onto the tall, revolving stools at the bar and stand up on them. Shouty, shouty, shouty. Spinny spinny spinny. Dad ignores this completely. Then they climb ONTO the dividing wall between ball and the rest of the room. So now, they're a good 5ft off the ground and nope, dad STILL hasn't noticed. Nor for that matter, has mum, who's at the bar now and has actually walked PAST the kids to get there. The level of consciously ignoring the kids to get to this point is something that's obviously taken years to hone to this supreme height of shitty parenting. Nor do they notice when the kids JUMP off the dividing wall onto the seats below.

Thing is, this isn't anything like an isolated incident. Nor is it limited to the private school. But seeing as it is my local, seeing as I'm there a fair bit, writing my stuff and drinking my coffee / G&T, my anecdotal observations suggest that there's a lot of really overly-entitled, rude, ignorant little Tarquins and Tarquinas running around here.

And.... rant over. Back to writing about nice stuff. In fact, tomorrow we have a fantastically lovely nice thing for you to look at.

Oh Joy It's a Royal Wedding

Halfway through the day - Louise emails me, obviously hugely excited with the Royal Wedding news - she's such an impossible Royalist you wouldn't believe.

I, like so many voices I've heard today, really could not give a toss. The only thing that really annoys is that I know exactly who's going to end up paying for the damn thing. Me. And unless they shut the schools for it and I get a day off then I really don't even need to think about it.

But what absolutely amazed me about the whole thing was this BBC News article:

"Prime Minister David Cameron said the engagement marked "a great day for our country" and wished the couple a long and happy life together.He said he had received the news in a call from Buckingham Palace during a cabinet meeting, and it was greeted with "a great cheer" and "banging of the table" from fellow ministers.

He had slept overnight on the Mall ahead of Diana and Charles' wedding, he added."

So, there's two very rant worthy images:

One of the cabinet doing their best "hah, hah, hah, we're going to smash the oiks, what ho jeeves, bring me my morning prostitute and quail's egg". Tossers.

And the other one - wanker cameron was camped out on the Mall when he was 15.

FIFTEEN.

Useless, upper class, knob.

I know I'd have used the royal wedding as an EXCUSE to stay out all night when I was 15, but there's no way I'd have actually gone to the bloody thing.

Now, off to watch the news. Oh wait, it's full of Royal correspondents trying to outdo themselves over who can be more sycophantic.

What next? Hermetically sealed children released at 18?

I despair. I really do. Increasingly I find myself shaking my head in horror and frustration at the insanity of modern living. Where the default position appears to be "everyone is under suspicion" and the shrill, paranoid cry rings around of "who will protect the children?"

All of those helicopter parents, worried about any adult, especially any man who goes anywhere near their child. Suddenly no one trusts anyone, and everyone is a potential paedophile, everyone is out to hurt or harm their child. And we end up with a shrill, media driven, mass of hysteria that has no basis in reality. The sort of child protection that ends up creating a generation of children who can't actually function amongst their peers, don't know how to be independent or cope on their own.

I'm trying not to harp on too much about it. But the mass hysteria over the safety of our children is ridiculous. Children are far more at risk from injury or death on the roads, but I don't see many Daily Mail covers screaming how we're all potential child murderers because we drive. And in the majority of those horrible cases of child abuse, abduction or murder it's far more likely to be at the hands of family members or by adults known to the family.

Reason for the little rant? It transpires that a new ruling is likely to come down that anyone in a care environment will be banned from using their own cameras or cameraphones. Presumably all down to the terrible case of Vanessa George, the nursery worker who abused children and took cameraphone images to spread to friends on Facebook. So because of one hideous, unusual crime committed by a twisted abuser everyone who works in a care environment has another rule imposed upon them that tells them that they're not trusted to look after children at all.

It may not seem that serious and too be honest the actual practicalities of it aren't. I take my camera into school sometimes when I want good photos for the website or know that all of the cameras will be in use. Other people do the same. Not being able to do this will be a pain, but not terribly serious. Except it's simply a small part of an ongoing regime of distrust and blame that's crippling our children. They aren't being allowed to live life and they're being denied a childhood because of a fear of something that mercifully is incredibly rare.

And as usual, the imposition of this new regulation will not help solve the problem at all. Anyone able to hide her terrible crimes from her workmates would probably be able to figure out a way to hide a mobile phone - maybe in her pocket?

But never mind, the fact that the new rules wont solve any problems doesn't matter to the knee jerk reactionaries. Maybe we should just turn our nurseries and schools into barbed wire covered, 24 hour CCTV coverage and where our children aren't actually allowed to do anything -all in the cause of "keeping them safe".

Baby Einstein users - Disney offers you money back for being guillible parents

Baby Einstein is that horrible series of toys, videos, audio and other shite that promised that hot housing your children with their products would result in your little darlings being smarter, better children.

Well, surprise, surprise. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. It would be incredibly stupid to think sticking your child in front of the TV to watch anything would increase brainpower at such a young age.
Yet the number of parents who fell into this horrible little marketing ploy was scary. Including, I'm sure, some of the parents amongst my friends.

Well now Disney (who bought the company a while back) are offering refunds for those parents who feel that they were let down by the promises of instant genius offered by something that, let's face it, was no more than a babysitting via TV service.

There's lots of these things out there, promising better babies, smarter children if only you would spend a small fortune on whatever piece of plastic tat they're flogging. I remember the first time I saw those horrible VTech things in the shops - play laptops for kids wouldn't be bad if they were just play (a modern equivalent of dress up, tool-kits and doctors sets) but I detest the way these things always had to have some spurious educational value attached - giving the idea that just playing wasn't good enough anymore.
And heaven forbid we actually sit our children down in an empty space or with an empty page and just let them use their bloody imagination.

And don't get me started on the Leapfrog book system - "The number 1 learn to read system".
Excuse me. Hold on a moment, but isn't the number one learn to read system having parents who are engaged enough to read books to you, smart enough to have books in the house and a public library system that you use regularly to instil a love of reading in your child?
Or is that just me?
We read to Molly every single night. Every night. The only nights we miss out on it are when she's not actually here (we figure that's a fair excuse). We can't understand parents that don't. And the Leapfrog system just seems like a horrible admission of "we can't be bothered reading to you/with you".

So, back to Baby Einstein. I know tht the easy excuse is to say that you never expected these things to turn little Tarquin into a genius, but that's not the point is it?

All of these brain boosting things, these learn to read systems, they all seem designed by horrible corporations to prey on the fear of modern parents about their children just not being good enough.
But it's not the corporations fault. It's the parents fault. The parents who never had any of these things that suddenly seem so essential, the parents who were allowed to play out, to get dirty, to be children.
Thankfully both Louise and I agreed early on that the way to make Molly smarter had nothing to do with buying the latest faddy parenting solution, had nothing to do with stealing her childhood away and tutoring her from 6 months old like some parents seem to want to do, but had everything to do with being parents, being there, reading, talking, listening.

Simple really.

Or maybe we're wrong. maybe buying your child everything you can to steal away their playtime, to steal their relaxing time, to steal their childhood is the answer.
In which case you don't need to get the refund from Disney for those Baby Einstein dvds you bought, because you and the corporations that prey on your fear and insecurities deserve each other.

Parents banned from sports day - an update

A while back I blogged about a case reported in the Telegraph about parents being banned from sports day on a security risk issue. I was so upset by this that I fired off an email to the organiser. Well, he wrote back.

I'm going to pick some of what he said in a very long email:

Dear Mr Bruton,

Thank you for your e-mail and consequently an opportunity to hopefully set the record straight. As is often the case, these stories are picked up and the facts twisted (or carefully ommitted) by the "journalists" (I believe this story was syndicated by a local media agency) until they have a stereotypical "political correctness/health and safety gone mad" article on which they can hang an inflammatory headline with which to reinforce the views of their general readership.

Firstly, it was not a school sports day as reported, but an organised athletics event involving 270 children from 20 different lower schools within my partnership. All the schools in the partnership organise and run their own sports day on their own site to which, as has always traditionally been the case, parents can attend to support their children.

This event was taking place on the Upper School site as that is where the athletics track is placed, the school is a closed and gated site for security reasons (all schools tend to be these days). As with all schools, site security is very important, and anybody coming into a school to visit normally needs to be signed in and accompanied. The athletics track shares changing and toilet facilities with the school, therefore if any spectators needed to use the toilet (and the event lasts for 2 and a half hours) then they would have to go into the school building to do so. Furthermore, there is insufficient parking to deal with large numbers of spectators wishing to attend - the school's main car park is full of staff and sixth former's cars all day. The school also sits within a housing estate and there is little parking available on the roads nearby.

The event was also taking place during the period when the Upper School pupils were taking important examinations. It would also be running over the host school's break time, which means we would also have hundreds of Upper pupils on the school fields for 20 minutes.

When organising the event, we had to consider all of the above information, and part of that process involves producing a risk assessment. In planning this event, I had 1 major concern: the potentially large number of parents or carers who might want to come and spectate. I had to consider the impact this would have firstly in terms of disruption to the host school and the education of its pupils, and secondly the potential risks to pupils from all schools from having large numbers of adults on the site. And yes, within a risk assessment you list all risks, which for this event includes the potential for harm to, or abduction of, a child from the site; we also include risks of theft, damage to property, accidents to children/adults from extra traffic when the buses are dropping schools off etc. etc.

Hopefully you can see that the key reason for not allowing parents to attend was logistical: the host school just is not set up to deal with large numbers of spectators, and the disruption would've been detrimental to the smooth running of the school and the education of its pupils

And I wrote back to him tonight about it. I can sympathise with him about it, but have to compare what they did with a recent event organised up here in Yorkshire that took place after school, the parents all came along, parked where they could and had a bloody great time. Children ran around everywhere, parents were all over the place and generally everything went smoothly. I can see his problem, I really can, and agree that the Telegraph just picked up on the one aspect of it.

On a more generalist note, the need for schools to be a secure site is one of those strange things - on the one hand I understand it, but on the other I don't necessarily believe it actually works.

It's like the argument over ID cards - the solution doesn't actually address the problem. I used to work in a particularly difficult secondary school in Birmingham. One of those schools that just survive by keeping the children in the classrooms, teaching is a bonus, that sort of thing. We regularly used to have intruders on site. The secure nature of the site made absolutely no difference whatsoever. What was required was exactly what was required 30 years ago - adults or children reporting the intruders and then adults (and often police) seeing them off the site. All the complex security measures at the front gate, all the signing in systems, all the fences didn't keep these intruders out. But it did make the whole place seem designed to confine the children. Not what we were after.

And whilst I remember, all of this feeds into the views of the wider world that all adults are dangerous to children.

There's an implication in the world today that all adults, particularly all men who even show any interest in children are a threat to those children's safety.

And that's offensive to me as a man, as a father and as a member of staff in a primary school.

A related article I came across on this:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reclaiming-childhood/200907/the-stranger-danger-panic-is-creating-hostile-adult-world

Parents banned from Sports Day?

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.
This is the sort of thing that makes me worry about a generation of over-protected, molly-coddled, intensely paranoid children that we seem to be bringing up.

Parents banned from sports day over paedophile fears.

(Yes, I know it's the Telegraph. But there are enough direct quotes in there from those concerned to make it seem genuine.)

It was one of those sports days where several primary schools travelled to a central secondary school to compete. Molly recently did something very similar at her district sports day. Loads of parents came along, kids running all over the place, no problems, no abductions, no stalking paedophile's that we noticed. But we live in Yorkshire, where things are a little more civilised and sensible than Bedfordshire.

Because in Bedfordshire, the East Beds School Sports Partnership Athletics Day took place without parents. Because the organisers decided, in their infinite wisdom, that all grown ups are potential paedophiles or child abductors. Guilty until proven innocent indeed. Far be it for common sense to get in the way of this terrible fear mongering attitude.

Paul Blunt, development manager at the East Beds School Sports Partnership, said the "ultimate fear" was that a child could be abducted.

"If we let parents into the school they would have been free to roam the grounds. All unsupervised adults must be kept away from children.

"An unsavoury character could have come in and we just can't put the children in the event or the students at the host school at risk like that. The ultimate fear is that a child is hurt or abuducted, and we must take all measures possible to prevent that."

"None of the children taking part attend the host school so it would've been really hard to police. We did a risk assessment and concluded that we couldn't guarantee the children's safety."

Just how many children have been abducted from School Sports Days anyway? It's the ongoing problem of ridiculously paranoid parents and authorities attempting to completely remove any risk whatsoever from their child's lives. Any sane and sensible soul will tell you that life is a risk. Attempt to take all risk away and you take so much of what makes it so wonderful.

There's an update to this post here.

Thank You For Waiting, your patience is appreciated

I know it is. But why do you insist on telling me every 30seconds when I've now been on the damn phone for half an hour waiting for someone to actually pick up the damn phone. Bloody Tesco. Bloody useless customer service department. No doubt some 17 year old working Good Friday and busy playing World of Warcraft or instant messaging his friends when he should be answering the phone.

Not a Good Friday so far. Dodgy credit card transactions are no fun at all.

Play Barns, Different clientele to a Wacky Warehouse but many of the same problems. Richard goes off on one again.

We don't really go into wacky Warehouses any more; there just aren't that many around us. We still go to wacky warehouse type places, it's just that the ones we do go to are a little better than wacky warehouses in inner city Birmingham. (And yes, that is meant to be as snobby as it sounds.)

One problem you do get, particularly when it's just me sat here on my own with nothing to do but read, write and listen to other people talking is an awareness of how unbelievably ignorant some folks are, especially the ridiculously chattering middle class types. The woman next to me has just been spouting some bollocks about training to become a primary teacher, but she's determined to just do juniors, and only teach subjects like History and Geography that she's interested in. Because that's how Primary teaching works isn't it?

The table next to us is indicative of the sorts of people we get at these middle class Wacky Warehouses. Invariably it's some group of Moms who have nothing to do with their lives and live from day to day dropping the kids off at school and working out who's house they're having coffee at before their weight-watchers meeting in the afternoon. It's a life of intense drudgery but they will defend it until they're blue in the face. In fact I even heard one Mom point out that she was really annoyed at her husband, home between contracts last month, who dared to question the intensely difficult job of being a stay at home mom. She was incredulous about it. But is being a stay at home mom, dropping the kids off at school, doing cleaning, shopping and cooking really as hard as the job done by Louise or Me for example - we both work jobs and do all that stuff as extras when we can. Surely we have a harder job? But she'll never see it.

Worse still, every word that comes out of their mouths is purely concerned with themselves or their kids. And it's always positive, always self-centered. It's the never ending determination that they are right, their lives are so bloody important and their kids are the most wonderful, angelic, perfect little things in the world. We decided very early on that our child, although lovely, although wonderful, although perpetually interesting and delightful would still be subject to the same rigours we apply to everything else in the world. So she's decidely not perfect. And it's so much better that way.

So the play barn experience may be different from the Wacky Warehouse experience, but only by degrees. The parents may earn more, drink less (whilst they're in the play barn at least), have less facial tattooing and drive a better car, but the fundamental problems are still there, they just exhibit themselves in different ways. Instead of the parents getting drunk and ignoring their children at the WW, in the play barn the middle class moms are so busy talking amongst themselves - usually about how wonderful their children are and how they're thriving in their French / Ballet / Clarinet / Horse Riding / Skiing / insert ridiculous club and/or activity here - that they fail to notice their little diddums causing havoc,, upset and inflicting pain upon some little one three years younger than they are.

But try to point it out to them - go on, try. It's like you've accused one of them of abusing children.

Because every time I go to these sorts of things there's always at least one event every hour where some little kid runs screaming from the ball pool because one of these middle class, over-indulged children has decided that they're going to jump on top of the smaller child without waiting for the smaller one to get out of the way. Why? Because they've never actually been taught the value of waiting, of considering others, of actually following a few simple rules. Hence the reason that said group of women have 6 boys between them who've just run past screaming into the ball pit designed for under 3s without a care in the world, ignoring the shocked, surprised little ones already in there. And the mom's reaction? Didn't even notice. They're actually so used to their children's bad behaviour that they find it much more convenient to ignore it than actually face up to the fact that they're not that good at this parenting lark.

(Yes, we went to a play barn today. Yes, I had a good time. Yes, I could have cheerfully said a lot of this to many people in there. And no, I didn't say it. Because it would be a pointless exercise.)

More birthday thoughts....

It was the third birthday of the blog yesterday and originally I had put this up then, but writing about the final DFC rather took over yesterday so I thought it best to move it.

Just looking through the first few weeks of doing this, it's amazing how horrible some of the writing is (and for all I know it hasn't really improved that much in the time since). But what I am proud of is how quickly this post on Wacky Warehouses appeared. In fact, here it is again - think of it as a birthday present:

Wacky Warehouses and the like........

God I hate them. On the plus side they're lovely for Molly and I can get a cup of coffee and a sit down. But the shit you have to put up with.....

If you didn't want children maybe you should have taken a little more care with contraception? Moronic parents with a pint in one hand and their mobiles glued to their ears whilst their 8 offspring wander around the wacky hitting my child. But heaven forbid the parent who points this out. The little chav devils can do no wrong in their chav parents eyes.

Of course, I say Chav parents, what I should have said was chav parent. Singular. Seemingly always singular. Which is not to say I have anything against single moms. But experience and observation lets me make some hideously sweeping generalisations about this.

Take, for example, the single mom in front of me. I'm assuming she's a single mom of course. But she's with a bloke and her child keeps calling her mom and him dave so it's either step dad or boyfriend or she's picked a really dumb place to have an affair.
Her: Chav, horrible, cheap chocolate brown velour tracksuit, hair pulled harshly back onto scalp, designer label clothes and shoes, two mobiles on the go constantly.
Him: short, shaven headed and having that vaguely threatening manner of a football hooligan in waiting. The sloping brow, the dull, lifeless eyes and the slightly disbelieving looks at anyone who flaunts their ability to read. Of course, the deciding factor is the crap birmingham city chain round his fat, corpulent neck.
Why do single moms always seem to go for this sort of bloke? Why do they always cling onto them in public, mauling each other with the same level of passion your laborador uses to greet you. Of course, after a little while this passion will transmute into violence and they'll spend hours wasting police and hospital time.

And possibly worse are the Harbourne mums and dads.
You all know the sort..... just insert your own area (West Bridgford mums for Nottingham I hear)
Middle class or at least want to be, organic/ free-range / hand-reared bioyoghurt, alternative remedies, packed lunches of celery sticks and carrot puree, french at 6 months, violin appreciation classes from birth, that sort of thing.

Just go down to the Botanical Gardens and observe the playground, it's all liberal attitudes and swirly chiffon skirts and desperately trying to outdo every other Harbourne mom there by signing your child up for Mongolian Yak farming courses or whatever is in-vogue that week.

They seem to find it impossible to discipline their children. At least the bloody chavs can't be arsed. Harbourne mums are worse, they've made a conscious decision to neglect this rather important aspect of parenting.......

"Little tarquin doesn't mean to kick everything he sees and run around shouting like a monkey on acid, it's just his nature."
Absolutely, his nature is to be an arrogant and aggressive fuckwit, just like his dad and an ignorant, pompous harpy like mommy.

And at least Chav kids are only running around MacDonalds causing havoc, Harbourne mom's little angels run around the restaurants I eat in.
And that really wont do.

A wasted day ... why government organisations shouldn't produce software. Ever.

The day went well today at school. Up until the point I was asked to do something with a dvd that the dfes had produced on dyslexia. Then it all went downhill fast. The dvd itself is the worst resource I've ever seen. Complicated beyond belief and completely impossible to navigate in any meaningful way. It looks very pretty. But functionality got lost somewhere in the design process. Talking to various people who went on the original course on this, they have nothing good to say about it at all. Even the people delivering the training spent more time apologising about the crapness of the dvd.

The only way we can even use the dvd is to just treat it as a very simple resoource and guide the staff through it without letting them go off on their own and get impossibly lost. Even then it's going to take me sitting down and spending hours making a spreadsheet for them to fill in as they go. My rage at the moron who designed this cd just grew and grew as I realised there was no way we were going to be able to get this rubbish ready for a training session on Wednesday. Thankfully the head was willing to change the training session to next term.

The bad news is that the morons who brought us the Dyslexia dvd are coming out with a dvd on Autism. And that's going to be on a training course as well. The temptation to start trying to find the person writing these awful dvds is great. I could probably track him down and, in these financially troubled times, be able to hire a hitman for about £8.50. After the afternoon I had, it's very tempting.

1 in 10 parents believes Jaffa Cakes contribute to your 5 a day - Why are you surprised?

This is one of those stories (Telegraph, Sky) that is obviously intended to make the educated masses tut into their lattes and shake their heads in mock horror whilst barely suppressing their hatred fro anyone not like them.

But in truth, all it shows is that 1 in 10 people is an idiot. And that's hardly a surprise is it?

Of teachers and the military......

The other morning I listened with increasing disbelief to radio 5 as they held a little phone in on the subject of the National Union of Teachers discussing whether to ban the Army from coming into schools on a recruitment drive.

The first thing to mention is, as always, the teachers came out of this whole thing as a bunch of inarticulate, blithering fools, incapable of presenting their arguments in a logical or reasoned manner. Whereas the military folks, mostly ex-squaddies, came across as focused, literate and grounded.

Then the fun started. It seems the NUT have suddenly decided that they don't think the Army should be coming into schools and effectively doing a little bit of marketing and unofficial recruiting.

These quotes are from the Beeb:

Paul McGarr, a teacher from east London, said only when recruiting materials gave a true picture of war would he welcome them into his school. These would have to say:
Join the Army and we will send you to carry out the imperialist occupation of other people's countries, Mr McGarr said.
Join the Army and we will send you to bomb, shoot and possibly torture fellow human beings in other countries.
Join the Army and we will send you probably poorly equipped into situations where people will try to shoot or kill you because you are occupying other people's countries.
Join the Army, and if you survive and come home, possibly injured or mentally damaged, you and your family will be shabbily treated.

Okay, some have merit - particularly about being poorly equipped. But so much of it reads as an anti-Iraq rant. I'm as anti the Iraq war as your next Guardian reader, but even I can see that the Army, for some, is just as valid a career choice as going into the building trade.

In similar ways is Mr McGarr demanding that all trades and careers represented at what we used to know as the careers fair have the same truthful advertising:

Become a plumber: no knowledge of plumbing necessary, learn on the job as you casually fuck up someone's house for them. Ability to take tea breaks on the half hour every half hour a must.
BT customer support representatives: Can you completely ignore someone's problem and just repeat the same mantra over and over from some badly written pre-prepared script?
Are you a pompous, arrogant twat with no sense of reality and have no problem charging £30 for a letter? - become a lawyer.
Incompetent, illiterate? Can't really think what you want to do? Ever thought of teaching?

But the NUT are questioning why it is that the army recruits a disproportionate percentage from poor, underprivileged and ill-educated backgrounds.
I'm no expert, but hasn't this always been the case? Centuries ago didn't Tarquin go off to officer's camp before taking over daddy's estate whilst Billy, the Blacksmith's son, if he fancied doing something other than being a Blacksmith, buggered off and enlist in the army?

The best bit of it all is these teachers claiming that 15 year olds are not equipped to understand the futility and horrors of war and are thus being sold a misleading and polished version of army life.
Isn't it possibly worth asking that if 15 year olds don't have an understanding of the futility and horrors of war - shouldn't someone be TEACHING them better?

Lolita - the bed for young girls?

Above: This is the sort of thing a children's bed should look like

Below: This most definitely isn't

I almost crashed this morning laughing in incredulity over this on the BBC when I heard it on the radio. Woolworths have just withdrawn from sale a set of bedroom furniture branded with the name Lolita

This is just the sort of modern stupidity you'd expect really, after WHS selling Playboy branded stationary for school children and BHS selling a range of padded bras and Little Miss Naughty undies for the under 10s.

I despair of the whole sexualising the under 12s phenomenon that goes on. The pursuit of the pre-teen dollar means companies go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to market increasingly innapropriate material to boys and girls everywhere. And the cult of celebrity is so prevalent that these children see some noted children's writer like Jordan and just start thinking it's acceptable.
And all over the world, parents just too stupid to really be responsible for themselves never mind the upbringing of their ever increasing brood of ASBO collecting devil spawn keep buying the stuff. One day they're down the town spending their hard-earned benefits of push up bras, crop tops and hot pants with "sexy" plastered over the backside and the next they're shouting loudly about pedofiles after their kids. (That was the spelling of the word on a wall in Birmingham I saw once and it's always struck me as indicative of the problem.)

But perhaps even worse is that it slipped by without notice. And the stupidity just gets worse from there: According to the Woolworths spokesman:

“What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.”

Alternatively they could have just looked on their own bloody website and found the movie for sale there. But someone, somewhere knew what it meant. After all it's not the sort of thing that immediately comes to mind when naming a brand of children's furniture is it?

The Christmas number 1 is........soulless, bland, miserable, predictable and horrible.

Well thank you Simon bloody Cowell for yet again polluting our idea of Christmas with another of your insipid, no talent, no excitement, shit-idol winners.

This year's Christmas #1 is that bland bloke off the X-Factor.

Do you remember when Christmas number 1s used to be exciting things? Do you remember the words to all of the great Christmas songs? Does the memory of Wham's last Christmas or Band Aid or Slade bring back happy Christmas memories?
They do for me. I can sing along happily with them all, reliving Christmases past and present. But Molly can't. Molly wont have that same memory of Christmas because so far, all she knows about the Christmas number 1 is that it's always some talentless talent show winner. There's nothing special, nothing memorable about it.

The one ray of light in all this talentless show gloom is that this year the chart is awash with old Christmas songs, proving to all and sundry what a Christmas number one should be about.
Baa Humbug.

Tesco - your friendly neighbourhood store.....? WTF?

Bless their little cotton socks. That little neighbourhood shop down the road, just next to the Butchers and the Fishmongers where you get all your little essentials - you know the one?
Well it seems they're opening another shop in the United States of Somewhere.

Isn't that lovely.
A little store to combat all those evil, nasty supermarkets who don't care about neighbourhoods, the environment or their employees quality of life.

Nasty, evil supermarkets who expand their way across a country, opening bigger and bigger stores, putting smaller, more convenient local stores out of business by deep discounting and loss leading. Huge corporate nasty supermarkets who will pay producers a pittance, but since they operate anti-competitive practices, the producers really don't have a choice and have to go along, realising less and less for more and more.

I could keep going.
I could list the evils of the big supermarkets until I'm blue in the face.

But I don't need to.
There's a website set up to show you exactly what I'm talking about - Tescopoly.org
Or try these - BBC, wiki, Independent, Friends of the Earth (pdf)

So, we now know big, nasty supermarket bad.
small neighbourhood market good.

Which probably explains why the biggest, nastiest of all UK supermarket's:

Has decided to enter the US market again, this time by branding themselves as:

As we watch this wolf in green, organic, fair-trade sheep's clothing sidle up to America it's no more than a spectacular fuck you to Britain really.

Dear sir, here's some information you already knew. That will be £1 million please.

Yesterday we received a nice letter from the child benefit people apologising for the cock up with losing the data of 25 million individuals or 7.25 million families.
Which is completely bloody pointless.
Is there anyone amongst the 7.25 million families who aren't aware of the huge mess this has landed HMR&C in? Maybe a family that's been on a visit to relatives in the Amazon? Or for those holidaying on the moon perhaps?

But what does amaze me is the sheer scale of the expense that HMR&C have just gone to to apologise for something we all knew about anyway.

7.25 million families.
All receiving letters.
2nd class franked post. I have no idea what that costs, assuming that HMR&C get a sizeable discount from the post office. Maybe 15p each?

That is a frankly staggering 1.08 MILLION POUNDS.
All spent from taxpayers money just to tell us information that we already bloody knew about anyway.
Incompetence and stupidness just doesn't cover it.

There's a very good reason you're not on the Union Flag.....

And while I'm in a mood to annoy folks......

It seems the Welsh have decided they want a new Union Flag. They're upset that they're lacking representation on the flag of the United Kingdom.

So, they've finally noticed then. Took them long enough.

Well here's the news for our Welsh brethren. The Welsh flag is part of the Union Flag. It's behind the other flags. No, really. That's one of those secrets that only the English, Scots and Irish know.

Wales is a principality, effectively annexed by the English in 1283.
Scotland was independent until it's union with England (& Wales) in 1707.
Northern Ireland, whether you believe it right or not, was created as part of the 1801 Union of Great Britain & Northern Ireland.
Thus there is no reason to have part of the Welsh flag on the Union flag - it's already there since Wales is, was and always has been part of the kingdom of Britain. The Scottish and the Northern Irish can have representation on the Union flag because they never rolled over and gave in.

Alternatively Wales could become an independent country.
Chief export?
Probably Welsh people looking for work in England.

Meet the teddies...... God, Jesus, Yahweh, Buddha........

From left to right......
Top Row: Buddha, Vishnu, Thor, Zeus, God, Jesus
Middle: YHWH, Jumala, Elohim, Mohammed,
Front: Jah Rastafari, Allah, Brahman, Yahweh.

Oh dear. I fear this may get me in trouble.

Ikea-d out. but before retiring to bed .... Have we all finished bleating about Princess Bloody Diana yet?

Very tired today.
Busy day of holiday and then all three of us met up for an Ikea trip, complete with all the horror and carnage that can entail.

But before crawling into bed, Louise and I were talking about the whole emotional masturbation that's been washing over the world's media today.
Yes, it's 10 years since a media obsessed, emotionally damaged, mother of two with a habit for dodgy men and a fondness for a photogenic charity cause died.
But I really don't care.

One thing that we always wonder about the yahoos who insist on commemorating her memory by flowers and travelling to her grave etc. This is something Louise first brought up on seeing the hideous sight of the mass hysteria surrounding the funeral:
Do you not think, if these idiots really wanted to remember Diana, they should take the money they were going to spend on flowers and train fare to the capital and actually try helping one of the charities she supported.
Surely, if she was the paragon of virtue and goodness you all make her out to be, she'd rather you all did this and actually saved some lives. Look at the flowers, how many lives could you have saved?
Or perhaps you'd all rather have a good selfish cry to make yourselves feel validated by your grief?

Diana funerals and Big Brother finales on the same day.
The brain dead and the emotionally incompetent - you all deserve each other.

Tragic Life Stories.Dave bloody Pelzer has a lot to answer for.....

WH Smith has a new system of labelling it seems. I was in the branch in Beverley the other day, turned a corner and stopped in my tracks, wondering whether some stupid prank was being played on me.

But sadly, it was not.
There, in front of my eyes was a new section, right next to the Biographies: Tragic Life Stories.

(Update to answer Pete and clarify - yes, a complete, in your face section. As legitimate as Biography, Travel, Science Fiction or Crime.)

Oh bloody hell. This refers to the hideous examples of autobiography and biography where every poor unfortunate thing to have been abused, tormented or taken advantage of is encouraged to pour their hearts out onto the page. I take nothing away from these poor souls, but the sheer proliferation of these books seems somehow to increase their degradation, to pour new suffering onto them by appearing to enter them into a competition where the winner is the one whose suffering titillates and enthralls you the most. (that's enthralls YOU, not me.)

It all started with a few books, each more shocking than the last, each portraying some poor soul's suffering as entertainment. Of course, most obvious of these was Dave Pelzer, a man whose suffering has been sufficient to sustain a whole series of novels, detailing his life through his suffering. Worse yet, he seems to be inspiring his other relatives to write their own stories as well.

And then of course we have the literary agents, never slow to spot and milk a trend. It's thanks to them that these books reproduced like bacteria on a petri dish. Where once there was only a few, complete with required white cover and tales of woe, suddenly there are enough to necessitate their own section of a bookstore.

Although, it's not just the agents who are to blame. Nor the writers. No, the ones who are really guilty in all of this are you.
You, who actually picks up a book like this and reads it.
You, who is never content with the one book of human suffering.
It's your fault that the bookstore now has a section specifically devoted to Tragic life Stories.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
But not too ashamed. If you start letting the shame get to you, you may find the agents knocking on your door and you may join the ranks of tragic life stories yourselves.

I'm off to get a drink. There's a bad taste in my mouth.

Update (22/08/07): Following Steve's comment that he'd already blogged this at the start of August about WHS, I realised that I'd written this post about Waterstones, when obviously it's WHSmiths. I have now changed it to read WHSmith. As I say in the comments - I am a moron. More drink please.