Rage at the Radio

I'm a huge fan of radio 4, any questions and any answers specificly. despite the rage that it causes me.

But I've just sat through both and, as far as I'm concerned, EVERY SINGLE PERSON managed to miss the point on an issue.

True, I normally disagree with most people about a lot of things. But maybe I just take a long view. But yes, xx number of years after a sex crime, yes, the culprit should have a chance to be removed from the sex offenders register.

Not because of "fundamental human rights". I'm not a huge fan of them, as currently implemented.

Not because of rehabilitation - the justice system may or may not rehabilitate. To rehabilitate there must be the acceptance that it's possible - but the point of the system varies from society to society.

Not even on the insanity of keeping people with dementia on the list.

No, but because things that are a sex crime change. Fifty years ag0 - within the lifetime of a decent part of the population, homosexuality was a crime. Now, it's not. So someone who was a sex criminal then wouldn't now warrant more then raised eyebrows.

Right now there are some serious oddities in our legal system. It's a crime to be *sent* a picture of naked girl less then 18 years old. That is, if a 17 year old girl sent a naked picture which she took herself to her boyfriend, he is committing a crime.

It's lunacy I expect to be fixed at some point. But people caught by this are by definition sex offenders.

Our definition of what is a sex crime changes; so we should review - if it's not still a crime, they don't need to be registered.

Muppets.

Jelly on radio 4

Now I'm grumpy.

Not only do I have to be up and alert on the morning after a bank holiday, but the BBC are giving air time away to a politician to lie.

Turn on the radio and we hear a labour politician being asked "What don't you like about the VAT rise?". His answer, paraphrased slightly, was:

1) Because they promised not to (but they and the lib dems were going to increase national insurance.
2) Because it's regressive
3) Because it's a tax on jobs

All this and the presenter didn't even query any of them. Now, I know the general election was last year and people might not rememebr it that well. So lets look at these claims.

1) The conservatives very clearly said (at some cost) "We have no plans to increase VAT". But they didn't promise it - they were amazingly clear on this.

2) Regressive. Define regressive. This term now seems to mean "any policy we don't like" - if it doesn't actually benefit the target groups a politician cares about, it's regressive. It's a meaningless word, and I'll show you why.

Lets say that you're going to increase tax in such a way that someone earning 10,000 a year pays an extra £10 but someone earning £30,000 pays £30 extra - that sounds progressive, right? Well.... no. You can still call it regressive. Or progressive.

Yes, the rich are paying more - but so are the poor. Indeed, if the £30K person paid £20 more then labour would be dancing up and down, it's regressive, regressive! Because as a percent, the rich are paying less of their income.

So to pass this test the poor both must pay less in absolute terms and as a percentage of income. Which makes virtually any cut you think of making regressive. Which is surprisingly difficult.

Oh, and the third point, about a tax on jobs? All taxes cost jobs. National Insurance is paid by both employers and employees. So, by definition, any increase is an actual tax on jobs.

VAT increases prices for everyone. So that's 2 actual lies and one meaningless statement - not even a follow up question.

An interview as hard of Jelly.

A few words of advice

You will know fear; you will know pain and then you will die.

These words should have been written in blood on the church door hosting the carol service I was at today. Indeed, adding "Abandon all hope all ye who enter here" would be to err on the side of caution.

First, let me state my position - I am not a Christian. I just have a thing for carols and singing. This means that I actually listen to the music. Today... this was not a good thing. And for the record, I have sung in amateur choirs with pretentions of standards.

First; the music. It is not an exacting standard to expect all the players to keep their instrument in tune; not close to it, near it or in spitting distance. On it.

And, for that matter, asthmatics should not be allowed to play a flute.

Second, the singers. Imagine, if you will, the spectrum of female singers who can be termed alto or soprano. There exists a point on this line, above the altos - and from this point every singer is alto. Yes, perhaps they can sing some soprano lines. Indeed, they might even sound nice on occasion.

But this is the same as a scalpel and a sword. Yes, you can behead someone with both - but this does not mean they are interchangeable.

Don't let a high alto pretend to be anything but what she is.

Ever.

Then, there is the choice of music to play...

Carols are beloved of many for a reason - classic tunes, lyrics learnt in the depths of childhood in a time when snow was special and hope lived.

This is why you should restrain any musical director who dreams of re-writing descants for them. Or tweaking the final verses so as to confuse everyone but the choir, who are ignoring everyone else anyway.

And while we're talking, know your limits. This applies to musical directors, alcohol and cake. Don't even dream of doing anything more than "the usual" with 5 rehearsals. With something odd or different, allow 10. If including an orchestra, changes to almost every part and new songs...christmas really does begin in June.

The Right Reverend Irrelevance. Yes, this might be the fullest you've seen your church since...last Christmas. This does not mean you're allowed to sell your Alpha course. Nor should you spend the first 10 minutes running through fire exits, the contents of the program (that we have in our hands), where the money raised in the offering is going, how persecuted christians in general are and how the world is a terrible place.

Talking of terrible places. If you pick out 8 readings, there is no requirement to play Holy Book Roulette. You don't need genesis, revelations, all the gospels and two random books. You can have real structure and meaning. You can have a theme - even, dare, I say, a message. Of the readings I think 3 had a relationship with christmas. If by message you mean mentions something which you later may rely on in court. Sorry, church.

But random quotes?? And, more to the point, if at any point your reading from *any* biblical book just sounds like an eidolon from Maelstrom - then you've really, really picked the wrong quote.

And finally, the choir. Oh the choir. There is much I could say. If your altos over-ride not the rest of the choir but the entire church singing, they need to be told to calm down and listen to themselves.

If your choir can't even stand up at the same time, there's no way they'll start singing at the same time, except at gunpoint.

But I'm going to restrain myself by saying that I believe the entire choir would have been improved by a single, simple addition.

A hand grenade.

/rant

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?