Wednesday, January 31, 2007 :
Single parents
So there’s a big drive from John Hutton to get single parents back into work. As Alice Miles points out in the linked article, a lot of this comes down to the money and where the parent fits into the earnings league table. It makes sense for a single parent partner in a law firm to pay someone to look after their kids while they go out and earn three quarters of a million quid. However, underlying the debate on the need for “affordable” (i.e. state subsidised) childcare, to enable the less high earners to rejoin the workforce too, lies the question of whether or not it is crazy for the state to pay to look after someone’s children so that they can go out to work and earn less than the amount that it is costing the state to have their kids looked after. Why not just give them the money and let them look after their own kids?
If the argument is that it may be beneficial for the single parent’s spiritual growth if he or (still much more usually) she goes back into work even if that actually costs the taxpayer more money overall, well, that’s a pretty interesting policy. For one thing, it amounts to subsidising low–paying employers, who are effectively paying a wage which is not otherwise viable in the market. And in the situation where the single parent does not want to work, and would rather take the benefits and look after their kids, it is significant extension of the nanny state to insist that they work nevertheless, even where this gives rise to a net cost to the taxpayer. Even if the single parents do want to take on economically unviable jobs, because it improves their self esteem, or enhances their social network, or whatever, is that a good reason for this to be funded by the taxpayer? Or could one say that they chose to have kids and have to bear the economic and social consequences of having done so? Are the obligations of a civilised society fulfilled by offering benefits so that once the kids have arrived, if the parent’s job is not enough to support the family, appropriate benefits are offered, in as cost–effective a manner as possible, to support the family in looking after the kids without the parent working?
I suppose in answering that question, we need to consider whether or not we have now reached the stage where the state benefits package must act as an incentive for people to have kids even if they cannot afford them, because the demographics of the country (caused by people living longer and the middle class giving up procreation) mean that otherwise we are going to run out of young people and become extinct as a nation.
Labels: UK politics
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 :
Is this lid cool or what?
Labels: motorcycles
Sunday, January 28, 2007 :
Arghh!
Just got another Penalty Charge Notice today, this time affixed to my motorcycle by Westminster Council. I must say that I am at a loss as the the basis upon which this one is to be justified, given that I was parked in what appeared to be a designated motorcycle bay, which showed no sign of having been suspended:
On this occasion, I was actually parked a quarter of a mile away from where I wanted to be, on the basis that I was attempting to park in a “legal” parking spot. I am starting to wonder about whether or not it is even worth trying to obey the law.
Update: The bay I parked in appears to be listed on Westminster Council’s own website.
Friday, January 26, 2007 :
Drug cheat
Despite not knowingly having an alcoholic drink so far this January, I just tested positive for booze. How can this be? Reading the small print on the Beecham’s liquid all–in–one remedy that I am taking for the stinking cold that I have picked up, it appears that a 20ml dose — of which I have been taking two per day for the last three days — contains ethanol “equivalent to 6ml of wine”. So much for my rigorous booze ban. Shows how careful you’ve got to be though.
Labels: personal
Thursday, January 25, 2007 :
UK crime statistics
According to this, 28% of women reported to the police non–sexual abuse from their partner last year. Holy shit. That cannot be right. Stella sales figures must be through the roof.
Labels: crime
Sexism
I know that this site is rapidly becoming a cross between Jeremy Clarkson and the Daily Mail, but I’m sure it’s not me: the world actually is going mad. According to Dawn Dixon, Chair of the Association of Women Solicitors, in an interview by journalist Selena Masson, “…women are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the traditional long hours culture but nothing appears to be getting done and it is high time the profession recognized the potentially detrimental effects on the workplace culture, productivity and profit and the loss of female talent that this situation may give rise to”. Dixon adds, “I am often contacted by members who have returned from maternity leave only to be told that they remained on the same PQE (Post Qualification Experience) in relation to salary reviews. Their male counterparts, however, who had not been on maternity leave, had progressed to the next year’s PQE salary bracket, thereby receiving a higher salary”. This is described by Masson as one of the “horror stories of maternity discrimination” with which “the profession is rife”.
So let’s get this straight. Basically, women are disenchanted with the legal profession because firms are unwilling to pay them for long hours that they don’t actually want to work or to bump them up a PQE pay bracket for which they haven’t actually acquired the requisite additional PQE. Like, duh. I am sure that men are similarly disenchanted by the rotten stickler firms in this regard. The only difference is that men are less likely to have the option of leaving the profession, wreaking further collateral damage to the culture, productivity and profit of firms, because they are still much less likely than women to have the option of deciding to stay at home, while another member of the household chases the pay cheque.
Dixon has one last piece of advice: open your own firm. Apparently, “then you can work as flexibly as you want in your nightgown at 10 o'clock in the morning with the children playing away in the corner!”. How lovely. I can only wish you all the best of luck with that, ladies.
Labels: law
Tuesday, January 23, 2007 :
Over-regulation on the roads
Should the amount of traffic lights on the roads be reduced? I say yes. There has been a steady increase in the number of junctions around where I live in London to which lights have been added and my impression is that most of the time it clogs the roads up and slows everything down. When driving outside of rush hour, frankly, I’d be tempted to ignore the lights and drive on where safe to do so, if it wasn’t for the fact that in many cases these days some wanker will have been stationed by the local council to watch my actions via a 24–hour camera and send me a £100 fine.
On a related note, TFL’s Road Safety Advisor, Jenny Jones was on BBC breakfast this morning having a pop at 4x4s in London. She did a good job of confirming my suspicions that TFL contains a fair number of irrationally prejudiced, interfering gits. Her basic argument was that 4x4s are unnecessary and that “PEOPLE NEED TO REALISE THAT THEY’RE JUST NOT ACCEPTABLE”. She did not have a sensible answer to arguments that 4x4s take up no more road space than do a lot of cars and are no more polluting, that the feeling of safety for which Londoners supposedly purchase them in fact has a solid basis in the statistics and that the real problem is actually goods vehicles, which take up much more space and produce a third of all pollution from vehicles, not to mention being noisy and damaging roads inadequately designed for their use.
My response to Ms Jones would be that everything beyond breathing and bare subsistence could be said to be unnecessary and, assuming that civilization is about more than the merely necessary, what is actually unacceptable is the government, the council and TFL steadily increasing the number of restrictions, obstructions, prohibitions, penalties, taxes, tolls and charges in the way of law–abiding citizens in a free country without reasoned, genuine justification.
What do you get if you nick the title from Velvet Revolver (Fall to Pieces) and the music from Bob Dylan (Like a Rolling Stone). Razorlight’s new single that’s what. Also, that boney posh bloke seems like a nob. Put a shirt on mate.
Labels: music
Sunday, January 21, 2007 :
Snowboarding
Having got that out of my system, I do have some better news. I made further progress with my vertigo (or whatever it is) while on my recent ski–trip to Austria. On the first day, I rode a short, exposed open chairlift three times and a long, high covered chairlift twice. On the second day I rode a long open chairlift at a different resort six times. I had to steel myself a bit to get on the first lift on day one (and employed one round of EFT
* as taught to me by Alistair Horscroft
Labels: diary, personal, snowboarding
Camden Council
Just got back from a three night short break skiing in Austria (not much snow, but enough for two full days snowboarding) to find that Camden Council have caught me again on one of their evil 24–hour real–time video monitors (operator 1576!) and sent me a £100 Penalty Charge Notice. A google search suggests that I am not the first person to be caught by this camera, which according to the linked Evening Standard article makes an estimated £12,000 a day for the Council! Nothing appears to have changed in terms of the road layout or the signage since the article in 2005. It seems from the evidence therefore that this is a money–making scheme, undertaken with malice aforethought by the Council, to tempt people into committing what a reasonable man would not realise was an offence so that fines can be levied. That is wrong and makes me cross. It is not appropriate for what is supposed to be a public service to act as a highway robber, extracting unjust tolls with menaces on those passing through its territory. If Camden Council needs more money to fund its services, it should raise the council tax (sorry, Camden residents) or procure more funds from central government. The employment of men and women to raise funds by watching these 24–hour real–time cameras and sending out penalties leaves an extremely bad taste in my mouth.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 :
I prefer it, actually
I’ve noticed an annoying trend in customer service phone lines lately (Easyjet, Orange, NTL and no doubt many others). Before you even get to press the buttons to select where you would like to sit on hold for 90 minutes, you now get something like “We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. Answers to our most frequently asked questions and all the information about our whatever service is on our award–winning website at www.whatever.com. If you would nevertheless prefer to speak to somebody, please select from one of the following options”.
Piss off. Contrary to your patronising assumption, I am not calling because I am stupid, unable to read, or incapable of operating a computer or navigating your (admittedly often unhelpful and counter–intuitive) website. I would not “prefer” to speak to someone. I would “prefer” that you had just done what you were supposed to have done in the first place, meaning that I did not have to waste my time and raise my blood pressure in attempting to contact you at all. Waiting on hold to speak to someone who will most likely take the opportunity to demonstrate both their sense of superiority and total stupidity, without actually resolving my problem, is in fact just about the last thing I would “prefer” to do. I am calling this number with a heavy heart after exhausting all other possible options, having perused every page of your website, sent a number of emails to you, scoured the internet for self–help suggestions and asked everyone I know whether or not their flight, mobile, broadband supplier is any better, all with negative results.
Labels: customer service
Thursday, January 11, 2007 :
Amusingly ambiguous newspaper headlines (via madmusingsof.me.uk).
SNL
This youtube video of a rather amusing Saturday Night Live Justin Timberlake skit was sent around by nickyg but he obviously considers tumblage too highbrow to post it on there. Pretty good bit of parody I reckon: made me laugh anyway.
Labels: comedy
Training
Blah blah, trying to get fit for the New Year. As well as giving up booze for the month of January, I shall mostly be following this basic fitness programme of my own devising for general all–round fitness. For historical reasons, it is known as the “Lensfield programme” and it’s guaranteed to make you as fit as a boatie.
Labels: training
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 :
This is pretty disturbing shit as well, on the old interference with personal liberty in a supposedly free country tip. It details the Control Order restrictions “including a 12–hour home curfew, no Internet access and a ban on visits from anyone who has not been approved by the Home Office” that have been imposed for the last two years upon some guy who has never been tried or convicted of anything but is apparently a terrorist. Unsurprisingly, his lawyers are contending that the restrictions are a breach of his human rights.
Whatever John Reid says about how nanny knows best and how we need protecting from terrible things that for reasons of national security he can’t tell us about, I cannot help feeling uncomfortable that there are now crimes to which the usual rules of habeas corpus do not fully apply. Still, the Law Lords stopped the Government from detaining this geezer in Belmarsh without trial after three and a half years, so maybe they’ll step in here and restore the time–honoured position in relation to house arrest also.
Labels: law, news, war on terror
Like, woah
There are apparently some new requirements coming in if you want to visit the US from Britain. But something in this story in the Guardian totally shocked me.
“Britons already have their credit card details and email accounts inspected by the American authorities following a deal between the EU and the Department of Homeland Security. Now passengers face having all their credit card transactions traced when using one to book a flight. And travellers giving an email address to an airline will be open to having all messages they send and receive from that address scrutinised”.
So US authorities are already permitted to inspect credit card details and email accounts for anyone visiting the US from Britain, pursuant to a deal done with the EU, and now just dealing with an airline by email means that US authorities can inspect all messages to and from that address and if you pay by card they can review all transactions on your account?! Sorry for all the emphasis, but holy shit. Did I miss the memo on this? Isn’t that, like, a bit of an invasion of privacy if there’s, say, no actual evidence whatsoever that you might have done anything wrong?
Labels: law, news, war on terror
Tuesday, January 09, 2007 :
Lost in translation
I was amused to get the following email from a translation agency that I engaged last year to translate documents from Spanish into English.
“Estimado cliente:
Desde el Departamento de Calidad de Traducciones Políglota le queremos pedir que rellene una breve encuesta de satisfacción que no le llevará más de 4 minutos sobre los servicios de traducción e interpretación que ha recibido durante el año 2006.
Sus respuestas, observaciones y sugerencias nos serán de gran ayuda para mejorar la calidad de nuestros servicios.
Por supuesto, nos comprometemos a mantener la confidencialidad de los datos que nos facilite.
Para empezar la encuesta haga clic en el link que aparece más abajo o copie la dirección en su navegador.
De nuevo muchas gracias por ayudarnos a ser cada día un poco mejores.
Reciba un cordial saludo,
Departamento de Calidad de Traducciones Políglota”
Although I can hazzard a rough guess at what this is on about (some kind of customer satisfaction survey), I am afraid that I could not resist a Basil–Fawlty–esque reply along the lines of “the reason I engaged your translation services was because I do not speak Spanish”.
Labels: customer service
Climate change
Although he is getting slated for it, I cannot help thinking that Tony Blair’s latest comments on climate change represent the reality of the situation as far as the UK is concerned. If he is correct that even if we reduced our CO2 emissions to zero, this would cut world levels by only 2%, an amount that would be replaced by the growth of emissions from China within 2 years, then, really, what’s the point?
Labels: UK politics
£1m barristers
The first legal aid barrister to trouser over £1m for a financial year defends his income in the Times. His defence is predictably based upon how incredibly hard he works, how good he is and how if you can’t make £1m doing it, the best people would give up and do something else.
The real problem that people have with this comes out elsewhere in the piece: — “Premier league barristers do premier league work, he adds. Like premier league footballers? It’s a fair comparison”. Premier league footballers, paid huge amounts because they are rare and brilliant, are not paid out of taxpayers’ money. In this country, we are happy to allow the market to operate unchecked in the private sector, leading to multi–million pound bonuses for people who happen to be good at selling equity derivatives or £100,000 a week salaries for those who are great at kicking a ball about. But when it is public funds, we baulk at paying £1m in a year to any one individual, irrespective of brilliance or diligence. That’s why the Prime Minister doesn’t get paid tens of millions as CEO of the country. (Some of you may be able to suggest other reasons. I am not going to go into that here).
But why is that? There must be an equal, if not greater, interest in applying market forces to get the best people in public sector roles as compared with the private sector. I think what it comes down to is views about relative amounts of wedge and about who is the boss in each case. In the private sector, your bosses/paymasters generally make significantly more money than you. A manager who is on £100,000 is happy to pay his junior £30,000. A banker who is on a £7m bonus is happy to see his junior getting a £3m bonus. But in the public sector, we are the paymasters, in that all the money ultimately comes out of our pockets. And most of us do not earn anything like £1m/year. To most people in the country — in many cases, hardworking people, who consider their work to be an important contribution — £1m/year is an obscene, unobtainable salary. It is more than 20 times the average household income. A taxpayer who is on £40k, and is taxed £15k, is very unlikely to agree that a publicly funded legal aid barrister is worth every penny of his £1m, even if the barrister combines the wisdom of King Solomon with the work ethic of Aleksei Stakhanov.
Labels: law
Monday, January 08, 2007 :
Zaphod Beeblebrox?
Tokyo Sexwale?! Come on, who’s he fronting for?
Labels: eyebrow-raising monikers
Friday, January 05, 2007 :
Who is the strongest man in the world?
(‘My Dad’ aside, obviously).
World’s Strongest Man is ace. A January televisual institution that gets us through a dark time of the year.
However, watching this year I wondered what had happened to some of the athletes. For a few years, it always seemed to be Pudzianowski of Poland, Zydrunas Savickas of Lithuania and Vasil Virastyuk of the Ukraine who were battling for podium places. Pudzianowski and Virastyuk got the victories but Savickas was perhaps the most consistent with three second places in consecutive years, two to Pudzianowski and one to Virastyuk (with Pudzianowski in third until he was disqualified for failing a drug test).
Pudzianowski’s still around but where are the other two? A quick bit of internet research reveals that, like with the darts, strongman has split into two rival federations: the Met–Rx event and the rival IFSA (International Federation of Strength Athletes).
The parallel with the darts perhaps goes deeper. While one federation gets all the TV coverage (the Met–Rx), arguably the world’s best are to be found in the other federation. Many say that Savickas, currently IFSA World Champion, is in fact the strongest man in the world at the moment, as he holds several records for overhead lifts and has won the Arnold Classic Strongman competition for the last four years, finishing ahead of Pudzianowski.
Unify strongman, I say, and let’s see who really is the strongest man in the world!
Wednesday, January 03, 2007 :
A motorcyclist is making a Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority Claim for injuries suffered in the process of running over and killing a 12–year–old who was playing chicken on a dual carriageway A–road.
The CICA is set up to provide compensation out of public funds to victims of violent crime. This is said to be the first time that a person has tried to claim compensation from the CICA for injuries sustained as a result of an accident in which the ‘guilty’ party died. A particular difficulty seems to be whether or not a ‘violent act’ can be said to have been committed against the motorcyclist.
I can’t see why his claim should not be allowed to succeed. If the kid had deliberately run out for a prank and caused the motorcyclist to crash and be injured, but without the kid being hurt himself, it seems to me that there is a decent arguable case for section 20 OAPA 1861 grievous boldily harm on the basis of recklessness (subject to the additional complication of establishing that the person committing the offence knew that what he was doing was seriously wrong — required when an accused is between the ages of 10 and 14), with a corresponding claim for CICA compo. The fact that the kid managed to kill himself in the course of committing the act which consitutes the violent crime is neither here nor there with respect to the motorcyclist victim. Sad of course that the kid died, but that is no reason why the motorcyclist should be denied his compo.
Labels: law, motorcycles
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