On the other hand

Lisa and Brendon's showdance was the most inadvertently hilarious thing I have seen this year. The comments about it here have made me cry with laughing.

"Alien:The Musical".

A classic.

Tom Chambers and Camilla Dallerup's Showdance - Strictly Come Dancing 2008

My TV feel good highlight of the year.

No - funnily enough it wasn't the Cobblers losing 5-2 against Leeds in the FA Cup.(I am so not over that.)

I saw this today*

The dog in question was stood patiently waiting for its master to catch him up. It was very touching.

Without wanting to come over all sentimental on you (although why not - it is Christmas) - it seemed poignant that at a time when we are being told increasing numbers of people are chucking their pets out for reasons such as
'My cat doesn't match my new carpet' that others will spare no expense to keep their much loved pet alive.


*Well - not the exact same dog ( I googled for a photo), but one that looked very like it.

Compare and contrast

WARNING: Parochial rant coming up.


Northampton is a large market town and local government district in the East Midlands region of England. It is about 67 miles (108 km) northwest of London on the River Nene, and is the county town of Northamptonshire.

Please stick with this background stuff and I will try to reach my point before TOO long.

The district's population is 200,100 and the urban area's 189,474, making Northampton the 21st largest settlement in England and the UK's 3rd largest town without official city status, after Reading and Dudley.

The town became significant in the 11th century, when the Normans built town walls and a large castle under the stewardship of the Norman earl, Simon de Senlis. The town grew rapidly after the Normans arrived, and beyond the early defences. The town and its castle were important in the early 12th century and the King often held Court in the town. During his famous fall out with Henry II, Thomas Becket at one time escaped from Northampton Castle through the unguarded Northern gate to flee the country,


Milton Keynes is a large town in Central England, about 45 miles (72 km) north-west of London. It is also the principal town of the Borough of Milton Keynes, itself part of ceremonial Buckinghamshire. It was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967. At the 2001 census the population of the Milton Keynes urban area, including the adjacent town of Newport Pagnell, was 184,506.


Ikea (where on earth is this going?) - a rather popular furniture store as we all know - wanted to build their largest UK store in the large and historic town of Northampton. Our Borough councillors did not think this was 'a good idea' and turned Ikea down. Milton Keynes Council (15 miles down the road) said (loudly) "WE WANT IKEA!!!" And Ikea went to Milton Keynes creating as it did so, many jobs and knock on benefits for other local businesses.

Northampton Town was founded in 1897 (now she is getting to it -ed.)For the past four years (2004) in order to secure the financial future of the club the current owners have been trying to get approval for redeveloping the land around the ground into a local centre with shops, sporting facilities and a hotel. Our Borough Council has delayed making a decision on this more times than I care to relate here. (Thank god says only reader who has got this far.) Except they have now made a decision, which I will get to in a minute.

Milton Keynes Dons were launched on 21 June 2004, nine months after the then Wimbledon F.C. moved to Milton Keynes (and for god's sake don't get me started on that disgraceful episode... I must stick to my point, always assuming I can still remember what that was). Milton Keynes Council wanted a football club - so they built a state of the art stadium to accommodate one. It's next to Ikea, and has brought with it further jobs and knock on benefits for other local businesses. It seems that when a local council has the will to make things happen,things happen.

On to Northampton's Borough Council and their long awaited decision is .....

Drum roll......

to do nothing until at least 2026.

Yes - I did mean to type 2026. EIGHTEEN YEARS AWAY.

To quote one club director:

"We have discussed the club's intentions now with four chief executives, three council leaders, and it seems a busload of planning officers over a period of five years.

"We have had talks on Area Action Plans, Local Development Frameworks, Joint Core Strategies and Masterplans and yet we are still, after all this time, right back where we started."

It's taking 4 years to build a complete Olympics infrastructure in London. It's taken 9 years to completely rebuild the West Coast mainline including stations at a a cost of £9 billion. It took 8 years to build the Channel Tunnel. It took less than 18 years to build the entire city of Milton Keynes. It will take our council 18 years to even start thinking about developing the football ground? Northampton Borough Council are a total and utter disgrace.

There won't be a fucking football club by then. We will have gone bust long before then without any additional income.

Everyone (except me) will have long since started supporting Milton Keynes (Franchise) Dons.

One is

frightfully chuffed.

The other two Northamptonshire bloggers are positively seething!

Guess he wants to go back

for good.

Brilliant.

Reidski and I were at this gig to see Glasvegas. Here is the summary of the review in the link...

In short, acts like Glasvegas show us that stadium rock can be so much more than cheesy falsetto hymns to groupies and decadent lifestyles, and with this gig anyway, confirmed themselves as the best rock outfit out there today...


After Monday night I for one can not believe there is currently a better rock outfit than Glasvegas.


I can't come up with a more appropriate descriptive word than - Stunning.

What have I started?

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now nothing more than estates taken over by the Buonaparte family."



And how long is it going to take me to finish?

Spot the typo

I just sent the following in an e-mail to a colleague:


"The stuff in his flies is absolutely harrowing."






Should have read 'The stuff in his files is....'!

I'm like Lisa!

Cloud has found this which will analyse blogs.

I love daft things like this!

Lisa's blog and mine both come back as this:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

Reidski will be best able to judge if my blog does indeed reflect upon my personality. But as Reidski's comes back as ISTP and defines him thus "They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters." I have to say they are a little off the mark with him. Reidski will not mind me saying He Does Not Do Risk! And he is the most careful driver I know.

The Jam - Saturdays Kids

"Saturday's girls work in Tesco's and Woolworths."

But not for much longer.

Once upon a time

were the Cobblers to play Leeds United it would be a Heap Big Deal. But things change.

Last night we played Leeds United for the third time since 7th November.

7th November - FA Cup 1st round at Elland Road. It was on tele, but I did not see it as I was watching the Cold War Kids play at the Astoria, Charing Cross instead. Through the wonder that is texting I did however know that we were 1 nil up within 8 minutes, lost our captain to injury two minutes later, had a player sent off ten minutes after that, and conceded a penalty all before half time. Not a dull first half then. We then by all accounts defended for our lives and saw the match out for a replay.

18th November - FA Cup 1st round replay at our place. I actually watched this from the comfort of Reidski's front room. Had I gone to the match it would have cost me £22 - £3 more than our usual ticket prices - to watch the side that I would be seeing the following Tuesday anyway - and in any event the match was also being televised.

THANK GOD I DID NOT PAY £22 TO WATCH THE RESULTING DEBACLE.

We were absolutely dire and it was painful to watch. We got thumped 5-2 at home, our last goal coming in the 89th minute. (I texted my son at that point to say we had scored with a minute to go so he should not abandon hope.)

True to say I was not looking forward to 25th November - League One home game. I took a mate of my son as my son was working last night and couldn't use his ticket. I jokingly said to this lad on the way there "You're not a secret Leeds United supporter are you? " "No" he replied, "I AM a Leeds United supporter." (Nothing secret there then.) That was all I needed - thought of taking a gloating Leeds fan home after the match - bloody marvellous.

But hey - what do you know? We were superb and deservedly won
2-1.


I would say that it's a funny old game, if I did not have a sneaking suspicion someone somewhere may have said that before.

I love local news stories

This one comes from Reidksi's home town. It has the lot - a mistake that could happen to anyone (couldn't it?), sex (possibly), violence (definitely), the bowling club (naturally), and a great last line.

Margaret refused to comment.

In those circumstances that seems like the wisest course of action....unless of course she is just waiting for the tabloids to ocme up with their best offer for her Exclusive.

Harry and Paul-Dragons Den 2-Kitten Stomper

I LIKE kittens.

But I still think this is hilarious.

Getting to Egypt

Yes - I know I promised I had finished with the subject of Egypt, but the following tale doesn't count cos we weren't actually IN Egypt at this point*. In fact - at that particular point we all began to wonder if we were in fact going to get to Egypt in the first place.

In order to get to Egypt we have decided to take an aeroplane. This means travelling from Heathrow Airport's new Terminal Five, a decision which provokes comment from even the youngest members of the group, all of whom are aware of publicity regarding the disasterous opening of the Terminal a few months ago. Now was all this bad publicity fair?



The new Terminal Five is a massive facility, designed to relieve congestion at the airport and improve the travelling experience. It is designed to handle all of Briish Airways flights from Heathrow.

Unfortunately, the much-publisised opening was dogged by problems, cancelled flights, computer systems not working, massive levels of lost luggage; in other words complete testament to the fact that we British, when faced with the task of building anything larger than a garden shed, always manage to cock it up. In fact Graham who was one of our party and who is himself a frequent traveller, has an unfortunate friend who arrived at terminal 5 at 11 o'clock one morning, whose flight was cancelled at 11 o'clock the same night, whose luggage was lost in the meantime, and whose travel insurance was declared invalid since, technically, he had not travelled.

When one is due to travel via Terminal Five one receives a leaflet from British Airways telling one how to negotiate Terminal Five without stress. That didn't seem quite as reassuring as B.A. no doubt intended that it should be.



Our collective feeling of unease was compounded at check-in, where a unique system has been adopted by the authorities. What you don't do when checking-in at Terminal Five is go up to the check-in desk and check in. What you do is go to the check-in desk, get told to go to do-it-yourself check-in computer screens, check in each of the seventeen members of the party separately, get issued seventeen boarding passes where no two seats are together, go back to the original check-in desk to have all of the machine-issued boarding passes cancelled so they can issue new ones manually and try to seat the group in the same section of the plane. It is a unique system. And it took an incredibly long time which was why we all started to wonder if we were in fact travelling to Egpyt or not.

Still, all the hanging around sorting out our seats did give some of us the opportunity to read some of our travel guides whilst we were waiting and now I finally get to the one thing I really wanted to tell you about Egypt but had somehow neglected to in my earlier posts. I think you will agree that the following information was well worth waiting for.

One of the things we learnt from one of the books was that:



"The Egyptian pyramids are pyramid shaped structures to be found in Egypt".


As you may imagine - this came as something of a surprise.




* My blog - my rules to make or break as convenient.

Feeling a bit depressed

I don't know why I let it get to me. It has certainly not been a good few weeks to be a social worker but nevertheless the vast majority of us work really hard in challenging circumstances.

So then I read something like this about some woman who claims she was told she was too posh to adopt, and it isn't so much the article that bothers me (typical Daily Mail story) but it is the comments that follow it. 191 to date. And so very many posted by some of the very many people who obviously simply hate social workers.

Makes me wonder why any of us bother.

I've just gone off my favourite programme

I didn't like reading that other contestants snubbed John at the end of Sunday's results programme.

I don't like it that John Sergeant has now quit Strictly Come Dancing. If this show is a dancing competition then just pick 'celebrities' who are young, fit and have already got dancing experience. If it is, as some of us were under the impression it was, in fact harmless entertainment then pick a cross section of the population to take part and don't get hot under the collar when the voting public actually vote for the person that entertains them the most.

And yes I do realise that many people think SCD is neither of the above and is in fact just a load of rubbish, but I liked it in a passive non voting kind of way, and after today I really don't like it anywhere near as much.

For anyone who never had the pleasure of seeing John jive, and who is not easily distressed by dancing that is not of the highest possible standard.

Look out

Iain Dale. The blogger beloved of the media has a rival and he must be shaking in his Tory boots. Yes, another blogger - well known to literally tens of other bloggers (or at least to tens of other people if you count all my distant relations) is in running for the title of media darling.

Or not.

OK - not content with snogging Tony Blair in full view of television cameras (another story)- in my mad pursuit of media recognition I e-mailed Radio 5 on the subject of Baby P. I had been listening to the Victoria Derbyshire programme and the phone in was about how social workers did bad. After the discussion ended I sent an email about it and thirty seconds later my mobile rang. Radio 5 to say they were very interested in what I had said and would I be prepared to talk on air to Victoria about it? Well modesty forbade - but obviously I got over that and


Bit

Their

Hand

Off.

Well - not quite as one does not want to appear too easy to get, but opportunity to sound off on a subject close to my heart???? Here we go, here we fucking go. I did agree and I did indeed chat with Vix (as her closest bosom pals know her) and it seemed to go OK. As in; I didn't make a complete and utter tit of myself on nationwide radio.*


Half an hour or so later though I got another call. BBC News. I assumed it was the radio station again and was therefore more than a little thrown to be asked if I would appear on a television discussion programme they planned to put out on Friday evening. So fame and if not fortune maybe at least a token expense claim beckoned.

Petite Anglais, Norm, The Girl With the One Track Mind, that other tart that sold books about how being a prostitute is really ace. For one moment 'It Could Have Been Me' too.





Except I said I couldn't possibly. But thank you very much for asking me.



* And did anyone I know ring me to say they heard me and I was bloody marvellous? No they did not.

Although maybe they did hear me, and thought it kindest to pretend they did not!

Nat is blogging again

And she brings us wonderful tales like this one concerning a drawing of a spider with 7 legs and an overdue utility bill.

The story has a very satisfactory ending indeed.

Baby P

I used to work for the London Borough of Haringey.

It is a borough too often in the news for all the wrong reasons.

I wasn’t in social services although my job did bring me into regular contact with that department. My area of work was community relations and I was there at the time of the Broadwater Farm riot where PC Keith Blakelock was murdered. As you may imagine promoting good community relations following that terrible night wasn’t easy.

When Victoria Climbie died it sounds awful but I wasn’t surprised. There were many inadequate workers at the Council but they either went unchallenged or we noticed they got promoted. It was all too easy to understand how an inexperienced social worker without proper support from supervisors could fail a child with such terrible consequences. The fact that it is happened to yet another child within the same borough - in fact just a few streets away from where Victoria died, is however not so much as surprising as frankly beyond understanding. Where a mother has actually been arrested twice on ‘suspicion’ of child cruelty and both times released; where a child is recognised as being at risk and is on the local Child Protection Register; where a child has been taken into foster care because of concerns for his welfare and safety – for crying out loud how many serious concerns does any authority need to have before they remove a child for his or her own protection, let alone the very Local Authority who had failed Victoria Climbie?

I am trying to get my head round this and I do think that partly The Children’s Act of 1989 is at fault because this emphasises that the best interests of a child are normally served by keeping the youngster within their birth family. I quote directly from the Act: The underlying philosophy in the provision of services is to work in partnership with parents and children to prevent the breakdown of family relationships and minimise the need to have recourse to Court or emergency protection.

So what workers are supposed to do is take every possible step to keep a child at home; whether by putting in a family support worker to assist with parenting, sending a parent on courses designed to help them care properly for their children, or anger management training, or ensuring respite care for the child and parent. So the social workers act as a family friend and inevitably form some kind of relationship with the parent/parents, and that does make it difficult to reach the decision that the child needs to be removed because actually in this case the family represents danger for that child. That same worker moves from being a helpful family friend to Family Enemy Number 1.

If the case gets to court, because of the basic premise of The Children’s Act the Family Courts in care cases will always insist on knowing what measures social workers have taken to keep the family unit together and if they don’t think enough has been done they often return the child to their parent/parents. The court appointed officer (The Guardian ad Litem) who investigates the circumstances for the child will first and foremost look into how that child can remain at home. It is the social worker who has to fight that belief within the adversarial atmosphere of a court case that a child’s interests are best served by remaining at home – with support from the services if necessary. It isn’t surprising if maybe a worker will be over optimistic that a family can be trusted to care for the child safely when the alternative is becoming immersed in hostile proceedings. We also all know the poor outcomes for children that do end up in the Care System.

Yet so often it is glaring obvious from the very beginning that a child needs to be removed from their family. In my work now I summarise care files for people who went on to be adopted and I often read in disbelief at the sheer scale of recorded abuse which was allowed to continue for months and in some cases years before children were removed whilst parents are given one more chance after one more chance to prove they can adequately protect their children.

Having said all that though I still find it inexplicable that workers in Haringey of all places could fail to spot what was going on with this poor Baby P (and why he can’t be identified along with his mother and her partner I really don’t understand?*) when they were visiting his home week in, week out. One thing stands out to me in all the horrific catalogue of injuries… (Baby P had) Blackened finger and toenails, with several nails missing; the middle finger of his right hand was without a nail and its tip was also missing, as if it had been sliced off.

How does anyone involved with the welfare of a child miss that?

* the doting parents had another child when she was in prison so that explains the anonymity.

Wednesday - I just read the serious case review. Not only did the mother have another child in prison - there are three older siblings to Baby P. Wonder where they are right now the poor, poor children.