How would you explain this to the children?

Have a read at the article, here.

I'm not going to quote it, but a summery would be "A women describes how she's doing all she can, up to breaking down because of running out of petrol, because she's afraid she doesn't have enough money in the account. She's doing this to send her two girls to a private school, at the cost of £8,000 a term - but she has (at least) 3 children. One of them is a boy in a state school."

Now, she does try to justify this - girls do better in single sex schools, they'd love to do the same for their son by they just can't afford it. That it's the most critical years for the girls now.

But what I'm trying to get my head around is, how will she explain to her son that for most of his life he's been relatively poor - if she can't afford petrol, that's relatively poor.

He's been relatively poor for his entire life while is parents have spent everything they had - house included - at a rate of £24,000 a year (3 terms a year, 24K a year) - on his two sisters.

That's £24K a year for 5-18...that's £24*13 = £312,000. Not including university.

How could any one explain that to their youngest child?

Grumpy is in the building

Here I am, sleepy and tired on a Monday morning.

I turn on the radio (about 7.20?) in the morning and I find the Today program is interviewing people about the coalition's plans to change the nature of council housing. (Aka, houses owned by the local council and rented out at reduced rates to "those in need" - typically about 50% of "market rates".)

These annoyed me.

The first example was a women who had a council house - they may have said why, but I didn't hear. She was studying to be a nurse; this would take 3-4 years, but she would be able to "better herself" without the council house, or so she says.

Lets call that four years in a place with the same commercial cost as mine. So that's a rent of £500/2 = £250 a month discount. So £250*12 = £3,000 a year. So, over the period of three to four years while studying that's £9,000 to £12,000.

Lets compare that to Little Johny, who's a good student, worked at school, lives with parents. Like huge numbers of students he'll have to take out loans and receive no actual support from the state - I didn't, and you don't need much in the way of "wealth" to do this. Bugger all, in fact.

Would little Johny get 9-12K in aid...?

Interview 2 was from a women who moved into a council house with her mother and family in 1984 - about 26 years ago. She's still living there.

She considers the council house "hers" - she's inherited it from her mother, effectively. Never moved out, has been subsidised for her entire adult life; almost certainly most of her life. Said that if they lost the place they would be expect to be paid for all the work they've done in the past - painting, cleaning, etc.

Total cost - half her housing costs for 26 years and administration+maintenance costs for the same.

Social housing is important... but I'm really having issues understanding why some parties are opposing the reforms.

Because they just seem fair - to those who pay for it all.


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Edited because I first posted just a title

Burning bridges

If you've not heard yet, the London Fire Brigade is taking fireworks night off.

Yep, that's right - the Fire Brigades Union are calling them all out on strike, because of what they clearly consider to be critical and unresolvable differences with the management. After all, if they were resolvable they'd talk first, right?

Well, have a look here

Union position

The union claims firefighters were being threatened with the sack if they do not agree to new shift patterns. FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said: "We do not want to take this action but we have no choice. The alternative is to allow London's firefighters to become doormats for their employers to walk on."

Sounds moderately damning - new shift patterns could mean a lot of things, but they don't seem to say what's so terrible about these new patterns. But surely there must be some room here for some debate, negotiation? There must be a reason why they want to change the shifts?

A little further down...

"There are no cuts, no job losses, this is about reducing a 15-hour night shift, adding those hours to the day shift and doing more community safety work and firefighter training."

Ahhhh, now I understand. Your members are paid for a 15 hour nightshift, during which they.....wait for fires?

Let me unleash my inner cynic. The firemen spend most of this 15 hour shift asleep or playing games - and this is what the unions are afraid of their members losing. But wait, further down still:

"The crucial fact being ignored in all of this is that if we can agree a compromise with the FBU on different start and finish times, the whole process ends immediately. Talks have been ongoing for five years, and a compromise from the original proposal of two 12-hour shifts, to an 11-hour day and 13-hour night, with a range of other benefits, are still firmly on the table."

Talks have been going on for 5 years. After FIVE YEARS of talks, with a half-way compromise (with no details on "range of other benefits" it's hard to say more) available the union involved decides to call a strike on the busiest night of the year.

The employers are trying to improve the public safety - more community safety and the like. They've been trying to negotiate this for so long that a child could have been born during this process and grown up enough that you could talk to them about the concept of fire safety.

The union is striking on the day when that same child is most likely to die in a fire.

They need to get a grip.

What to do when ill...

I want you to imagine - you're ill.

You've been running a temperature for days, quite high at times. Paracetamol, plenty of fluids etc, What would you do....

1) Stay in bed, huddled in blankets and read/sleep/do nothing
2) You're ill and can't go to work - a chance to do all the housework/dusting/sorting of photos/crocheting
3) Nothing. I'm ill, I'm allowed to not do anything. Daytime TV!
4) Chart your temperature, log all your drugs and try and determine how effective paracetamol is as an antipyretic and determine how long it's effective for

What can I say?

Have thermometer, will meter?

I'll stop at the second paragraph

Morning all

As my Stars partner has failed to send me a turn, I'm having to resort to blogging this morning wake me up. This is fine, because first I went to a couple of news websites, to see what was happening in the world. And I found this.....

Dr Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference, argues against the idea that male and female brains are programmed by nature to provide contrasting talents and skills. Fine's conclusions provide a timely warning against taking too seriously the deluge of books and articles that would have us believe that men are biologically advantaged when it comes to mathematics, racing driving or map reading – and that women are naturally more intuitive and nurturing, so better at childcare and multitasking (they can look after a child and clean at the same time). No marks for guessing that "masculine" skills tend to be the ones with status in our particular society.

So, let's see. Some feminist is releasing a book and is trying to get free advertising. Her friend in the guardian (if only via the "sisterhood") repeats the core message, saying that we should ignore science that shows differences between men and women. Or at least be very skeptical about it.

Oh, and as a side issue, being good at maths, science and reading doesn't seem to hold any status at school - it makes you more of a target then anything else.

Gender difference is a thorny issue and historians would be unwise to enter where even some scientists fear to tread. But leaving the merits of scientific evidence aside, history shows that whenever women start to demand equal access to what have traditionally been men's roles, theories about their "natural" unsuitability tend to emerge.

Historians would be unwise to enter? I'm sorry? The point of a historian is to tell us what happened in the past and try to understand it. To reach the cause of events explain, so that we can learn from the past. So why should they be unwise to enter - it's not their fault. Oh, you mean that what they find might be different to what you believe? *mutter* Those who forget the past are condemned to repeating it.

Where scientists fear to tread... why would scientists fear to tread? Oh, that's right. Because of women like her. Because if they find in a nice, blind study something that backs up a common prejudice feminists and "writers" will come down on them like a ton of bricks. Science should NEVER fear to tread somewhere.

Because it's possible for science to be wrong. Scientists are fallible people to. But science has (in most fields) this pesky ability to find these errors and correct them. Some times it takes longer then others - they once believed in the aether - and now we know better, because they went and made a test for it.

If there isn't a way to prove it wrong, it's not science.

So she wants scientists to go away, or at worst, only prove her pet little theories right, because... oh, never mind the because. Look at the next line.

"leaving the merits of scientific evidence aside". Right. So she doesn't care about what the science shows - because she's going to ignore it anyway, because she is right and science is irrelivent.

Oh, and the final line cracks me up. After telling the historians to bugger off and leave history alone she then has the audacity to talk about "historically".

So what she wants is for us to ignore history and science and accept that women are equal (and/or better) , that the reason women aren't equal is because of the prejudices of men and that we should ignore anyone who says anything to the contrary.

The thing is, the world isn't that simple. What we should do is accept this and understand, not ignore and stifle debate. There are differences you can observe in your own home and the world is better because of this.

Well, with a pair of consenting adults...

Ideologically blind

I've just been listening to the "Today" program on radio 4.

And today there was a section on education and school admission policy, which isn't what I want to comment about.

No, I was irritated by a comment from a representative of the Barnados charity, which complained that the difference between the academic achievement of the rich and the poor hadn't shrunk. And by implication that was a bad thing the government could fix.

Now, I don't know about you, but I can see a very simple reason why this might be the case - which just didn't seem to occur to the representative.

Intelligence is an inheritable trait - and intelligence can be linked to both educational achievement and income.

True, the link is far from perfect. It's an indication only. But we should not be terribly surprised if the children of the "winners" of the last generation "win" this one as well.

We should be taking advantage. Look, look , study the sciences. Understand the universe. Learn how we can manipulate reality at the level of the atom. Build server farms.

Because science and technology are directly responsible for the industrial revolution, the computer revolution and now the biological revolution.

Each such revolution has benefited the society as a whole, eventually.

Trying to push back the tide - sorry, ignore reality for an ideology that says everyone is equal and that it's the systems fault that they haven't achieved...

Hasn't.

Midwives...

Morning all

For your daily dose of insanity, have a look here...

It would appear that the medical establishment has published a report that says that a home birth has three times the risk of the baby dying.

It came complete in the lancet with an editorial, which is quoted in the guardian as including the line... ""women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk"."

Now, I'm going to go as far as assuming that no one in the article has lied or is materially wrong in what they say. Which, for me, is rather generous.

The response from someone who could be described as the head of a midwife trades union was...

She said midwives now "feel there is a concerted and calculated global attack and backlash against home birth which is being unfairly pilloried by some sectors of the global medical maternity establishment.

"There is a danger that risk during childbirth is presented in a way which is leading women to believe that hospital birth equals a safe birth. It does not. There is no hard and fast guarantee that a woman will have a safer birth in a hospital than at home".

She's wrong. And for a couple of reasons. Let us list them?

1) They aren't comparing the same thing. The medical journal reported on infant death; she's talking about maternal death.

2) "Global" is not a dirty word. The "Global medical establishment" has eradicated smallpox. What she's saying is that "One of the most educated professions in the world disagrees with me"

3) "attack and backlash" Hmmm. Either it's an attack on "home births" or it's a backlash against something midwives are doing. You can't have an attack and backlash at the same time. They describe different things.

4) That last paragraph is a little confusing. If I was to paraphrase the entire thing, what would it say? "There is a chance women could be misinformed about risk". Ok, fair enough. Which is why studies like this are important, because slightly flawed though it probably is, it remains better then no evidence.

She just doesn't like it.

5) Comparing cars to tractors. I haven't had anything to do with maternity hospitals, home births or the risks of child birth. However, I do know a few things.

One of the critical things is that doctors will strongly advise anyone who hasn't had a perfectly ordinary pregnancy to give birth in a hospital. Be it high blood pressure, diabetes or infection by zombie bite - they all advise a hospital is safer.

This forms a self selecting group, those at home who are low risk, those in the hospital at higher (average) risk.

And yet, despite all this, three times as many babies survived in hospital.

Which sounds safer to you?