Magpie's Nest

Why my daughter is awesome. Again.

2013-10-15T04:36:00.000-07:00

So, driving back from her judo lesson last night, I was talking my my daughter. Specifically, we were talking about a recent thing on tumblr from this blog by the always excellent Laurie Penny.

And, being brilliant, my daughter made some great points.

Mostly, was that she really doesn't care what people think about her looks. She's already had to deal, at age 12, with people saying she looks / dresses "weird", and she's doing really well with that. So I asked her what she thought about being judged on how she looks and dresses, and what sort of things does she like being complemented on.

And she completely hit me sideways when she said "Well, when I'm in a comic shop or at a games day and people say they're glad that there's a girl there who's there because she's into that stuff. You know, when people recognise that I'm kinda of a geek and they like me for that."

And that's the geek dream, isn't it? To be accepted and lauded for exhibiting your enthusiasm. Not for your looks or having the right clothes or looking down on another part of culture.

She also said "You know, I know there's some girls who wear clothes with geek stuff on just because they like the look of it. And that's great! But I wear it because it's about stuff I like as well, and I love it when people talk to me about it because I'm wearing it."

So yeah, my daughter. Super-awesome nerd fighter. Brilliant. And, incidentally, beautiful. But I'm biased about all that.

PS: Goddamn it, and this is why my daughter being proud of being a geek is also a source of anxiety to me: http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/this-right-here-is-the-problem/

The parable of the farmers, or vanity publishing explained.

2013-04-11T09:34:00.003-07:00

Once upon a time there were three wheat farmers. Each had produced a bumper crop of grain.

The first farmer showed his grain to a merchant[1], who was so impressed with the grain that he bought the rights from the farmer to winnow, mill and bake the grain into bread and then sold the bread to shops, in return for a small amount of the sale of each loaf. The merchant made more money than the farmer, but had risked a great deal of his own money paying for winnowing, milling, baking and promoting the bread, while the farmers job essentially stopped after harvest[2]

The second farmer, who had heard that merchants and grain agents were very picky about grain these days, really just wanted people to eat his wheat. He sometimes paid others to winnow mill or bake the grain into bread, sometimes did it himself, and negotiated himself with the shop owners. While he spent a lot of his own money and time, he kept all the money that the shopkeepers gave him, and all the money from the bread he sold himself. One year, his grain made fantastic bread which was so popular a merchant approached him for rights to his grain (see first farmer).[3]

The third farmer was approached by a man who called himself a merchant, who praised his grain to the skies. He said it was just the grain he was looking for, and would be happy to pay the farmer for the rights to his grain. Only, wasn’t it fair that the farmer should contribute to the costs of winnowing, milling, baking and selling to the shops? The farmer, somewhat impressed that anyone would want to buy his grain in the depressed bread market, paid the merchant (who had many stories of how successful people had been making their own grain into bread). The merchant then promised the farmer that he would get a substantial proportion of the sales of the bread, and an even bigger proportion of the money he made from any he sold himself.

And when the other farmers heard about this they said “Dude, seriously, you’ve already paid them to winnow, mill and bake the bread that you’re selling yourself, why give them one red cent extra?”

The third farmer then found that the winnowing, milling and baking wasn’t much good. And, to be honest, his loaves were just plumped onto the shelves of big bread stores without any promotion, getting lost in the proliferation of loaves. In fact, if he tried selling any of that grain by himself, the merchant would tell him he couldn’t, he could only sell grain through the merchant (who was beginning to look a lot like Robert Carlyle in Once Upon a Time).

His “merchant” wasn’t bothered, as he’d already been paid, and actually made most of his money from charging farmers for processing their own grain.

And there were always more farmers desperate to get their grain made into bread.

[1] Actually, he first showed it to a grain agent, who was so impressed he agreed to negotiate the contract with the merchant for a consideration of the revenue, but that’s by the by.

[2] The merchant also paid for options on next years crop, and first refusal on any oats, barley, etc the farmer may produce, but that’s by the by

[3] He also paid for the rights to make and sell bread from previous years grain harvests. YOU SEE, THIS IS ALL A METAPHOR.

Yet Another Consultation Response

2012-11-22T16:03:00.001-08:00

Consultation response by Peter Darby, Home educating parent, former Welsh Correspondent of Action on Home Education, Drama Group Facilitator, Welsh resident.

Executive Summary: The compulsory licensing proposals are unnecessary, expensive, detrimental to the relationship between Local Authorities and home educators, and predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the statutory duties of LA’s.

The entire basis of the proposals is that in order to discharge their duties under Section 436a of the Education Act (1996), Local authorities must register and monitor the education of children electively home educated. However, the All Wales Attendance Framework of 2011 makes it explicit that Section 436a duties do not apply to children who are being educated at home.

Put simply, with regards to Section 436a of the Education act, Local Authorities have NO special duties towards home educated children.

The intent of Section 436a was to confirm that Local Authorities have responsibilities to ensure that children not attending school but not being electively home educated are receiving a suitable education from the Local Authority, under Education Other Than At School provision (EOTAS).

If legislation is passed on this basis, it will seriously extend the duties of the LA’s into a realm previously covered by parental responsibility, far beyond that intended by Section 436a.

The proposals are not for a registration programme, but a licensing program. Properly formed, a register is the recording of information, and as such does not require permission or approval.

By restricting the ability to be entered onto a register of home educated children to make it by the approval of the Local Authority, this makes the register a licensing scheme, far beyond the intent of a simple register of information.

This is an unnecessary and extreme intrusion of arbitrary authority into parental responsibility.

Furthermore, the suggestion that license to home educate be restricted on the judgement of an education officer that there are welfare concerns confuses education and welfare issues. Educational and general welfare issues are separate issues, and should be addressed by separate LA officers with appropriate training in each.

The introduction of such language into educational legislation seems to hint that the intent is that only the “right sort of people” will be “permitted” to educate their children outside of the school system, a class based assumption that is countered by research showing that it is the most “deprived” families that benefit most from education outside of school.

While there is some debate in the Home Education community about the conduct of the Bridgend pilot scheme, the participants, both Local Authority and Home Educator, seemed to agree that where the relationship was based on respect, trust and integrity, LA’s were better able to discharge their (actual) statutory duties and also engage positively with the home educating community.

Where LA’s are demanding, forceful, and inflexible, the relationship suffers, as home educators exercise their right to withdraw co-operation from an LA they perceive as acting in an adversarial role.

Compulsory registration and licensing by LA fiat forces LA’s into an adversarial role. Already I’ve had feedback from LA workers that the proposed legislation will damage what can be a fragile relationship with families who have often felt let down and stigmatised by the education system.

In informal talks about the proposed legislation, it has been expressed that compulsory registration will decrease the number of home educating families that are not known to the authorities.

I would ask how.

Proclaiming that “registration is now compulsory” will not automatically make people register. How will the authorities find families that have decided not to register? Will they further make it an offence not to inform the authorities of a known home educating family? Are we to be set as informers on each other?

Would it not be true that the adversarial nature of stating that, if we find you have not registered, we will force your children into school and possibly prosecute you, will make families less likely to engage with the local authority? What have they to lose by staying hidden? What have they to gain by coming forward and saying “yes, been home educating without registration for ten years now, please send my children to school until you’ve come to a decision as to whether I’m fit to teach my own.”

Compulsory registration with legal consequences is not a “find home educators” spell. It’s an invite to go into hiding.

Not consulted upon are the intractable problems of implementation.

What are the penalties for non-registration going to be? Fines? Imprisonment? Making something a legal requirement means that legal consequences must be brought to bear for infringement. What would be proportionate for an offence which is only an offence because non-compliance makes the LA’s job more difficult?

Where is the money coming from? Do education departments have inspectors standing idle at the moment? At a time when those very departments are struggling to fulfil their current, actual duties, inventing new ones, with commensurate increased demands on scant resources, seems perverse.

As stated above, how are the LA’s going to find families that have not registered? If they think they can find them, why do they need compulsory registration? If not, how will making registration compulsory help them?

Will families be “permitted” to home educate during the six (or possibly twelve, it varies in the documents) weeks it takes to prepare the report? If they are refused permission after twelve weeks, will they be subject to the legal consequences of home educating without license during those weeks?

The introduction of a licensing system fundamentally alters the balance of education law. It makes the responsibility of the parent to provide an education to their children subject to the approval of the local authority. This means that the LA assumes ultimate responsibility for the education of the child, which is a thought that should stop any LA legal representative in their tracks.

Currently, the buck for inadequate education stops with parents. By licensing home educators, that buck gets passed to the LA’s, and in principle this applies to all parents in Wales, including those with children in state schools. The shift from the current “we will step in if there are demonstrable, serious concerns” to “we will permit you to educate if we choose to” is a vast one, and should only be taken if the WAG believes that there is a problem serious enough to expose itself to the greatest increase in state educational liability in British history.

It is perhaps unfortunate that this consultation period ends in the week when the minister has suggested that responsibility for schools could be taken out of Local Authority control. Two LA’s in Wales are already under special measures, with perhaps more to follow. It would not be unfair to say that state provision of education in Wales is in crisis, has been for some years, and is unlikely to resolve that crisis any time soon, whatever the best wishes and efforts from the LA’s, the WAG, the teachers and their unions, etc.

But it does lead one to ask: If the education departments cannot oversee schools to a standard which is acceptable to either Estyn, the Minister or the people of Wales, why are they expected to license the education of those children who have chosen not to participate in their failing system?

I have not answered the prepared consultation questions, as they are almost entirely framed by the assumption that compulsory licensing will go ahead and it is only the minor details of where the assessments are to be made and how long home educators will have to wait for the license to be debated. The fact that the whole thing is based on a faulty reading of the education act renders the questions posed as virtually meaningless.

What the I don't even

2012-11-21T08:18:00.000-08:00

From a job description:

The UK has progressed a sector based policy approach over the last decade with a view to improving its’ skills position. The Sector Priorities Fund Pilot Programme (herein referred to as the SPFP Programme) is designed to take forward strategic sector project activity led by Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) in order to realise the sector related policy recommendations outlined in “Skills that Work for Wales: A Skills and Employment Strategy and Action Plan. This policy promotes a sector based response to identifying and addressing skills and employment needs within sectors of the Welsh economy.

Skills That Work for Wales outlined the need for a Sector Priorities Fund from 2011 in Wales to align provision to the needs of key sectors of the economy. SPFP is aimed at piloting sector based solutions activity which has been identified by SSCs and evidenced as a need through their employer engagement strategies and backed by robust labour market intelligence. There is also an underlying aim to build the capacity in the skills system by brokering relationships between SSCs, FE and HE Institutions.

This will enable sector solutions to be delivered with strong partnership arrangements with providers and strategic sector bodies (SSCs) who act as the voice of employers in identifying skills gaps and shortages, as well as reforming qualifications to ensure they meet the needs of industry. The overarching aim of the SPFP Programme is to provide the evidence base on which to inform and influence policy and delivery systems in Wales to enable mainstream training programmes supported by the Welsh Assembly Government to become more demand-responsive. That is, policy and delivery systems are more reflective of the training and skills needs articulated by employers across sectors of the Welsh economy. Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) will be at the core to directing and managing project activity and submit project proposals to be supported via the SPFP Programme funding. SSC strategic projects will be underpinned by evidence of employer-demand gained primarily through their Sector Skills Agreements (SSAs) and Sector Qualifications Strategies (SQSs), and will pilot activity aimed at feeding intelligence to inform the Sector Priorities Fund identified in “Skills that Work for Wales”.

IS THIS EVEN ENGLISH?

More random thoughts on the Welsh HE proposals

2012-09-16T02:27:00.001-07:00

It's not registration, it's a licensing scheme.

They call the proposals "Registering and monitoring home education in Wales" , but with one small change, it goes beyond that.

26. The LA would only be able to refuse a new application or revoke an existing
registration in a very limited set of circumstances:

Hang on, a register is a record of information. That's it. If you hold a register of home educating families in your area, then the only time you remove someone from that register is when they are no longer home educating in your area.

You, as a home educating family, don't apply for registration: you register.

You, as a local authority, can't refuse an "application to register", as you would be refusing to record a given fact.

What do we call something that's applied for, then granted, refused or revoked by the local authority? That would either be permission or license.

So, it's a licensing scheme, not a registration scheme.

A license to discharge your legal duties to your children in the manner you see fit.

Which is odd, isn't it?

I'm sure I'll get corrected, but I can't think of any other legal duty which is subject to licensing. I've got a driving license, but no legal obligation to travel. I could get a gun license, but I have no legal obligation to shoot. I've got planning permission for a polytunnel, but no legal obligation to grow veg.

On the other hand, I've got a legal obligation to pay tax, but I don't need a license to earn money.

More, no doubt, will be said on the "register home cooking" blog...

2. It does the opposite of what it's supposed to do

2. Section 436A of the Education Act 1996 places a duty on LAs which consists
of two parts. The first part requires a LA to identify (so far as it is possible to do so)
all learners of compulsory school age in their area who are not on a school roll. The
second part requires a LA to establish if such learners are receiving a suitable
education. In the remainder of this document we describe this duty as ‘the section
436A duty’

So the reason for compulsory licensing of HE families is to allow LA's to discharge their 436A duty.

And given infinite resources for education departments, it will do just that.

Oh hang on! Just remembered! Education departments have finite budgets!

Which means that diverting resources away from investigating reports of educational neglect towards compulsory licensing schemes means that fewer resources are available to investigate and support struggling families.

This is especially true of a county like, for example, Powys: population density of twenty five people per square kilometre, less than half that of Northumberland, the least densely populated English County. No wonder it's hard to get a board game group together. It's going to take a long time for a team to cover that area for a handful of families.

The fact is, identifying families in trouble has never been a problem for Local Authorities. Knowing their legal obligations and powers is a constant struggle, and one which another legislative layer is not going to help.

3. Practicalities: How are people going to know? And what happens if they don't?

The proposal is curiously blank on these two questions.

How is someone entering Wales supposed to know about this? There's no formal legal system of application to move from England to Wales, but on moving, a home educating family will have a new legal responsibility that they did not have before.

For that matter, anyone in Wales whose child reaches compulsory school age (I know, it's the legally accurate but semantically inaccurate term) could find themselves breaking a law without knowing it.

In trying to make families enforce a local authority duty, they are putting families in a paradoxical position.

But from then on, what happens if the local authority find a family that has been home educating without a license, sorry, registration, for years? Will the family be prosecuted? What happens if they continue to home educate after a license (oh sod it, let's call a spade a spade) has been refused? Is this in any way different from refusing a Statutory Attendance Order?

In other words, beyond a big scary licensing scheme, a new statutory monitoring function for already over stretched Welsh education departments and a few big brotherly terms, would this proposed legislation offer any advantages to LA's in pursuing their statutory obligations? No.

Would it make it more likely that failing HE families would receive support? No.

Would it provide any new tools beyond those already in the legislative toolbox? No.

At a time when education departments in Wales are in crisis, it seems incredible that time and money is being spent on an area that is giving no cause for concern.

On Enthusiasm

2012-09-12T10:16:00.001-07:00

Whenever anyone patronizes or belittles you for liking something, whether it's something out of the mainstream like table top games or obscure SF shows, or something more in the mainstream like wrestling, or TV talent shows or soaps, you should feel sorry for them.

Because while they think they're proving their superiority, what they're really doing is shouting "STOP FINDING JOY WHERE YOU FOUND IT!"

They're jealous of your enthusiasm. Poor dears.

Whenever you come across someone liking something you don't care for, I'd recommend cultivating these responses:

"Hey, that's not my bag, but don't let me stop you! Tell me what's cool about it!"

"Mind if I geek out about why I like this other thing for a while?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I am utterly failing to get what's great about it. And that's not your problem at all."

Yeah, all of these can come across as passive aggressive bullsh*t (PABS, for those keeping score at home), so grace and acceptance, at all times.

Enthusiasm and joy are commodities in very short supply. Let's try to keep as much of them alive as possible.

History lesssons: part one, the rise and fall of the Badman report

2012-08-14T15:05:00.002-07:00

Just speaking personally now, about how I understood the Badman affair, and what I learnt from it.

It looks like the story of the Badman review starts in January 2009, with the announcement of a review to investigate current practice, and whether HE was being used as a cover for child abuse, neglect, forced marriage ~~and weapons of mass destruction that could be launched against the UK within 45 minutes~~.

Of course, it doesn't start there, as Ed Balls did not wake up one day and think "today I will commission a hugely prejudicial review into home education." Because, as we all know, he wakes up every day and thinks "I WANNA BE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER!" but that is neither here nor there.

It could have been said to have started in 2007, when Lord Adonis said that HE without government oversight was "an anomaly which we intend to rectify." But that was just hot air.

It really started in May 2008, with the death of Khyra Ishaq. She was starved to death, at the age of seven, while in the care of her mother (Angela Gordon) and her mother's partner. She was not, at the time, attending school.

However, the authorities had first been alerted to Gordon's deliberate neglect of children in her care in 2000. There were a steady stream of reports about Ishaq's welfare, not only from her teachers before she stopped being sent to school, but medical staff and members of the public. Failures within Birmingham social services meant that they were not properly followed up.

The Ishaq case, rapidly approaching court in late 2008, was the main catalyst for the Badman review, and in my opinion, the course of the court case and the progress of the review and subsequent proposed legislation cannot be considered separately.

I believe that if the court case had gone according to Ed Balls' predictions, then England would now have compulsory registration for home educators.

For now, let's return to the home education review.

No-one is selected at random to head a government enquiry. In a perfect world, where policy is decided by level headed and rational assessment of impartial evidence, they would be conducted either by a well respected, neutral figure from outside the field in question prepared to weigh carefully the expert opinions offered them, or the best qualified expert inside the field.

In this world, a policy is decided upon, and an "expert" who agrees with it is found to head an "enquiry" to find evidence to support the policy.

Ed Balls found Graham Badman. Badman is a former teacher and headteacher who then moved upwards into senior circles of local authority education departments. By another of these accidents of history, education and children's social services were merged to form children's services departments, and thus did a man with a great and good history in education, but with no qualifications or experience in social work or safeguarding, become responsible first in Oxfordshire, then in Kent, for child welfare and protection.

One small note: immediately prior to being asked to conduct the HE review, Badman was parachuted into Haringey Local Children's Safeguarding Board (hereafter HLCSB) to replace Sharon Shoesmith after her mishandling of the death of "Baby P". HLCSB, it should be noted, were previously heavily censured for failing to save the life of Victoria Climbie in 2000. Climbie was, like Ishaq, not attending school at the time of her death. While not directly related to the Badman review, the Climbie case was referred to by the NSPCC as being a case of a child dying while being home educated, and thus of the need to monitor HE families, during the media coverage of the Badman review.

Personally, I cannot see how Badman, having been dropped into Haringey to oversee a review of a fatal child neglect case, could not have been influenced by this earlier case.

Incidentally, in the criminal case regarding Climbie's death and the subsequent serious case reviews, "home education" as such was not found to be a contributing factor. Local authority (and, ironically, NSPCC) incompetence was.

So, back to the Badman enquiry: for the progress of Badman's relationships with actual frontline home educators, I can do no better than to refer you to a contemporary eyewitness account:

http://mummyslittleangle.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/graham-badman-just-doesnt-get-it/

For the TL:DR crowd, some quotes...

His main themes included:
- Why aren’t we arguing for our “share” of our tax money?
- What do we want from the LAs – and “to leave us alone” was not accepted as an answer. He was pushing for what we wanted in terms of support.
- Did we want access to internet schools
- He looked for structure and didn’t seem to “get” autonomous home education or just even freedom to chose
- Would we be happy with a health visitor, rather than an EWO or Social Worker coming to visit (if we are talking about welfare, safeguarding etc)
- If we didn’t accept the Government monitoring us, would we accept “other home educators” monitoring us!! Eg, local groups, national organisations etc
- How can “society” protect the vulnerable amongst us

The feeling/feedback from the families was:
- they weren’t sure that he listened
- felt they could see the points *he* was making
- felt that he didn’t understand/listen to the points *they* were making
- that he didn’t GET home education
- that he certainly didn’t GET autonomous home education
- many felt somewhat insulted by the end of the debate
- they were glad to have the chance to have met him for themselves and got a “feel” for what we are up against
My 13 year old said at the end that “talking to the Badman left a bad taste in my mouth”

This, however, is merely the prologue.

Upon meeting with Paula Rothermel, who has done arguably the best academic work on HE and outcomes in the UK, he first asked her if HE mothers suffer from Munchausen's by proxy, and shortly thereafter proceeded to rubbish her research to her face.

Other academics whose work was shown to demonstrate improved outcomes for HE children were similarly rubbished.

Meanwhile, Badman's approach to rigorous research, well... not too good

As I ranted at the time:

*(And to those who doubt that, I say that any man who has spent a good portion of his life teaching science who then takes an unrepresentative sample, extracts the median value and then multiplies it unweighted across the whole class to obtain an aggregate figure, is not being merely disingenuous but actively misleading. Either he is too mendacious to be trusted with the review or incompetent. You see, unlike Mr Badman, I tend to vilify and defame people solely on the basis of clear evidence of their actions.)

Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, a funny thing happened.

In June 2009, Badman produced his report. This was not unnoticed, nor funny. There was a media frenzy. The government responded with undetailed plans to implement the recommendations.

What did go unnoticed was that, almost simultaneously, the first trial of Khrya Ishaq's killers was abandoned.

For those playing at home, yes, the first trial "should" have ended pretty much on the day the Badman report was released. In the middle of a media shitstorm about "hidden children" at risk.

Personally, I believe Ed Balls planned to ride the wave of public outrage to pass HE monitoring legislation. Sadly for him, two (in some reports three) jurors became ill, and for want of a nail...

From this point on, the story essentially becomes one of party politics: the HE community latches onto some Tory politicians looking to make a name for themselves in the education lobby, an inquiry into the Badman review is held (and is pretty scathing), shadow education minister Michael Gove somehow makes statements supporting autonomous HE while calling for more discipline and structure in schools, time passes, leaves fall from the calendar...

Oh wait one more thing.

On 25th February 2010, the Khrya Ishaq trial ends. The Ministry for Children, Schools and Families puts out a press release welcoming the judgement, particularly the highlighting of the need for greater control of home educators...

Except the judgement says no such thing. It's very scathing about Birmingham social services though.

Oh, notice I linked to blog above? It's because within hours, the original statement has been taken down and replaced with one that mutters and mumbles about trying harder, tragic case, etc etc. No formal retraction, nothing.

Almost as if the DCSF had written it before the judgement, eh? Maybe months before. Maybe in June.

Back to politics. 2010 crashes onwards towards the national embarassment that was the election that year, parliament is suspended and in the shameful process that is the wash up, Labour decide the HE legislation isn't as important as the rest of the education bill and ditch it.

And that, in my view, is the potted history of why we don't have registration in England.

You will notice that HE families, campaigners, and organisations, do not feature greatly in this version of events. Politicians, cronies, dead children and two twists of fate (ill jurors and a general election) feature heavily.

Fast forward to 2012. A child not in school dies in North Wales. A child known to the local authority, for whom alarms have been raised, but intervention was not deemed necessary.

Epilogue: Where are they now?

Ed Balls is shadow chancellor. I think this may be his ideal job, as it allows him to imagine that his policies really would save the country without actually having to see them fail in real life.

Michael Gove is Secretary of State for Education

Graham Badman is... well, one thing he isn't, despite the repeated statements of Ed Balls, is Sir Graham Badman. Yet.

What he is doing... some will find distasteful.

Graham Badman is currently available for speaking engagements. His current topic? The lessons learnt from the death of Baby P. Sometimes, Victoria Climbie is also referenced.

To be absolutely fair, it seems that the thrust of the talks is that social workers who know their powers, the law and are absolutely dedicated to the welfare of children are what is needed to save vulnerable children.

I wholeheartedly agree.

What isn't, and has never been, needed is new legislation that forces those social workers into households where no concerns have been raised.

TL:DR
The Badman legislation failed because of happenstance.

AAAaaaand we're back on the air...

2012-08-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, hello, welcome to my own contribution to the diaspora of opinion on Home Education, since that's what I mostly ranted about last time I was active.

Now last time I was active here, it was because the then Labour government in London decided to "consult" (and I use the term in the loosest possible fashion) on proposed legislation to make home education subject to compulsory registration.

Due to somewhat complicated and, I believe, serendipitous conditions, this legislation did not come to pass.

Guess what?

Someone in Cardiff has had an idea. Yup, meat's back on the menu boys, there is a proposal to make it compulsory to register in order to home educate.

They're playing my song again. Let's dance.

Poems by Alex (primary offspring)

2011-01-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

The White Bike

The white bike
And the polite ammonite
Went to ignite
A parasite.

"Not quite",
Said the parasite.

It check a website.

The ammonite
Ran away on a motorbike.

The bike
Got frostbite.
Alex Moorhouse, 2011.

The Mite

The mite
Was childlike.

It disliked dynamite.

It gave a wiggle
And a giggle
And a jiggle.

Alex Moorhouse, 2011

Just got this in my inbox...

2010-12-09T06:09:00.000-08:00

... wondering how legit it looks to you guys...

To: Peter.Darby@BHM.Co.Uk
From: oikygove@toryhq.co.ni

GREETING!

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PLEASE DEPOSIT MONEY WITH ANY NAMED UNIVERSITY. NO WORK REQUIRED. THREE A STAR A LEVELS NEED TO BE SHOWN. I HAVE ATTACHED THESE TO THIS E-MAIL.

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MICHAEL GOVE, DEPT OF EDUCATT... EJUCA... LEARN STUFF GOODER!

... Where's my chequebook?

Doing it on purpose.

2010-11-25T07:18:00.000-08:00

With some uneasiness, and a couple of proviso's, a TV entered Tan-Y-Fron yesterday.

Quite pointedly, the digibox did not and hopefully will not. So no live broadcasts. It's just a big screen, for occasional use.

As in, if it gets used, it will be used for a definite occasion. Maybe not a big one, like last night's viewing of a double bill of Brain of Morbius and Toy Story 3, but not channel surfing.

One of our number in the house expressed concern that she didn't like TV because of her own problems in resisting just sitting and watching ANYTHING... which I can completely relate to.

(See also resisting just eating ANYTHING in my case. Easy fake temporary satisfaction, I guess.)

So the TV is going to become like a freshly baked cake, or that one book, or a board game... rewarding, but not entirely convenient enough to be taken for granted.

As usual, this is firing some other thoughts in the butterfly brain, so hang on...

Doing it on purpose.

Speaking personally, whenever I do something "just because", it's unsatisfying. Watching whatever's on TV. Eating whatever's in the fridge. Scanning through chunks of my rss feeds. Most casual PC games.

Making time, making effort, doing things on purpose, much better. Writing. Most boardgames. You get the idea.

Thing is, some things can be done either on purpose or just because. Some people play RPG's because, well, it's what we do every Thursday. Some people have sex, or get married, or go to church, or don't go to church, or send their kids to school, or vote for a particular party, just, you know, because.

Some people do some of those things "just because" sometimes and "on purpose" sometimes.

A couple of years ago, there was talk on The Forge RPG site about "playing on purpose", trying to break through the old saw of RPG's being 20 minutes of fun wrapped up in three hours of play. There was some resistance to it from some quarters, a lot of it sounding a bit like Mrs Doyle, when faced with a tea making machine that "takes the misery out of making the tea"; "Maybe I LIKE the misery!"

But really, most of the time, doing stuff without doing it on purpose is, yes, easier. But so much less fulfilling, possibly less worthwhile.

Now excuse me while I drink the HELL out of this GODDAMN COFFEE.

The truly Bizarre notion of National Events.

In the last few years, noting the proliferation of TV channels, alternative viewing options, timeshifting, YouTube, etc, there have been periodic paeans to the notion of the National Event That Everyone Watched on TV.

The Royal Variety Show. Royal Weddings, Funerals and Bar Mitzvahs. National Football Matches. The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show. The Moon Landing. Live Aid.

The fact that we don't all do the same thing at the same time as a nation is supposed to be a damning indictment of Thatcher's, Blair's, Brown's Cameron's Britain. "How can we have a national identity if some people aren't watching EastEnders," seems to be the implication.

It's all quite silly, and the more you think about it, the sillier it gets.

Widespread TV ownership, say 1960 for argument's sake (enough that getting to see this kind of event TV could be taken for granted).

Widespread fracturing of TV viewership, say 1995 for arguments sake (enough options that the terrestrial stations start to sweat).

So that's what, 35 years of national unity imposed by Big Brother screens?

What did we have before that arbitrary 1960 date? For one thing, tighter local communities, for all the good and bad that implies.

There were national events, sure: Royal weddings, coronations, war and peace, but these were celebrated and felt not as individual households plugged into a massive national identity, but as part of a community that was tangibly celebrating, commiserating, panicking, or protesting within arms length of each other.

(Obligatory sidetrack into mentioning a scion of my mother's side of the family who spent VE parading a sign saying "Churchill Is A Warmongering Bastard". Don't accept myths of national unity of opinion at face value. And remember Winnie lost the post-war election.)

Having conditioned us to interact with the national consciousness via a TV screen, when the viewing is fragmented, so will national identity.

And to an extent, good. That level of implied national unity, even on just a cultural level, is historically speaking downright odd.

And some communities only exist through screens. And if you're reading this, you're part of one of them. Hi.

So yes, I think this sort of national unity is a) bizarre and b) on the way out, and I'd like to think it will at least partly be replaced with a new form of the old community spirit, some of it virtual, some of it of necessity physically local.

In fact, to be frank, in the long term it's the only sustainable way. And it's pretty much been what the evolving brain has created in a feedback loop with other evolving brains over a lot longer than the 35 years of "One nation under TV". We're badly adapted to being in a community of 40 million, never mind eight billion. A couple of hundred (you know, like the average Facebook friends list, or what you can just about fit into a village hall) seems to be the human brains' median social comfort zone.

Which makes me very suspicious of anyone trying to sell the truly bizarre notion of National Events.

Which makes me happier that we've left the digibox behind.

Inhabiting the corpse of the RPG industry

2010-11-01T03:52:00.000-07:00

Another random blurg, after the food blurg, a game blurg.

So, everyone's talking about the death of the rpg industry*. Or at least it's dwindling to stump.

Some random thoughts:

1. Thirty years ago, when I first threw polyhedral dice in anger, if I wanted to play a game about, say defeating a dragon, what were my options? Blocky ploygons on the atari 2600. Read a fantasy novel. Play a miniatures wargame, or a board game which would come in two flavours: moronically simple roll and moves or Avalon Hill titles with rules more complex than the average house purchase document. Even text adventures on home computers were a couple of years away, and then were essentially fantasy novels revealed through through working out puzzles.

D&D and it's clones were state of the art.

Now... well, World of Warcraft and Dragon Age are just the beginnings. Consoles and PC's offer immersive experiences with as much an illusion of freedom as you get in most table top games, without having to arrange time with half a dozen folks for a whole evening.

As goes return on time invested, RPG's are looking lousy. But so is writing, and acting, and crafting, and other hobbies that require more effort than finding a charged controller and the right disk. And they're still going strong. At least partly because people recognise that part of the reward comes from knowing you've made the effort to do something that takes effort.

These are activities that value the product of effort, rather than the experience of entertainment. Can RPG's do the same? Should they?

It's been over ten years since people first started talking about this, about gaming on purpose, on taking the activity seriously, as much as a garage band or amateur drama club would, to work on producing a worthwhile experience for the participants. Otherwise, why not just plug in the Xbox?

2. Paper fetishism.

What is a table top RPG? In a product sense, it's mostly books, a few dice. Even when sold as electronic media, RPG's are usually electronic stand ins for paper books. Often some of the best looking books you will see, and more often than not, these days, with indices and hyperlinks inside the text.

I want an electronic toolbox for playing a game. I want to be able to fire up a character creator from the get go, I want tools to manage the job ready to roll.

I want to be able to run a whole game from an iPad. Possibly a networked set of iPads No, I don't have an iPad, but keep the design philosophy in mind when thinking about...

An app for Universalis that takes free text input from multiple chat clients, allows tagging of text and busting it out to objects created on the fly while tracking tokens and dice pools.

An app for Inspectres that tracks the dice pools and rolls between all players, who's had a confessional, etc...

An app for Dogs in the Vineyard that contains the town builder, character builder and conflict trackers...

So far, I've mostly seen dice rollers, online mappers with some game functions embedded for D20 derivations, and character builders, mostly fan built, mostly... not great. And especially not great for games from the Forge diaspora.

But developing takes time. And costs money. And no-one yet knows if anyone will pay for for table top rpg's in this form. So it's not going to get done.

And those who are still publishing will be publishing like it's 1989.

3. And does it matter?

You can buy a new buggy whip, if you want to. Which means someone is still making money out of the proverbial thing that you can't make money out of any more.

The shops may be going, but the online outlets will stay. The conventions will shrink, but they'll keep going until the rising cost of travel will kill all such shindigs.

And, you know, rising fuel/electricity costs could get people to look again at local, social, low-electricity forms of recreation.

My boy wants to play table top RPG's. He wants to get his friends involved.

The industry is shrinking, if it was ever an industry at all. The hobby? It's barely out of the cradle.

*Mostly triggered by http://gmskarka.com/ , who commonly suffers, along with many other intelligent commentators on RPG's, with people arguing with what the voices in their head tell them is being said rather than the actual words.

By gum, that was lovely...

2010-10-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here, recovering from what must be one of the best meals I've ever eaten.

And just look at me. I've eaten a hell of a lot of meals.

Finally, after many false starts where it became painfully obvious they were trying to avoid me, even to the extent of moving their restaurant lock stock and barrel from Irby to Wallasey Village on the very day I'd booked a meal, myself and my partner, having dispatched offspring to the care of a paramilitary youth organisation and grandparents, snuck into Cromwells half an hour before we'd booked the table.

Yeah, didn't see THAT coming, did you?

While I went off to secure cash for the evening, my partner settled herself in with her back to the window and a hot chocolate in front of her.

Firstly, this meant that my face was pointing to the outside world. Which I think was a major contribution to us having the downstairs of the restaurant to ourselves from six until nearly eight on a Wednesday evening. This, the staff assured us, has never happened since their move to Wallasey.

I'm available for hire to anyone wishing to send me to a rival establishment to scare away business. Reasonable rates.

Secondly, it meant I was faced with Cromwells' version of the hot chocolate. Being a tall glass of hot milk with a great big chunk of chocolate on a stick indulgently melting away in the middle of it.

Pacing myself a little, I went for a pot of green tea while interrogating the menu. I'm not a tea snob, and all I can say is that it was markedly more pleasant green tea than I'm used to.

So on to starters. My partner went for the Blacksticks Mushroooms, portobello mushroom topped with Blacksticks Blue cheese and Cromwells own red onion marmalade. She claimed later that the marmalade was the highlight of the meal, but it must be said, only because it is fantastically good. It had a lot of competition.

I went for the black pudding topped with roast apple and peppercorn sauce. The sauce was quite mild, the black pudding just spiced enough, most and tender (again, I'm used to leathery black pudding, or seemingly underdone almost runny stuff; this was a delight). It's easy to overwhelm with spice and peppers in this lot, but it was pitched just right.

Already, I was feeling failry well fed, probably because I've been on a somewhat drastic feeding regime recently, and this was a very off piste excursion from what I ought to be doing. Three hail mary's and a day on the evian for me tomorrow...

Onwards, and with the recommendation of the waitress, my partner took on the red pesto linguine, while I went for the pie of the day, steak and onion, with chips. Before, when ordering a fresh pasta in a restaurant of this standard, you expect a modest amount; now, my partner may not be tall, but I expect to be able to see her chin when looking across the table, not to find it obscured by linguine. And linguine of near perfect texture, with a superb red pesto, pine nuts and parmesan, at that.

Meanwhile, I picked up a chip and bit into it... my partner caught my look and asked what was up. I passed her a chip, and she got the same surprised, almost shocked, look on her face. These were, quite possibly, the greatest chips we'd ever tasted: fluffy, light, with the barest crunch on the outside. The pie was packed with a meat that was rivalling the chips for lightness of texture, very flavoursome, with a gorgeous crunchy vegetable selection on the side.

Then the desert. After toying with ordering all six dessert options (apart from possibly Bakewell Slice, which my partner claims is "too sweet"; she also claims that icing "ruins" cakes, and is clearly delusional), I cut the deadlock by generously offering to order the jam roly poly and custard, and offering to share with my partner, allowing her to go for the plum crumble tart with cream.

The crumble was gorgeous, just tart enough to earn the name, and the jam roly poly fantastically sweet and stodgy (as it should be). If more people ate this kind of jam roly poly, there would be fewer wars. Mainly because I cannot imagine anyone being able to get up and fight after polishing off a whole bowl of it.

Didn't get to chat with the folks at Cromwells as much as I'd like: one of them was having his wedding reception upstairs (they claimed... anything to avoid me, I reckon), but the waiting staff were friendly and genuinely wanted to make sure the experience was as enjoyable as possible, and by gum it was.

Plans are already being laid to get granny in for an afternoon tea, and if I can get to the tweetup there in November, I will be.

Overall: if you ever need an excuse to break a diet, this certainly qualifies. Now, to the exercise mat to clear off some of this roly poly...

Okay, here's the deal...

2010-05-11T06:18:00.001-07:00

You know who I want? A party with a sane response to the ongoing financial meltdown, a commitment to civil liberties and some sort of plan to stop us increasing the body counts (and bills) in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cameron's financial plans seem to amount to "sit on our personal fortunes and laugh at the proles", will grant everyone the finest freedoms money can buy, and don't mention the war. Labour pissed the boom years up the wall sucking up to the corporate interests that were always going to run back to the Tories when it started raining and claiming an end to boom and bust, are insane control freaks ("just a LITTLE more government and we'll have this fixed, a couple of hundred more laws..."), and don't mention the war. And no-one knows what the lib-dems planned economically, least of all them. Make initial good noises on civil liberties, but have caught the labour bug of not trusting the populace. And don't mention the war.

So frankly, I'm "behind" none of them. Whoever gets in, the next few years at least will be worse than you think, no matter how bad you think it's going to be.

Everyone clear where I stand now? Good.

Now like I said before, I expect either a Cameron minority govt or lib con agreement, but whatever happens, it's likely to go into meltdown before September.

And I don't want ANY of the current options.

Pink stinks less than viral marketing.

2009-12-09T01:02:00.000-08:00

So, most people have at least peripherally noticed that over the last few years, really lazy marketing departments have been pushing versions of popular products in pink: iPods, radios, yes, even pink scrabble.

It's lazy marketing because it follows insane logic of "We don't have enough market penetration with female tweens, they like pink, let's make a pink version." I guess it worked well enough to keep it going for a while, and the appropriation of pink for breast cancer let them shift more pink crap with an air of piety...

But I'm guessing that they didn't shift enough, because out of nowhere the Pink Stinks campaign has appeared.

Pushing a really pathetic claim that all this pink crap oppresses little girls more than, say, the constant judgemental attitude of the press towards women's bodies (and I notice that Gok Wan, who seems to think empowerment means getting naked on national TV, is backing the campaign), Pink Stinks by some miracle seems to have got a really good press officer just in time for the christmas rush.

And all over the press, the blogosphere and twitterscape, lots and lots of manufactured stimulus response outrage from people who are NOT going to be dictated to, they WILL face down the PC brigade and BUY MORE PINK CRAP FOR THEIR LITTLE GIRLS THIS YEAR.

Because, you know, you fight DA MAN with consumerism. That'll show 'em.

And Pink Stinks will go away again until the next time the buyers overestimate demand for pink crap.

(Historical note: for Victorians, pink was for boys, blue was for girls. Honest. I've seen very silly evolutionary psychologists trying to explain why girls "naturally" prefer pink, because it couldn't possibly be a social construct. They are wets and weeds and I diskard them uterly.)

How dumb is three strikes for Broadband?

2009-11-20T05:33:00.000-08:00

Because if we applied it to other services...

If they thought you had ordered pirate DVD's by mail three times, they'd stop you receiving or sending mail.

If they thought you had made recipes from a pirated cookbook three times, they'd take your kitchen away.

If they thought you had used a car to take a dodgy DVD to a friends three times, they'd take away your driving licence.

If they thought you had obtained a dodgy DVD in a pub three times, they'd ban you from pubs.

Used electricity to watch pirated content? Then why not have your electricity taken away.

I used to have a couple of photocopied books. Guess I should just burn my library now.

Oh, and remember, they want to be able to do this without due legal process. On the say so of Mandleson's appointed deputies. From the MPAA and RIAA.

Listen, Doubleday doesn't get to check my bookshelves, Warner don't get to check my hard drive, not without a frigging warrant and probably frigging cause.

This is basic, page one, rule of law. We shouldn't have to explain this to a government minister.

Well, they've fired the starting pistol...

2009-11-19T06:15:00.000-08:00

Children, Schools and Families Bill

Never mind the assurances that nothing would be done until the official response to the enquiry, let alone the select committee report, there it is.

Anyone got any idea what is so wrong with HE that we need further legislation and powers RIGHT THE F NOW? Or any of these "high profile cases" that aren't, in fact, failures of state authorities to properly use their current powers?

A parliamentary petition might help a little now, as it's got to be voted on. The commons debate will be drawn out, thanks to the select committee members who were engaging with Badman, and there will not be an entirely smooth path in the Lords either. Certainly, there's a good chance this could get delayed until after the election, and then quietly go away to die.

A petition or a few would at least force MP's to engage a little with those materially affected by the bill.

As for the statement of non-conformity, or whatever it is... look, if you're not going to comply, why the hell are you shouting "I will not comply" now, before it's the law? You are registering yourself not only as a home educator, but a "trouble making" home educator, which is exactly what they want to get a frigging list of.

If you're not going to comply, then don't. Comply.

As for "Parents United", you harvested my email, spammed me anonymously, stalked me on twitter then bugged out when you realised youcould be traced, and you want ME to put MY name and expose MY family for your half arsed, ripped off "statement" when you won't even say who you are?

You're making EO look classy.

We are the people they've been looking for...

2009-11-12T01:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.wearethepeoplemovie.com/

Imagine if you will that you are happily working away in your kitchen, say, baking some bread. Not unusually you have your radio on. Lets presume you're a smug, middle class, university educated so-and-so, so you have radio four on.

While you are kneading your dough, a programme comes on about the crisis in bread. The state bakeries are turning out bread that can, to be fair, be excellent in both taste and nutritional content on occassion, but much of the time is bland and full of empty calories. In many cases, it turns out to be actively carcinogenic.

In fact, despite what the government say, many independent experts say that it's as good for you, on balance, as eating cardboard. The official bread making process is laborious, inflexible at the bakery level and subject to interference on the slightest whim of the Minister for Bread, Scones and Baked Goods.

The minister is not allowing state bakeries to use the international bread test, as it doesn't mandate "Traditional medium slicing".

While you are warming your oven and letting your dough prove, many experts come on the radio, debating what should go into the official governmental standard bread making process, whether adding additional mandatory stages helped, whether it's the fault of the standard tin, whether it would be improved by making poppy seeds compulsory, and, of course, blaming the bakers (who have to follow the official process), the inspectors (who have to enforce the official process) or, ultimately, the farmers for producing such terrible, terrible wheat these days.

By the time they have finished that section, your bread has risen nicely and is ready to be baked. The pundits are moving on, saying, well, they are trying their best, British bread is the best in the world and, according to their figures, better than it has ever been. One of them says sagely "Baking bread is HARD. If it was easy, we would have cracked it by now".

Maybe today you've made a cottage loaf, or a tiger loaf, a baguette, a fruit loaf, soda bread, bara brith... but there it is, hot, and delicious. And you know, maybe today it didn't rise right, or turn a little crustier than you hoped, but it's only a days baking, you can have another go tomorrow, and at least you know exactly what went into it.

And that's exactly how I felt about education when I saw that trailer.

From Twitter 11-10-2009

2009-11-10T18:00:00.001-08:00

From Twitter 11-09-2009: From Twitter 11-08-2009: From Twitter 11-07-2009: From Twitter 11-06-2009: From Twitte.. http://bit.ly/1mctVA
From the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" folder... http://bit.ly/4qNmz0
Citizen Journalism at it's best: http://bit.ly/3XnCLQ
Just applied for a job: http://bit.ly/4FPz76 wondering how far it will get before they set the application on fire.

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Graham Badman, King of projection

2009-11-05T03:23:00.000-08:00

Sure, let's bandy around psychological disorders, Graham. Let's do that.

Let's start with Mbp. Let's ignore that the syndrome is of dubious medical acceptance, and go into it.

It's where someone, desparate for approval or sympathy, invents or creates evidence of abuse or harm in another, usually a child, and perhaps colludes in creating and/ or concealing the actual sources of harm.

These sad individuals often seem unable to adequately divorce their fantasies of vulnerable people that only they can adequately protect from the reality that it is their own actions that are placing these people in harms way.

These people often engage in elaborate ruses, sometimes involving their family and friends in their deceptions. They portray any attempts to reveal their deceptions and actually causing harm as personal attacks on their blameless character.

Now. Graham Badman produced a report which, on the basis of no defencible statitstics, claimed that home educated children were at risk from their parents, that only the intervention of state appointed officers, like him and his daughter, could protect these children, despite the documented vastly worse outcomes for state cared children. Badman's daughter joined at least one home educating group under false pretences during the review. When the poor quality of the review was highlighted, further requests for information about Badman's conduct of the review was denied on the grounds it could be used to defame or villify him.

It's a classic case. There's no hope for him. In accusing the home educators of MBP, Badman was indulging in textbook projection, placing his psychological problems onto an external scapegoat.

If critically examining a man's "work" is defamatory, if telling the truth about him is villification, then call me a domestic extremist.

HE Consultation! Important please read. Time sensitive

2009-10-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

(copied with permission of the author, Elaine Greenwood-Hyde)

Hi,

please read the whole of this email as it contains important information for every home educator, information that some may not be aware of.

We are currently facing the biggest threat there has ever been to home education and everything could hinge on this current consultation which ends on this Monday 19th Oct. I cannot stress just how important it is that these proposals are defeated because they are planning much more than registration.

Hot on the heels of this consultation they intend to consult on the definition of what constitutes a suitable education. First they intend to hog tie us with compulsory registration, inspections and annual licensing to home educate and then they intend to determine the content of our home education.

Here is a link to the announcement that they are planning a consultation on suitable education.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8299694.stm

Smaller URL

http://tinyurl.com/yg3t56k

Please do fill out the consultation on home education and enourage friends and family to do so too. Even if you think the consultation has pre determined outcomes you have nothing to lose. You do not have to write a lengthy response to each question, you can answer a simple no or yes.

Here is a link to the current consultation. Please note it ends very soon.

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm?action=consultationDetails&consultationId=1643&external=no&menu=1

Smaller url

http://tinyurl.com/l82dxm

Please feel free to cross post this email to other home educators and groups, but please remove my personal details/email address first. Thanks for reading

BWs Elaine

Watch out for the reposts!

2009-09-22T14:56:00.001-07:00

Again, especially on the facebook feed: trying to save some old posts, nothing to see here, move along.

A rant (repost from 18/09/09)

2009-09-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Graham Badman.

The bad penny, the pee into the wind, he just keeps coming back.

After he turned in his woefully prepared report into home education, for which, as far as we can understand, the conclusions were written first, we tried to challenge either him or the DCSF on it.

And we were told "Mr Badman does not work for the DCSF, he is independent, and has turned in the report, so it is nothing to do with him any more, and since it was independent, it can't be wrong, so the DCSF can't be challenged for putting forward a legislative program based on it."

So we got a hearing arranged for the select committee on education. AHEd, working through freedom of information requests, got very robust figures where not only did Badman give none, but Baroness Morgan claimed that they "weren't the basis of the report".

And today..?

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/publications/documents/laeelectivehomeeducation/

I'm sorry, WHAT?

This "independent researcher", who no longer has anything to do with the report, can get the DCSF to forward his request for "better figures" (and with a later deadline than other evidence) to every LA in the country?

Now, as far as I make it, that makes at least three different versions of the state of play that Badman and the DCSF have spun.

1) Badman is independent, the report is soundly based in empirical evidence.
2) Badman is independent, the report is based on soft evidence that we can't find right now.
3) Badman is working for the DCSF, we'd like some evidence that we forgot to collect. Since the dog ate the last lot.

What really annoys me isn't so much that it betrays a set agenda from the outset.

We knew that.

Nor that their evidential cupboards (along with their coffers) are bare and that the stats in the report are a triumph of auto-proctological accounting.

We knew that.

It's that they thought no-one would notice. It's possibly the most half-arsed, cloth-eared, pig-ignorant attempt at a cover-up that I've seen since my chocolate encrusted three-year-old son claimed the biscuit tin fell on him.

It makes the machinations of The Thick of It look like machine like competence.

More than anything, it shows the level of dismissive contempt that Badman, Balls and all their little wizards have for home educators, parliament and the population as a whole.

They're trying to move the goalposts and think no-one will notice. I spurn them as I would spurn a rabid dog with dysentery.

Simon Webb, education warrior. Contains language.

2009-07-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/simon-webb-we-must-get-tough-on-home-schooling-1764348.html

From my facebook thread:

I believe Simon's children are miserable hothoused prisoners of their home who are desperate to escape their father, and will probably end up broken drug addicts selling their bodies for cash due to being unable to properly form relationships after their claustrophobic upbringing.

And I have as much evidence as Simon does of his worries. So I demand that I be allowed to inspect him.

Also, note that Simon "works with children with special needs in inner London ". So I'm guessing that he works for, or at the very least hand in glove with, the LA.

And from twitter:

thatdebswoman: OMG, I've only read the first paragraph & already seething - who the fuck is this prick?

pete_darby: Someone who wants Ed Balls to hold him, as the auto's scare him.

bridd: he wants Balls' sweaty caress

pete_darby: There is nothing good or right about that sentence.

Villification and Harassment...

2009-07-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

Now, this really does take the biscuit.

The Department of Continued and Sustained FAIL are threatening to take their ball away... no, it's even sillier than that.

They're trying to take their facts away.

They're linking the existence of the satirical Badman Blog to the work of those brilliant people working away at official figures to demonstrate that Badman produced his figures in a monumental act of auto-proctological statistics.*

And so, they are reviewing the provision of FoI requests in light of the possibility that they may be used to "defame or vilify" the authors of the review.

Yes, they are witholding facts in case those facts are used to portray the author of a review (that claimed that monitoring was necessary, despite their being no evidence, on the grounds that some authority figures have "issues" for which their is no factual basis) in somewhat of a bad light.

I take it then that it is now policy that you can defame and villify a whole class of people on the basis of hearsay and deliberately manipulated figures, but that it is unacceptable to use facts to challenge that vilification.

Oh I forgot... in order to defame and vilify a whole class of people, you have to be working for the DCSF. Silly me.

*(And to those who doubt that, I say that any man who has spent a good portion of his life teaching science who then takes an unrepresentative sample, extracts the median value and then multiplies it unweighted across the whole class to obtain an aggregate figure, is not being merely disingenuous but actively misleading. Either he is too mendacious to be trusted with the review or incompetent. You see, unlike Mr Badman, I tend to vilify and defame people solely on the basis of clear evidence of their actions.)