Monday 28 September 2009

Nutty world

OK so I am GOMing already but what the devil is going on when OFSTEAD, hardly a proven body of competence, starts to decide whether grown women can mind each other's children? It appears that two mothers, who are also police officers, have been told they must become registered child minders if they are to do each other the favour of caring for their children when one is on duty. Lord help us chaps but when will al; this end?
Happily someone in government has demonstrated that not all of Westminster is asleep on watch and told them to reconsider. A start but telling them to mind their own business full stop would be a start. And anyway how did OFSTEAD get involved? Have they asked themselves how and where their information came from?
It is on a par with sacking a school care assistant for informing the mother of a bullied child that her child was being bullied. What she really deserved was a medal for informing on the little dears. And if the child was tied up (held against her will, m'lud) and detained by her assailants (kidnapped, your worships) and being whipped with skipping rope (assault occasioning actual bodily harm, Madam Recorder) and she had NOT reported it she would have been failing in her duty.
Small surprise that the parent of one of the assailants was a parent governor. She (he?) may7 not have taken part in the sacking but the mud will stick. And it is mud that the very power given to parent governors was itself invitation to become adherent.

Saturday 26 September 2009

Getting started

Really not sure about this. Mostly I am exactly what they say bloggers are - writers of letters to the editor who don't like their stuff being rejected! Well sort of. I do write to the Guardian and the Eastern Daily Press and I do smart a bit if they don't use it. But that's just vanity really. I was a hack so I should be used to the pain of the spike.
So what shall I write? Anything really. I shall try not to be a GOM even if I am chronologically and probably by inclination exactly that. I accept that coppers really are getting younger, they don't just seem to be. But I do wish they wore less stuff round their body and that more of it was helpful to ordinary mortals rather than threatening (GOMing already!). I do think Blair and Brown are right wing lunatics who have abandoned proper socialism. But I prefer a regulated free market to the alternatives - I just wish we would regulate properly like the Americans!
Talking of which, I quite like Americans in small and social doses but having worked for them and alongside them I would prefer them to keep their business attitudes and alleged acumen in North America. They are nothing like as busy as they give the impression, tend towards neuroticism, organise significant time off and, in their admiration for profit and entrepreneurism, allow monstrosities like ENRON, Worldcom, Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers and Freddi Mae and Freddi Mac and all the rest to grow fast, ugly and bust horribly.
I am pro Europe but not over everything. Like most people I do not trust bureaucrats and the EU has too many of them with too much power. I agree with union but I would like a root and branch clean up of the Parliament, its members and of the administration.
Sadly I concede that the Australians have the best cricket side in the world even now and that to a shatteringly great extent most 'English' cricketers need to get back to basics - like doing some work for a start! KP is a genius but flawed and will, like Compton, Gower and others of that ilk continue to frustrate us as often as he inspires us. We have to learn to live with it - he's the best weve got (and unlike Ramprakash, the best we never had, we seem willing to go with his flow). Broade is no Botham or Flintoff but he too is bthe best we have and could be a McGrath with the ball and a Gilchrist with the bat - give him room. Strauss is well good enough so all we need is the other EIGHT!